Category Archives: Kurds

Curious numbers in Ninevah

Posted on by

BAGHDAD — Ninevah province, home to the mixed city of Mosul and the besieged city of Tal ‘Afar, is see­ing some _​very_​strange num­bers. I’ve done back of the Excel enve­lope cal­cu­la­tions and have found this:
* In the Jan­u­ary elec­tion, which was boy­cotted by Sun­nis, there were 165,934 votes cast, accord­ing to the “Inde­pen­dent Elec­toral Com­mis­sion of Iraq”:http://ieciraq.org/English/Home.htm.
* In Octo­ber, accord­ing to “AP’s pre­lim­i­nary results”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051017/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_vote_results, there were 419,804 votes cast in Ninevah, an increase of 253,870 votes, or +152.99 per­cent.
* The num­ber of peo­ple vot­ing *for* the con­sti­tu­tion in Ninevah, accord­ing to the AP, was 326,774 (78 per­cent), with 90,065 vot­ing *against* it (21 per­cent). Less than 1 per­cent, or 2,965 votes, was dis­qual­i­fied.
By way of com­par­i­son, Tamim province, home to the dis­puted city of Kirkuk, saw 542,000 votes cast — an increase of 35.2 per­cent over Jan­u­ary — with 341,611 vot­ing “yes” (63 per­cent) and 195,725 vot­ing “no” (36 per­cent). You mean we’re sup­posed to believe that in Tamim, which is also a mixed province but which has had a steady stream of Kurds mov­ing in for the last two-​and-​a-​half years, had *more than twice as many no votes as Ninevah?* And with the Kurds already pretty much own­ing Kirkuk? Color me skep­ti­cal.
What’s truly eyebrow-​raising is that the num­ber of con­sti­tu­tional “yes” votes — 326,774 — is more than the total increase in votes over January’s turnout. That sug­gests that not only did all of the Sun­nis in Ninevah province, who largely boy­cotted the Jan­u­ary elec­tions turn out, but that they _​all voted for the constitution._ That’s a very strange idea to me, as I’ve not met a sin­gle Sunni who voted for it here in Bagh­dad.
Ninevah is home to Mosul, a mixed city of about 2 mil­lion Arabs, Turko­mans and Kurds, as well as Tal’Afar, the mostly Turko­man city of 500,000 that U.S. and Iraqi forces stormed last month. Anec­do­tal reports are that a) Sunni Arabs have come out in droves, mainly to vote down the con­sti­tu­tion, and b) the con­sti­tu­tion was very unpop­u­lar in Tal’Afar because of mil­i­tary actions there.
Now, sev­eral pos­si­bil­i­ties spring to mind: Sunni Arabs in the north really _​love_​the idea of the new national char­ter, but I find this unlikely, to say the least. In fact, I only sug­gest it for the gig­gle fac­tor. Another pos­si­bil­ity is that the vote was bla­tantly fixed. A third pos­si­bil­ity is that the Kurds moved thou­sands of peo­ple into Mosul to skew the vote. Oddly enough, I heard Sun­nis mak­ing just this charge in the run-​up to the Saturday’s ref­er­en­dum. A third pos­si­bil­ity is a com­bi­na­tion of the last two. The vote was rigged _​and_​the Kurds moved peo­ple in.
Now, con­trast­ing points that prove I don’t know what I’m talk­ing about, sug­gested by col­leagues:
# Mosul is an Iraqi Islamic Party strong­hold. The IIP called on its sup­port­ers to vote “yes” after a deal last week to open up the con­sti­tu­tion to early amend­ments. This split the Sunni oppo­si­tion to the char­ter.
# The Sun­nis sim­ply don’t make up 20 per­cent of Iraq. There hasn’t been a reli­able cen­sus in years and not only do the Sun­nis not make up 42 per­cent of Iraq as Saleh Mut­laq, a mem­ber of the National Dia­logue Coun­cil, claims, but they’re much fewer than the 20 per­cent most peo­ple assume.
# Ninevah and Mosul aren’t Sunni strong­holds. It’s con­ven­tional wis­dom, but maybe that’s wrong.
# Mosul was a lot more vio­lent in Jan­u­ary, keep­ing the vote there down. Per­haps now, with less vio­lence, more Kurds — per­haps half of the total increase — were able to come out and vote.
# The Turko­mans aren’t a fac­tor. Money quote from cyn­i­cal col­league: “There are more Turko­man par­ties than there are Turko­mans.“
# The AP num­bers are so pre­lim­i­nary, they’re flat-​out wrong.
The pos­si­bil­ity exists that all of these pos­si­bil­i­ties have played into the dynamic in Ninevah, lead­ing to wild num­bers, and I’ve not been able to reach a stringer in Mosul yet to get more infor­ma­tion. But if these num­bers hold, there’s some­thing very, very rot­ten in the north.
(Hat tip to var­i­ous com­menters who alerted me to the num­bers here.)

Tech­no­rati Tags: , , ,

Shellings and kidnappings

Posted on by

Today was a bad one. Another friend was kid­napped last night, and this morn­ing a mor­tar shell hit our com­pound. Thank­fully, my friend was released after a day — but he was very lucky. (More details to come tomor­row after he leaves the coun­try.) The mor­tar caused no real dam­age, hamdil­lah, but hit a house near one of the hotels in the com­pound. The explo­sion, in size and inten­sity, sounded exactly like the car bomb that hit the Karma hotel back in May.

Stay­ing here is becom­ing increas­ingly unten­able. There’s talk of TIME mov­ing me up north for a cou­ple of months, which would be a wel­come change, to be hon­est. I’ve not been able to get out of the com­pound, and after the kid­nap­ping, I’m dis­in­clined to even make the attempt. The bot­tom line is I can’t work like this and I’m get­ting more and more frus­trated, as I’ve men­tioned. Hope­fully, by mov­ing to the north for a lit­tle while, my work will improve and so will my state of mind.

More as the sit­u­a­tion devel­ops, but things are chang­ing here in Bagh­dad — for the worse.

UPDATE 2321 +0300 And now a large car bomb with many casu­al­ties — in first reports — has just gone off down the street from our compound.

Suicide Attacks in Arbil kill dozens

Posted on by
PUK_hq.jpg
An exte­rior view shows a destroyed wall in the office of the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan in the town of Arbil, some 400 km north of Iraqi cap­i­tal Bagh­dad on Sun­day. REUTERS/​Namir Noor-​Eldin

Two sui­cide bombers attacked the offices of the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party and the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan in Arbil, the seat of the Iraqi Kur­dis­tan par­lia­ment, today, killing dozens and wound­ing more than 200.
Reports vary as to the num­ber of dead, with some reports putting the num­ber at 56, oth­ers 70 and still oth­ers at 100 or more. This is the worst bomb­ing since the August “attack on the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000451.php#000451, which killed more than 100 peo­ple, includ­ing Aya­tol­lah Moham­mad Baqir al-​Hakim, a key Shi’a cleric and then-​head of SCIRI.
Among the dead are:

  • Sami Abdul­rah­man, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter KRG, polit­bu­reau Sec­re­tary, KDP
  • Shawkat Shekh Yezdin, Coör­di­na­tion Min­is­ter, KRG, Cen­tral Com­mit­tee Mem­ber, KDP
  • Sa’d Abdulla, polit­bu­reau Mem­ber, Head of Branch 2, KDP
  • Mehm­mod Halo, Deputy Finance Min­is­ter, KDP
  • Akram Men­tik, Gov­er­nor of Arbil, KDP
  • Mehdi Khosh­naw, Deputy Gov­er­nor of Arbil, KDP
  • Ahmad Rojbeyani, Head of Admin­is­tra­tion of the City of Arbil, KDP
  • Ner­i­man Abdul-​Hamid, Head of Police in Arbil
  • Shakhe­wan Abbas, Lead­er­ship Mem­ber, PUK
  • Khasro Shera, Lead­er­ship Mem­ber, PUK

At a news con­fer­ence in Sofia, Iraqi For­eign Min­is­ter Hoshi­yar Zebari, a Kurd, blamed the attacks on the al Qaeda net­work or its allies.
sami.jpg
Sami Abdul­rah­man, KDP deputy prime min­is­ter, in his offices in Arbil in July 2002. Christo­pher Allbrit­ton ® 2002“It was an attack by ter­ror­ists, al Qaeda and Ansar al-​Islam,” he said. Sev­eral senior Kur­dish offi­cials have been tar­geted in assas­si­na­tion attempts in recent years, with the Kurds accus­ing Ansar as the cul­prit. Today’s attack has the hall­marks of Ansar, who killed Aus­tralian cam­era­man Paul Moran on March 22, 2003 at a road­side check­point near Suleimaniya. PUK Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Barhim Salih has also been nar­rowly escaped assas­si­na­tion.
Peter Gal­braith, a for­mer U.S. ambas­sador and expert on the Kurds, said the attacks would strengthen the hand of sep­a­ratist Kur­dish groups who want to break away from Iraq. He — and I — con­sider this a very bad idea. “It is too early to pre­dict the fall­out, but the bomb­ings will strengthen those in the Kur­dish move­ment who want to insu­late Kur­dis­tan phys­i­cally and polit­i­cally from the rest of Iraq,” Gal­braith said.
The attacks came on Eid al-​Adha, or the Feast of the Sac­ri­fice, which is one of the holi­est and most joy­ful hol­i­days in the Islamic cal­en­dar. The sui­cide bombers appar­ently were able to get past secu­rity into the party head­quar­ters because of lax secu­rity on the hol­i­day.
On a per­sonal note, I knew Sami Abdul­ra­ham. I met him in July 2002, and was intensely impressed with him. He was a hero to many in the KDP for his unwa­ver­ing loy­alty to the Barzani clan — first to the founder of the KDP, Mustafa Barzani, and then to his son, Mas­soud Barzani. He treated me with grace and hos­pi­tal­ity, let­ting me have “drafts of the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tions for a Fed­eral Repub­lic of Iraq.”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000046.php#000046 He had writ­ten most of the drafts him­self, hope­ful even then for the future of his coun­try and his peo­ple. I still have my last inter­view with him on tape. I con­sid­ered him a friend.
Sev­eral mem­bers of Abdulrahman’s fam­ily were also killed, includ­ing a young mem­ber named Saleh, who was con­sid­ered a ris­ing star. A few fam­ily mem­bers have already been buried in Duhok in keep­ing with trad­tion.
To all the Kurds and other Iraqis who have felt this loss, my sym­pa­thies to you all.
On a more crit­i­cal note, what can be done to secure Iraq from this vio­lence? Yes­ter­day, 17 peo­ple, includ­ing three Amer­i­can GIs, died in three sep­a­rate attacks. A car bomb in Mosul, mor­tars in Bagh­dad and an road­side bomb in Kirkuk. The insur­gency or ter­ror­ists or what­ever you want to call these killers are not con­fined to the “Sunni Tri­an­gle” as the Bush admin­is­tra­tion keeps insist­ing. The num­ber of dead GIs for the month of Jan­u­ary alone is 41, mak­ing it the sec­ond dead­liest month of the occu­pa­tion since Pres­i­dent Bush declared Iraq a “Mis­sion Accom­plished” with the end of major com­bat oper­a­tions on May 1. Wasn’t the “cap­ture of Sad­dam Hussein”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000495.php#000495 sup­posed to end — or at least blunt — the attacks?
Some may con­sider that a cheap shot in light of today’s death toll, but a hard ques­tion remains: Why are sol­diers and civil­ians dying in num­bers greater than ever while the White House con­tin­ues to insist “we’re mak­ing progress” against these killers? Iraqi Kur­dis­tan is con­sid­ered the safest part of Iraq, patrolled by _​peshmergas_​and build­ing on the bur­geon­ing civil soci­ety the Kurds built in the last decade. What coun­try can be con­sid­ered secure when the safest part is attacked like this?

Uh-​oh…

Posted on by

U.S. troops raided the KDP offices in Kirkuk Sat­ur­day night, seiz­ing AK-​47s and rocket-​propelled grenades. The Amer­i­cans also arrested a senior KDP leader. A PUK office also was raided.
The raids are con­nected to the “recent eth­nic violence”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000637.php between Turk­men, Arabs and Kurds in Kirkuk that has left almost 20 peo­ple dead since “August”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000445.php#000445. Six have been killed since last week.
“We are dis­ap­pointed by this,” said Moham­mad Sabir, chief PUK rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wash­ing­ton when I con­tacted him this after­noon. “We are very close to the U.S. but I don’t know [the rea­son for] the raid. Maybe some Turk­men or Arabs gave them infor­ma­tion that the PUK had many weapons. I don’t know, really.“
He added that the PUK was work­ing to clear up any mis­un­der­stand­ing.
The KDP rep­re­sen­ta­tive in D.C., Farhad Barzani, said he knew noth­ing about the raid and couldn’t com­ment.
The “Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party”:http://www.kdp.pp.se/ and the “Patri­otic Union of Kurdistan”:http://www.puk.org are the two main Kur­dish par­ties in Iraq and have been push­ing for a fed­eral sys­tem guar­an­tee­ing Kurds “sig­nif­i­cant autonomy”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000046.php#000046 since last year. Arabs, Turk­men and sur­round­ing coun­tries have all expressed alarm and dis­plea­sure over the idea of sig­nif­i­cant Kur­dish autonomy.

Turkomen to be trained by Egypt

Posted on by

_TurkishPress.com_ reports that mem­bers of the Iraqi Turk­men Front will be trained by Egypt as part of the new Iraqi Army instead of Turkey.

Turk­men and Arabs have grown closer in the wake of the Kurds’ recent attempts to estab­lish an ethnic-​based fed­er­a­tion in Iraq. The two eth­nic groups have assumed a com­mon stance, with both argu­ing that Kirkuk is an Iraqi city after the Kur­dish groups revealed their ambi­tion to include the oil-​rich city within their ter­ri­to­ries.
The Turk­men are wait­ing for the sup­port of the Arab world. Last week Iraqi Turk­men Front (ITF) head Faruk Abdul­lah held a series of meet­ings with Arab League Secretary-​General Amr Musa and Egypt­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ahmet Mahir. Sources say that Musa and Mahir’s stances were a relief to the ITF, and can be sum­ma­rized as fol­lows:
“Iraq’s ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity will be pro­tected. We can’t allow one group to dom­i­nate another. Kirkuk is an Iraqi city. It can’t be left to the dom­i­na­tion of one eth­nic group. Egypt will do its utmost to pro­tect both Iraq’s ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity and the rights of every eth­nic group in the country.”

While the Turks might seem an obvi­ous choice to train the Turk­men, thanks to their his­toric ties to the Turk­men, ITF spokesman Ahmed Muratli says that “Turkey is now out of the pic­ture. The U.S. signed train­ing agree­ments with Jor­dan and Egypt, not Turkey.” Kur­dish lead­ers Jalal Tal­a­bani and Mas­soud Barzani have also expressed oppo­si­tion to the Turks pro­vid­ing train­ing, despite (or per­haps because of) its prox­im­ity and its NATO ties.
A Turkmen-​Arab alliance should be expected as the third largest eth­nic group in Iraq finds com­mon cause with the largest (Arabs) in the wake of Kur­dish attempts to add Kirkuk to their pos­ses­sions in the post-​Saddam Iraq. Both Arabs and Turk­men have argued that Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and not Kur­dish. Vio­lence in that city last week left at least two peo­ple dead and more injured when _​peshmergas_​fired into a demon­stra­tion of “Arabs and Turk­men protest­ing the Kurds’ pro­posed plans for Iraqi federalism.”:http://b2i2.thestonecutters.net/archives/000637.php