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RIGHTS: Iraqi Minorities Dying Over Turf War

Chryso D'Angelo

NEW YORK, Nov 11 2009 (IPS) - Iraqi minority groups are caught up in a power struggle between the country’s Arab-dominated central government and the Kurdish-controlled regional government over the oil-rich Nineveh province – and they are paying with their lives, according Human Rights Watch.

Targeted shootings and truck bombings tied to Sunni Arab extremist groups who view Christians, Yazidis, and Shabaks in the Northern province as “crusaders” or “infidels” have left hundreds dead since 2003. The most recent attacks claimed 157 people between July and September.

Accusations are flying that the two warring governments are behind the attacks or have stood aside and allowed the attacks to take place, hoping to sweep in with reparations to win minority support and ultimate control of the region.

“Everyone will start showing their muscles and saying they want to protect us. But everyone is willing to sacrifice us for their goals,” a farmer told HRW after a bomb killed 35 people and razed 65 homes in his Shabak village in August. “We blame the [Nouri] al-Maliki government and the Kurdish government for all the mass killing we face.”

“They wanted to kill two birds with one stone,” a Kurdish official told the New York Times in August. He blames Shia Arabs for the attacks. “Kill Shiites and have Kurds blamed.”

A Sunni Arab lawmaker accused the Kurdish government of attacking the minority groups.

“If not the Kurds, who? Who else has the power, the weapons and the desire to control these areas?” he told the Washington Post in August.

“At the heart of this issue is a conflict over land and who controls it and this means that minorities are courted – in nice and not-so-nice ways – for their loyalty,” Joost Hiltermann, deputy programme director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, told IPS. “It’s an attempt to secure the minorities’ loyalty by one means or another.”

According to Human Rights Watch, the Northern province is constitutionally under Arab jurisdiction, but Kurdish authorities quietly moved their security forces and political administration into the region in 2006 when clashes between Shia and Sunni Arabs in southern Iraq distracted the central government. After the violence abated this year, Arabs awoke to a new threat – Kurdish occupation of the province.

Nineveh was home to hundreds of thousands of Kurds before previous Iraqi governments (including the Saddam Hussein regime) forced Kurds to identify as Arabs or risk expulsion. Now, the Kurds want control of the land and they are counting on Nineveh minorities – many of whom they consider to be of original Kurdish decent – to be behind them, says Human Rights Watch.

“Yazidis and Shabaks are Kurds; 90 percent of them agree with this,” said Khasro Goran, Nineveh’s former deputy governor. “They are the original Kurds. The only important issue for every nation is language – the only language they speak is Kurdish.”

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) has received reports alleging verbal abuse and harassment of the Shabak for their presumed lack of loyalty to Kurdistan and for insulting Kurdish leadership, according to the 2008 UNAMI human rights report of the region.

Human Rights Watch included first-hand accounts of arbitrary arrests, detentions, intimidations and violence attributed to Kurdish authorities in the report, “On Vulnerable Ground: Violence against Minority Communities in Nineveh Province’s Disputed Territories,” released on Tuesday.

One Shabak construction worker claimed he was detained by Kurdish officials after he was accused of knocking down Kurdish flags during a soccer match in 2008. He said he was told, “You, the Shabaks, are Kurds, if you don’t elect our list, we’re going to kill you inside your villages.”

They drove him to an unpaved side road and pointed to a deserted area, and the KDP official said, “We can kill you right now and nobody would ever know.”

“It is unfair to put the blame only on the Kurds on this score,” argued Hiltermann. “The Arabs have done exactly the same. During the Saddam years, the Shabak were compelled to declare themselves Arabs even though many saw themselves as either Shabaks or Kurds. Today the reverse is true. They can’t win.”

In an attempt to protect their homes from future attacks, some communities have dug trenches around their villages, leaving one guarded road for entry and exit.

Hiltermann fears that’s a short-term fix, at best. “Eventually, the enemy will come from the air instead,” he told IPS. “A better way is to seek protection from a larger group, but this makes you even more of a target, because you have now declared your loyalty. By far the best way is to actively promote a political solution to the question of disputed territories that accommodates minorities and respects their rights constitutionally.”

HRW is asking both the Kurdish and Arab authorities to step in to stop the violence.

“What’s needed right now is a commitment from Iraq’s central and provincial authorities, and Kurdish authorities, that protection of minorities is the top priority,” Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

“Those minorities have suffered grievously already, along with Kurds and other Iraqis. They should not be the victims of the struggle to control these disputed areas in the Nineveh Plains,” he said.