Sheikh Muhammadawi warns Kurds to leave Arab areas or face death

ERBIL- The leader of the Brave Sons of Iraq, Sheikh Abbas al-Muhammadawi, has warned Kurds in Baghdad and other Arab-majority areas to leave or be killed.

The Brave Sons of Iraq, a Shiite group, gave one-week for Kurds to leave Arab cities after which they threatened to carry weapons against the them.

Iraqi media circulated a statement from Abdullah al-Muhammadawi, a spokesperson for the military wing of the group, the 9th Division of Badr.

The group stated that they would also carry weapons against Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani and those who are with him.

“Who has warned is excused” concluded the statement, meaning that following one week period given, the killings would begin if Kurds did not leave the Arab areas.

The threats come as tensions between Baghdad and Kurdistan Region escalate over accusations that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is becoming an autocrat and a dictator.

Muhammadawi said in a press release that Kurds in Baghdad and other Arab majority areas should be “displaced to and moved to Kurdistan region, and must ask for visas if they want to enter Baghdad or any other Arab land in Iraq as retaliation for the way they deal with Arabs who want to enter Kurdistan.

“Kurds must know who gave them prestige and value” he added.

Muahhamadawi’s statement quickly set off criticism from Kurdish MPs and organizations. The Kurdish group Supporters of Change called on Kurdish MPs in Baghdad to file a lawsuit against Muhammadawi on charge of terror for his threats to kill Kurds.

Mohammed al-Afandi, secretary of the group called on the authorities in a statement for “severe measures about it, and restrain the groups that are trying to undermine security and safety in the country.

"This behavior is contrary to law and the constitution.”

Following al-Afandi’s call, the Kurdish Blocs Coalition (KBC) member Saman Fawzi said Muhammadawi’s threats against the Kurds go under the label of “terror”.

“Even the Baathists did not go this far in their threats and intimidation of Kurdish people,” he said.

Fawzi said the Kurdish MPs are working on a lawsuit against the Arab leader.

The threats were also condemned by al-Iraqiya list, the main Sunni bloc in Iraq. Their spokesman, Maysoon al-Damluji, described the statements as “mere harbingers of bad will that aims at breaking up Iraq”.

She added: “Kurds are an integral part of the Iraqi society and the Kurdish leader displayed a pivotal role in fighting dictatorship and in the establishment of the principles of democracy in Iraq.

"The mountains of Kurdistan and the honorable Kurdish people hugged the opposition [during the time of Saddam Hussein], among them the Wifaq Movement, Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq, the Dawa Party and a large number of other opposition forces and Iraqi patriotic figures.

"And they [Kurdish people] have faced big risks for that.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office said the day before yesterday that any Iraqi citizen has the right to choose the place they want to live and it is the Iraqi government’s responsibility to protect them.

The Badr Organization also announced that it has nothing to do with Muhammadani whose military wing carries the same name, Badr division.

Qasim al-Araji, a leading member of the Badr Organization, told a press conference that the Badr Organization does not have any armed wings, and that “Muhammadani is not related to us.”

“We call on the security authorities to prosecute any group that spreads terror and tries to provoke hatred between the sons of one nation” he added.

Soon after the media hype about Muhammadani’s threats, the sheikh backtracked on his remarks regarding killing Kurds in Baghdad and other areas.

“I did not threaten Kurds living outside the Kurdistan Region or pose their lives to danger. The majority of my friends are Fayili Kurds," he said.

But in any case, the threat is still there. Kurds from the semi-autonomous region have relatives in Baghdad and family members who work in Baghdad - in the political arena or in other cases have paperwork that needs to be done in Baghdad such as a US visa, UK or other visa interviews.

Besides, Arabs of Iraq do not require visas when they enter Kurdistan Region. This year, over 100,000 Arabs from southern and central Iraq visited Kurdistan Region during the three-day Nawroz festivities.

"And many of them have bought properties in Kurdistan, in particular housing projects that the Kurdish government launched over the past few years to address the housing crisis in Kurdistan Region. But the with the big number of Arabs from other parts of Iraq buying from these projects, the housing crisis is much the same."

 A report published by Hawler Newspaper last year said that 25% of the housing units tendered by the Kurdistan Region’s Investment Board to companies so that people of the region could buy them to ease the housing crisis was in fact bought by Arabs from Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

The only thing that might be disturbing for the Arabs who come to Kurdistan Region might be the strict measures taken by security forces such as the inspection of the cars of Arab families who come to Kurdistan.

This is justified when taking into account the security situation in other parts of Iraq where al-Qaeda and other armed groups carry out daily bombings and attacks.

The security, stability and economic development in the Kurdish region, which has been spared of such violence since 2003, has been because of the strict security measures.

Efforts mount to remove Maliki

ERBIL – Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has been accused of running an autocracy and dictatorship, may face a vote of no confidence if he continues his current political behaviors, claim political parties.

The accusations against al-Maliki increased recently after his Shiite-dominated government started firing Sunni academics from universities on charges of belonging to the outlawed Baath party, detained former Baath Party affiliated Sunnis on charges of planning a coup after the withdrawal of the US forces and chased after Sunni politicians with terror charges.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki

He also went against the allies in Kurdistan Region over long awaited issues of oil and gas. The political crisis erupted between Baghdad and Erbil recently after Kurdistan Region stopped the export of crude oil in protest against the federal government's non-payment of dues owed to foreign companies operating in the region.

The Kurdistan Regional Government claims to have asked Baghdad to pay the foreign companies some $1.5bn (1.7tr IQD), while the latter stated it would pay only $450m (522bn IQD).

On Sunday, Maysoon al-Damlouji, the spokesperson for al-Iraqiya bloc - the main Sunni bloc in the Iraqi parliament - said the list was seeking a consensus to remove al-Maliki from his position.

Al-Iraqiya Spokesperson Maysoon al-Damluji

Damlouji said a national consensus would be sought to withdraw confidence if Iraqiya and the Kurdish Blocs Coalition (KBC) were able to collect 163 votes. He added, Iraqiya has also established ongoing dialogue with parties in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's own National Coalition (NC) bloc for this purpose.

Damluji's statement was immediately echoed by Kurdish observers. Falakaddin Kakayi, a former KRG minister, said Kurds may join other Iraqi forces in an attempt to remove the prime minister if he continues his current political behavior.

Falakaddin Kakayia has been known as a close personality to President of the Kurdistan Region Massoud Barzani,

"I believe that if Maliki continues his current behavior, and dealing with the Kurdistan Region, then I think the Kurds in the future will join those parties who are after such a bid."

Maliki has been accused of creating more issues in Iraq than solving them - those of a national level that affect all Iraq and others regarding Erbil-Baghdad relations.

On a national level, the PM has rejected al-Iraqiya's candidates for the ministerial positions they were entitled to under the 2010 Erbil agreement, when political parties came to a power-sharing deal following an eight-month deadlock.

But ever since, Maliki has been working as acting Defense Minister, National Security Minister, Interior Minister and acting intelligence chief – and this has been described by the political parties as a monopoly of authorities.

Bukhari Abdullah, a Kurdish political sciences academic said: "The administration of these positions is not Maliki's specialty and this is a serious indication that Maliki's behaviors have lead him to a dictatorship. "Over the last two years he has even entered disputes with parties who are his allies too. His disputes are not only with the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs, but also with some of the Shiites as well."

President of Kurdistan Region, Massoud Barzani, also criticized Maliki for his "autocratic" rule last month in an address during the Nawroz festivities in Kurdistan Region. 

Barzani with US Vice President Joseph Biden

He also warned that if problems between Kurdistan Region and Baghdad remained unsolved then the Kurdish leadership would take action according to the will of the Kurdish people.

Barzani also said during a U.S. Congress address last week: "Iraq is heading towards a crisis, autocracy has emerged; control of the majority of state institutions is growing every day.

"After I am back [to Kurdistan] we will seriously make efforts to find radical solutions for them in a specified time frame. "We will not be convinced with futile promises like before."

MP Salman al-Musawi, who is close to Nouri al-Maliki, said Sunday that the Iraqi PM has instructed all Iraqis to remain silent about the ongoing crisis with Kurdistan Region, to preserve the historic relationship which brings together Shiites and Kurds.

"On the Kurdish side, [they] must understand that our position comes from our sense to keep a good relationship with Kurds and that does not mean or is interpreted as a position of weakness," he said.

  

Barzani warns that autocracy and dictatorship is no longer accepted in Iraq

President of Kurdistan Region Massoud Barzani told a US Congress audience last week that Iraq was heading towards dictatorship as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is controlling the majority of the state institutions. Below is a translation s his address with a link to the video on Youtube.

"My Washington visit came upon the invitation of the US government. Yesterday, I met with President Obama and Mr. Biden and other US officials, we talked about the current situations in the region in general, but the Iraq and the relations between the [Kurdistan] Region and Baghdad were tackled in detail. We conveyed our opinion very frankly that Iraq is heading towards a crisis, autocracy has emerged; taking over the majority of the state institutions is growing every day. Therefore, the situation requires a solution and we have called on the Iraqi political forces to sit together and solve the situation, or as I said earlier in Kurdistan during the Nawroz, that "eventually, we will be obliged to go back to the opinion of our people. Whatever our people decides we will do that"

"Of course, their opinion [US officials] was that they cared about the situations in Iraq, Mr. Obama personally stressed several times that 'We emphasize on our commitment to Kurdistan Region and the achievements, and we support the solution of the issues' and after I am back [to Kurdistan] we will seriously make efforts to find radical solutions for them in a specified timeframe. We will not be convinced with futile promises like before"

"It should be clear to everyone that the current Iraqi government was formed on the Kurds shoulders and with Kurdish blood, this is one. Second, unlike before, Kurds will not leave Baghdad for other people. It is the people who are against the Kurds who have to go out of Baghdad. Therefore, yes we have issues, some of which are related to the way of governance regarding Iraq as a whole; autocracy and controlling all state institutions is by no means acceptable. Others are related to issues between the [Kurdistan] Region and Baghdad such as the Article 140 [of the Iraqi constitution] for which we as Kurds showed maximum flexibility. And the issues of Kirkuk and other territories, the Peshmarga, oil and gas. It is now openly said that federalism should not be there while one of the conditions for Iraq to stay united is that it has to be a federal, democratic and plural Iraq. The Constitution itself states that commitment to this constitution is a condition for Iraq to remain united. They [Baghdad authorities] are playing with fire; they are playing with the fate of a nation. Therefore, we will never accept the return of dictatorship top Iraq. We Kurds, as I said, have only found 3 or 4 thousand remains of a total of 182,000 Kurds, the majority of whom are women and children, in the deserts of southern Iraq. We will not accept these catastrophes happen to Kurds or dictatorship re-emerge in Baghdad again"

Increased attacks against Shabaks in Nineveh

ERBIL, April 2 (AKnews) – Militant groups have increased attacks against Shabaks who are being actively targeted in the northern province of Nineveh amid failure of security forces in the province to protect the minority group.

Over the last month, there have been at least six deadly attacks against Shabaks in Nineveh province. Some of them have been covered by media outlets, which are mainly Kurdistan-based, while others have kept the public in the dark.

On Sunday, a Shabak secondary school headmaster in Mosul was shot dead by a gunman in the school library - the story was not covered by the media. Zakariya Yahya al-Ali was the headmaster of al-Mas'oudi Secondary School for Boys in Mosul's al-Ta'mim neighborhood.

"A gunman pretending to be the guardian of one of the school boys, who wanted to talk to the headmaster, entered the school and asked where he could find Mr Ali.

"The man was shown the way to the library where Ali was. He shot him three times. One of the deadly bullets went through his throat," said one of Ali's brothers.

Media coverage of the Shabak killings has been relatively low and officials have withheld information or avoided mentioning the ethnicity of the victims.

All the attacks against Shabaks have targeted civilians, in the majority of the cases, ordinary self-employed people unlike assassinations in Baghdad and Anbar where mainly security personnel and government employees are targeted.

• Last month, an explosion in Mosul's Nabi Younes area left five casualties. One of the dead was later revealed to be a Shabak student from Jilwa Khan village. Nabi Younes is located in an area known locally as Souk al-Akrad (Marketplace of the Kurds) because the majority of the residents are Kurds and Shabaks.

• On March 4, a Shabak man was gunned down with a silencer in the North Garage area in Mosul. He was identified by Shabak News as Husam Al-Dean Shehab Mawlood .

• On March 5, a Shabak cafe owner was killed and his brother seriously wounded when militants in a car opened fire on them as they were leaving their house in Mosul's al-Atshana area.

• On March 9, a Shabak man was killed and his mother injured when militants opened fire in a house in Mosul's al-Sadr area. The gunmen fled after the attack.

• On March 12, a Shabak man was killed and his wife seriously wounded during a house attack in al-Sada Buoweza area, north of Mosul city.

There were also at least nine deaths among Shabaks after two separate attacks in January this year.

On January 16, at least 8 Shabaks were killed and four others injured in a car bomb attack in Bartilla district, east of Mosul city.

The car went off in the Al-Ghadeer residential complex that is resided predominantly by the Shabaks. A second car bomb set to explode in a nearby neighborhood was disarmed by security forces.

On January 18, militants in Mosul city shot dead a Shabak man and wounded his brother as the two were leaving home for work.
Shabaks are a mainly civilian and peaceful minority, who are not much involved in the government. The only motive for armed groups to attack them is that they are Shiites and support Kurdish nationalism.

There are an estimated 450,000 Shabaks in Iraq, according to the United Nations, with 90% of them living in Nineveh, the provincial capital of Mosul - which is one of Iraq's most dangerous cities.

Since 2003, the area has witnessed some of the deadliest militant attacks, and in recent months has become the scene of daily armed attacks.

"In general the Shabaks are targeted because they belong to Kurdish nationalism and the Shia Shabaks are the most targeted," said Salem  Khudr al-Shabaki, the head of the Shabak Advisory Board in Nineveh.

"The al-Qaeda and remnants of the Baath Party are behind these massacres," al-Shabaki added.

Shabaks are not only suffering at the hands of the armed groups. They also complain about discrimination by, and Arabization policies of the mainly Arab Nineveh Provincial Council.

Khudr al-Shabaki says Nineveh Provincial Council is deliberately Arabizing areas inhabited by ethnic Shabak people through the distribution of land to Arabs.

In June 2011, Nineveh provincial council handed out approximately 6,000 residential lots among state employees in the Nineveh Plain district. Shabaki said the land was largely given to Arabs at the expense of Kurds and Shabaks.

The council said the lots were allocated through a random draw. However, if this was the case this would still result in a large number of Arabs moving into Shabak areas because the number of Arabs across the region is higher than those of the minority group.

There is great sensitivity around the issue of demographic shifts in the province.

During Saddam Hussein's rule thousands of families from minorities were pushed out of their homes to be replaced with Arabs.

Shabak families were forced to migrate to Harir in Kurdistan region in the 1980s, after refusing to register their nationality as Arab.

Iraq on Fire as bombings rage through the country

Tuesday was a day of mourning for Iraq as a series of what appeared to be coordinated bombings raged through the country. There were bombings in more than 8 provinces including capital Baghdad, Kirkuk, Nineveh, Salahadin, Diyala, Anbar, Babil and Karbala. More than 150 people were either killed or injured in more 15 confirmed attacks.

The bombings come only 9 days ahead of the upcoming Arab League Summit scheduled to be held in Baghdad on March 29. Iraq has long been waiting for the Summit to be held in Baghdad seeing it as an important opportunity to regain it esteem among the Arab states.  

Iraqi officials said earlier this week that some 100,000 Iraqi troops will be on alert to keep security in Baghdad during the days of the Arab Summit.

The attacks seemed to be coordinated by the militants, most likely al-Qaeda in Iraq, who have carried out similar attacks on government institutions, security forces as well as civilians. The bombings today send a clear message to the Iraqi authorities that militants are still powerful and can attack whenever and wherever they want.

The majority of the attacks carried out today were carried out by suicide bombers riding booby-trapped cars. Of the 15 attacks, 11 were car bombs, 1 IED and 3 others were shooting attacks. There were also a few foiled attacks.

So far, the following attacks and casualties have been confirmed:

• A car bomb in the northern Kirkuk city left over 30 casualties, most of them civilians. It was not clear how many people were killed and how many were injured.
• One civilian was killed and 30 others were injured when a car bomb exploded in central Hilla city, Babail provincial capital.
• A member of the Tuz Khurmatu district, I northern Salahaddin province, council was shot dead by militants.
• 13 were killed and 42 others were injured in two separate car bomb attacks in Karbala. The bombings allegedly targeted Iranian visitors. One Iranian visitor is among the dead and one is among the wounded.
• A car bomb went off in Baghdad's central Allawi area leaving an unknown number of people injured.
• Five civilians were injured today in two car bomb attacks in Baiji and Samarra, Salahaddin province.
• Four unidentified gunmen stormed a church in the Mansour district, western Baghdad, today killing three security guards. The church's fourth guard was able to escape the assault.
• Iraqi police foiled a plot to detonate two car bombs in Baghdad. The car bombs were located in Khadra neighborhood, western Baghdad, and Latifiya district, south of the capital.
• A second car bomb exploded today in Baghdad, Mahmoudieh district, killing and injuring a number of people.
• Security forces managed to disarm a car bomb today in Karrada district's Abu Nawwas street, central Baghdad.
• The governor of Anbar survived an assassination attempt today after a car bomb driven by a suicide bomber struck his motorcade in central Ramadi city. Two of Governor Qassim al-Fahdawi guards were killed in the attack and seven more injured, including 2 civilians.
• Chairman of Baghdad's provincial capital, Kamil al-Zaidi, survived an assassination attempt today when a suicide bomber blew himself up. There were injuries among the official's guards.
• An improvised explosive device struck a police patrol at the entrance of the district in al-Ba'aj, west of Mosul city, in Nineveh killing three policemen and injuring four others.
• A car bomb in the city of Samarra, Salahaddin, went off leaving four people seriously injured.
• Two civilians were killed and one more injured during clashes between gunmen and local police.