Reporting from Mosul, Iraq -- For decades, Arab soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas battled by gun, by mortar, by rocket. Now, elections are the latest weapon in the struggle for land and power in Iraq's north.
The ballot box has become a battleground in Nineveh province, a high-stakes combat zone where Kurds and Arabs will face off over the future shape of the country -- and confront each other over the past. The outcome could set the stage for another round of violence, which both sides insist that they do not want.
In the last few years, almost 2,000 Kurds have been killed in Mosul," Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani told The Times this month. "We have not responded in the same manner and we have not reacted in any act of vengeance; but of course everything will have its limits."
The rival ethnicities are grappling with the legacy of Saddam Hussein's policy of displacing Kurds to create an Arab majority here. Whereas the Kurds believe they are correcting a historical wrong, Arabs see humiliation. They accuse the Kurds of harassment, arbitrary arrests and torture in the run-up to the election Saturday.
How the struggle plays out here, where Arabs clearly outnumber Kurds, will go a long way toward determining the outcome in other disputed territories, such as the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, where no side has such an outright majority.
"If these problems are not solved, there will be some extremism here in [Nineveh], on the Kurdish side and Arab side," Deputy Gov. Kharso Goran warned, sitting in his riverside office in the provincial capital, Mosul, flanked by the flags of Iraq, Kurdistan and his Kurdistan Democratic Party.
The Kurds have governed their own region, Kurdistan, since 1991 and have pushed to expand the area to include the northern and eastern belt around Mosul and the Sinjar region of western Nineveh. That has exacerbated Kurdish-Arab tensions, which U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker recently labeled one of the emerging challenges of the year.
"The people of these areas do not want to belong to Kurdistan," said Sheik Abdullah Humaidi Yawar, a senior leader in Hadba, a Sunni Arab nationalist movement. Yawar is considered the front-runner in the Nineveh election.
"They want to stay included in Nineveh," he said. "The Kurdish parties have proven to the people for the last five years that they are racist like the former regime."
The Sunni Arabs are playing catch-up after their boycott of U.S.-sponsored elections in 2005 handed the Kurds control of Nineveh. The Kurds used the last four years to cement their grip on the disputed areas in northern Nineveh bordering Kurdistan, with a sizable presence of Kurdish border guards, intelligence officers and Kurdish-dominated Iraqi army units.
The Kurds had hoped to formalize the new reality in a constitutionally mandated referendum, designated to settle the fate of similarly contested areas across Iraq, including Kirkuk. But the date for the referendum expired a year ago, and with it the Kurds' opportunity to quickly seize what they believe is rightfully theirs.
Now both Baghdad and local Arabs appear intent on beating back the Kurds, through a mix of intimidation, negotiation and show of force.
"When we have the ability to protect these areas, we will ask Kurdistan to leave them," said Yahya Abdul Majoud of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is considered the less extreme Sunni faction in the north. "If they agree or not, it's not the Kurds' choice," he said, adding that the Iraqi army should replace Kurdish units in Nineveh in six months to a year.
Shiite Muslim Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has already put his weight behind Nineveh's Arabs. He has started trying to purge the two Iraqi army divisions in Nineveh of Kurdish officers, who have been accused of working for Kurdish ambitions, Kurdish officials say.
Since the summer, Nineveh's security command, which reports to Maliki, has twice threatened to forcibly evict Goran from his Kurdistan Democratic Party offices in east Mosul.
The Kurdish political parties are sure to not go quietly. They warn that an aggressive campaign to dislodge them from the disputed territories and marginalize them in Nineveh politics has the potential to spark serious confrontations. If Baghdad backs the hard-line Arab nationalists, Goran said, "there will be a problem between Kurdistan and the central government."
Goran has a visceral dislike of Hadba, which exemplifies the new nationalist wave. He accuses the movement of having ties to the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq and Hussein's Baath Party. Hadba is headed by Atheel Najafi, scion of an old Mosul family, famed breeders of Arabian horses who once sold and raced horses with Hussein's sons Uday and Qusai.
Najafi and his colleagues regularly accuse Kurdish army units of torturing detainees and hint that the Kurdistan Democratic Party has plotted at least one assassination attempt against a Hadba candidate. Najafi vows to force Kurdish troops to withdraw from the disputed territories.
"When we have strong authority and power in Mosul, the Kurds will change their stance," Najafi said. He pledges to bar Kurdistan's two main parties from any leadership positions in Mosul.
Najafi describes the dispute as the latest mutation of an old conflict between the Kurdish parties and the central government.
#1
The Iraqi civil war will start in Nineveh/Mosul. Probably sometime in 2009.
The Kurdish militia will initially trounce the Iraqi Army which will then probably fragment amid the usual Arab genocide claims. Iran won't stand by and watch, nor will Turkey.
The Obama Regime will either abruptly withdraw or side with the Arabs.
I hope the Kurds are stockpiling ammo. They will need it.
In the first entry of his week-long diary, BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams joins British troops on a raid near Basra as they witness the progress made by the Iraqi Army.
Up before dawn as word comes of an Iraqi army search operation at Az-Zubeir, south east of the city. The operation involves 50 Iraqi Army Brigade, who our British hosts from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment are mentoring, so we are invited along to watch.
We race through the deserted streets of Iraq's second largest city, not really knowing what the morning will hold.
The British MiTTs (Military Transition Teams) are not here to direct Iraqi army operations - those days are long gone - but to observe and offer discreet advice. To keep a low profile, the Brits leave their imposing Mastiff armoured personnel carriers behind and ride in soft-skinned Iraqi jeeps. They do not want to draw attention to themselves, a lesson from the days when highly visible British soldiers became a magnet for militia attacks.
The job of "mitting" will end soon, probably well before the final British departure date of 31 July, and this certainly feels like the beginning of the end.
Help and equipment
Britain's role in training and mentoring the 14th Iraqi army division is almost done. As this morning's display shows, the Iraqis are organising and conducting their own operations with minimal British support. To be sure, an RAF Lynx flies up and down the road as we near az-Zubeir, and an occasional whine gives away the presence overhead of a tiny British drone, a Desert Hawk.
Britain is still providing the sort of help and equipment the reconstituted Iraqi armed forces cannot muster.
But as the true size of the raid becomes apparent, causing astonishment among the British soldiers watching, it seems clear the Iraqi army is operating with considerable confidence. Or at least that is the impression it hopes to convey.
As the sun comes up over the desert, our convoy stretches as far as the eye can see. It seems that 14 Division has thrown almost everything it has into the operation. It unfolds at a fairly leisurely pace, with several U-turns and, when we reach the town, a lot of standing around. But the British are still impressed.
"They've got it pretty well locked down," remarks Maj Adrian Grinonneau as we pass street after street blocked off by armoured vehicles and well-armed Iraqi troops. "This is unprecedented from our viewpoint," he says as more and more troops arrive.
And to emphasise that, this is an Iraqi operation through and through. He adds: "We're not giving them guidance, we're not giving them direction. Operationally, they're mustard."
The search, in a dirt poor town with a reputation for lawlessness and violence, yields dozens of weapons, from an ageing Sten gun to an assortment of Kalashnikovs. More than 120 weapons in all. Some of the house searches look a little staged for our camera and the town's sleepy atmosphere seems at odds with the overwhelming military presence.
But with just five days to go before Iraq's important provincial elections, it seems the army is glad and able to make a big statement. And for the watching Brits, that means that it'll soon be time to go home.
#2
Nope, that's not going to happen. The Kurds have the best indigenous soldiers in the region, good equipment, and pretty good leadership at this point. Be it Sunnis, Shi'a, or Iranians, I wouldn't mess with the Kurds. Turks might want to consider that point as well.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/27/2009 8:06 Comments ||
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#3
Peshmerga are light infantry. No armor, no artillery, never mind Air Force.
Sixteen Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi officials, including former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz and Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed -- nicknamed Chemical Ali -- faced a new trial on Monday for repressing Shi'ite Kurds.
The trial is the seventh being held against senior Saddam officials for crimes committed before the Iraqi dictator was ousted in a 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Saddam was hanged after his conviction in the first trial, for ordering the killing of Shi'ite villagers after an assassination attempt.
The latest trial will examine the repression of a community known as Feyli Kurds, who come from the mountainous border area between Iraq and Iran, and, unlike most Iraqi Kurds, are Shi'ite Muslims rather than Sunnis.
Thousands of Feyli Kurds were driven from the country under Saddam, who declared them to be Iranian citizens and forced them across the border. Others were repressed, imprisoned and tortured in the 1970s and 1980s.
The trial is being presided over by Raouf Rashid Abdul-Rahman, the Kurdish judge who sentenced Saddam to die.
Majeed -- nicknamed Chemical Ali for using poison gas to kill 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 attack -- has already been sentenced to death twice.
The first death sentence was for his role in the mass killings of Kurds in the 1980s and the second for a bloody crackdown against Shi'ites in the 1990s. His execution has been delayed by political wrangling.
Aziz, a fluent English speaker who served as the public face of Saddam's regime in the west, is also standing trial in a separate case over the deaths of dozens of merchants executed for price fixing when Iraq was under U.N. sanctions.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Keep him in trials until he begs for waterboarding -- then hang him.
Aswat al-Iraq: Police forces arrested 87 wanted and suspected gunmen, including 25 al-Qaeda elements, during operations waged in the past four days, the chief of Diala police said on Monday. "Policemen launched military operations in the past four days in separate areas of Diala, where they arrested 87 people, including 25 al-Qaeda wanted men," General Abdul Hussein al-Shimri told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "Security authorities finalized all preparations for protecting the electoral centers," he added, noting that the forces also found a weapons depot during the operations.
The provincial council elections are due to be held on January 31 in 14 out of 18 Iraqi provinces.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Wanted man in Diyala
Wanted man in old Wazoo
Wanted man in Gaza
for blowin' up a zoo...
Aswat al-Iraq: Iraqi army forces completed their presence with the police at 52 voting stations in northern and eastern Mosul within preparations for Iraq's local elections scheduled to be held on January 31, according to a military source on Monday.
"Forces from the 1st Division's 3rd Brigade, stationed off the left coast of the city of Mosul, completed today (Jan. 26) their presence in association with the Ninewa police at ballot stations in northern and eastern Mosul," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
"The security forces have placed barricades in front of the stations, placed barbed wires and pitched special tents for inspection of women," noted the source.
The forthcoming local elections will be held all provinces of Iraq except those of the three autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region provinces of Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Duhuk.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Aswat al-Iraq: A force from the Quick Response Department (QRD) on Monday arrested two wanted men in western Kut, a senior police officer said. "The Interior Ministry's QRD forces on Monday (Jan. 26) arrested two wanted men and found 27 rockets during a security raid of a house in Hour al-Dalmaj region in western Kut," Major Aziz Latief told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The operation was based on a tip-off," he also said. He did not add more details.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Aswat al-Iraq: Police forces on Monday arrested three wanted men and seized weapons and ammunition during a security operation in the west of and central Basra, the media office of the Basra police said. "Police forces waged a crackdown operation in al-Zubair and al-Janiena regions in west and central Basra, where they arrested three men wanted for terrorist and criminal cases," the office told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The forces seized eight mortar shells, five hand grenades, two rocket propelled grenades, and four Kalashnikovs," it added.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/27/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
In the first entry of his week-long diary, BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams joins British troops on a raid near Basra as they witness the progress made by the Iraqi Army. 
The search, in a dirt poor town with a reputation for lawlessness and violence, yields dozens of weapons, from an ageing Sten gun to an assortment of Kalashnikovs. More than 120 weapons in all. Some of the house searches look a little staged for our camera and the town's sleepy atmosphere seems at odds with the overwhelming military presence. 
