The Assyrian Democratic Organization
Middle East Features
By Elijah Zarwan and Muhaned al-Sadi
Jan 27, 2009, 4:04 GMT
Mosul – The river Tigris bisects Mosul, the capital of the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh. On the western bank is the old city, the centre of Nineveh’s majority Sunni population.
The suburbs and villages to the east and to the north are largely Kurdish, but are also home to a patchwork of one of the most diverse mixes of Iraqis anywhere in the country.
For years, pockets of almost every religious and ethnic community in Iraq – Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, Sunni Kurds, Yazidi Kurds, Turkomans, Chaldean Christians, Nestorian Christians, Armenians, and Shabaks – lived in relative harmony here.
But after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, it was Mosul that provided one of the first preludes to the dark sectarian strife that was to descend on Iraq in the years to come.
Now, as Nineveh prepares to vote in provincial council elections, Mosul has seen a series of sectarian attacks and bitter recriminations that have stoked fears that the elections could bring simmering sectarian rivalries back to a boil.
Kurdish parties have long sought to incorporate northern and eastern Nineveh into the semi-autonomous region controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government.
In the 2005 elections, aided by calls for a boycott from Sunni leaders, Kurds won 31 of 41 seats on the provincial council, despite the fact that Sunnis make up a majority in the province.
Kurdish militias are strong on the east bank of Mosul and in the towns to the east and to the north of the city. The Kurdish flag flies over some Christian villages in the north.
The sudden shift alarmed many Sunnis in the province. In the wrangling over the new electoral law, Arab nationalists successfully reduced the quotas for Christians, Yazidis, and Shabaks to one seat each in the province, out of fear that they would align with the Kurds.
Christian and Shabak villages may indeed align with the Kurds.
In November, hundreds of Shabaks – a small ethnic group scattered in 35 villages to the east of Mosul – staged a peaceful demonstration asking to be governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government ‘on the basis that they are Kurds, not Arabs,’ spokesman Thanoun Yunis told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency at the time.
But if Nineveh’s minorities do align with the Kurds, it may not be as willingly as Yunis suggests. Sunni and western observers say that Kurdish militias in the Iraqi Army have been intimidating minorities in an attempt to ‘Kurdize’ the region.
On January 18, a suicide bomber killed Hassan al-Luhaibi, a former general in Saddam Hussein’s army, then deputy to prominent Sunni leader Salah al-Mutlaq and campaign manager for al-Mutlaq’s National Dialogue Front in Nineveh and in Salah al-Din provinces.
The bomber had come into al-Mutlaq’s house in Qayara, 60 kilometers south of Mosul, saying he had urgent business to discuss.
And last November, some 10,000 Christian families fled Mosul after 15 Christians were murdered.
‘The prime suspects,’ a western diplomat in Baghdad told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on condition of anonymity, ‘were Kurdish militias in the Iraqi Army.’
Osama al-Najifi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament from Mosul with the Iraqi National List, has been accusing Kurdish peshmerga militias of trying to ‘Kurdize’ Nineveh, including eastern Mosul, for months.
‘The province is now witnessing ethnic conflict between Arabs and Kurds. The Kurds are trying to take over the province using the peshmerga and the Assayesh (the Kurdish secret service)’, al-Najifi told dpa.
‘The forces intimidated residents with the aim of ‘Kurdizing’ them,’ al-Najifi said.
Kurdish leaders deny these accusations. A statement published on the Kurdistan Regional Government’s website on January 20 quoted Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdish autonomous region, as telling Nineveh tribal leaders: ‘We want Mosul to be a city of fraternity and peaceful coexistence. Rumors that the Kurds commit transgressions are false.’
Kurds who fled attacks from ex-Baathist and Islamist insurgents in Mosul years ago hold little hope that Mosul can be a model of ‘fraternity and peaceful coexistence’ again.
Hisham Ali, a 31-year-old Kurdish teacher, fled his home in southern Mosul three years ago after he received death threats.
‘Islamists and Baathists had sabotaged the city,’ he told dpa. ‘They killed my brother and forced me to flee. The Baath had returned to my city, wearing a different mask. I will not return to my city as long as I live,’ he said.
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