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Homeland Security Focus
Areas NYTimes.com June 5, 2008 Indonesia Cracks Down on HardlinersBy PETER GELLING JAKARTA, Indonesia — Hundreds of police swept through a Jakarta neighborhood Wednesday morning, arresting about 60 members of a hard-line Islamic group blamed for a violent attack last Sunday at an interfaith rally in the capital. Members of the group, the Islamic Defender’s Front, assaulted scores of people at the rally with bamboo sticks and rocks, injuring dozens of people, some of them women and children. On Wednesday, supporters of the Islamic Defender’s Front initially blocked the police by crowding the neighborhood’s maze of narrow alleyways. But police eventually found their way to the group’s headquarters, where they arrested a dozen people. The others were arrested in nearby homes. Police officials said they are now being held at Jakarta’s central police station for questioning. The Sunday attack triggered strong reactions from moderate Muslim groups and government officials. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the attack and several of his ministers said they would look into the possibility of banning the organization. Until now, the Islamic Defender’s Front, which is known for its violent attacks on bars, nightclubs and restaurants that serve alcohol, has been largely tolerated by government officials and police. Wednesday’s sweep is the first time any of the group’s members have been taken into custody, although its leader had been jailed briefly in 2004. No arrests were made in response to attacks by the group on a number mosques, schools, and followers of the minority Muslim sect Ahmadiyah over the past few years. “I appreciate the work of the police to detain these people, it is the first time any of its members have been detained. But it is not enough,” said Uli Parulian Sihombing, a human rights lawyer who was at Sunday’s rally. “The Defender’s Front should be banned, they are a dangerous organization that commits violence against other groups and religions.” The leader of the Islamic Defender’s Front, Habib Rizieq, said at a press conference that the attack at Sunday’s rally, held by the National Alliance for the Freedom of Faith and Religion, was in response to support of Ahmadiyah, which has been targeted by hardline Muslims for what they call its “deviant” beliefs. He said his group would wage a war against Ahmadiyah if it didn’t disband within three days. Ahmadiyah, whose members number about 200,000 across Indonesia, don’t believe that Muhammad was the last prophet, a central tenet of Sunni and Shiite Islam. The group is banned in Pakistan but has, until recently, lived peacefully in Indonesia where it was established in the 1920s. Recent attacks on Ahmadiyah followers have led many of them to go into hiding. Indonesia has the largest population of Muslims in the world but is not an Islamic state. Its constitution guarantees freedom of religion, though only five religions are recognized legally — Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism and Hinduism. That law, coupled with the harassment of Ahmadiyah and other minority Muslim sects over the last few years, have raised concerns among human rights lawyers about the government’s commitment to religious freedom. But analysts said Wednesday that the strong reaction to Sunday’s attack might indicate growing frustration among Indonesia’s moderate Muslims and a shift away from the government appeasement that hardline groups like the Islamic Defender’s Front have often enjoyed. “There is a growing solidarity among the majority of people against such violence and intolerance here,” said Ahmad Suaedy, director of the Wahid Institute, an Islamic think tank. “But the government should be more active in preventing these situations from the beginning, they shouldn’t wait until the pubic demands it.”
NYTimes.com June 1, 2008 Baghdad Jews Have Become a Fearful FewBAGHDAD — “I have no future here to stay.” Written in broken English but with perfect clarity, the message is a stark and plaintive assessment from one of the last Jews of Babylon. The community of Jews in Baghdad is now all but vanished in a land where their heritage recedes back to Abraham of Ur, to Jonah’s prophesying to Nineveh, and to Nebuchadnezzar’s sending Jews into exile here more than 2,500 years ago. Just over half a century ago, Iraq’s Jews numbered more than 130,000. But now, in the city that was once the community’s heart, they cannot muster even a minyan, the 10 Jewish men required to perform some of the most important rituals of their faith. They are scared even to publicize their exact number, which was recently estimated at seven by the Jewish Agency for Israel, and at eight by one Christian cleric. That is not enough to read the Torah in public, if there were anywhere in public they would dare to read it, and too few to recite a proper Kaddish for the dead. Among those who remain is a former car salesman who describes himself as the “rabbi, slaughterer and one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Iraq.” Although many of his Muslim friends and immediate neighbors know he is Jewish (“I’m proud, I’m Jewish, not ashamed. I’m not hiding,” he wrote at one point.), he was wary of being named because it could draw more dangerous attention to him or his friends. To protect him, he is referred to as Saleh’s grandson, because his or his father’s name would be too easily recognizable here. Interviews with him were conducted by correspondence over the course of several months. He lamented that Jews in Baghdad had had no meeting place since the Meir Tweig synagogue, the last in the city, was closed in 2003, after it became too dangerous to gather openly. “I do my prayer in my house because we closed the synagogue from the war until now. If we open it, it will be a target,” he wrote, adding later: “I have no future here, I can’t marry, there is no girl. I can’t put my kova on my head out of the house. If I’m out of Iraq, I’ll share with people in all our feasts and do my prayer in the synagogue and will be with my family.” Now in his early 40s, he exists as anonymously and discreetly as he can. He cannot reliably hide his religion: it is stamped on his official identity card, which he must present at any security checkpoint. So he stays mainly in his own neighborhood, protected by Muslim neighbors who have been family friends for decades. He is a very cautious man. After contact with him was first established through an intermediary, and his identity was confirmed by his family abroad, he consented to speak directly for only a few moments over the telephone. Even that was just to propose a safer way to correspond, under a version of his name different from the one that other Iraqis know. His fears are all too real in a city where bodies are still found dumped in the street almost daily, despite a fall in the overall death toll. Christians, a far larger group, have fled Iraq by the thousands, and even Sunni and Shiite Muslims, who live among millions of their fellows, remain fearful of religious and sectarian fanatics. Jews were once a wealthy and politically active part of the spectrum of Iraq. In a fading red volume of the Iraq Directory of 1936, the “Israelite community,” then numbering about 120,000, is listed along with Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and Sabeans. Rescued from a Baghdad library, this book lists Hebrew among the six languages of Iraq and describes a country in which “the mosque stands beside the church and the synagogue.” However, the directory predates decades of trauma: the 1941 Farhud pogrom in which more than 130 Jews were killed during the Feast of Shavuot, World War II, the Holocaust, the anti-Zionism of Saddam Hussein and the post-2003 rise of Islamic militants. Most traces of Jews are now gone beside the Prat and the Hidekel rivers, the Hebrew names for the Euphrates and Tigris. Baghdad’s Jewish quarter, in Taht al-Takia, is no more. And about 80 miles south of Baghdad lies the Hebrew-inscribed tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel, “son of Buzi.” During a visit there on Saturday, dozens of Muslim pilgrims filed through the well-tended shrine, its interior blackened by centuries of lamp smoke, to honor Ezekiel as a respected prophet. Among these fragments of their civilization live the moribund huddle of holdouts. Saleh’s grandson is now alone. His mother died two decades ago, his older brother left in 1991, and his father, now 87, was among the last handful of Jews taken from Iraq by the Jewish Agency after 2003, reducing the current community to single figures. Most of his other relatives departed in 1951, among more than 100,000 Jews who fled Iraq between 1949 and 1952, in the years after the state of Israel was created. Their exodus was code named “Operation Ezra and Nehemiah,” after the Jewish leaders who took their people back to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon beginning in 597 B.C. Some of the remaining handful of Iraqi Jews are middle class, including two doctors. Others, including Saleh’s grandson, are poor and unemployed, dependent on handouts. “We see each other if there is something necessary, like a death, or to discuss some important things, or if someone needs help,” he wrote. “We take care about the people in the Jewish community only, not the half or part-Jewish. We don’t know about them after they left us.” Some Jews say they are too old to leave. Some do not want to leave their friends behind. The few remaining Jews ignore the entreaties of worried relatives and friends abroad and await an unlikely renaissance, demographic extinction or a more sudden end. Concern for their safety rose two years ago when one of them, a middle-aged man, was kidnapped. They have no idea whether he was taken because he was Jewish, wealthy, or whether the abduction was random. “We don’t know anything about him, and don’t know the reason,” Saleh’s grandson said. His relatives voice frustration at his insistence on remaining in Iraq, saying he cannot be persuaded to relinquish the family home. He wants to sell it for $300,000 to help build a new life abroad but has had no takers. “I talk with him all the time,” said his older brother, who lives in Europe and requested anonymity to protect his brother. “I call him every two weeks, and always I give him advice to leave, because it is dangerous, and because he needs to build his life and to find a wife.” The family argues that if buyers were going to come forward they would have done so long ago. They say that in Iraq’s current instability, an unscrupulous buyer could simply steal the money back, knowing that Saleh’s grandson would have no recourse without a tribe to protect him. “Now there is nobody buying because of the situation in Sadr City,” his brother said. “I keep telling him, ‘Money is nothing.’ ” The Jewish Agency for Israel, an organization that arranges immigration to the Holy Land, has offered to relocate the entire group. “Should the remaining Jews in Baghdad request to immigrate to Israel, the Jewish Agency will immediately facilitate this request and also take care of their absorption needs in Israel,” said Zeev Bielski, the agency’s chairman. However, Michael Jankelowitz, an agency spokesman, conceded: “They are not interested in leaving. Their philosophy is, ‘We are old, no one is affecting our day-to-day life. If we have to leave, we know how to contact the Jewish Agency.’ ” The holdout’s father says that he regrets leaving Iraq, the country of his birth, five years ago, but that he would not return in the current dangerous climate. “Why did we have to leave?” he said, sighing. “In Iraq I was always with my friends. Everyone was very, very, very, very nice. I had Muslim friends for 50 to 60 years. They were friends, like family. I used to spend more time with Arabs than Jews.” His son says he knows the risks. “I’d like to leave, but I have my house, I can’t leave it,” he wrote. “I have no future here to stay.” He insists that he has responsibilities to his fellow Iraqi Jews, no matter how few in number. “If I’m faithful in GOD, I’m not afraid of anything,” he wrote, “and GOD BLESS ME.”
The Washington Times Article published May 23, 2008
May 23, 2008 By Hamza Hendawi - BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's most influential Shi'ite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance to U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.
NYTimes.com April 6, 2008 Christian Priest Killed at Baghdad HomeBAGHDAD — A Christian priest was shot dead outside his home in Baghdad on Saturday by attackers who used a silenced pistol, witnesses said. His wife, they said, who stood near him, did not realize he had been shot until well after he had fallen. The priest, Faiz Abdel, who was known as Father Youssef, was the second senior Syrian Orthodox priest to be killed this year. And since the 2003 invasion, church officials say, about 40 percent of the denomination, the country’s second-largest Christian group, have fled their homes. Father Youssef, 49, was shot shortly before noon as he and his wife returned home from a market in the Unity District of east Baghdad. Friends and officials at SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral, just around the corner from his house, said that the cleric’s wife had just left the car and was walking across the driveway to the house when he was hit by three or four bullets to the chest and shoulder as he went to close the gate. The gunmen escaped. As mourners gathered outside the gate of the priest’s home, Archbishop Severius Hawa, Primate of the Diocese of Baghdad and Basra, paid tribute to “our son, the martyr.” Speaking from the heavily barricaded cathedral, Archbishop Hawa said: “This tragedy came as a surprise to us because we did not receive any threat. “He was still in his religious garments so we believe they followed him from the market to his house and killed him. The most important point is that he was killed because he was a religious man.” But the archbishop said the “hand of the devil” was directed at all Iraqi sects, Muslim and Christian alike. “Educated people, scientists, those who are working for the benefit of the country are all targeted,” he said. “If we lose one from our sect, 100 will be lost from other sects.” Mourners said that while Father Youssef appeared to have been singled out because of his distinctive black robes, many of the threats and attacks were by criminal gangs demanding money under the pretext of being Islamic fundamentalists. “I had to move out of my house in Dora a year and a half ago because I received two letters threatening to kill my son,” said Abu Noor, 59. “I paid them $900, and nothing happened.” “All educated people are targeted: it is the fault of the Americans. When they discharged the army, everything was lost,” he said, referring to the decision by the American occupation authority to dismiss the entire Iraqi Army in 2003. “These people had no work and no money to live, so of course they will go into gangs. And a weak government with no police detectives, how can they manage?” The invasion had caused only harm for Iraq’s Christians, he said. “I heartily believe that we were living better under the old regime. No one could threaten the Christians then.” His murder follows the death of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, the leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Mosul, whose body was found buried in the northern city last month after gunmen kidnapped him in February. Hours before the killing on Saturday, a bomb hidden inside a minibus carrying early morning commuters killed three people and wounded 13 on nearby Palestine Street, the police said. The victims were mainly day laborers who travel daily into central Baghdad from the mainly Shiite eastern district of Sadr City. In Diyala Province, four Kurdish police officers working as guards at an oil installation were kidnapped and killed near the border town of Khanaqin. The police said the four were stopped at a fake checkpoint early in the morning, and their bodies were found at midday. Mudhafer al-Husaini contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baquba.
NYTimes.com April 1, 2008 Turkey Court Takes Politically Explosive CaseISTANBUL — Turkey’s highest court said Monday that it had decided to hear a case on shutting down the governing party and banning its political leaders, moving the country closer to a final confrontation between religious and secular Turks about who will rule the nation. Alifeyyaz Paksut, deputy chairman of the Constitutional Court, said the court’s justices had voted unanimously to hear the case, which calls for shutting down the Justice and Development Party and banning 71 of its members, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from politics. In addition, 7 of the 11 justices voted to hear a ban on the president, Abdullah Gul, an ominous sign for the party, which has its roots in political Islam but has since disavowed them. The case, filed this month by Turkey’s top prosecutor, calls for banning the party on the grounds that it has steered Turkey, whose citizens are mostly Muslim, away from its constitutionally mandated secularism. The standoff is part of a broader struggle between the party, whose members are observant Muslims, and the secular elite, which includes the military and judicial systems. The party has largely defended Turkey’s secular system of government, but the indictment accuses it of trying to impose Islam. The number of judges who voted to accept the case sharply increases the chances that its claims will be granted. The votes of seven justices are needed to ban the party. Cengiz Candar, a political analyst in Istanbul, said, “This is not a legal act; it’s political.” The 162-page indictment charges that because of Mr. Erdogan, Turkey is now seen as a “moderate Islamic republic,” an image that it says has become the official view in the United States. It cites former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as “having defined our country” that way, “disregarding the fact that Turkey is a secular democratic state.” Mr. Erdogan, the indictment said, had bragged that he was co-chairman of the “Middle East Initiative,” which it called “a U.S. project aimed at installing moderate Islamic regimes in countries.” The State Department unveiled a program in 2004 aimed at fostering democracy in the Arab world, called the Broader Middle East North Africa Initiative, but Mr. Erdogan has played no role in it, American officials said. The charge echoes fears of secular Turks, who bristle at being placed in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.
ajc.com
Muslims denounce Dutch film; Web site claims threats AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Hundreds of angry Muslims marched Friday in Pakistan and denounced a Dutch legislator's film that portrays Islam as a ticking time bomb aimed at the West. Dutch Muslims were more restrained, saying they had expected worse. The 15-minute film — titled "Fitna," or "Strife" in Arabic — was made by anti-immigrant lawmaker Geert Wilders and was posted on a Web site Thursday. The host site, LiveLeak.com, removed the film Friday evening, citing threats to its staff "of a very serious nature." But the film already had been widely dispersed across the Internet on file-sharing sites. Employing elements and symbols calculated to offend Muslims, it draws on recycled footage of terrorist attacks and anti-Western, anti-Jewish rhetoric meant to alarm the native Dutch. The film begins with the Danish cartoon image of Muhammad with a fuse in his turban — an image that provoked violent protests in Islamic countries when it was published by European newspapers two years ago. The same image appears at the end of film, although the fuse is lit and a ticking clock counts down the seconds, then fades into blackness broken by flashes of lightning and thunder. In another provocative image, a hand turns a page of the Quran as the screen darkens and the sound of tearing paper is heard. A printed text says it is only a telephone book being torn, and adds: "It is not up to me, but to Muslims themselves to tear out the hateful verses from the Quran." It cited verses from the Quran interspersed with images of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the 2004 commuter train bombings in Spain, and the slaying later that year of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim radical for perceived insults to Islam. The film concludes with a scrolling text saying that the West had defeated the Nazis and communism, and now must defeat an Islam that "wants to dominate, subject and seeks to destroy our Western civilization." Wilders told reporters he made the film because "Islam and the Quran are dangers to the preservation of freedom in the Netherlands." He argues in the film that Islam's objective is to rule the world and impose an Islamic order without Western freedoms, where gays would be persecuted and women discriminated against. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to deliver an official complaint against what it called a "defamatory film which deeply offended the sentiments of Muslims all over the world." Small groups of demonstrators, mostly followers of hard-line religious groups, rallied in Pakistan's major cities, demanding Pakistan cut diplomatic relations with the Netherlands. A banner at one demonstration read: "We hate the uncivilized West." Militant Qari Mohammed Yusuf warned before the film's release that revenge attacks were being planned. "I am telling you now that after this maybe you won't be able to come to Peshawar like this. Foreigners will not be able to come so easily anywhere in Pakistan," he told The Associated Press last week in an interview in Peshawar, Pakistan. Condemnations also came from the government of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, Iran and Jordan. "It is not Islam that should be stopped, it is fear-mongers like Geert Wilders who should be stopped from spreading their hatred," said Zakaria al-Sheik of the Rassoul Allah Yajmana, a Jordanian group formed to protect the image of Islam. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the movie. "There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here," he said in a statement. "The real fault line is not between Muslim and Western societies, as some would have us believe, but between small minorities of extremists, on different sides, with a vested interest in stirring hostility and conflict." The Council of Europe said the film was a "distasteful manipulation" that exploits fear, and three U.N. rights experts said it showed a distorted vision of Muslims. The World Council of Churches said the film failed to distinguish extremism from mainstream Islam. Even before its release, the Dutch government went out of its way to distance itself from Wilders, but was powerless to gag him. It set up a crisis center to deal with reaction, but Muslim demonstrations failed to materialize after the film hit the Internet and Dutch TV stations showed excerpts. "I want to pay tribute to Muslim organizations and the way they have reacted: Moderate reactions despite totally disagreeing with its contents. The Cabinet is proud — proud of people who react in this way," said Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. Mainstream political parties and many Muslims dismissed the film as a tactic to polarize society and scare people into supporting Wilders, whose reactionary Freedom party holds nine seats in the 150-member parliament. Dutch Muslims said the film misrepresented Islam, but that Wilders had largely stayed within the bounds of acceptable political discourse. Wilders praised their civil reaction. Mohamed Rabbae, leader of a group representing the Netherlands' large Moroccan immigrant community, said the film was "less bad" than expected from Wilders' prior comments. Rabbae called on Muslims abroad to be calm and let Dutch Muslims deal with Wilders, adding: "Harming Dutch people harms us." "I wasn't personally offended," said Imad el Ouarti, a worshipper at El Umma mosque in Amsterdam. He said Wilders had taken Quranic texts out of context and had reused images that have been seen thousands of times since Sept. 11, 2001. "It's just tasteless and non-creative, as if a child had pasted it together." Kurt Westergaard, the artist who has lived under police protection since the Muhammad cartoon was published two years ago, objected that Wilders had violated his copyright. "I won't accept my cartoon being taken out of its original context and used in a completely different one," he told Denmark's TV2. A Rotterdam court said it would rule April 7 on a petition by the Dutch Islamic Federation seeking to gag Wilders and order him to publicly apologize. Wilders' lawyer Serge Vlaar said the federation "wants to ban a point of view," which he said was not possible under Dutch law. Federation lawyer Ejder Kose countered that "my clients are not attacking freedom of speech. This is about ending the unjustified insulting of Islam." Outside the courtroom, a pro-Wilders demonstrator shouted far-right slogans until police removed him. —- Associated Press writers Mike Corder in Amsterdam, Kathy Gannon in Peshawar, Pakistan, and Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this article.
NYTimes.com March 19, 2008 Reconciliation Conference Highlights Iraq’s Deep Political and Religious FissuresBy ERICA GOODE and AHMED FADAM BAGHDAD — It was billed as a national “dialogue” that would bring Iraq’s disparate and warring factions together to discuss their differences and emerge with a blueprint for peaceful coexistence. But if the national reconciliation conference held here on Tuesday revealed anything, it was that the deep political and religious fissures that run through this battered country are nowhere close to healing. Three of the most important political blocs boycotted the conference. Few, if any, prominent Baathists, militia members or representatives of the insurgency — the groups that many believe represent the largest obstacles to reconciliation — showed up at the meeting. And a prominent tribal leader stormed out of the auditorium after the opening speeches and threatened to leave the conference altogether. “People want answers from us,” said Sheik Ali Hatem al-Suleiman of Anbar Province, a leader in the Awakening movement, the largely Sunni Muslim militia that has turned against the insurgency. “We’re not going to sit here only to listen to speeches.” American and Iraqi government officials have insisted that reduced violence will pave the way for harmony and an end to sectarian strife. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, speaking to the several hundred sheiks, clerics and politicians, Sunni and Shiite, who gathered in the auditorium of a heavily guarded convention center in the Green Zone, echoed this hope. National reconciliation, he said, is “not just a political slogan” but “a safe boat” that would lead Iraq to stability, rebuilding the country’s infrastructure on a strong foundation. But in interviews after the morning session, some who attended wondered how it was possible to have a dialogue with opponents who were absent. “We were hoping to see more people invited, people who really represent the Iraqi components,” said Sheik Muhammad Fahman al-Rikahis, leader of the Shiite tribe Al Shibil in the south. “So the question is, why wasn’t everyone invited?” Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s party, the Iraqi Consensus Front, refused to attend the meeting, as did Hiwar, a minority party that includes Shiites and Sunnis, and Tawafiq, the largest Sunni political bloc. Ayad al-Samurai, a spokesman for Tawafiq, said that although some members had received personal invitations to the conference, no official invitation had been received, and “therefore its members preferred not to participate.” But Akram al-Hakim, whose Ministry for National Dialogue organized the conference, insisted in a news conference on Tuesday that, despite rumors “in the media” that some political blocs had not been invited, invitations had been sent “to the blocs directly and to the heads of blocs, too.” Few participants interviewed could even agree on who was to blame for the rifts that every day tear new wounds in an already bloodied country. Some blamed Mr. Maliki’s government, others the insurgents. Still others pointed to Baathists loyal to Saddam Hussein, or pointed to Iran, which they said exercised a strong influence over the government and some Shiite militias. Vice President Dick Cheney, who was visiting Iraq on Tuesday, spoke at Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, of “incredible progress on the ground in Iraq.” Mr. Cheney also traveled to the semiautonomous Kurdish region, where he asked for President Massoud Barzani’s help to “conclude a new strategic relationship between the United States and Iraq, as well as to pass crucial pieces of national legislation in the months ahead.” More than 300 miles to the south, in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, blood still covered the walls of buildings where a bomb exploded Monday, killing at least 43 people. Family members placed the bodies in coffins and traveled to Najaf to bury them, chanting, “God is great, God is great.” In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb exploded, killing three people and wounding 40.
Pope Benedict XVI, President Bush and Iraq's prime minister condemned the attack. U.S. officials in Baghdad issued a statement Friday, calling it "one more savage attempt by a barbaric enemy to sow strife and discord." During the funeral in a village outside Mosul in northern Iraq, grieving Christians wept and wailed as the archbishop's coffin was carried down the streets, led by a church official carrying a wooden cross affixed with Rahho's picture. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraqi Christians have been targeted by Islamic extremists who label them "crusaders" loyal to U.S. troops. Militants have attacked churches, priests and businesses owned by Christians, many of whom have fled the country in a trend mirrored across the Islamic world. The Chaldean church is an Eastern-rite denomination aligned with the Roman Catholic Church that recognizes the authority of the pope. Chaldean Catholics make up a tiny minority of the current Iraqi population but are the largest group among the less than 1 million Christians in Iraq, according to last year's International Religious Freedom Report from the U.S. State Department. Rahho, 65, was seized on Feb. 29 in Mosul, a city considered by the U.S. military as the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq. It was not immediately clear if Rahho was killed or if he died of an illness while in captivity. He was the most senior Catholic cleric in Iraq after Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly — who was elevated to the College of Cardinals by the pope last November. A Mosul morgue official, speaking on condition of anonymity for security concerns, said Rahho's body had no bullet holes. The official said police found the body in an early stage of decomposition under a thin layer of dirt just north of the city, suggesting that Rahho had been dead for a few days. There have been no claims of responsibility for the archbishop's kidnapping or his death. Meanwhile, the U.S. military on Friday said a suicide bomber who killed two people a day earlier in Zab, a village outside Kirkuk, about 180 miles north of Baghdad, was a woman. Female suicide bombers have been involved in at least 20 attacks or attempted attacks since the war began, including the grisly bombings of two pet markets in Baghdad that killed nearly 100 people last month.
NYTimes.com February 1, 2008 Kurds’ Power Wanes as Arab Anger RisesBy ALISSA J. RUBIN BAGHDAD — As a minority group in Iraq, the Kurds have enjoyed disproportionate influence in the country’s politics since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But now their leverage appears to be declining as tensions rise with Iraqi Arabs, raising the specter of another fissure alongside the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites. The Kurds, who are mostly Sunni but not Arab, have steadfastly backed the government, most recently helping to keep it afloat when Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lacked support from much of Parliament. With their political acumen, close ties to the Americans and technical competence at running government agencies, the Kurds cemented a position of enormous strength. This allowed them to all but dictate terms in Iraq’s Constitution that gave them considerable regional autonomy and some significant rights in oil development. But now the Kurds are pursuing policies that are antagonizing the other factions. The Kurds’ efforts to seize control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and to gain a more advantageous division of national revenues are uniting most Sunnis and many Shiites with Mr. Maliki’s government in opposition to the Kurdish demands. For the United States, the diminution in Kurdish power is part of a larger problem of political divisiveness that has plagued its efforts to build a functioning government in Iraq. While several political parties can come together to address a particular issue, none can seem to form the lasting allegiances needed for actual governance. The Kurds, with their pro-American outlook, were a natural ally. But now the Americans are increasingly placed in the uncomfortable position of choosing between the Kurds, whom they have long supported and protected, and the Iraqi Arabs, whose government the Americans helped create. One major Shiite group, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, has not publicly taken sides, but powerful people within the party have been openly critical of the Kurds. Others expressing frustration are leading members of Parliament and Hussain al-Shahristani, the oil minister and a prominent Shiite politician, who calls Kurdish oil contracts with foreign companies illegal. Humam Hamoudi, a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, said, “They are no longer the egg in the balance,” using an Arabic proverb that refers to the item that tips the scale. Mr. Hamoudi added, “The Kurds are not so powerful.” Independent analysts largely back that assertion. “There’s a strong feeling that the Kurds have overreached,” said Joost Hiltermann, a senior analyst for the Middle East at the International Crisis Group who is based in Istanbul. “The Kurds had their eye on independence in the long term, and they wanted to use the current window to increase the territory they hold and the powers they exercise within the territory,” he added. “They’ve done well on the powers, but not so well on the territory. They now face real restrictions.” The jousting threatens to undermine much of what the Kurds have achieved in political influence and to supersede, at least temporarily, the far deeper divide between Sunnis and Shiites. And by helping unite Sunnis and Shiites, the Kurds’ overreaching has strengthened the hand of Mr. Maliki despite widespread doubts about his ability to govern effectively. The tensions could even persuade the central government to further postpone an already delayed referendum on whether to make Kirkuk part of the Kurds’ semiautonomous region. “The government got a lot of support when they stood against the exaggerated demands of the Kurds,” said Jaber Habeeb, an independent Shiite member of Parliament who is also a political science professor at Baghdad University. But to capitalize on this support, which is almost certain to be temporary, he said, the government must move quickly to improve electricity, water and other basic services. The Kurds have been locked for decades in a power struggle with Sunni Arabs, most recently with Mr. Hussein. That led to the Hussein government’s Anfal campaign, in which about 180,000 Kurds died and 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed, according to Kurdish counts. The United States and its allies created a no-flight zone over the Kurdish areas after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and the areas have since become increasingly affluent. While much of Iraq has been engulfed in violence since 2003, Kurdistan has been notably peaceful, with streams of foreign investment and a building boom in Erbil, the largest city. Against that backdrop, the Kurdish aspiration to bring more territory, including Kirkuk, into its semiautonomous region looks greedy to the Arabs. In a signal of its displeasure, Parliament has refused to approve a new budget because it awards the Kurds 17 percent of the total revenues, which many representatives say is more than their share based on population. Because Iraq has not had a census in decades, it is impossible to know the true size of the Kurdish population. Some Kurdish leaders say it could be 23 percent; some Arabs say it is 13 percent. The Kurds are also believed to collect millions of dollars in duties on goods coming into Iraq but they neither send the money to Baghdad nor share accounts of the income, according to the International Monetary Fund. Parliament members are also angered that the Kurds want Baghdad to pay salaries of their militia, the pesh merga, from the Defense Ministry’s budget. The pesh merga operate primarily in Kurdistan rather than serving the country as a whole. However, the Kurds contend that in the event of an invasion they would be on the front lines. Such a situation seems all too real to the Kurds, because Turkey has recently threatened to invade to rout the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party. The rebels have been mounting attacks over the border into Turkish territory. Perhaps most grating for Iraqi Arabs, the Kurds have refused to back down on the oil exploration contracts they have signed with foreign companies. Arabs view the central government as the only entity empowered to approve contracts, albeit in consultation with the regions where the oil is located. The Kurds argue that the central government has been dragging its feet on an oil law and that they cannot afford to defer oil exploration and development further, said Ros Shawees, a former vice president of Iraq and point man in Baghdad for Massoud Barzani, the president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. The Kurds acknowledge that they are worried by the opposition that has developed, although they are reluctant to concede that they may have overplayed their hand. “It is necessary to keep such feelings to a minimum,” Mr. Shawees said. “We have to work in different respects to show that the Kurdish region doesn’t just make demands and take things, but that the region is an example for all regions and it can benefit all Iraq.” For now, however, the budget has yet to be approved, the oil law and revenue sharing laws are in limbo, and there is a new and visible fault line on the Iraqi political scene.
The Washington Times Article published Nov 27, 2007
PUBLIC SUPPORT IN NORTHERN IRAQ Kurdish rebels aren't outcasts Monday, October 29, 2007 3:50 AM By Asso Ahmed and Ned Parker LOS ANGELES TIMES
MARDU, Iraq -- It is a land of resistance, the mountain peaks and winding valleys where Iraq's own Kurds battled Saddam Hussein for decades. Now, another generation of Kurdish guerrillas is bunkered down in the Qandil mountains, this time in a fight against Turkey. Iraqi Kurds and members of the Turkish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, live together in this vast mountain range that straddles Iraq, Turkey and Iran. The haven provided to the Turkish Kurd rebels here infuriates Ankara, which has been locked in a conflict with the Kurdish separatist movement that has cost thousands of lives since the 1980s. With as many as 100,000 Turkish troops poised to march across the Iraqi border to attack PKK camps, a military response to a rebel ambush in southern Turkey on Oct. 21 that killed 12 soldiers, Iraqi Kurds now might pay a steep price for ignoring the problems caused by the PKK's presence in the north. "Iraqi Kurds generally sympathize with PKK fighters. It is a force that has been demanding and fighting for the rights of Kurds in Turkey for tens of years now, and the Turks have been very harsh to their Kurdish community by forbidding them from rights," said Asso Hardi, editor in chief of Awena, an independent newspaper in Sulaymaniya, a city in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan region. "On the other hand, many Iraqi Kurds view the PKK as an entity ... which has caused many problems to the relatively stable Kurdistan area of Iraq, especially with neighboring countries." Up winding switchbacks lies Mardu village, northeast of Sulaymaniya. Kurdish farmers tend livestock and harvest peaches, apples and grapes. A few houses serve as an impromptu headquarters for the PKK. Male and female fighters, dressed in billowing, traditional shalwar pants and olive combat tops, walk freely. Local Iraqis openly support them, and some Iraqi Kurds have left their families and city life to become soldiers with the Turkish Kurd rebels and their Iranian sister movement, Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK. "Three times I lost my house, but I never scorned the Kurdish movement. The PKK and PEJAK have been in our village for years," said 64-year-old farmer Mohammed Wasso, whose property was destroyed during the Iraqi Kurds' hard-fought war with Saddam. Some describe the PKK as a vital trading partner and protector in a lawless area. Hussein Rashid, 45, regularly hauls gasoline and kerosene from Iran to sell to the guerrillas. He warned, "If the PKK is not here, then this will be a place for terrorism and Iran will send Ansar Al-Islam," a Sunni extremist group linked to al-Qaida. Shereen Sulaiman, 39, worried about what Turkey might do to the PKK. "They respect the people and serve the area. They even supply the area with electricity. I don't want them to be hurt," she said. "They are Kurds like us." Kurds speak a distinct language and have a separate culture from that of Turks, Iranians and Arabs. They are thought to be the world's largest ethnic group without a state, with a total population estimated at 25 million to 40 million.
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