IRAQ's MINORITIES BEING ERADICATED BY ISIS - report of consortium of NGOs

Launch of "Between the Millstones: Iraq's Minorities Since the Fall of Mosul"A report of a consortium of NGOs   

(Minority Rights Group, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, No Peace Without Justice and Institute for International Law and Human Rights).

Brussels, 27th February 2015.

Since June 2014, the rapid spread of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham) forces across northern Iraq has triggered a wave of displacement, with more than 2 million people uprooted.  Ethnic and religious minorities have been particularly targeted, including Turkmens, Christians, Yezidis, Kaka'is, and Shabaks, with thousands killed and many more injured or abducted.

Alison Smith, NPWJ; Johanna Green, UNPO; Mays Al-Juboori, MRG; William Spencer, HLHR

William Spencer, Institute for International Law and Human Rights and

Dr Hassan Aydinli, Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) EU Representative

Marino Busdachin, General Secretary of  UNPO and

Dr Hassan Aydinli, Iraqi Turkmen Front EU Representative.

Minority communities in Iraq have been targeted by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in a systematic strategy to remove them permanently from large areas of Iraq, warns a group of human rights organizations in their new report.

"Between the Millstones: Iraq's Minorities Since the Fall of Mosul" provides critical information on the legal basis for war crimes prosecutions.

According to the report, the Iraqi government lacks a legal framework to address the rights and entitlements of the displaced people, it should clarify its role and responsibilities.

The Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government should investigate and prosecute corruption in the delivery and acquisition of humanitarian aid and make sure that humanitarian aid is fairly divided among the displaced people.

The Iraqi government should provide urgent assistance to the humanitarian effort and resettle minorities who have been displaced.

Summary executions, forced conversion, rape, sexual enslavement, the destruction of places of worship, the abduction of children, the looting of property and other severe human rights abuses and crimes under international law have been committed repeatedly by ISIS.  While minorities have long been vulnerable to attacks by extremists, this violence appears to be part of a systematic strategy to remove these communities permanently from areas where they have lived for centuries.

For these groups to have a future in the country, Iraqi and Kurdish authorities, the international community and other stakeholders must work together not only to ensure their immediate security, but also take steps through comprehensive legal and social reform to bring an end to their long-standing marginalization and prevent further abuses.

All IDPs are suffering especially minority women.

Regarding the TURKMENS, the report states that prior to June 2014, Turkmens were intimidated by Kurdish and Central government authorities, as well as by extra-judicial militias, on religious and ethnic grounds as well as for the presence in the 'disputed territories'. More recently, Shi'a Turkmens have been summarily executed by ISIS fighters.

The reports also states that Iraq's Turkmen community has strong support from Turkmen diaspora organizations such as the Europe-Turkmen Friendships and other groups.

Concerning TURKMEN SITES, the report says:

As ISIS forces swept through Tal Afar and the surrounding areas in June and July 2014, numerous Turkmen mosques, shrines and religious and cultural sites were destroyed or desecrated, including Shi'a mosques in the villages of hardaghli, Brauchli and Qaranaz, all of which until recently had a large Turkmen population.  ISIS forces also destroyed the shrine of Arnaour and the Shi'a mosques of Husseiniyh al-Qubba, Husseiniyh Jawad, Husseiniyh Kaddo, Husseiniyh Muslim Bin-Aqeel and Husseiniyh Askar-Mullah in Tal Afar. The largest and oldest library in the Tal Afar district was also blown up - a huge blow to the Turkmen population. Another library in the Diyala governorate, with some 1,500 Islamic historical texts and stories, was reportedly burnt to the ground by ISIS forces.

In Mosul the tomb of Ibn al-Athir was destroyed, and the shrine of Imam al-Abbas in al-Qubba village and three Shi'a mosquess were set ablaze by ISIS militants in the village of Al-Sharikhan. ISIS forces reportedly used bulldozers in the Turkmnn town of al-Mahlabia to destroy the shrines of Sheikh Ibrahim and the shrine and tomb of the Sufi Sheikh Ahmed Rifa'i.

Shi'a mosques and other sites of religious significance were reportedly set on fire by ISIS forces in the Turkmen towns of Qubba and Qubbek, in Tal Afar district.

Several important Sunni shrines were also reportedly destroyed in Mosul and Kirkuk, including the shrine of Sufi Salih, in addition to some Kaka'i shrines. Two Shi'a shrines in Sinjar - Sayida Zainab and Saiyed Zakariya - were also destroyed, as well as the Shi'a holy shrine of Imam Ridha in Tiskhrab village.

In the Tukmen village of Chardaghli, a Sunni mosque was destroyed along with three Shi'a mosques. In the Turkmen village of Staeh, Sunni and Shi'a mosques as well as Yezidi religious shrines were destroyed.

The report also mentions the Denial of Entry issue that minority communities have experienced from certain areas of Iraq, particularly by Kurdish forces. The KRG has been criticized by numerous human rights activists for applying discriminatory rules based on ethnicity and religion, with Assyrians, Kurds and Yezidis typically being permitted to enter the Iraqi Kurdish region, while Iraqi Turkmen and Shi'a and Sunni Arabs have been denied access.

Regarding Employment and Education, the report states that though children have the right to be educate in their mother tongue under the Iraqi Constitution of 2005, this has not been respected.
In the Iraqi Kurdish Region minority groups are pressured to be educated in Kurdish and fincancial incentives are used to promote the language. Provision of education in the children's native tongue is also under-resourced in Iraq: many Turkmen communities, for example, have struggled to access education in their own language. 

On the Sexual and gender-base violence, the report says:
There have been numerous reports of sexual abuse, rape, abductions, enslavement and other violations of a sexual nature perpetrated by ISIS militants on women and children across Iraq.
In many cases, sexual violence has been used as a tool of terror and coercion. In one incident on 12-13 June 2014, ISIS forces reportedly raped and killed at least nine women and girls as young as 12 years old in the Turkmen town of BESHIR. The bodies of the women were then stripped naked and hung from lamp posts and water tanks around the town. 

The report also says that some Turkmen and Yezidi children left by ISIS forces in an orphanage in Mosul showed signs of being physically and sexually assaulted.

While Yezidi women have been especially targeted, at least several hundred Shi'a women, mostly Turkmen, have also been kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery by ISIS, as well as Christian women.

Finally the report makes several recommendations to the Federal Government of Iraq, to the Kurdish Regional Government and to the International Community, to prevent further abuses and for the Restoration and Reconciliation.

PLEASE SEE:

http://unpo.org/downloads/1271.pdf

http://unpo.org/article/17993

IŞİD Operasyonları Sonrası Irak’ta İnsani Durum, Türkmenler ve Türkiye’nin Irak’a Yaptığı İnsani Yardımlar

IŞİD Operasyonları Sonrası Irak’ta İnsani Durum, Türkmenler ve Türkiye’nin Irak’a Yaptığı İnsani Yardımlar


Firuze Yağmur Gökler Araştırma Asistanı, ORSAM



http://www.orsam.org.tr/tr/yazigoster.aspx?ID=5207

Irak Şam İslam Devleti’nin (IŞİD) 2014 yılı içinde Irak’ta neden olduğu istikrarsızlık, Haziran ayı başlarında etkisini arttırmış ve 10 Haziran 2014 tarihinde Irak’ın en büyük ikinci şehri olan Musul’un IŞİD’in eline geçmesiyle doruk noktasına ulaşmıştır. IŞİD’in yarattığı bu kaos ortamı Irak’ta yüz binlerce sivilin evlerini, şehirlerini terk etmesine neden olmuştur. Irak’ta yaşanan bu insani drama komşu ülke Türkiye sessiz kalmamış hatta ilk yanıt veren ülke olmuştur. Türkiye tarafından yapılan insani yardımlar ırk, din, dil farkı gözetilmeksizin yerlerinden edilen bütün Iraklılara gönderilmiştir. Bu noktada Irak’taki Türkmenlere de Türkiye’den bazı yardımlar gitmiştir. Bu değerlendirmede IŞİD’in Irak’ta 2014 yılının başından beri yapmış olduğu operasyonlara ve bu operasyonlar sonucu Iraklı Türkmenlerin ülke içindeki göçlerine değinilecektir. Bu göçler sonrası Türkiye’nin bölgeye ve Türkmenlere yapmış olduğu insani yardımlar anlatılmaya çalışılacaktır. Son olarak yaşanan bu insani krize müdahale noktasında göçmenlerin de ihtiyaçları göz önünde bulundurularak, yapılan yardımların dışında hangi hususlara önem verilmesi konusunda öneriler sunulacaktır.

Arapça versiyon

İngilizce versiyon

Metnin Tamamı

The Fall of Tal Afar and the Situation of Turkmens

http://www.orsam.org.tr/en/showArticle.aspx?ID=2652

The Fall of Tal Afar and the Situation of Turkmens
Bilgay Duman, ORSAM Middle East Researchers




Among the districts highly influenced by the state of conflict during and after the US invasion in Iraq, the town of Tal Afar, which is part of Mosul province and populated by Turkmens, fell to ISIS following an expected operation after ISIS created the zones of control in Mosul, Salah ad Din (Tikrit), Diyala, Anbar and some parts of Kirkuk on 6 June 2014 and headed for Baghdad. Tal Afar is experiencing one of the biggest disasters again after the US attacks in 2004-2005. While ISIS was taking the control in and around Tal Afar, the citizens massively fled from the town. Iraqi army has been carrying out air operations on Tal Afar.

Therefore, Tal Afar is collapsing again due to both the ISIS terror and the air operations of the Iraqi army which is targeting the settlements. In addition to the central town of Tal Afar, which has a population of approximately 510,000 people, the districts of Rabia, Zummar and İyaziye, where 230,000 people are living, are fully composed of Turkmens. Both the center of Iyaziye and the surrounding villages of Zummar and Rabia were heavily populated by the Turkmens. While the Turkmens compose 70 % of Tal Afar, the Arabs, Kurds, Yazidis and Gergeris live out of the town center, as well. At present, the region ISIS has targeted is the town center of Tal Afar. In this sense, the operation of ISIS has targeted only the Turkmens.

Before the operation of ISIS, Tal Afar had witnessed violence many times. The ethnic and religious division in Iraq had negatively reflected on Tal Afar and many conflicts had taken place in the town. Especially Al Qaida and Al Qaida inspired organizations had seized the town in order to create a transit point. In response, the multinational forces led by the USA and the Peshmerga troops started an operation known as "Black Typhoon" on 9 September 2004 in order to restore the security in the town and establish the control of the government formed by the USA in Iraq. An important number of Turkmens had to leave the town as a result of the operations and Tal Afar witnessed a terrible chaotic atmosphere. The justifications for the operation led by the US troops and peshmergas were "the entry into Tal Afar of the forces led by Muqtada al Sadr, the foreign fighters who tried to enter Iraq from Syria, some insurgents fleeing from Fallujah and Ansar al Islam militants affiliated to Al Qaida." This operation lasted five days and later on, the US soldiers left the town. Meanwhile, the Sunni insurgence took place in Mosul and Fallujah. Also, the terrorist organizations had begun to gather in Tal Afar in a year. Thereupon, in September 2005, the USA, alongside with the Iraqi security forces, conducted a new massive operation called "Restoring Rights." It is said that nearly 70 % of the citizens left Tal Afar during these operations. The conflict dynamic took root in Tal Afar after the operations increased. After al Askari Mosque was bombed in February 2006 in the city of Samarra, sectarian tensions arose in Tal Afar, too. The state of conflict intensively continued until 2009 and many families who had left the town between 2004 and 2009 were not able to return to Tal Afar. Along with the decrease of the sectarian conflict in Iraq after 2009 and the agreement between the tribes in Tal Afar, the efforts of Turkey to consolidate the tribes produced some positive results and the acts of violence in Tal Afar considerably decreased. However, the sectarian tension showed continuity and accordingly the town center in Tal Afar took a bi-zonal form. Still, the fact that there had been no conflict in this period and the relative restoration of security comforted the town and the migrants who had left the town due to 2004-2005 operations and the conflicts caused by the sectarian tension returned.

Yet, Tal Afar has still remained under pressure. As a result of the strategic position of Tal Afar, the biggest part of this pressure is due to the struggle between the Iraqi central government and the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) with the effect of the ethnic and sectarian division. Also, the repercussions of the incidents in Syria have kept the tension in Tal Afar at a high level even if there has been no concrete violence and conflict. At this point, all other ethnic and religious groups in Iraq have been affected the developments in Tal Afar. As the Kurds have created pressure on Tal Afar, which is a buffer zone preventing the unification of the KRG borders and the region of Sincar that the KRG dominates, the town has become a part of administrative, political and energy discussions between the central government and the KRG. Besides, Tal Afar has become the focus of the Iraqi central government's pressures on the Sunnis particularly in Mosul which have made the people in the town a part of this polarization. The approval of Tal Afar as a province by the Iraqi Council of Ministers in January 2014 has become the most significant example of this situation. The Sunni Turkmens in Tal Afar who had previously demanded the town to become a province opposed the approval, as they refrained from the government's pressure which had influenced Mosul as well, while the Shia Turkmens who had previously opposed the idea of Tal Afar's becoming a province persistently defended the approval as they were encouraged by the Iraqi central government. After the incidents in Syria, Tal Afar acquired importance again and some arguments were asserted claiming that the armed people who went to Syria to fight was using the passageway of Tal Afar.

Today, Tal Afar has received attention again with the pressure of ISIS, which blockaded the town to expand its area of control and enable border crossing between Syria and Iraq after the seizure of Mosul. Beginning from 14 June, howitzer attacks have been staged for two days. After the army withdrew from Tal Afar in addition to the other cities captured by ISIS, the local police composed of the townspeople and the public attempted to restore security on their own. After the help of Peshmergas for the restoration of security in Tal Afar, the prominent tribes and authorities in Tal Afar and the KRG held meetings. Although the Peshmergas accepted to restore the security with a demand from the public to hand in their weapons to them and a precondition to enter the town center, the Tal Afar side who refrained from allowing the Peshmergas to enter the town center refused to hand in their weapons to them and the sides could not come to an agreement. Within two days, the resisting people of Tal Afar were not able to endure the rising pressure of ISIS and the town was largely captured by the group while nearly all of the townspeople left Tal Afar. Heading for especially Sincar, Rabia and the regions under the KRG control, the Turkmens were at the edge of a disaster, as especially Rabia and Sincar were also under the pressure of ISIS. Also, the Turkmens of Tal Afar had difficulties in entering the KRG, because the KRG demanded controlled passage. Moreover, neither Sincar nor Rabia has the capacity to host the population escaping from Tal Afar. The Turkmens' escape caused a tremendous human tragedy. Extremely high levels of temperature ratings as a result of the summer conditions also negatively affected the migrants. It is said that there have been some difficulties to sustain basic needs such as water, food, medicine and sheltering. The people took refuge in the mosques and school buildings. However, these are temporary precautions and permanent solutions need to be generated. At this point, the Turkmens in Tal Afar have great expectations from Turkey. Providing the help of the KRG and international foundations is also crucial. The KRG should receive the Turkmens with open arms, likewise the opportunities it provided for the Kurds immigrating from the Kurdish territories of Syria. This will be, in a sense, a trust building attempt for the KRG. In spite of the problems regarding Mosul, Turkey should develop a strategy for the Turkmen’s escape, and the attempts to bring the Turkmens in Tal Afar to Turkey should be made if necessary. In addition to the human tragedy in Iraq, the hard conditions of Turkmens raises once again the kinship responsibility. Taking this sensitivity into consideration, the Turkish public also defends the necessity of creating a consciousness in order to take steps both at national and international levels.

Iraqi Turkmens celebrating NAVRUZ in Belgium

Where Do The Turkmen Stand In Political Polarization In Iraq?

Where Do The Turkmen Stand In Political Polarization In Iraq?


Bilgay Duman, ORSAM Middle East Specialist



In the recent period, the politics in Iraq has centered on a new polarization. Even though its lines are not quite clear, the struggle between the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his opponents/rivals seems to come to light. Especially the meeting held in Arbil, on 29th April can be considered as one of the most important indicators of this. In the meeting, which is suggested to have been held upon the call of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and with the participation of the KRG leader Massoud Barzani, who is known to oppose to Nouri al-Maliki, the Sadr Group leader Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraqi Parliament Speaker and among the Iraqiya List leaders Usama al-Nujeyfi, Iraqiya List leader Ayad Allawi, and Jalal Talabani, it was stated that the last
political tension in Iran was talked and solutions were proposed for the problems. The fact that Barzani, who accused Maliki for being “dictator” and Sadr had a separate talk before the meeting also drew the attention. 

The fact that those groups headed by the aforesaid two leaders are in the “key position of the governments in Iraq”, including the government formed after the 2010 elections, increased the importance of this talks still more. Despite the fact that the “National Conference”, which is planned to be held to overcome the crisis within the government and to be held with the participation of all political groups in Iraq, have not been somehow carried out, it is extremely important to hold such a conference.

Turkmens to suffer again as Iraqi blocs sharpen their swords

Turkmens to suffer again as Iraqi blocs sharpen their swords



1 January 2012 / CEREN KUMOVA, ANKARA TODAY’S ZAMAN

Although most fear a collision of both a sectarian and ethnic nature is awaiting Iraq in the post-US era, experts believe threats from the blocs in favor of a federation are leverage for blocs to impose their will on one another, but they also voice concern that minorities, led by the Turkmens, will suffer under the weight of the fight before the blocs reach a consensus, if they ever do.

Only a day after the last US troops withdrew from Iraq, powerful blocs of Sunni and Shiite leaders drew their swords in a fight to snatch power from each other, reviving a scene from back in 2007 when blocs gathered along sectarian lines and took thousands of lives monthly to prove their worth in Iraqi politics.



However, a significant minority group, the Turkmens, say the pressure was always there, before the US intervention, and maybe more increasingly, after their pullout.



Having already issued an arrest warrant for the top Sunni official and asked for the resignation of the second in line, Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made the first move against rivals in the fear that Iraq might see another era of Sunni dominance and in the hope that he gathers enough power under the grip of the Shiite bloc to ensure Shiite control the country.



While Sunni and Shiite blocs took up the fight from where they left off in 2007, and the Kurdish administration started gaining political power through oil deals it secured with foreign companies, other smaller groups, most significantly the Turkmens, worry that they will be trampled as the conflicts continue.



“The Turkmen community in Iraq is the only one without arms,” Mehmet Tütüncü, the general director of İstanbul-based Iraqi Turks Culture and Mutual Aid Society (ITKYD), told Sunday’s Zaman as he expressed concern over the fate of the minority group. “If, God forbid, Iraq falls into three pieces as most believe it will, the situation of the Turkmens will be even worse, as they will be split between Kurdish and Arab blocs geographically,” he added to point out that an extensive conflict among the powerful blocs might shake the ground the Turkmen community stands on. However, he also claimed that the Turkmens would not side with any party if at some point Iraq becomes a federation, saying, “We always say the Turkmens are a part of Iraq; the Turkmens will never be a part of a part.”

According to Tütüncü, Turkmens are divided almost equally among Shiite and Sunni, but they stand together according to their ethnic identity. There are approximately 2.5 to 3 million Turkmens in Iraq, Tütüncü claimed, citing a census held in 1957, after which “Turkmen” was not listed under the category of ethnicities -- “one could either be Kurdish or Arab.” He suggested that Kirkuk was historically a Turkmen city but overrun by Arabs during Saddam’s reign and by Kurds after 2003, the year of the US intervention. “The demographic structure of the city is far from reflecting its historical settlers,” Tütüncü claimed, but both Kurds and Arabs make the same claim, saying they are the historical owners of the oil-rich Iraqi provinces.



Oil is a curse for Iraqis



Alongside the blocs’ strong desire for political dominance over each other, the Iraqi conflict is also significantly an economic one, with many areas in the country blessed with natural resources, drawing attention from the rest of the world for a share of the oil profits. The semiautonomous Kurdish administration of the north, in particular, proves to be an example where economics dominates the political scene, as the administration has struck deals with oil companies that acted against their arrangements with the Baghdadi government as they recognized the Kurdish authority as the rightful owners of the resources. Rich fields of oil are also found in the Turkmen provinces, but since the status of the Turkmen hometowns are still vague, the oil is not a contributor to their society but a cause of conflict since all blocs lay claim to the same lands. “The main challenge for Iraq lies with the integration of Kurds into central Iraqi administration, but it is still a mystery where that road will lead since Kurds are able to use their oil resources to secure economic and political power from oil deals,” Ramazan Gözen, an academic at Yıldırım Beyazıt University, told Sunday’s Zaman, as he advocated that natural resources and economic activities across the country should be supervised by Baghdad, not by local or regional administrations. “Oil deals struck by countries with the Kurdish administration steer Iraq away from solidarity for the benefit of big companies by providing the means for the Kurds to opt for a federal structure in the country,” he added. “Oil has always been a curse for the Turkmens, a major reason for the controversy regarding their lands; instead of wealth and prosperity, oil has brought trouble to the Turkmens,” Tütüncü added to clarify that wealth has its own complexities.



Turkey changes perspective on Iraq



Turkey’s approach toward Iraq also took another form after the US intervention, as the country extended its vision of Iraq consisting only of its border with Turkey and its perspective that focused on protection of Turkmens in the country. Although the struggle of the Turkmens to remain unharmed by clashes still has enormous significance for Turkey’s Iraq policy, the country is now more concerned with the stability of Iraq as a whole, rather than of its parts. “Turkish policy on Iraq before 2000 was focused solely on the Turkmens, which was a rather narrow vision that did not help anyone,” Gözen said, as he said that the Turkish attitude toward Iraq has changed over the last decade. “Now the horizon is farther away with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visiting Shiite headquarter cities, then moving on to lunch with Kurdish administration in the north,” he stated to express the change in the Turkish official Turkish perspective with regards to Iraq. Gözen also signaled that such moves were unthinkable in the last decade but that today’s Turkey was well aware that it had to ignore ethnicity and sect to help Iraqi maintain the stability the country urgently needs in the fragile Middle Eastern region. “Turkey is apparently at odds with Maliki, who probably believes Turkey is hostile to him because he is of Shiite descent,” Ufuk Ulutaş of the Ankara-based Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) told Sunday’s Zaman. He agreed that sect and ethnicity had to be ignored when looking at Iraq. “It is hard for a country [Iraq] that is psychologically divided into political blocs to understand how another country might be blind to its blocs, but this is exactly the position of Turkey toward Iraq now,” he added, stressing that Turkey was not seeking to have one bloc benefit at the expense of another because any power imbalance would harm Turkey drastically. Ulutaş also doesn’t believe Iraq will break up into pieces after the US pullout, thinking none of the blocs that currently seem to be battling actually wants to be on its own through independence.


http://www.todayszaman.com/news-267270-turkmens-to-suffer-again-as-iraqi-blocs-sharpen-their-swords.html

Maliki, the Fayli Kurds, and the Return to an Ethno-Sectarian Political Discourse in Iraq

By Reidar Visser

Maliki, the Fayli Kurds, and the Return to an Ethno-Sectarian Political Discourse in Iraq

Posted by Reidar Visser on Sunday, 2 October 2011 19:34

Ever since he came to power in 2006, a key issue for Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki has been the tension between, on the one hand, a majoritarian, all-Iraqi politicial discourse, and, on the other, a discourse that instead emphasises the identity of separate ethnicities and sects.
In a speech to a gathering of Fayli Kurds yesterday, Maliki certainly emphasised ethno-sectarian identity. Firstly, Maliki stressed that the Faylis had suffered more than any other Iraqi community because they are “both Kurds and Shiites”. But not only that. Maliki advised the Faylis to seek “unity” within the component (mukawwin), meaning he demanded political conformity across the imagined “Fayli Kurd community”. He went on to suggest that the census to be carried out in Iraq in the future would make clear how many Fayli Kurds there are in Iraq! This would effectively transform the census to a questionnaire about more than mother tongue (Arabic, Kurdish or Turkish) and main religion (Muslim versus Christian): It is mainly their Shiite sectarian identity that sets the Faylis apart from other Kurds.

Seen in isolation, one could wonder whether Maliki perhaps was simply following a strategy of reinforcing sub-divisions among the Kurds, as seen before in Iraqi history and perhaps most prominently in the case of the Shabak around Mosul. But Maliki’s tendency to focus more on the components than the whole has been a consistent trend since the disappointing result for his State of Law coalition in the 7 March 2010 parliamentary elections. Back then, Maliki expressed disappointment that his hope of building a political-majority government had been crushed, and that the alternative of an ethno-sectarian power-sharing formula would likely lead to ineffective government. However, Maliki soon seemed to adapt to the new realities. Already in August 2010, people in his alliance (and the US ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill) expressed the view that the prime minister “had to be a Shiite”. This year, Maliki and his State of Law allies have increasingly expressed the view that certain posts should be given to sects, as seen especially in the call for the defence ministry to go to a Sunni. These are all important steps towards the permanent Lebanonisation of Iraq.

There are of course examples of brave resistance and cases where Iraqi national sentiment clearly does survive. When Turkmens in Kirkuk recently demanded an ethnic Turkmen militia to protect them, Sunni Arabs from the same area instead called for central government intervention, notwithstanding the fact that the Iraqi army is now Shiite-dominated. Similarly, those Sunni Arabs were among the first to reject the idea of a Sunni federal region when it hit the political agenda this summer.

Away from political elites, many ordinary Faylis continue to express unhappiness about being labelled as anything other than Iraqis. However, it seems Prime Minister Maliki is now giving them pretty little choice.

Turkmen Conference in Baghdad

Turkmen politicians held a conference in Baghdad over the week-end to complain about the predations of the two major Kurdish parties in KERKUK.

All Turkmens oppose the annexation of Kerkuk, their capital city and main cultural centre to the Kurdish Autonomous Region.

See article in Al-Hayat (Arabic):

http://www.daralhayat.com/arab_news/levant_news/02-2008/Item-20080202-db732b59-c0a8-10ed-01dd-6f8237c6e9ad/story.html

UN envoy meets local officials in Kerkuk

Kerkuk - Voices of Iraq
Sunday , 03 /02 /2008

"The Turcoman parties agreed to unify political and media discourse and that article 140 has ended legally and constitutionally with the expiry of its deadline set in the constitution," Saad al-Din Arkij told VOI on Saturday. Arkij said an agreement was reached during the meeting to have Kerkuk as an independent province to be run by the groups in the city and in a way to be agreed on later.

******
Kirkuk, Feb 3, (VOI) – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy Andrea Gilmore is holding a meeting with members of the Kirkuk local council on the mechanism to implement article 140 of the Iraqi constitution pertaining to fate of the oil-rich city and other disputed areas during the next six months.

"Members of the local council from the Turcoman Front did not attend the meeting because they are in Baghdad," a source from the Kirkuk local council told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

The Turcoman parties had met on Saturday in a workshop in Baghdad on the fate of Kirkuk and agreed that article 140 of the constitution dropped legally with the expiry of its deadline. The meeting was attended by a number of Iraqi MPs and ministers.

"The Turcoman parties agreed to unify political and media discourse and that article 140 has ended legally and constitutionally with the expiry of its deadline set in the constitution," Saad al-Din Arkij told VOI on Saturday.

Arkij said an agreement was reached during the meeting to have Kirkuk as an independent province to be run by the groups in the city and in a way to be agreed on later.

Article 140 provides for normalization of Kirkuk through having back its Kurdish and Turcoman inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs relocated in the city during the former regime's time to their original provinces in central and southern Iraq.

The article also calls for conducting a census to be followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having it as an independent province.

These stages were supposed to end on December 31, 2007, a deadline that was later extended to six months.

http://www.aswataliraq.info/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=68244&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1E