Kurdish Authorities Move to Annex Assyrian Lands in North Ir

[Piling]

How they did force them ? Perhaps they accept willingly...

[talsor]

I have said it before , Assyrian are pethatic . They run like rats from baghdad and they have a BIG MOUTH in Kurdistan . I personaly do not want Assyrian to be part of Kurdistan . Let them be part of Iraq , they can not open their mouth with Arabs .

[Londoner]

Lets be frank that the Christian Community in North Iraq can keep their land and property only if they join Kurdistan. Otherwise all of them will be forced to leave. If I was a Christian, Assyrian or Chaldian or others, I would have signed this form,

[Rumtaya]

I have said it before , Assyrian are pethatic . They run like rats from baghdad and they have a BIG MOUTH in Kurdistan . I personaly do not want Assyrian to be part of Kurdistan . Let them be part of Iraq , they can not open their mouth with Arabs .

What? The assyrians of baghdad are the most "unpatriotic" Assyrians, those one who were always residing in the Nineveh Plains, Nohadra (dohuk province), Arbil are the one who work for the Assyrian Nation. Assyrians HAVE THE RIGHT TO GO AND SETTLE IN NORTHERN IRAQ especially IN NOHADRA (DOHUK) and the NINEVEH PLAINS

Why you like to blame things on the Assyrians who come back to Assyria, after they have been displcaed from the Baath Regime? What right do the Kurds have to resettle Kirkuk and other areas of displacment, but Assyrians dont?

You are a racist dreamer.

Lets be frank that the Christian Community in North Iraq can keep their land and property only if they join Kurdistan. Otherwise all of them will be forced to leave. If I was a Christian, Assyrian or Chaldian or others, I would have signed this form,

sacarsm right?....

for the rest, who still belive Assyrians are doing Propaganda READ!!!

Christians Want Police Protection in Iraq

Monday, April 28, 2008 10:00 AM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

For Christians living in the ancient sprawling town of Tel Kaif, just 10 minutes north of Mosul, geography is a curse. “We are sandwiched between the Arabs in Mosul, and the Kurds in Erbil,” says William Warda, 47, who grew up in this city in the 1960s and '70s.

Local leaders are hoping that a modest proposal, currently in committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, can bring dramatic changes to their everyday lives.

The $4 million measure will fund a 711-man local police force for the Nineveh Plain. It is part of a $30 million emergency relief package for the predominantly Christian region submitted to Congress last month by Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.

“We need to have our own security force, our own police force,” Warda tells Newsmax. “But we want an official force, not a militia. It should be drawn from all the communities in the Nineveh Plain, not just Christians. And it should be part of the national police, reporting to Baghdad, not to Erbil or Mosul.”

With the collapse of central government services in the region because of terrorist incursion from Baghdad, fighters loyal to Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani have set up shop in Christian towns and villages, even though the Nineveh Plain lies outside KRG authority.

While the Kurdish fighters, known as peshmergas, provide much-needed security for the area, they also commit exactions, local leaders and residents tell Newsmax.

Sometimes, the harassment is banal. In the town of Hamdaniya, for example, Barzani’s men have taken over the town library and has refused to give it back.

“They have set up an intelligence headquarters there,” said Ehmad Behnam, a member of the Hamdaniya district council. “We have asked them many times to go someplace else, but they refuse to leave.”

In Tel Keif, students complain that they were barred from renting a hall for a high school graduation party last year by local militiamen working for the KRG Finance Minister Sarkis Aghajan, because they weren’t members of his party.

Mr. Aghajan, who is Christian, has become the public face of the KRG in the Ninevah Plain, where he has built an extensive patronage system by doling out cash through local churches.

But the repression also can get ugly.

In December 2005, during Iraq’s first parliamentary elections, Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) bused hundreds of peshmerga fighters and party loyalists to Christian villages on Election Day, where complacent officials opened the polls and allowed them to vote.

Once they had cast all the available ballots in one town, they would move on to the next village to vote again. “The image you see in America of people dipping their finger in purple ink after they voted was a joke here,” one local official told Newsmax.

“The KDP controlled the polling places, so for them the ink was no problem,” he said. “None of them was made to dip their finger in the ink.”

Dozens of local officials filed formal complaints of election fraud and ballot stuffing with the Mosul governor, the central government in Baghdad, the United Nations, and the U.S. embassy, but never received a reply.

“We must have international election monitors in all these places in time for the next parliamentary elections,” former Iraqi minister of migration, Pascale Warda, told Newsmax.

In Hamdaniya, the largest Christian district in the Nineveh Plain, Kurdish peshmergas simply stole the ballot boxes when local officials phoned the U.S. embassy in Baghdad to get them to send more ballots.

“Everyone in Hamdaniyah and the surrounding villages was deprived of their right to vote,” said Warda.

In the early evening, well after the polls had officially closed, district council member Louis Markus Yacoub was told that fresh ballots had finally arrived.

“I was the one selected to go pick up the ballots, but the Kurdish intelligence people arrested me on the way,” Yacoub said.

They yanked him out of the car in front of four policemen, and took him to the local peshmerga headquarters, where they beat him for three hours.

“They beat me in my back and my shoulders. They beat me in my face and my head. Seven people were beating me with their fists. They even broke my teeth,” he said.

Yacoub says the peshmerga told him outright that they had arrested him to prevent him for picking up the fresh ballots, because they knew they would lose the elections if the Christians were allowed to vote.

“We are asking for the militas to be banned from the next elections,’ said fellow council member Ehmad Ayad. “Next time, we would like the protection of the national army, with American help.”

The KDP hasn’t only targeted Christians. In Dohuk, teams of armed peshmerga fighters stormed the election offices of the opposition Kurdish Islamic Union, killing two party workers, including the leader of the KIU election list.

In Zakho, they killed two more KIU officials. “They were hoping to do worse, but I happened to be in Baghdad at the time and asked U.S. and British ambassadors for help,” says KIU general secretary, Salahuddin Bahauddin.

After several phone calls by the ambassadors to KRG President Barzani, the peshmerga stood down. “Their plan was to attack us in other regions as well,” Bahauddin told Newsmax in Erbil.

The KRG eventually agreed to pay Bahauddin’s party compensation for the damage done to their buildings. But KRG officials insist that the violence was the work of individuals, not the government militia.

Such explanations fool no one in the Nineveh Plain. “If the Kurds would just take their hand off this region, the future would be very bright,” said Tel Kaif Mayor Bassam Ballo.

Johnny Koshaba learned first-hand how brutal the peshmerga can be. The 34-year old Assyrian journalist was taken from his home in Tel Kaif last month and beaten after he wrote an article exposing the corruption of KRG Finance Minister Sarkis Aghajan.

“I found that the money Sarkis hands out was going to individuals who serve his policy and the Kurdish leaders’ policies to take over this land,” Koshaba said.

The peshmerga took him to a detention center in Sarseng — more than an hour’s drive away — and beat him for two days while they interrogated him.

On the third day, they presented him with a “confession” written in Kurdish and told him they would release him if he signed it.

“I don’t read or speak Kurdish, but I signed it anyway,’ Koshaba said. “They told me I was not allowed to talk about what happened to me during my detention.”

Warda, who runs the Hammurabi Organization for Human Rights and Democracy Monitoring, believes that the exactions of the peshmerga have driven Arabs in nearby Mosul into the hands of al-Qaida.

“An Arab tribal leader told me, ‘we can get rid of al-Qaida in one day, but we won’t, because we don’t want the peshmerga to fill the vacuum,’” he said.

Al-Qaida and the Kurdish peshmerga need each other, said Dr. John Eibner, the CEO of Christian Solidarity International, who toured the region last week as part of an aid mission.

“Without al-Qaida, the United States wouldn’t support the peshmerga. Without the peshmerga, the locals wouldn’t support al-Qaida,” he said.

It was never supposed to happen this way. Two years ago, the U.S. Army Joint Operation Center and the Iraqi Interior Ministry ordered the creation of a local police force for the Nineveh Plain, but it has twice been blocked by the officials from Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party.

Leading the charge against the local police force was the KDP deputy governor of Nineveh Province, Khisro Goran, who claimed the police would become “a Christian militia.”

The KDP’s motive is simple, says Michael Youash of the Iraqi Sustainable Democracy Project in Washington. “The KDP interests are outlined in a simple article of the KRG constitution. that says the Nineveh Plain shall be absorbed into the Kurdistan Region in Iraq.”

Instead of allowing the creation of an authentic local police force, independent of the KDP, Barzani’s party has sought to buy patronage through Finance Minister Aghajan and a cadre of “KDP Christian loyalists,” Youash and others believe.

The $4 million legislative earmark being sponsored by Rep. Mark Kir and Rep. Frank Wolf is aimed at “removing the political bottlenecks” created by the KRG that have prevented the creation of a local police force for the Nineveh Plains until now.

Just last week, the initial complement of 711 policemen were called up and began training, Youash tells Newsmax. Another 4000 policemen will be needed to fully secure the region and establish checkpoints on all highways and roads leading into the villages.

“Standing up a local police force will help with economic development as well,” said Joseph Kassab, secretary general of the Chaldean Federal of America who toured the region last month.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

[talsor]

all I hear is blablabla , Assyrian have no population it is as simple as that . Join Kurdistan or join the rest of Iraq . Your choice and no one will force any assyrian to be part of Kurdistan if they do not want too . But enough of this Cyper hero crap and the glory of Assyria and blaming everything on Kurds

An Assyrian man walking in the desert and an airplane spare tire fall on him and died instantly . The Assyrian News agency reported that Kurds were behiend it . You guys make me laugh .

[Barış]

An Assyrian man walking in the desert and an airplane spare tire fall on him and died instantly . The Assyrian News agency reported that Kurds were behiend it . You guys make me laugh .

[Rumtaya]

all I hear is blablabla , Assyrian have no population it is as simple as that . Join Kurdistan or join the rest of Iraq . Your choice and no one will force any assyrian to be part of Kurdistan if they do not want too . But enough of this Cyper hero crap and the glory of Assyria and blaming everything on Kurds

An Assyrian man walking in the desert and an airplane spare tire fall on him and died instantly . The Assyrian News agency reported that Kurds were behiend it . You guys make me laugh .

Nice that you laugh, cause I heard its healthy and I wish for everyone to be happy and healthy in his/her life.

Assyrian have no population? How you mean that? That assyrians have nowhere a homogenous area?
Probably we dont have an homogenous area we had 90 years ago, but there is still a sizable population in the Nineveh Plains, enough to form an Administrative Unit alongside shabaks and other minorities there.

What cyber hero thing? We are having here discussions about how the KDP with their peshmerga and puppets is trying to annex the Nineveh Plains against the will of its inhabitants. Where is the cyber hero thing here? Can you enlight me....

The text I posted was not an Assyrian News agency, you should read it instead of making nonses posts, where you try to "joke" the truth away, you should FACE reality my friend. Which shows that some of youor fellow people, are beeing far from "we have been victims, we want peace for all now".

If you cant bring up some constructive posts (meaning to talk seriously without making any jokes and do not try to talk the truth away).

Isnt is shameful, you guys just faced some cruly massacres by the Baath Party and after you have kinda automomy and a pretty high place within the Iraq, you just go on and use some baathism tactics to get people under your goverment? Kinda ironic aint it?

The victim becomes opressor?

just to clarrify things. I do not generalize things to the whole kurdish Nation, but to people of the KDP and those who associate with their "friendly" politics. However as you could see from the Text there are already 700 police mean beeing trained and some few thousands need and probably will follow to secure the area, so that the Peshmerga can withdrawl and secure the areas of KRG, which will not incooporate the NP to its boundaries.

Also I am not a fan of the Iraq name, nor of its state system, but Assyrians should try to stand on their own feets as sooner as better.


btw. if you do not know how a construtctive post looks like...this was just a VERY GOOD example for you to learn from.

oh something else your qoute "all I hear is blablabla", do you think that the same when Kurds from N. Kurdistan complain about abuse of human rights?

[Piling]

how the KDP with their peshmerga and puppets is trying to annex the Nineveh Plains against the will of its inhabitants.

How do you know it is against their will ? the referendum did not yet happen.

[Rumtaya]

How do you know it is against their will ? the referendum did not yet happen.

http://www.shabaknews.com/

As I can read from Shabaknews they arent fine with it too, so!

If they would want it, you wouldnt have alot of complains about the KDP and Peshmerga in that area, you would have people try to form an NP Polices, beeing selected from the iinhabitants in that area.

They would just suppourt the KRG and try to do anything to become a part of its region, but do you see that happining? I am sure about it that Assyrian indepenent political parties do now want to be under KRG jurdaistic.

By Assyrian independent groups I do not mean Sarkis Aghajan, because he is not INDEPENDENT, but just someone who work in the interests of KDP.

[Piling]

I am sure about it that Assyrian indepenent political parties do now want to be under KRG jurdaistic.

By Assyrian independent groups I do not mean Sarkis Aghajan, because he is not INDEPENDENT, but just someone who work in the interests of KDP.

I can imagine perfectly that KDP does not allow any other party ruling in its area, Kurdish or any kind else... They have not yet passed the step of a perfect democratic country, but as they are not even a country with the rights of a State, it is hard of Western democracies to make them reproaches. If you have not the rights, you are free from duties... Moreover KDP is not a KURDISH or MUSLIM party. There were always Christian and yezidi members within it. Moreover, the situation of Assyrians and Chaldeans in KRG is not so bad, I mean not worse than for Kurdistani citizens'.

Concerning Niniveh, if there is a referendum, let's wait for the results. But even if people vote for integration in Kurdistan, it would be wise from the KRG to let rule Niniveh by a mixed counncil of people (Assyrians, Shabaks, Yezidi or muslim Kurds) with a large local authonomy.

If Niniveh does not want to be within KRG, then let's people express themselves their own will. But as I said, the trouble is to depend of Iraq in that case, for their asking. I don't think that Shiites will give you freely a piece of land.

BTW, thanks for the links about Shabaks, it is interesting.

[talsor]

annex the Nineveh Plains against the will of its inhabitants.

You put a big smile on my face with your post .

You have to learn how to relax and not see BAD and EVIL in everything . You probably think that your Cat is kurdish too and trying to take something from you . PTSD they call it .

You are day dreaming about Ninavah , I do not know if you have ever been there or not . My guess is Not . ARABS are the majority , then comes the Kurds , then the Turkman , then the Assyrian . Do you get my point ? and you want to form an Assyrian autonomous region in Ninavah ?

you said "The victim becomes opressor?" ,and you call the Kurds as bathist ? that is what I call Blablabal and and some more blablabla . I would normally get angry if someone say that , but honetly your tpp pethatic to get angry at and you are not worth it . so feel free to post more insults .

[Rumtaya]

You put a big smile on my face with your post .

You have to learn how to relax and not see BAD and EVIL in everything . You probably think that your Cat is kurdish too and trying to take something from you . PTSD they call it .

You are day dreaming about Ninavah , I do not know if you have ever been there or not . My guess is Not . ARABS are the majority , then comes the Kurds , then the Turkman , then the Assyrian . Do you get my point ? and you want to form an Assyrian autonomous region in Ninavah ?

you said "The victim becomes opressor?" ,and you call the Kurds as bathist ? that is what I call Blablabal and and some more blablabla . I would normally get angry if someone say that , but honetly your tpp pethatic to get angry at and you are not worth it . so feel free to post more insults .

You ever saw the movie "cats and dogs"? haha

There is a diffrence between "Ninawa" and "Nineveh Plains", Shall I show you the diffrence or are you cabable enough to do it by yourself?...
I agree with you Arabs form the majority followed by Kurds in NINAWA, but they do not form the majority in the NINEVEH PLAINS.

The Nineveh Plains are located at the upper tigris and the zab river, the biggest assyrian town is Hamadiyan beside Tel Kaif.

[Piling]

Here are Nineveh Plains :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineveh_plains

Moreover, I don't think that the oil of Niniveh plains is so vital for the KRG, no more than the quite exhausted oil fields of Kirkuk. The area of Zakho is richer with an oil of the best quality. And concerning the agricultural lands, Kurds refuse to work as farmers now, for it is less interesting than working in city. So I doubt that they are greedy to seize Assyrians' fields as they let theirs empty...

[Rumtaya]

Here are Nineveh Plains :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineveh_plains

Moreover, I don't think that the oil of Niniveh plains is so vital for the KRG, no more than the quite exhausted oil fields of Kirkuk. The area of Zakho is richer with an oil of the best quality. And concerning the agricultural lands, Kurds refuse to work as farmers now, for it is less interesting than working in city. So I doubt that they are greedy to seize Assyrians' fields as they let theirs empty...

Zakho, was alos 60 years ago full of Assyrians, but the Semele Massacre and its sourrounding areas gave big blow into the Assyrian numbers there. There is a documentation I watched called "Ancestral Homeland", it deals about the Highlander Assyrians from Syria (I am one), where they said, that Assyrians asked the Brits to form the Nohadra (dohuk) province with the capital Dohuk as an future Assyrian State (you must know we were very tribal and are still kinda tribal, which means that "nestorian" Assyrians were looking for their area, whereas those in the nineveh plains were more calm under whatever rule), but those claims were also blown in the wind with the Semele Massacre.

Kurds are not interested into farming? But there is a huge and fruitful area in northern Iraq to do agricultre.

But you know what, its not because the Kurds only care about the oil under NP´s soil, its more that they do not wish to see an independent Assyrian Group working free, they need to controll them, because we as indigenious people have the right to the areas in Northern Iraq, from which we have been displaced and forced to leave in the last few decades.

Now you guys will attack me again, but thats how it is. Just imagine what would happen if Turkey leaves Kurds having an autonomeous region? How would Iran react? How would Syria react? Now as how Kurds are for Turkey, Assyrians are the same within "Southern Kurdistan". It is very clear that the mainland of Kurdish homeland likes in Northern Kurdistan i.e SE Turkey, so does the Assyrian heartland lies between the upper tigris and the great-low Zab river.

So what I want to say is, Kurds fear Assyrians in Iraq to have their own "area". Or why would they just lobby for an Assyrian "autonomeous area" within the borders of KRG to form (the kurdish constitution nor the iraqi constition does allow such a step...an area within in area).

I know how you guys will also react on that, but hey...just laugh its healthy...

[Piling]

Zakho, was alos 60 years ago full of Assyrians, but the Semele Massacre and its sourrounding areas gave big blow into the Assyrian numbers there

There are now many Chaldeans coming back in Zakho and resettled in their villages by the KRG and the "puppets" you hate.

The forced emigration of christians villages and their destruction begun when Saddam made a buffer-area in Turkish border, and later at the end of Anfal.

Kurds are not interested into farming? But there is a huge and fruitful area in northern Iraq to do agricultre.

I know. But most of products are imported from Turkey now. For many reasons, the main being that a generation who grew in Concentration Centers or refugees camps, and later in cities are not desired to come back in villages and living as farmers. For the same reasons, Chaldeans who come back in the villages around Zakho, if they had lived in Baghdad or Mosul before, are not happy to become farmers again.

The second reason is economical : there are much cheap foreign products selling in markets (KRG has not protectionnists laws) and then it is difficult for farmers to face at the economical disadvantage. The current crisis in the world could change this fact or makes it worse, I don't know, I am not an economist.

But you know what, its not because the Kurds only care about the oil under NP´s soil, its more that they do not wish to see an independent Assyrian Group working free, they need to controll them, because we as indigenious people have the right to the areas in Northern Iraq, from which we have been displaced and forced to leave in the last few decades.

There is certainly strategical and pooitical reasons. Of course, if ADM claims their rights on all Erbil, Duhok and Zakho areas, Kurds would not welcome them friendly. Perhaps they see some Assyrians as former pro Baathists also. At the end, if the KRG renounces to integrate Niniveh Plains, Assyrian parties and KRG should sign a compromise of common "renouncement" : KRG territories belong to Kurdistani and Niniveh to Assyrians if it is the population's wish, and then it woud be better to make an alliance against Al Qaïda, and that would the the wisest solution... But when men are wise ?

So what I want to say is, Kurds fear Assyrians in Iraq to have their own "area". Or why would they just lobby for an Assyrian "autonomeous area" within the borders of KRG to form

Perhaps they rather to have a friendly autonomous area at their borders than a hostile region controled by Baath. Perhaps they don't trust Assyrians in their ability to form a safe area facing Mosul. In fact, there could have many reasons, but I am sure they are not economical.

the kurdish constitution nor the iraqi constition does allow such a step...an area within in area).

About the Kurdish constitution, no one has red it until now, it is not published. About the Iraqi one, that's the point : any district can join another one to form a "federal" region. The decision is expressed by referendum, as it could happen in Niniveh also.