Mosul - Iraq: Kurdish villagers set up barriers against attackers

Kurdish villagers near the north Iraqi town of Mosul in the province of Nineveh are setting up security barriers outside their villages for fear of attacks. "People have lost trust in the provincial government, which is mainly Arab, since terror attacks against defenceless civilians have been increasing”, reported the chair of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV), Tilman Zülch, in Göttingen on Friday. The five villages of Khatara, Sarijka, Doghata, Nafiria and Chushaba have with the help of the neighbouring autonomous federal state of Kurdistan already set up their own security guard, since there are rumours that the Iraqi-Arab police have been infiltrated by terrorists. On Thursday an attacker blew up his lorry right in the middle of the village Wardak and killed at least 24 people. 45 were injured.

"For weeks the inhabitants of the Kurdish Yezidi, Christian and Shabak villages in the north of the province of Nineveh have been living in great fear of attacks by Arab Islamist terror groups wanting to prevent a possible annexation of the region to Kurdistan”, said Zülch. Disputes are being carried out there on the placement of some districts or subdistricts like Sinjar, Shekhan, Telkaif, Karaqosh, Zammar, Bahshiqa, Aski Kalak which are inhabited in the main by Kurds (Moslems and Yezidi). Most of the people of these ethnic groups favour the annexation of their settlement areas to the peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution provides for a plebiscite on this matter.

There are living in the province mainly in the Nineveh Plain almost 200,000 of the remaining 600,000 Christian Assyrian Chaldean Arameans of Iraq and the almost 70,000 Shabak. At least 440,000 of the 500,000 Kurdish Yezidi are living in the Sinjar hill-country, where their most important holy site "Lalish” is to be found. Tens of thousands of these ethnic groups have already had to seek refuge in the autonomous federal state of Iraqi Kurdistan.

For further information please approach the GfbV chair, Tilman Zülch, who is also available at politik@gfbv.de