IRAQ: MINORITIES SUFFER PERSECUTION
UNPO, Netherlands
Aug 2 2007
Ethnic minorities in Iraq face oblivion and persecution and it is
believed that among the 2m Iraqi refugees the number of minority
group members is disproportionately high.
Below is an article written by Patrick Jackson and published by BBC
Crushing Iraq’s human mosaic
Caught in a triangle of religious, ethnic and criminal violence,
communities which once made up as much as 14% of the country’s
population get little state protection, said Hunain Qaddo, chairman
of the Iraqi Minorities Council, a Baghdad-based non-governmental
organisation.
The marketplace bomb attack on a Shia Turkmen village near Kirkuk
on 7 July marked a new spiral of horror, according to Dr Qaddo, who
believes 210 civilians, mostly women and children, died and about
400 were injured. Police reported 130 deaths at the time.
He says that his own community, the Shabaks of the Nineveh Plains,
face oblivion as a people, targeted physically by al-Qaeda militants
because they are mainly Shia, and politically by Kurdish separatists
with claims on their land.
Dr Qaddo is in London as part of a campaign by the UK-based advocacy
group Minority Rights Group International to raise awareness of the
crisis gripping Iraq’s lesser-known peoples while the big three –
the Shia and Sunni Arabs and the Kurds – pursue their own interests.
Iraq’s minorities range from large communities like Turkmens and
Christians to small groups of Armenians, many of them descended from
refugees from the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago, and Palestinians
given sanctuary by Saddam Hussein.
Between Arab and Kurd
The problems of the Shabaks, a community of up to 400,000 with their
own language and cultural traditions, are rarely reported by foreign
media, in contrast to those of Iraqi Christians, for example.
Communities at risk
"They have no communities in Western countries," Dr Qaddo points out.
Some 1,000 Shabak civilians, he says, have been killed in the
Mosul area since the 2003 invasion in terrifying attacks, including
beheadings, by Sunni Arab militants.
A further 4,000 Shabaks have been driven out of their homes, adds
the MP, whose own house was burnt down in the city.
And Shabaks, whom Saddam once attempted to "arabise", are also under
pressure from Kurdish political parties seeking to "kurdify" them in
a drive to assert wider control over the ethnically divided north.
"They are really facing a genocide," says Dr Qaddo.
It is hard to assess the scale of the problems facing the Shabaks
and other ethnic minorities independently during the current conflict
in Iraq, Charles Tripp of the London School of Oriental and African
Studies points out.
Estimates for population size, he told the BBC News website, are often
exaggerated in a country where parliamentary seats, resources and
recognition are based on a community’s percentage of the population.
Prize targets
Nonetheless, the number of minority group members among the 2m refugees
from Iraq is believed to be disproportionately high.
Mandaeans who fled to Syria told the BBC earlier this year harrowing
stories of forced conversion, rape and murder by Islamists.
A Minority Rights Group International report published in February
notes that Mandaeans, who follow a religion which pre-dates both
Islam and Christianity, are also targeted by criminals because they
traditionally work as goldsmiths and jewellers.
They have often been kidnapped for ransom in Baghdad and the south
of Iraq, says Hunain Qaddo.
Christians have found themselves in a similar dilemma: targeted by
Sunni extremists because of their religion and by kidnappers – who are
often Shia Arab militants or rogue members of the security forces –
because of their wealth.
The common problem of most of Iraq’s minorities, says Dr Qaddo,
is that they lack any militias of their own to protect them.
Iraq’s loss
Iraqi police are too weak or corrupt to help, he adds, while the
US-led coalition, fighting insurgents and seeking good relations with
the main communities, offers no special protection for minorities.
The chairman of the Iraqi Minorities Council accepts that minorities
always suffer during a civil conflict and he is not advocating safe
havens for minorities or calling on other countries to take in more
refugees.
Instead, he wants Western states involved in Iraq to do more to help
train up the new Iraqi army so that it can restore the rule of law
across the country, put pressure on the Kurds to respect minority
rights, and back the creation of a defence force recruited from the
minorities in the north.
"That would be the best solution for all Iraqis including the refugees,
many of whom are willing to return if security is established,"
he says.
"I feel very sad when I hear that Christians or other minorities are
leaving Iraq because we are going to lose the value and the culture
of these people who have enriched our society through their hard work
and their skill."