The killing of Iraqi Christians is politically motivated, writes Saif Nasrawi About 6,000 Christians have fled the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in the past two weeks because of killings and death threats. Iraq's Ministry of Immigration and Displaced Persons said the number represents 1,424 families who have sought refuge in nearby Christian towns and villages. The mass exodus followed the death of 14 of Mosul's Christians slain in the past two weeks. Mosul, about 420 kilometres north of Baghdad, is historically know as the homeland of the Iraqi Assyrians and Chaldeans, the two main Christian sects in Iraq. The ministry said on Saturday it had set up an operation room to send urgent aid to the displaced Christian families as a result of attacks by what it called terrorist groups. Iraqi and US officials have condemned the attacks, which undermine recent security gains. The killings also raise the spectre of violence ahead of provincial elections that could create a new power balance on the country's political stage. Iraqi officials have said the families were frightened by a series of killings and threats by Muslim extremists ordering them to convert to Islam or face reprisal. Mosul is one of the last Iraqi cities where Al-Qaeda in Iraq has a significant presence and routinely carries out attacks. The US military said it killed the Sunni militant group's number two leader, Abu Qaswarah, in a raid in the northern city earlier this month. In response to the recent attacks on Christians, authorities have ordered more checkpoints in several of the city's Christian neighbourhoods. The attacks may have been prompted by Christian demonstrations ahead of provincial elections, which are to be held by 31 January, Christian politicians said. Hundreds of Christians took to the streets in Mosul and surrounding villages and towns, demanding adequate representation on provincial councils, whose members will be chosen in the local elections. Iraqi parliament agreed last month on a provincial election law for Iraq's 18 provinces, but it failed to grant the Christian minority a fixed quota in the governorates' seats. On Sunday, Iraqi MP Yonadam Kanna called for an international investigation of the recent targeted killings in Mosul against the Assyrian minority. Kanna, a prominent Assyrian politician, told the Iraqi website Newsmatique : "If the Iraqi security service is unable to disclose which group pushed these terrorists to force the Christians out of Mosul, we will then ask for an international investigation to find out the truth." He said that 90 per cent of the attacks occurred in an area which is under the control of the second army unit in Mosul, composed entirely of Kurds. Kanna also confirmed that 10 individuals have been arrested so far and linked to the attacks on the Assyrians in Mosul. He stepped short, however, of directly blaming any group, adding that the attacks were "systematic". Kanna's implicit allegations about a possible Kurdish involvement in the Christians' recent plight, the most severe since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, were also echoed by other Iraqi Arab politicians. Osama Al-Najifi, a Sunni member of Iraq's parliament, accused the Kurdish militias of carrying out "acts of ethnic cleansing". Al-Najifi, a native of Mosul, told the Iraqi Independent News Agency that the Peshmerga, the Kurdish security forces, and the Asayesh, the Kurdish intelligence service, are responsible for driving the Christians out of Mosul under the cover of the Iraqi military. He said, "there is a clear strategy of Kurdifying the province of Nineveh and [its capital] Mosul in order to change its demographic balance to serve Kurdish interests." The Iraqi Shia-led government has been reluctant to blame Al-Qaeda operatives of carrying out the attacks, showing a new restraint in its long-standing war against the Sunni extremist group. Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul- Karim Khalaf said on Friday that there was no evidence to suggest Al-Qaeda in Iraq was behind the attacks on the Christians. Five known Sunni insurgent groups, including Al-Qaeda, issued statements last week denouncing the attacks and denying involvement in them. And although several Kurdish leaders issued various statements condemning the attacks, Iraqi observers pointed to multiple reasons that could link the recent assaults on Christians to Kurdish scheming. An Iraqi political analyst argued that what was peculiar about these attacks was that they almost entirely occurred in eastern Mosul, which is adjacent to Kurdistan, the largely Kurdish sovereign area in northern Iraq and which is also controlled by the Peshmerga. "It was significant that the western side of Mosul which is hugely dominated by Sunni Arab inhabitants has only witnessed one incident against the Christians," he told Al-Ahram Weekly on condition of anonymity. He added that recent attacks on Christians in Mosul should be linked to other attempts by Kurdish political factions to "redefine the material and ideological borderlines of their region", a reference to the rising tensions between Iraqi Arabs and Kurds over the nature of the political system, the upcoming provincial elections and the redeployment of Kurdish military forces outside Iraq's ethnically mixed cities, especially Diyala and Kirkuk. Many Iraqi Shia, Sunni, Turkomen and Christian political factions warned recently of systematic planning by the two major Kurdish political parties, the Kurdistani Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to enlarge Kurdish areas beyond their traditional provinces of Dohuk, Erbil and Suleimaniya. They point out to Kurdish attempts to encroach on Arab, Turkomen and Christian lands in Mosul, Kirkuk and Diyala to create a new demographic reality in Iraq whereby Kurds would form a majority in any local and national elections. The majority of Iraqi Arab and Turkomen political factions boycotted the last local polls of 2005 in protest of what they viewed as widespread fraud and voter intimidation carried out by 280,000-strong professional Kurdish Peshmerga. The two main Kurdish parties hold 32 of 41 seats in the Nineveh Provincial Council and dominate its executive council, although Arabs and Christians form more than 70 per cent of the province's population. However, the anticipated wider Arab and Turkomen political participation in the January local elections could mean that Kurds will no longer secure a comfortable majority in the ethnically mixed areas, a condition that jeopardises their attempt to create a strong Kurdish region within a future federal Iraq, especially since these mixed areas are also rich in oil and natural gas reserves. A Sunni lawmaker attributed the rising tensions between Kurds and other ethnic groups and religious sects in Iraq to calculations based on the US presidential elections to take place next month. "The Kurds believes that [Democratic presidential candidate Barack] Obama has a strong chance of becoming the next president; this is why they are toughening their positions," he told the Weekly on condition of anonymity. He added that the Kurds believe that Obama's victory will lay the grounds for a huge reduction in US troops in Iraq; thus, they want to preempt possible plans by the Shia-dominated security forces to fill in the vacuum. Obama has pledged to substantially reduce US forces in Iraq within 16 months of assuming power. His running mate on the Democratic ticket, Joseph Biden, is infamous for his plan to partition Iraq into three autonomous areas as a step to stabilise Iraq if violence sparks again.
