A PKK fighter holds his position in Nouafel, an Arab village west of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
KIRKUK, Iraq, Sep 9 2015 (IPS)

Reminders of the last occupants of camp K1 in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk are only visible on the murals at the main gate leading into the compound: Iraqi soldiers saluting the flag, pointing their weapons or being cheered on by grateful families.

But Iraq’s 12^th Infantry Division fled, leaving everything behind, after the arrival of fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in June 2014.

"We have a very good relationship with the PKK and we’re fighting together not only for the Kurds, but also because ISIS is the enemy of mankind as a whole." -- Peshmerga Colonel Jamal Masim Jafar
Today, the military garrison hosts a joint Kurdish force of Peshmerga units – Kurdish army soldiers – and guerillas from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK and the Peshmerga fought each other back in the 1990s, but a powerful common enemy – ISIS – brought them together last summer.

A visit to the trenches where the united front is still holding back the Jihadi militants offers a glimpse into the region’s complex ethnic and ideological dynamics, as well insight into the relationship between armed groups and the local population.

After a brief introduction, Heval Rebar – Kurdish for ‘Comrade Rebar’ – offers to accompany this IPS reporter on a drive south alongside an earthen wall.

A chain of checkpoints gives us access to military posts or villages recovered from ISIS, some of which have been completely destroyed by air strikes led by the U.S. and its allies.

Peshmerga Colonel Jamal Masim Jafar welcomes IPS from inside a bunker standing close to a 15-meter-high promontory, which has its replica every thousand meters along the wall.

Jafar talks of “constant” fighting: “We get sniper fire from two houses and a tower the enemy has raised but they also hit us with an improvised device made of gas canisters,” explains the official, adding that the last fire exchange was “just an hour ago”.

Despite the hardships, he appears satisfied with his PKK counterparts.

“We have a very good relationship with the PKK and we’re fighting together not only for the Kurds, but also because ISIS is the enemy of mankind as a whole,” he stresses.

Sitting to his right, Comrade Rebar nods.

After the mandatory cup of tea, Jafar invites us to the promontory, which overlooks Al Noor, one of the many villages built by Saddam Hussein – Iraq’s ousted ruler – to host Arab settlers on Kurdish land.

Al Noor remains under ISIS control, but last week Kurdish forces launched a major offensive southwest of Kirkuk, taking back nine villages like this one plus a 24-square-km swathe of land.

“These gains are only possible thanks to international aid, both supplies and air strikes,” Jafar notes while he walks towards one of the armed pick-up trucks.

“We have just installed machine guns on the back of the vehicles. They are French and we got them recently. We are also getting night vision goggles, which are essential in this environment and MILAN guided missiles from Germany. Regarding air cover, we get it every time we need it,” explained the Kurdish officer.

He said he had spent seven years with American troops in Iraq, and that he would welcome western foreign troops in the region.

Female PKK fighters are also present in the combat line against ISIS in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

No man’s land

Coordination between Kurdish factions is more than evident but that has not been the trend in this part of Iraq over the last decade.

Historically claimed by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, oil-rich Kirkuk is among the so-called “disputed territories” by Baghdad and the north-western Kurdish city of Erbil, very much one of Iraq’s thorniest issues even years before the emergence and advance of ISIS.

Ethnic and sectarian clashes have been rife in this part of the country, with the local population being constantly targeted from every side.

Our next stop on our way south is Nouafel, an Arab village next to the wall where PKK fighters keep their positions. From their makeshift headquarters in one of the houses, Comrade Selim prefers not to disclose the exact number of his fighters deployed here.

“We have enough to fight ISIS,” he tells IPS, settling the question with a smile. From the little hill where they hold their positions, another fighter, Comrade Farashin uses a pair of binoculars to monitor Wastaniya – the closest village under ISIS control.

Relying on light assault, snipers and a couple of machine guns, the PKK guerrillas don’t look as heavily armed as their Peshmerga counterparts. However, Comrade Aso’s testimony stands as proof that the PKK fighters are far from neglected:

“In the spring we received a course in urban warfare for two months conducted by two Italian instructors. I learned many things they had not taught me during my training in Qandil [the Kurdish mountain stronghold],” recalls this fighter, a young man in his early 20s hailing from the nearby town of Tuz Khormato, a predominantly Turkmen district located 170 km north of Baghdad.

“They were very professional,” he added. “They never let us take their picture and we were never told which organisation they were working for.”

Peshmerga Colonel Jamal Masim Jafar says he’s satisfied with the support his forces are receiving from the PKK. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

What makes this combat post particularly interesting is not only the fact the village remained under ISIS control for seven months, but also that the majority of the local villagers have not left the area.

At the request of Comrade Rebar, a dozen locals agree to meet this IPS reporter in a house just a few metres away from the one occupied by the guerrillas.

At first glance, the relationship between civilians and fighters looks cordial. Greetings are exchanged and some of the fighters try a few words in Arabic to break the ice. Meanwhile, our host, Arkan Ali Bader, serves Arabic coffee, which everyone drinks from the same cup.

The sound of incoming fire from the other side hardly provokes any visible emotion among the villagers. That’s been part of their daily life for over a year. However, Ali Bader says he regrets that his land, and that of most of the villagers, lies today in “no man’s land” – between the Kurds and ISIS.

Also dressed in the traditional lose garments, Juma Hussein Toma claims that during the seven months the village was under Jihadi control, life for ordinary people did not undergo significant changes.

“When ISIS came they announced through the mosque’s loudspeakers that they had freed our village from infidels, and that it was the victory of the revolution, but no one here suffered threats of any kind,” explains Toma.

“There are a few who left because they had no work here, but not because of the war,” adds the peasant.

“ISIS killed a few [people] in Al Noor because they had been members of the Awakening Councils [a US-backed Iraqi militia that fought against Al Qaeda] but none of us was hurt,” stressed Mohamed al Ubeid.

Locals in Nouafel said they were happy about the arrival of the PKK fighters. However, such statements were made in the presence of those very fighters, making it impossible to ascertain whether or not they were coerced.

After the expected polite farewell, a PKK fighter points to the deep ditch surrounding their headquarters in the village.

“We had to dig it because we do not trust the villagers,” he admits, just before returning to his guard shift by the earthen wall.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

One of the ancient yet vanishing Mandaean rituals in Baghdad, at the banks of the Tigris river. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
KIRKUK, Iraq, Nov 8 2014 (IPS)

“Going  back home? That would be suicide. The Islamists would cut our throats straight away,” says Khalil Hafif Ismam. The fear of this Mandaean refugee sums up that of one of the oldest yet most decimated communities in Mesopotamia.

“We had our house and two jewellery shops back in Baiji – 230 km north of Baghdad – but when ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] took over the area in June we had to leave for sheer survival,” recalls Khalil Ismam from the Mandaean Council compound in Kirkuk, 100 km east of Baiji. That is where he shares a roof with the family of his brother Sami, and the mother of both.

The Ismams are Mandaeans, followers of a religion that experts have tracked back 400 years before Christ, and which consider John the Baptist as their prophet. Accordingly, their main ritual, baptism, has taken place in the same spots on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates for almost two millennia.

In the sixteenth century, Portuguese Jesuit missionaries attempted to convert them to Christianity in Basra (southern Iraq). Young Mandaeans were sent, often abducted, to evangelise far-flung Portuguese colonies such as today´s Sri Lanka. They were called the “Christians of St. John”, although Mandaeans solidly dissociate themselves from Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The Ismams, a Mandaean displaced family, pose at the entrance of the Mandaean Council in Kikruk. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

Khalil Ismam and his brother, both jewellers in their late thirties, also come from Iraq´s far south. Talking to IPS, they explain how they moved to Baghdad in the 1980s, “looking for a better life”. After the first Gulf War in 1991, they were forced to relocate again, this time to Baiji. Today they are in Kirkuk but they have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

“The council has told us that we cannot stay over a month, but we still don´t know where to go next because ISIS is already at the gates of the city,” says Sami.

Among the little they could take with them, the silversmiths did not forget their sekondola – a medallion engraved with a bee, a lion and a scorpion, all of them surrounded by a snake. According to Mandaean tradition, it should protect them from evil."The most striking thing about the killings of Mandaeans in Iraq is that it ranges from monetary gain by the extremists to the more sinister reason of ethnically cleansing the population of Iraq to get rid of the entire population of Mandaeans” – Suhaib Nashi, General Secretary of the Mandaean Association Union in Exile

Talismans are likely among the few things they can stick to while Mandaean ancient rituals begin to disappear as their priests are driven into exile in the best case scenario. In Kirkuk, the dry bed of the Khasa River – a tributary of the Tigris – is not an option so the increasingly rare ceremonies are held in a makeshift water well inside the complex.

“Every two or three weeks a genzibra – Mandaean priest – comes from Baghdad to conduct the ritual but the road is getting more dangerous with each passing day,” laments Khalil Ismam, standing by the pond.

According to a report released by Human Rights Watch in February 2011, 90 percent of Mandaeans have either died or left the country since the invasion by the U.S.-led forces in 2003.

From his residence in Baghdad, Sattar Hillo, spiritual leader of the Mandaeans worldwide, told IPS that his community is facing their “most critical moment” in history, adding that there are around 10,000 of them left in Iraq.

But that was his assessment a few months before the ISIS threat in the region. Today, the situation has worsened considerably, as Suhaib Nashi, General Secretary of the Mandaean Association Union in Exile, sums up:

“In the past two months, our community in Iraq is suffering a real genocide at the hands of radical Islamists, and not just by ISIS”. Nashi told IPS that the situation is equally worrying in southern areas, where the followers of this religion are easy victims of either Shiite militias or common criminals.

“The most striking thing about the killings of Mandaeans in Iraq is that it ranges from monetary gain by the extremists to the more sinister reason of ethnically cleansing the population of Iraq to get rid of the entire population of Mandaeans,” denounces Nashi.

Seeking asylum

Khalima Mashmul, aged 39, is among the Mandaean refugees staying today at the local council. She tells IPS that she is originally from the south, but that she came to Kirkuk at the early age of 15, dragged by a forced population displacement campaign through which Saddam Hussein sought to alter the demographic balance of Kirkuk, where the Kurds are the majority.

Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen dispute this city which lies on top of one of the world’s largest oil reserves. What Mashmul has called “home” for nearly 25 years is still considered as one of the most dangerous spots in Iraq. And she knows it well.

“My husband is a police officer. He lost his right leg and four fingers of one hand after a bomb attack last June. Despite his injuries, they still force him to keep working,” this mother of four tells IPS. Like the Ismams, they cannot stay indefinitely.

“We cannot go back home because my husband is threatened but we don´t have enough money to pay a rent,” laments Mashmul. Their only option, she adds, is that “Australia or any European country” grants them political asylum.

That is likely the dream of the majority in Iraq. In a report on the Iraq crisis released last month, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that 1.8 million Iraqis have been internally displaced since January this year. The report also adds that 600,000 of them need urgent help due to the imminent arrival of winter.

While many wait impatiently to move to a Western country, some others have opted for an easier relocation in neighbouring countries.

Chabar Imad Abid, one of the policemen – all of them Mandaean – managing security at the compound, tells IPS that he does not regret being left alone by his family, saying: “My wife and my five children are in Jordan and I will join them as soon as I can.”

“We have just been told that ISIS is gathering forces in Hawija – 50 km west of Kirkuk,” says the policeman, meaning that the offensive over Kirkuk is “imminent”.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The Kurdish flag is flying high in the wind from the rooftop of an old brick house inside Kirkuk’s millennia-old citadel, as Rashid – a stern-looking man sitting behind a machine gun – monitors the surroundings.

Rashid commands a small unit of a dozen fighters, members of the Kurdish armed forces – known as the Peshmerga – deployed to the oil-rich province since June 13.

On June 12, the Iraqi army evacuated its positions in Kirkuk province after its troops had earlier conceded control of the country’s second largest city, Mosul, in the face of advancing Sunni militant groups led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

“Since we have been deployed here things have changed,” says Rashid, a Peshmerga for 25 years, with a sense of pride. “It’s safer now and people can go out and do their daily business.”By appearing to favour Shia armed elements, Kurds might risk alienating the local Sunni Arabs and potentially push them toward cooperation with ISIS and other militant Sunni factions.

However, although the deployment of thousands of Peshmerga troops has in fact brought relative calm to the city so far, trouble appears to be brewing.

Rich in natural resources such as oil and home to a mixed population of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Christians, Kirkuk is no stranger to conflict. It has been at the heart of decades of armed and political struggles between the Kurds and successive Iraqi governments.

Since the Kurdish takeover there, armed Shia groups have been flexing their muscles, a move that has infuriated the considerable Sunni Arab population in the province and could be a potentially destabilising factor, while insurgent activity by Sunni militants continues in some parts of the province and has left tens of casualties behind so far.

The local office of the influential Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr organised a military parade on June 21 in which hundreds of armed Shia men walked through the streets in downtown Kirkuk.

“The parade was meant to send a couple of messages. One was a message of reassurance to all Iraqis that there are soldiers to defend all segments of the people,” says Sheikh Raad al-Sakhri, the local representative of Sadr, sitting on the floor of his well-protected Khazal al-Tamimi mosque. “And the other was a message to terrorists that there is another army ready to fight for the sake of the country if the [official] military [forces] fall short of their duties.”

Al-Sakhri might claim his men will protect everyone, but the Sunni Arabs here are not convinced.

At the peak of Iraq’s sectarian strife in 2006 and 2007, Sadr’s Mahdi Army was seen as responsible for summary execution of thousands of Sunnis in the capital Baghdad and other areas.

“A question for the local government [in Kirkuk] is will it allow Sunni Arabs to carry out a similar (military) parade,” says Massoud Zangana, a former human rights activist turned businessman, who alleges he has been threatened with death by Shia armed groups.  “The number of Sunni Arabs is more than the Shia in this city.”

Zangana owns a television channel called Taghyir – Arabic for ‘Change’ – that broadcasts from Amman, Jordan, which some Iraqis refer to as the “Revolution Channel” for its steady coverage of Sunni protests two years ago and of the current fight between Sunni militants and the Iraqi army.

Local media are also buzzing with reports that the central government in Baghdad has delivered a couple of arms’ shipments via the city’s airport to Shia militiamen here.

Officials in Kirkuk or Baghdad have not confirmed those reports.

“Giving weapons to official security forces is okay but providing arms to one side to fight the others is wrong,” says Mohammed Khalil Joburi, a Sunni Arab member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council, wishing that the news of arm deliveries is not true.

The local government in Kirkuk is run by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a major Kurdish party that has close relationship with Iran. Many in the local media speculate that the PUK-controlled administration in Kirkuk had possibly agreed to the military display by Shia groups under pressure from Iraq’s powerful eastern neighbour, Iran.

Despite the appearance of relative calm, tensions are high in Kirkuk and security forces are visible throughout the city.

By appearing to favour Shia armed elements, Kurds might risk alienating the local Sunni Arabs and potentially push them toward cooperation with ISIS and other militant Sunni factions.

In Bashir, a village in southern Kirkuk populated by Shia Turkmen, local Shia militias and Kurdish Peshmerga forces have clashed with ISIS and other Sunni militant groups.

In the western part of the province around Hawija district, the Kurdish Peshmerga have repeatedly fought against ISIS and its local allies.

Kirkuk has not been spared suicide attacks, a trademark of ISIS and jihadist groups.

On June 25, a suicide attack killed at least five people and injured around two dozen others.

The challenge before Kurds who effectively rule most parts of the province is to prevent a spillover of violence and sectarian divisions in other parts of the country into Kirkuk.

Kurds view Kirkuk as part of their homeland, Kurdistan, and hope they can maintain their current military and political dominance in the city.

In the latest Iraqi parliamentary elections in April, Kurds won eight out of the 12 parliamentary seats allocated to the province.

Kirkuk’s vast oil fields have the capacity to produce around half a million barrels of oil per day and Kurds consider Kirkuk central to their aspirations to build an independent state.

Massoud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Region, recently said that he will deploy as many forces as needed to maintain Kurdish control of the contested province. 

On June 30, Barzani asked the head of United Nations Mission to Iraq to organise a referendum in which Kirkuk’s residents can decide whether they want to be part of the Kurdistan Region.

The official territory of the Kurdistan Region includes Erbil, Sulaimaniya and Dohuk provinces.

But after the Iraqi military’s recent defeat at the hand of ISIS-led Sunni militant groups, Kurds have expanded their control over large parts of the neighbouring Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala and Salahaddin provinces.

Now in charge of Kirkuk, the challenge for Kurds is walking a fine line between Shia and Sunni, Arab and Turkmen populations to maintain order in the medium and long term.

In a deeply-divided city facing the threat of jihadists close by, Kirkuk’s Shia and Sunni leaders who spoke to IPS appeared to have no objection to Peshmerga’s control of Kirkuk, at least in the short term.

In the heart of the city’s historic citadel, Rashid and his young men are well aware of the difficult task lying ahead. “We are here to protect all groups … We don’t wish to fight but this area is surrounded by ISIS and all sorts of other groups,” says Rashid.

“We don’t know what their goal is, but we are on alert here.”

A traditional ‘tray and cup’ gambling game in Kirkuk that extremists have been targeting. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Karlos Zurutuza
KIRKUK, Iraq, Jul 31 2013 (IPS)

Two teams struggle to find an olive under one of the 11 cups displayed on a tray. The traditional game sin-u-serf  (tray and cup in Kurdish) is only played during the Muslim fasting month. In one of Iraq’s most violent cities, it is nothing less than a challenge to death.

“Every night we block the entrance of the street with our vehicles to protect ourselves against car bombs and the like. There are also several policemen in plain clothes among us,” says Haukar, the owner of this teahouse in Kirkuk’s northern district Sorja. Around 50 have gathered here to play the game after ending the daylong fast.

Disputed by Arabs and Kurds, this oil rich city 230 km northwest Baghdad remains in limbo between control from Erbil, administrative capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, and Baghdad.

A referendum originally scheduled for November 2007 would have decided if Kirkuk was to integrate with the Kurdish north or stay under the Arab south. But measures meant to counterbalance the Arabisation campaigns under former president Saddam Hussein before the vote are yet to be taken."In Kirkuk we never get to know who will make you never make it home again.” -- Abu Bakr, local taxi driver

Suicide attacks and target killings continue meanwhile. On Jul. 12 a car bomb killed 38 people in a gambling place like this one. According to the Iraq Body Count database, July has been the deadliest month in 2013, with a death toll above 800.

“Of course I’m afraid of going out at night, but my choices are either to stay at home or to move somewhere else in Iraq. And I do not want to leave Kirkuk,” says Wasta, one of the players. His team-mates nod.

Violence always spikes in Iraq during the Muslim holy month, currently under way. Iraqis gather outside in the evenings, lounging in cafes and bazaars after praying in mosques, all easy targets for mass violence.

Some al-Qaeda affiliates believe that any violent activity will gain them spiritual benefits during the Ramadan fasting.

“Who cares? No one knows when their hour will come,” says Abu Ahmed, who has just found the olive only after a third attempt. Meanwhile, cups of tea and glasses of blackberry juice circulate among those watching, like Abdul Kadir Jiand.

“After the withdrawal of the Americans in December 2011, Kirkuk became a stronghold for both al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s loyalists,” says Jiand, local head of Goran, a political party that seeks to break the prevailing bipartisanship in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq and seek reforms of a system where tribal loyalties are dominant.

“Kirkukis and Iraqis as a whole are the plain victims of the struggle between political parties supported by foreign forces,” says Jiand, struggling to reise his voice above the back-up generator behind him.

“Iran is backing the Shia coalition in power in Baghdad while Sunnis are getting support from the Gulf countries. Suicide bombings are al-Qaeda’s clear signature but we also get roadside bombs and target killings.”

Kirkuk police commander Khabat Ali Ahmed also speaks of the hand of al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein’s loyalists in Kirkuk, he says, are grouped around Jaysh Rajal al-Tariqah al-Naqshbandia, an insurgent group that first announced armed operations in December 2006 in response to the hanging of Saddam Hussein.

“The political crisis in Iraq and the war in neighbouring Syria have turned Kirkuk into a stronghold for foreign jihadists and local Baathists who are supporters of the ousted regime,” Ahmed tells IPS. The officer confesses he is “far from optimistic” over Kirkuk’s security situation in the short term.

“We are already building a trench around Kirkuk to prevent further attacks, but the only realistic solution is to put this city under Kurdish administration and turn the trench into a high wall like the one around the Gaza strip.”

Back in Haukar’s teahouse there are more opinions about Kirkuk’s endemic violence than there is interest in the game.

“Both the opposition and the government are behind this [violence] – but not just Baghdad’s; Erbil’s too,” says a player who asks to be identified only as Mohamed. “Destabilising the city is the only way to prevent it from being under the control of a rival faction. This is a big game where nobody’s hands are clean.”

Mohamed, a former activist against Saddam Hussein, says he rejected a high-ranking position in the Kurdish administration due to “the rife corruption and dark manoeuvres” among many of his former colleagues who became Kurdish government officials over the last years.

Mohamed’s testimony matches that of Farid [not his real name]. This young man in his mid-twenties quit his career as a journalist after his colleague Soran Mama Hama was gunned down in July 2008. Hama had published an article on a prostitution scandal naming police officers and government executives.

“Soran and I would often work together,” recalls the young Kirkuki. “I quit after I received threats from the Kurdish Democratic Party, the leading coalition in Iraq’s Autonomous Region. He didn’t.”

Well after midnight, Haukar starts piling up cups and trays, after people start slowly leaving for home. Those heading for the Arafa neighbourhood, northwest of the city, look for alternative routes to the jam blocking Sorja’s main avenue.

Abu Bakr, local taxi driver, turns off the engine and lights a cigarette with resignation. “It can be anything,” he says. “From a routine police check to a car bomb. But worst of all is that in Kirkuk we never get to know who will make you never make it home again.”

Residents queue at checkpoint in downtown Baghdad. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
KIRKUK, Iraq, Mar 19 2013 (IPS)

Driving into the city of Kirkuk, one is greeted by the view of a huge sea of grey concrete houses from which laundry has been hung out to dry in the wind and be blackened by smoke rising from the surrounding oil wells.

Only the turquoise flags fluttering from lampposts and balconies break the monochromatic view, reminding visitors that Turkmen form the majority here.

Indeed, this entire city, which lies 230 kilometres northwest of Baghdad on top of one of the world’s largest oil reserves, is disputed by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. Its legal status is yet to be defined by a referendum that has been postponed since 2007 due to the lack of a population census.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kirkuk has been languishing in a sort of legal “limbo” amid constant suicide attacks and targeted killings.

Today, according to the Kurdish MP Khalid Shawni, Kirkuk “is on the threshold of a new war.”

Receiving IPS at his residence in the neighbourhood of Tarik Baghdad, Shawni tells IPS, “Kirkuk is a black well in which Iraq finds its reflection. There is no political agreement, no dialogue and no confidence between the different communities.”

Paradoxically, the prospect of a civil conflict is one of the few points almost every Iraqi agrees on today, as the country marks ten years since the start of a war that has claimed the lives of over 100,000 Iraqis according to the Iraq Body Count database.

“After the invasion in 2003 we all expected an improvement in our living conditions but the sad truth is that today we are all knocked out by the system,” Arshad al Salihi, head of the Turkmen Front – the main coalition of this Iraqi minority – and the only Turkmen MP in Baghdad’s parliament, tells IPS.

“We believe that civil war is imminent and we’re all scared. If war finally breaks out we’ll be trapped in ‘no man’s land’ – it has always been like this for us,” explains the senior politician.

Protestors call for government removal

Just one day after U.S. troops officially left Iraqi soil in December 2011, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki – who also heads the ministries of interior and justice – triggered a political crisis when he ordered the arrest of Iraq’s Sunni Vice President Tariq Hashemi over allegations of promoting terrorism.

The Shia prime minister has constantly denied that such moves are politically motivated. But Sunnis say they are being increasingly marginalised from political power-sharing.

“Today Sunnis only form a majority in the prisons,” Mohammad Qasim Abid, governor of the Western Anbar region, told IPS in an interview conducted in March 2012.

Anti-government protests gained momentum in mid-December, when several bodyguards of Finance Minister Rafie al-Issawi, the highest-profile Sunni Arab in the cabinet, were arrested.

For the last three months, thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Nineveh, Anbar and Salahadin, in the west and northwest of Baghdad. It comes as no surprise to anyone that the biggest demonstrations since the outbreak of the “Iraqi Spring” – in February 2011 – are taking place in the predominantly Sunni regions of the country.

Ganem Alabed, coordinator of the demonstrations in Mosul, some 350 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, told IPS that tens of thousands of people have been gathering in Ahrar square in downtown Mosul every Friday since last December.

“We could be many more were it not for the security cordon around the area,” the activist claimed.

“People are asking for basic infrastructure to provide water and electricity, but are also crying out against abuses such as arbitrary arrests, including of children, or rapes inside the prisons,” Alabed told IPS in Mosul.

“Basically we are asking for a complete removal of the government in Baghdad.”

The local activist also blamed the police for the Mar. 8 killing of a protestor named Mahmoud Saleh, as well as for the gunshot injuries of 10 others.

On Mar. 9, Human Rights Watch interviewed witnesses to the Mosul shootings who claimed soldiers also searched and harassed demonstrators as they approached the protest site and tried to prevent ambulances from carrying away the wounded.

On Jan. 25, Iraqi soldiers reportedly opened fire on demonstrators in Fallujah, located 60 kilometres west of Baghdad, killing nine people.

In claiming that “foreign agents are behind the demonstrations”, Maliki echoes Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s attempts to discredit the legitimacy and grievances of those opposed to the ruling regime.

His remedy — to “isolate the virus” – involves repeatedly closing the borders with Syria and Jordan, which lie along Iraqi Sunni regions, and blocking protests as well as the press. In fact, this correspondent was the first foreign reporter to enter Mosul since the protests erupted three months ago, according to local activists.

Accordingly, images of the demonstrations pop up the same way as those in neighbouring Syria: footage is recorded using mobile phones and uploaded via Youtube.

The sense of déjà vu is even stronger when masked members of the self-proclaimed “Free Iraqi Army” – in clear imitation of the Free Syrian Army – start to give interviews to local and international media.

“We are not Baathists”

The demonstrations in Kirkuk may be much smaller given the city’s mixed population, but that did not prevent the local coordinator of the protest committee, Bunyan al Ubaidi, from being gunned down outside his home on Mar. 9.

“He is our first martyr in this new stage,” laments Ahmed al Ubaidi, a member of the same tribe as the deceased coordinator of the Arab Joint Coalition, comprised of 24 Arab organisations including political parties and NGO’s, which is set to participate in the 2013 provincial council elections.

“First we suffered the invasion of the (U.S.) and then that of Iran. We are not Baathists but we do not want to live under a regime governed by politicians loyal to Tehran,” stresses this former senior official in Saddam Hussein’s army.

Ubaidi firmly denies that the ongoing revolts are being spurred by the war in neighbouring Syria, insisting that the protestors simply seek “rights and democracy for all Iraqis”.

However, the veteran activist does not hesitate when it comes to denouncing the recent deployment in the region of the new Tigris Command Centre, a strong military unit exclusively composed of Shi’ite Arabs.

“Maliki has set up that unit under the pretext of ensuring security in Kirkuk but his only purpose is to protect the regime in case the crisis deepens,” explains Ubaidi, who used an old Iraqi expression to sum up the political climate in the country: “The protesters have planted a palm tree and now they are hoping to collect the dates.”