The Iraqi government had first offered 20 million dinars (about $15,000) for each family but the sum was lowered to 10 million ($7,500) a few days later. Mohammed Abdullah Al-Musawi, a negotiator representing Arab settlers in Kirkuk, demanded a piece of land and the transfer of jobs to the areas that settlers return to. “Just like Arabs came through a decision by the former government, they now want to return through a decision by the current government,” he added.
Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city, has an indigenous population of Kurds, Turkmen, Sunni Arabs and Assyrian Christians. Saddam Hussein’s regime deported thousands of Kurds and Turkmen from the city as part of an Arabization campaign and replaced them with rural Arabs from the south of Iraq. Many Kurdish families have since returned following the war in 2003, and the two major Kurdish political parties exercise de facto control of the administration and security forces in the city, much to the chagrin of the city’s Arabs and Turkmen.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution provides a three-step plan to normalize the situation in Kirkuk. In the first, Kurdish refugees will be allowed to return to Kirkuk, while Arab settlers will be offered incentives to return to their original areas. A census will follow in the second phase, and in the third, a popular referendum will be held to vote on the fate of the oil-rich governorate.
The Bahraini government has offered citizenship to 50 thousand Sunni Iraqis as part of a major naturalization act that offered Bahraini citizenship to 226 thousand Arabs, a move that has angered the small island’s majority Shia population. Sheikh Ali Suleiman, leader of the majority Shi’ite Wifaq bloc in Bahraini parliament, described the procedure as an attempt to further marginalize the Shia and to tamper with the country’s demographics. “This will not bring about security and stability for either ruler or ruled, but will bring a forced majority, like that of South Africa 350 years ago,” he said.
The Al-Marsad Al-Iraqi website alleged that Bahraini intelligence officers, acting under orders from the Bahraini royal office, vetted thousands of Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria to select former members of the Iraqi intelligence and military for citizenship, adding that 2,000 former Fedayeen were brought to Bahrain and given residency.
Shia Arabs and Persians constitute the majority in Bahrain (about 70% according to unofficial sources), but a Sunni clan, Al-Khalifa, has ruled the country for decades. The last official census that included sectarian identification was held in 1941, and reported the Shia as 53% of the population. Bahrain has also witnessed a large influx of foreign workers and immigrants from India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka over the last few years.
Babil police commander General Qais Al-Ma’mouri denied media reports of sectarian violence and attacks against Sunni mosques in the town of Haswa, south of Baghdad, and accused “Saddamist, Takfiri terrorist gangs” of blowing up the Al-Mahdi husseiniya and the Usama bin Zaid and Al-Anwar mosques at the same time, in order to stoke sectarian divisions in the mixed town, according to SCIRI’s Buratha News Agency. Al-Ma’mouri also denied that the Iraqi Islamic Party’s headquarters was attacked.
Eyewitnesses from Haswa had said that gunmen, who they described as Mahdi Army militiamen, burned down five Sunni mosques during a funeral of the victims of a bombing of a Shi’ite husseiniya in the town yesterday. The five mosques, according to the eyewitnesses, were the Abdullah Al-Jubouri, Usama bin Zaid, Al-Anwar, Hutteen and Al-Farouq.
Residents also reported attacks against two Sunni mosques south of Baghdad yesterday. Militiamen stormed into the Khadeeja mosque in the Muwasalat district and set it to fire after dousing the place with petrol, while the nearby Safwa mosque in Shurta Al-Khamsa was attacked with explosives. Unknown gunmen assassinated the imam of the Omar Al-Farouq mosque in the Risala district further north on the same day. Fierce clashes erupted in Amiriya after Iraqi soldiers fired two rocket-propelled grenades against the minaret of the Humoud Dhiyab mosque, damaging it severely. SCIRI’s Buratha News Agency had charged that insurgents were hiding in the mosque before it was attacked. Several mortar shells also hit the Ma’alif and Turath districts south of Baghdad from the Sunni-majority suburb of Girtan injuring several people. Nighttime clashes continue in these southern districts, which have not yet witnessed any security sweeps as part of the Imposing Law operation, despite urgent pleas from locals.
Sot Al-Iraq reports ongoing clashes between Zoba’ tribesmen and insurgents affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq or the Islamic State of Iraq in Abu Ghraib, Al-Zaidan and Amiriyat Al-Fallujah west of Baghdad. The clashes were in response to the assassination attempt against Deputy Prime Minister Salam Al-Zobai, who is a member of the tribe, several days ago and a failed assassination attempt against a Zoba’ tribal leader in Mosul yesterday. Unknown gunmen had opened fire at Sheikh Mohammed Jassim Al-Ugood and missed him but Al-Ugood’s son Buraq, 24, was killed. Local sources and the state-run Al-Iraqiya TV reported that two suicide bombers attacked the residence of another Zoba’ tribal leader at Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad this morning. The attacks targeted Sheikh Dhahir Al-Dhari, a cousin of Sheikh Harith Al-Dhari, the head of the Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq. Al-Dhari had recently joined the Anbar Salvation Council against Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The Zoba' tribe, which had so far strongly supported the Sunni-led insurgency against the U.S., occupies a vast area west, north and southwest of the capital, in addition to a presence near Mosul. The tribe's area of influence extends from Baghdad to Ramadi in the west and from the Baghdad International Airport to Mahmoudiya in the south.
An Iraqi police source stated that the headquarters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq at Kut, in the Wasit Governorate, was targeted with a roadside bomb resulting in heavy damages. Several attacks against SCIRI branches in the southern city have been reported over the last few days, and the culprits are suspected to be rival Shi’ite parties.
The Sadrist Nahrain Net website accused U.S. troops of exploiting Iraqi children in order to extract information from them on the Mahdi Army. Eyewitnesses told the website that U.S. soldiers lure the children by promising to give them sweets and chocolate after asking them questions on the whereabouts of Mahdi Army members and weapon caches. The questions could be: “Have you seen weapons in your neighbors’ house?” “Do you know anyone in the Mahdi Army?” “Where do they live?” according to the website. Dozens of Mahdi Army members who otherwise did not have their names on U.S. lists were detained using these methods in the Sha’ab, Hurriya and Utaifiya districts of Baghdad.
