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Iraqi Turkmen in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk have formed their own vigilante groups in response to what they say are attacks targeting members of their community.

There are no exact numbers of Iraqi Turkmen but a sizeable portion of their community has been living in Kirkuk, the capital of the province of the same name.

But they were sidelined by the former regime of Saddam Hussein and many of them were forced to leave the city and replaced by Arabs from the south.

In the aftermath of the 2003-U.S. invasion, the Turkmen, who settled in northern Iraq during the nearly 400-year Ottoman occupation of the country, found themselves marginalized by Kurds who deployed their militias in the city.

The vigilante groups, according to Ali Mahdi, member of the Turkmen bloc in the provincial council, will try to coordinate their activities with the security forces on the ground in the city.

Both Arabs and Turkmen oppose what they describe as “Kurdish covetous intentions” to annex the city to their autonomous region currently comprising the three province of Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Dahouk.

The fate of Kirkuk is as a thorny issue with Arabs and Turkmen insisting on the city’s special identity as an ethnic mosaic that should be linked to the central government in Baghdad.

The authorities have had to postpone a national census  three times so far due to accusations that the Kurds, through financial incentives, were encouraging Kurdish families to move to Kirkuk to change the city’s ethnic balance.

Iraqi Parliamentary Speaker Atheel al-Najafi has said that political meddling by even some foreign states which he did not identify was complicating conditions in Kirkuk.

Iraqi Turkmen form vigilante groups in Kirkuk | By Marwan al-Ani | Azzaman in English

A worsening water shortage in Iraq is raising tensions in the multi-ethnic Kirkuk province, where Arab farmers accuse the Kurdistan region of ruining them by closing the valves to a dam in winter.

"We are harmed by the Kurds, and the officials responsible for Baghdad and Kirkuk will not lift a finger," said Sheikh Khaled al-Mafraji, a leader of the Arab Political Council that groups mainly Sunni tribal leaders.

At the heart of the conflict is the Dukan dam, built in 1955 in Iraq’s northern autonomous region of Kurdistan, 75 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Kirkuk province.

"They release too much water from June to September while from October it is the opposite: there is not enough drinking water and even less to irrigate our lands," Mafraji complained.

Kirkuk province with its rich oil reserves has 250,000 hectares (617,740 acres) of arable land and 16 percent of its workforce engaged in agriculture, according to UN figures. Winter crops include wheat and corn, and summer harvests are mainly sesame, tomatoes and watermelon.

A UN factsheet in October 2010 showed that while more rain fell in 2009 compared with 2008, the situation is still critical. Rainfall is now 50 percent below average.

"The central government must intervene immediately to ask that our brothers in the north (Kurds) provide the necessary amounts of water for irrigation," Mafraji said, threatening to hold demonstrations if his voice was not heard.

Out of Kirkuk’s estimated 900,000 inhabitants, some 31 percent live in rural areas, UN data shows. They represent all of Iraq’s faiths, and are ethnic Arabs, Turkmen or Kurds.

Largely because of its oil riches, Kirkuk is at the centre of a tussle between Iraq’s central government and authorities in Kurdistan, who want to add it to their own region, currently made up of three provinces.

"Our suffering began in 2005, when the peasants were forced to set aside one-third of their land and cultivate only small patches near the artesian well" where there was water, said Abdul Rahman al-Obeidi, who owns 450 hectares west of Kirkuk.

"The peasants claimed that they (the Kurds) cut off water supplies to force them to leave the area. They do not understand there is a shortage and believe it is a political conflict," he added.

For him, it "is the lack of coordination between the authorities in Baghdad and Sulaimaniyah (the province in which the Dukan dam lies) which fuels the notion that the Kurds are responsible."

The growing water deficit and dams built by Iraq’s neighbours have significantly reduced the water flow in a country that was until the late 1950s a breadbasket of the Arab world.

"The dam holds 1.3 million cubic metres of water," said Shihab Hakim Nader, director of water resources in Kirkuk province.

"There is a strategic reserve of 700,000 cubic metres (which must not be used), which means there remains 600,000 cubic metres that can be used. But the rain is becoming more scarce, and the level of the dam is decreasing."

"Also, the Kirkuk area receives only 30 cubic metres per second of water, when it should be receiving 75. This is only sufficient for drinking water," he added.

The issue is a ticking bomb in a province with strong ethnic loyalties, where Arabs accuse Kurds of intentionally harming the province.

"The water issue is critical, and thousands of people driven to unemployment blame their situation on Kurdistan," said Sheikh Burhan Mezher, the head of Kirkuk’s agriculture department.

According to Tahseen Kader, a former minister of water resources for the Kurdistan region’s government, the closure of Dukan’s gates is routine and not a matter for concern.

"Every year, even during the time of the old regime (of Saddam Hussein who was ousted in 2003) we used to close the dam gates during the winter," he said.

Kader said that was done "to conserve water for agriculture in the late spring, and for the production of electricity," and claimed the notion that political motives had driven the dam closure was absurd.

"The majority of the inhabitants of the province of Kirkuk are Kurdish, so why would we harm them? We don’t want to harm anyone," he said.

Source: France24 – Iraq water shortages raising ethnic tensions

The Province of Nineveh, of which Mosul is the capital, will soon turn into a major oil producing region in Iraq, with output estimated at 200,000 barrels a day, an Iraqi oil official said.

The official, refusing to be named, said the crude will mainly flow from two fields currently under development.

“We cannot underestimate a volume like this,” he added.

He urged the Oil Ministry to seriously consider establishing a special oil company to handle the province’s riches.

The fields under development are Najma and Qaiyara. Both fields are being developed by state-run firms.

But the official said the output would certainly hike if the authorities allowed foreign firms to explore and drill for oil in the province.

Mosul is known to be among Iraq’s oldest oil producing areas but much of the provincial territory remains unexplored.

The field of Ain Zala is Iraq’s oldest oil-producing field but the machinery and equipment have not changed since production started there for the first time more than seven decades ago.

The official said foreign investment in the province’s natural resources “will reduce currently high unemployment rates” and bring economic prosperity to Mosul, one of Iraq’s most restive cities.

Iraq’s Mosul to produce 200,000 barrels of oil per day |By Samer Saeed | Azzaman in English

Their cathedrals stand silent and their neighbourhoods are rapidly emptying. Now Iraq’s Christians face two further unthinkable realities: that Christmas this year is all but cancelled, and that few among them will stay around to celebrate future holy days.

It has been the worst of years for the country’s Christians, with thousands fleeing in the past month and more leaving the country during 2010 than at any time since the invasion nearly eight years ago. Christian leaders say there have been few more defining years in their 2,000-year history in central Arabia.

The latest exodus follows a massacre led by al-Qaida at a Chaldean Catholic church in central Baghdad on 31 October, which left about 60 people dead, almost 100 maimed and an already apprehensive community terrified. Since then, the terrorist group has targeted Christians in their homes, including family members of those who survived the attack.

In Baghdad, as well as the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, Christmas services have been cancelled for fear of further violence. Church leaders said they would not put up Christmas decorations or celebrate midnight mass. They told families not to decorate their homes, for fear of attack after al-Qaida reiterated its threat to target Christians earlier this week.

"Now more than 80% of Christians are not going to the churches," said the head of Iraq’s Christian Endowment group, Abdullah al-Noufali. "There is no more sunday school, no school for teaching Christianity. Yesterday we had a discussion about what we would do for Christmas. We took a decision just to do one mass. In years before we had many masses."

Noufali’s church was closed and barricaded in 2005 when violence was consuming Baghdad. Many others had stayed open since then. Until now. In the wake of the attack on the Our Lady of Salvation church, at least 10 churches are believed to have been closed. At others, congregations are down to a handful.

Iraq’s Christian population has halved since the ousting of Saddam Hussein. But in the past two months, the rate of departure has soared. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees is reporting high numbers of registrations by Christians in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. And in Iraq’s Kurdish north, the number of refugees is overwhelming.

Christians have been arriving since the president of the Kurdish regional government, Massoud Barazani, offered them protection and refuge days after the massacre.

Kurdish officials say at least 1,000 families have taken up the offer. Noufali believes the number is far higher. He says the Kurds have been warm and welcoming, but fears that moving there does not offer his community a long-term solution.

"We have seen in Kurdistan that they have no ability to accept the Kurdish students in the universities," he said. "There are not enough chairs in the university for them. They must have opportunity to learn and work. The problem is not just security."

In Lebanon, the plight of Iraq’s Christians is being carefully scrutinised. Father Yusef Muwaness, of the Council of Catholic Churches in the Middle East, said: "We understand the shock [the Iraqis] are enduring. We want them to know that they won’t be left alone.

"There are ancient issues at work. These people [al-Qaida] are killing because of a fatwa. There has not been a mufti who has stood up and said this is wrong."

Lebanon’s Christians once held a demographic majority. Emigration and a brutal civil war has whittled numbers away. Amin Gemayel, a former Lebanese president and now patriarch of many of the country’s remaining Christians, believes far more could be done by Muslim leaders to ensure that the exodus is not total.

"The Christians were very nationalistic," he said. "They are part of the foundations of this area. We can’t understand such extremity then passivity from the leaders. When the region is completely cleansed of other religions (apart from Islam) it will be a surrender to the fundamentalists."

In the Chaldean archdiocese in Baabda, above Beirut, Father Hanna has been receiving Iraqi families fleeing their homeland. "I would go back there to give a service in front of one person, if I had to," he said. "But even that may not be possible now. Since 1 November, we have seen 450 families register here. Many more have gone to the UN."

Among those who have stayed in Iraq and tried to build a new life in the north, there are mixed feelings. "Three days after the church attack I left my house (in Baghdad) and came to the KRG," said Georges Qudah, 30, a pharmacy assistant. "At the main checkpoint I said we are a Christian family, and they said we are welcome to stay as long as we want. I feel safe and comfortable here, but the problem is how to live. The council here has given us blankets and beds, but housing is very expensive."

In Baghdad, there are few signs of the joy of Christmas.

"There is no hope here anymore," says Noufali. "No one can believe they [the Christians] will stay. Christmas came with two messages, peace in the world and hope for the people and we need these two things for our life in Iraq. If there are no more Christians here, I am certain Iraq will become a more dangerous country."

Christianity in the Middle East

Freedom of worship for Christians varies greatly across the Middle East.

In Lebanon, where about half the population are Christian, believers are allowed to practise their faith without fear of persecution. The Maronite Church is the largest, most politically active and influential denomination, holding 34 of the 64 Christian seats in the Lebanese parliament.

In Jordan, Christians are free to profess their faith, build churches, schools, hospitals and universities. They attend mass and there are public celebrations of religious festivals and ceremonies. They experience less discrimination and more freedom than fellow believers in Egypt and Iraq. There is a similar portrait of stability and freedom in Syria, where Christians comprise up to 10% of the population.

Evangelising bvy Protestants in Jordan has prompted a crackdown on churches, visas and summer camps. Attempting to convert Muslims is illegal, but there is no law against proselytising to other Christians and some Catholic and Orthodox groups have complained of energetic wooing from Protestants. It is this evangelising that has offended authorities, keen to avoid religious zealotry of any sort.

What Saudi Arabia lacks in violent persecution it makes up for in outright intolerance. There is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, which counts a million Catholics in its population. The country allows Christians to enter for work purposes but severely restricts the practise of their faith.

Christians worship in private homes and there are bans on religious articles including Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings and items bearing religious symbols. The religious police bar the practice of any religion other than Islam. Conversion of a Muslim to another religion is considered apostasy and carries a death sentence if the accused does not recant. Still, Christians in Saudi Arabia are positively blessed compared with those of Iraq. Riazat Butt

Christian exodus from Iraq gathers pace | by Martin Chulov in Baghdad |  The Guardian

ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan: The authorities in the Christian district of Ankawa in the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Erbil, have imposed a ban on selling cold alcoholic beverages in all places, except bars and restaurants, due to a number of incidents involving drunken young men in the area.

Farhad Mansour Marbin, head of the municipality of Ankawa, where most of Erbil’s liquor stores are located, told Rudaw that any store violating the ban would “face closure and termination of its business license.”

The decree was issued on November 25th, giving liquor stores and cafes in the district 15 days to stop selling cold alcoholic beverages.

But this has deeply concerned Ankawa’s alcohol merchants who say the prohibition will harm business.

Raeed, 40, who did not want his full-name mentioned, owns a liquor store in Ankawa.

“Nobody drinks warm alcohol,” he lamented. “This ban will adversely affect our businesses. We cannot give up our businesses, so we are very worried about this decision."

Raeed said he believed the authorities would face difficulties applying the decision.

“The municipality authorities cannot enforce this decree, because some liquor stores might sell glasses and ice with the alcohol or sell them secretly from their homes,” he said.

Authorities in Ankawa say there are more than 100 stores and bars in the district selling alcohol.

Marbin told Rudaw the reason behind the ban was because some stores sold alcohol improperly and people drank on the streets and inside liquor stores.

“Many young people visit Ankawa on a daily basis to drink alcohol,” said Marbin.

“They drink it in an uncivilized manner, throw the bottles down creating litter and then roam around the streets while intoxicated and start harassing women and men.”

Asked about the local businesses’ disgruntlement with the ban, Marbin said the merchant’s criticism was “not fair because they are the ones who have caused this situation… After the issuance of this decree, anybody who violates the rules will have their health certificates and licenses withdrawn from them."

In recent times, Ankawa has been the safest and most affluent place for Christians in Iraq. Over 500 Christian families have fled Baghdad and other volatile places to seek refuge in Ankawa in the last month alone, following the attacks on churches in Baghdad that left dozens dead.

Source: Street Drunks Lead to Ban on Selling Cold Alcohol in Kurdish Christian Area by RAWA ABDULLA Rudaw in English

ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan:  An agricultural official from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is warning that if there is no rain by December 15th in areas around Erbil and southern Sulaimani, and by the end of this month in other areas of Kurdistan, 85 percent of farms will remain uncultivated this year.

It was this fear that made many Kurds congregate last week in different towns and cities praying for rain, a religious ritual practiced by Muslims worldwide asking God to send His merciful rain.

Khaled Suleiman, a 44-year-old farmer, has had his seeds and pesticides ready for nearly two months but he has not been able to cultivate his land because of lack of rain. He fears his land will stay uncultivated this year.

Suleiman lives in Qaraj district close to Erbil, the capital of the federal region of Kurdistan. Suleiman’s livelihood depends on his approximately 66 hectares of land. He said that, out of 401 hectares of agricultural land in his village, only 13 hectares of it had been cultivated this year.

“We fear we will have a dry year and cannot raise our cattle too. If there is no rain by mid-December then there will be no cultivation here,” he said.

There are around 1.5 million hectares of agricultural land in Kurdistan, 88 percent of which depends on rain for cultivation. The Qeraj, Kandinawe and Shemamak plains near Erbil are the areas most under the threat of drought this year.

Saeed Mustafa, director of agriculture in Makhmour, said only 668 hectares of the area’s 66,890 hectares of agricultural land had been cultivated this year.

According to figures obtained by Rudaw from the Kurdistan Meteorology and Seismology Directorate (KMSD), the highest rate of rainfall in Erbil province this year has been in Choman district, near the border with Iran, which has so far seen 12.3 millimeters.

In Sulaimani province, the highest rate of rainfall has been in the Tawela area, also close to the Iranian border, which has reached at 8.7 millimeters.  In Duhok province the highest rate has been 8.1 millimeters in the Graseen area.

At the same time last year, Choman had seen 176.8 millimeters of rainfall, Biyare 252.4 millimeters and Graseen 88.8 millimeters.

KMSD’s head, Hassan Wehab, said his office did not possess advanced enough technology to forecast several months ahead.

“We have 27 weather registration centers and we can only forecast the weather for the next 48 hours,” Wehab said.

But he said the delay in rainfall is not necessarily a sign of drought since the rainy season is not over yet. KMSD officials say the rain shortage is mostly due to global warming which has affected other areas of the Middle East, such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine/Israel.

The looming threat of drought has made some farmers in Kurdistan criticize Kurdistan’s Ministry of Agriculture for failing to implement irrigation projects to reduce their dependence on rainfall.

Anwar Omar, director of planning at the Ministry of Agriculture, blamed the low number of irrigation projects on the small budget allocated for this.

“In Kurdistan’s five-year strategic agricultural plan, around 70 percent of the budget was earmarked for building dams and irrigation projects, but unfortunately over the past two years only 25 percent of the budget has been injected into the projects,” Omar said. “Because of the budget shortage we have only been able to irrigate 15 percent of agricultural land.”

Officials at the Ministry of Agriculture say that, out of 25 proposed dams, only 14 have been approved by the government, and these 14 are only at the stage of signing contracts and surveying.

Two dams, one in Koya, south of Erbil, and the other in Garmyan, south of Sulaimani, are currently under construction and are expected to be completed by the end of this year, but they are unlikely to be functioning until after this year.

Source: Kurdistan’s Parched Land in Dire Need of Rain | By Rawa Abdulla | Rudaw in English

We have a saying in Irak which translates into English as follows:

“Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”.

It means, as you might suspect, that the differences between two people are so small and insignifcant that it is foolish to expect any difference between them either in their opinions or in their actions.

On "Gorilla’s Guides" as part of our masthead we have a quote from an American commander to the New York TImes‘ defense correspondent Michael R. Gordon about Arabs, in this case Iraki Arabs:

"The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it."¹

We have it there to remind our readers and ourselves of what American soldiers are like and the values and attitudes of the society in which they grew up that sent them here. The Iraki experience of America, Americans, American "values", American generals, and the troops commanded by those generals is that Americans react with unthinking hysterical indiscriminate violence whenever they meet opposition. And that it does not matter whether that opposition is armed or not. It does not matter who is injured or killed men, women, children, we are all sand niggers and killing sand niggers is a good thing. "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it".

"You have to understand the Arab mind," one company commander told the New York Times, displaying all the self-assurance of Douglas MacArthur discoursing on Orientals in 1945. "The only thing they understand is force — force, pride and saving face." Far from representing the views of a few underlings, such notions penetrated into the upper echelons of the American command. In their book "Cobra II," Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor offer this ugly comment from a senior officer: "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it."

Source: What’s an Iraqi Life Worth? – washingtonpost.com

Some might like to argue that all of that was under the Bush administration but that things are different and better under President Obama. Really? “Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”.

"Actually it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up with you. I like brawling."

Sources: Controversial US general to head Central Command  and Federal Eye – James Mattis: ‘It’s fun to shoot some people’.

That’s the new over-all commander of the American invasion forces in Afghanistan and Irak speaking.

“Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”. He goes on to say this:

"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years, because they didn’t wear a veil. You know guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot ‘em."

Sources: Controversial US general to head Central Command  and Federal Eye – James Mattis: ‘It’s fun to shoot some people’.

You can watch and listen to him saying it in the YouTube video below.

“Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis is reflecting the values of the people he serves, their armed forces and their government. The arrogance, the unthinking fear and loathing of Muslims, the immediate resort to violence. And the viciously cynical pretence that the savage use of indiscrimante violence is somehow in aid of human rights or vindicating the rights of women. Go ask the more than one million widows in Irak or the 5 million orphans how America and Americans have vindicated their human rights. Saddam was bad but as an Iraki I can tell you from experience that America and Americans are worse.

If you go and read the comments on the Washington Post article you will find comments such as:

• "This general has the right attitude. Mattis should be running the country, not just Central Command. The US would be better off as a warrior based society.
  Posted by: 1911a1 | July 9, 2010 7:30 AM | Report abuse

  and this

• "Beautiful. I love this guy already. Maybe with him in command we’ll rightly kill all the extremists plus anyone who dares to mess with us. And as this guy understands, anyone who does deserves to die. He’s right – it IS fun to shoot ayholes like these people. Let’s kill those who need to be and be done with it and celebrate our victory as the best country in the world.
  Posted by: mikeinaustintx | July 9, 2010 9:18 AM | Report abuse

  and this

• "The General is right. There are a lot of Afghans that deserve to be shot. I see nothing wrong with his statement at all
  Posted by: dbeins | July 9, 2010 9:59 AM | Report abuse

  or how about this?

• "I am a die hard liberal and I have no problem with the general’s comments. Barbaric men, read muslim, should be treated the same way as they treat their women.
  Posted by: mortified469 | July 9, 2010 11:48 AM | Report abuse

“Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”. When it comes to the American war on Islam there is no difference worth talking about between the Obama administration and the Bush Administration. None. Obama is carrying forward, and expanding, Bush’s war against Muslims. He is a little less vicious, somewhat more efficient, and a lot better at putting a pretty mask on the evil that America does in Muslim lands. “Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”. Both Bush and Obama are commanders in chief of armed forces renowned for their deliberate attacks on civilians as an act of policy approved at the highest levels of their command structure. Human rights? “Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”. Under Obama the torture camp at Bagram has become larger, busier, and worse.

“Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”. There is no difference between an evil American pervert in uniform who admits to enjoying killing human beings and the perverted cowards who slaughtered the Southern tribes and the Kurds for Saddam. There is no difference between this pervert who now is the overall commander for Irak and Afghanistan and who publicly flaunts his enjoyment of violence and of killing human beings and the perverted cowards in the Badr Brigade death squads who gloried in using electric drills on their victims before finally killing them.

“Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”. There is no difference between the (Democrat) Secretary of State who says that 500,000 dead Iraki children is a price she thinks worth paying and the Republican one who describes the children slaughtered by the Israelis in Lebanon as the "birth pangs of a new Middle East".

Ana Iraki – I am Iraki and young though I may be thanks to the American invaders I am no stranger to either to violence or to killing. As I wrote to the American Christian Priest Michael Kinman as part of our continuing if somewhat intermittent dialogue:

My brother you should save your grief in the matter of arms. It is not a question of my taking them up – I have never put them down. Do you think we stopped the death squads from coming into our neighbourhood by nicely asking them to refrain from murdering our neighbours? I can assure you that we were far from gentle with those we discovered bringing bombs into the district. When my comrades and I protected your co-religionists we did not do it by waving olive branches threateningly. – We were somewhat more direct. Would that there were more like us and that we were stronger in the north were that the case your co-religionists in Mosul could walk freely in the city that is their home instead of fleeing in despair.

Sometimes violence is justifiable, sometimes it is right to kill one or more of your fellow human beings. But even when the killing is justified to enjoy it is depraved and disgusting. If you want the perfect example of why as a human being, a Muslim, and an Arab, I find America, its values, its cynicism, its cowardice and its thuggish actions to be depraved disgusting dangerous and evil it is because without exception the commanders of the American armys of invasion and occupation have been commanded by the sort of scum who publicly flaunt their viciousness and their evil:

 "The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it.

“Away goes the white dog and now comes the black dog”.

"Actually it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right up with you. I like brawling."

With commanders like that it is not surprising that your soldiers behave in the way the do. They are the perfect ambassadors for the society that sent them. Just as the cowards who slaughtered the Turkish peace activists on the flotilla are the perfect representatives of the racist apartheid settler state that America is so fond of.

By appointing a man such as this as overall commander for the American forces of invasion and occupation of both Afghanistan and Irak the Obama administration has proved yet again that the differences between them and the Bush administration that preceded them are so small as to be irrelevant.

Irak is for the Irakis. You Americans are welcome to your racist thugs in uniform and to your perverts in uniform who publicly gloat about what fun it is to kill people. Keep them at home with you in America where they belong. Irak is for the Irakis and because of how Americans have behaved towards my people Americans are not welcome here.

Mohammed Ibn Laith