Spies working for Saddam reinstated to the leadership council of the PUK

KurdishMedia ^ | 1/13/2007

[TexKat]

The local Kurdish media is reporting that four former spies were re-elected to the leadership of the Jalal Talabani’s PUK.

Various Kurdish media sources are reporting this story, which has shaken the PUK grassroots organisation and Kurdish society, prompting outrage and statements that both spies and patriots are working together to lead the PUK.

According to local reports, Saadi Ahmad Pira, Aso Almani, Mustafa Chawrash and Shalaw Ali Askari were discovered to be working for the former Iraqi regime while acting as high ranking officials within the PUK. Dismay and anger has been the response of many Kurds upon hearing that these decision makers in one of southern Kurdistan’s two major political parties were apparently spies for the Saddam regime.

Dossiers reportedly detailing the spying activity of these four officials were discovered among the documents captured from the former regime. These four were only a handful of a high number of Kurdish party high-ranking members and officials that worked for the Ba’ath Party while keeping decision-making positions in the southern Kurdistan’s two major political parties, the PUK and KDP.

The scope of the activities of these high-ranking, influential officials may never be made public. In the last PUK plenum, held on 7 and 8 January 2007, the alleged former spies were expected to be sacked and be tried for crimes that they committed, but this did not occur. Rather, they were reportedly re-elected and reinstated as members of the leadership of the PUK, triggering a angry responses from the Kurdish media and the public. The official PUK media tried to play this controversy issue down but KurdishMedia.com has heard from informed-sources that the party is shaken by the issue to the extent that the leadership of the PUK planned an organisation-wide campaign to re-gain the support and the trust of their members. In this campaign, the PUK delegated each member of its leadership council to deal with the PUK grassroots movement in one province.

The Kurdish human rights organisation CHAK, in a communiqué dated 9 January 2007 stated that only the court of law can give credit back to the former spies, no one else has that power. CHAK added, that they see this step of the PUK as an insult to the tens of thousands of victims and former prisoners of the Saddam regime, in particular those who were members of the PUK itself.

A Kurdish writer Rafat Halabjayi stated on 12 January 2007, “I think working for the Ba’ath party may be counted as a crime, but to be a spy for the Ba’ath while at a level of leadership of a Kurdish party, is equivalent to a double crimes. When I heard the news of reinstating the spies as leaders of the PUK, I could not help myself from crying over the soul of the Kurdish experience,” Halabjayi stated. “When I heard the news, I felt ashamed of my Kurdishness.”

A group of the PUK cadres stated on 11 January 2007 that the plenum’s forgiveness of the alleged spies by the plenum is unfair decision. The statement added that this act is beyond any norms and conventions.

[TexKat]

The Iraqi government has protested after US forces arrested a number of Iranian officials in Baghdad, allegedly because they were planning to incite attacks in the already war-torn country.(AFP/Pool/File/Ali Al-Saadi)

[AdamSmithWasRight]

It's time to let by gones be by gones. I think the Kurds need reconciliation and not to be looking at each other as still Saddam loyalists. The man is gone now, rather they need to start trying to rebuild those burned bridges of the Saddam era. The Kurds can't be a shining example for the rest of Iraq if they are going to fall into the same domestic strife over this person worked for so and so long ago.

I surely hope this doesn't set the Kurdish Regional Government back any.

[BlackVeil]

This controversy is interesting - now Talabani is ill and has gone to Jordan for medical treatments.

I think that all sorts of disputes are building up, within the Kurdish camp, as there are many competing interests. The Kurds used to fight each other even during the worst of Sadaam's persecutions, so it would be odd if they never did so again.