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500 bodies found in mass grave From correspondents in Sulamaniyah, Iraq 15dec04 IRAQIS who lost loved ones during Saddam Hussein's brutal rule today rushed to a site in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq that Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said was a mass grave containing some 500 bodies. They went to the site at a village near the city of Sulaimaniyah after building workers noticed human skulls and torn clothes as they were digging. Mr Allawi told the interim national assembly in Baghdad that "according to initial estimates, (the site) contains the remains of 500 martyrs". Fatima Ali, one of...

Kurdish media after the war 14 December 2004 Arab Reform Bulletin - By Maggy Zanger With sanctions lifted, Saddam Hussein removed from power, and Kurdistan the most secure place in Iraq, Kurdish media have unprecedented potential to thrive. Kurdistan is experiencing an explosion of investment and trade, thanks to Kurdish businessmen returning from the Diaspora, Turkish and Iranian companies eager to enter a new market, and Baghdad businesses seeking a respite from kidnappings, car bombs and insurgent raids. Despite this seemingly favorable media environment, however, Kurdish journalism appears hobbled by an "old Iraq" mentality and has been slow to capitalize...

Foreign Students Flock to Iraqi Kurdish Colleges Kurdish students from Iran and Syria are escaping the troubles by studying in northern Iraq. By Talar Nadir in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 94, 16-Dec-04) Kurdish students living in Iraq’s neighbours are flocking to universities in the Kurdish areas to escape repression at home and to benefit from the opportunities they say the region offers. The University of Sulaimaniyah alone has so far accepted more than 110 Kurdish students from neighbouring countries, mainly Iran and Syria, under a programme that reserves five per cent of all places at Iraqi Kurdish universities for high school...

Kurds - fly in the ointment 05 December 2004 The Decatur Daily - By Eric Fleischauer U.S. plan in Iraq doesn’t address group’s concerns U.S proposals for a unified Iraq can only lead to civil war, according to some members of the main ethnic group in North Iraq. The U.S. blueprint for Iraq after Saddam Hussein describes a unified country, or a federalist Iraq with minimal autonomy for three different states: the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites. U.S. officials envision a strong federal government that mimics the power-sharing arrangement of the states and the federal government in the United...

Kurds close ranks in bid to secure federation 03/12/2004 AFP BAGHDAD, Dec 3 (AFP) - 5h44 - The aim of the Iraqi Kurds in deciding to run on a joint ticket for January 30 elections -- a decade after bloody clashes erupted between their main factions -- is to defend their goal of a federal Iraq. A key task of the elected national assembly will be to draw up a permanent constitution for the new Iraq, in which they hope to enshrine autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of the country. "The Kurds have forgotten their differences to defend...

<p>The best solution at the moment is for Iraq's national elections to be postponed, but for previously scheduled voting to go ahead for the Kurdistan National Assembly and the governorate councils in the Shiite south.</p> <p>Even though President Bush, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and Shiite leaders are insisting on going ahead with the Iraqi national elections on Jan. 30, there are powerful reasons for a delay.</p>

Why not us, too? 01 December 2004 KurdishMedia.com - By Dr Rashid Karadaghi Following Yasser Arafat’s death over a week ago, there were renewed calls, and rightly so, by just about everybody, from President Bush to Prime Minister Blair to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and others, for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The Kurdish people have always supported the right of the Palestinians to their own state and Kurdish representatives have stated this on numerous occasions, and all past Kurdish political literature is replete with this fact. But the question on the minds of millions of Kurds...

Battle lost: Bekas wins his freedom, Kurdistan doesn’t 30 November 2004 The Decatur Daily - By Eric Fleischauer This final article in a three-part [Click for Part I & Part II] series traces the escape to Canada of Bekas Garmiany, a Kurdish soldier who endured torture in Iraq and Iran. Most of the incidents related by Garmiany cannot be corroborated. In many cases, the witnesses are dead. The writer spoke to experts on the Middle East and Amnesty International who said the accounts are consistent with others they have heard. His body battered by torture and battle, his mind twisted...

Fear of ethnic conflict charges Mosul unrest By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | November 30, 2004 MOSUL, Iraq -- After Saddam Hussein was ousted and his security apparatus collapsed, many Iraqis predicted ethnic war. They feared ethnic militias like the Kurdish Peshmerga would fill the security vacuum and engage in a bloody power struggle. Such dire predictions failed to materialize in the 18 months following Hussein's fall. But the recent explosion of violence in this ethnically divided northern city has deteriorated to the brink of widespread ethnic conflict. The rising tensions spilled over last week as the corpses of Iraqi...

This article focuses on the trials of Bekas Garmiany, a Kurdish soldier who endured torture in Iraq and Iran before immigrating to his current home in Alberta, Canada. The writer and Bekas have corresponded in a series of interviews for almost a year. Most of the incidents related by Garmiany cannot be corroborated. In many cases the only witnesses are dead. The writer spoke to experts on the Middle East, Amnesty International and other Kurdish soldiers who reported witnessing or enduring experiences similar to those related by Garmiany. Squeezing under a farmhouse, praying without hope that his 35 friends would...

A Peshmarga remembers 28 November 2004 The Decatur Daily - By Eric Fleischauer Horrible torture, death, and a haunting decision First of three parts. The writer and Bekas Garmiany, a former Kurdish soldier from Kirkuk, Iraq, who now lives in Canada, have corresponded in a series of interviews for almost a year. Most of the incidents related by Garmiany cannot be corroborated. In many cases the only witnesses are dead. Other witnesses could not be located. The writer spoke to experts on the Middle East, representatives of Amnesty International and other Kurdish soldiers, all of whom reported witnessing or enduring...

Northern City Has Little Time For Fast Iraqi Crisis Report Cafes stay open all day as Sulaimaniyah residents show few outward signs of Ramadhan observance. By Azeez Mahmood Abdullah in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 92, 29-Nov-04) For Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims are traditionally required to fast during daylight hours, the Akar restaurant in Sulaimaniyah made just one concession, covering its entrance with a curtain, while continuing the business of serving food as usual. Across the northern Iraqi province of Sulaimaniyah, the fasting period which ended two weeks ago saw fewer people than last year observing the normally stringent prohibition...

Job Market Flourishes in Kurdish North Iraqi Crisis Report Rising investment and stable security have created a boom in the job market in Sulaimaniyah. By Zena Tarik in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 92, 29-Nov-04) A crowd of Arab labourers gathers in front of the main mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah at 630 every morning, hoping to pick up work for the day. Once an area teetering on the brink of poverty, an influx of foreign companies and increasing regional investment means Iraq’s Kurdish region is attracting workers from across the country. Mosul native Faisal Omar arrived in Sulaimaniyah...

Three more bodies, including Kurd, found in northern Iraq city November 25, 2004 MOSUL, Iraq, (AFP)- Three bodies, including those of a Kurdish bodyguard and a member of the Iraqi security forces, were found Thursday in Mosul, the latest in a string of grim discoveries in the northern city over the past week. They bring to 28 the number of bodies discovered in Mosul in recent days, after US and Iraqi troops launched a vast operation last week to root out the insurgency in the country's third largest city. Two bodies were found dumped at the Al-Yarmuk roundabout, one of...

Insurgents step up the battle for Mosul Zarqawi accuses Muslim scholars of betrayal Michael Howard in Mosul Thursday November 25, 2004 The Guardian Insurgents increased their efforts to take control of Mosul yesterday, ambushing a convoy of Kurdish peshmerga fighters and attacking the Kurdish deputy governor of Nineveh province. The US military commander in Mosul, Brigadier General Carter Ham, has warned that militants, mainly Sunni Arabs, are trying to foment civil war in the ethnically mixed city of 2 million. Three peshmerga were killed and seven injured when their convoy was attacked on the main road into eastern Mosul, said...

A letter to the great beyond: A tribute to a fallen friend 21 November 2004 KurdishMedia.com - By Vahal Abdulrahman Dear Ismael, On the evening of Saturday, November 13, 2004, I was told of the tragic news of your sudden departure. As my mother uttered the words, “Ismael has been killed,” I could hear the sound of tears in her throat. My pious mother who loved you so much always prayed for your safe return, instead, she and I were forced to learn that you had been murdered. Shocked and angered, I sat on my bed and wept, wept for...

Ismail Zebari: Kurdish-American patriot 20 November 2004 KurdishMedia.com - By Agit Can I did not know Ismail Zebari, although he was a friend of a friend, or, more accurately, a close friend of a close friend of mine. Among those fallen in Fallujah, most of the world is unaware of a person such as Mr. Zebari. Mr. Zebari was not a member of the American or Iraqi armed forces, and he was certainly not among the ranks of the terrorists, which the media refer to as “insurgents”, who used the city as a base of operations in their mission to...

BIYARA, Iraq -- During the two years that Ansar al-Islam ruled this mountain redoubt, its secular Kurdish population had to learn to live under a brutal Islamic code modeled on the Taliban. Music, pictures, smoking, and drinking were banned. Women had to cover their heads and wear head-to-toe gowns. Men had to grow beards and wear traditional baggy Kurdish pants, not Western-style trousers. Religious police made sure television satellite dishes were not pointed toward European networks. Those who defied the foreign Arabs and Kurdish Islamists who took over in 2001 were beaten in public; some offenders, according to local lore,...

TUWELLA, Iraq -- A dirt track winds from this Kurdish border outpost to the top of a jagged mountain ridge separating Iran from Iraq's northern Kurdish enclave. For years, and with the blessing of Iranian officials, Islamist terrorist groups have smuggled weapons and money into Iraq on this road, many Kurdish intelligence and security officials said. When US special forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters attacked Ansar al-Islam, an Al Qaeda affiliate, in March 2003, hundreds of its members fled to Iran, the officials said, and have regrouped in several towns just over this border. There, they continue to train, raise...

Below is the Iraqi government statement declaring a state of emergency, read to journalists in Arabic and translated by The Associated Press: ’’Because of the continuation of a pattern of violence and terrorism and the daily operations of mass murder so that even children and women have not been spared, and that are committed by terrorist intruder groups against the sons of our people and in an indiscriminate manner, and because these groups went too far in practicing various malicious methods in their persistent attempt to paralyze the state’s activities through their organized criminal practices of murder that reached the...