Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Media: AFP
Byline: Abdel Hamid Zebari and Shwan Mohammed
Date: 01 October 2006
ARBIL, Iraq, Oct 1, 2006 (AFP) - Iraqi Kurds were left reeling after two
independent newspapers named scores of people who allegedly cooperated with
Saddam Hussein's feared intelligence services, including many now in
positions of power.
The president of the Kurdish autonomous region, Massud Barzani, ordered the
formation of a committee to study the allegations which come as bitter
memories of the community's savage repression under Saddam's Sunni
Arab-dominated regime have been revived by his latest war crimes trial.
"The committee will be legal and political and will choose a suitable
approach for its work and prove the facts about these files," Barzani's
chief of staff Fuad Hussein said Sunday.
"It will be a fact-finding mission and not a punishment committee," he
said, adding that the committee's members would be appointed by Barzani in
concert with the prime minister of the regional government and the speaker
of the regional parliament.
"This matter has become huge and very sensitive for the people of
Kurdistan," he said.
The names of more than 150 people who allegedly spied on their fellow Kurds
for Saddam's mukhabarat intelligence service after the Kurdish uprising of
1991 were published by the Awina (Mirror) and Hawalati (Citizen) newspapers
Friday.
According to the newspapers, which both went through several print runs on
the day of publication, the mukhabarat recruited people close to the two
main Kurdish rebel leaders, Barzani and Jalal Talabani, now Iraq's
president.
The allegations drew demands for an inquiry from members of both former
rebel factions -- Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Talabani's
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- and by Saturday more than half of the 111
MPs in the regional parliament had signed a petition calling for an
immediate debate.
"Those who worked with the mukhabarat must be tried," said PUK regional
lawmaker Ariz Abdallah.
"These agents of the odious Saddam regime must become examples for others
like them in the future," said KDP counterpart Khiman Zirar.
The allegations also prompted a spate of law suits against the alleged
informers by their victims and a variety of threats against the journalists
by those named.
Adel Omar, who works for a computer maintenance company in the Iraqi
Kurdish cultural capital of Sulaimaniyah said he was "shocked and stunned"
when he saw how many big names in the two main former rebel groups had
worked for the Baathist regime.
"Publishing the files showed how the Iraqi mukhabarat infiltrated the
parties and the Kurdish administration," he said, adding that he hoped the
government would hold them accountable.
The revelations come at a particularly sensitive time for Iraqi Kurds after
Saddam and six co-defendants went on trial charged with genocide over the
1988 Anfal campaign.
The campaign, in which hundreds of thousands were gassed, relocated and
their villages destroyed was not carried out just by Iraqi soldiers, but
also by pro-government Kurdish militias.
Victims' families have been calling for those who collaborated in the Anfal
to be brought to justice too, not just Saddam and his main henchmen.
For Yassin Taha, a high school teacher in Sulaimaniyah, the newspaper
reports of Kurdish spies just made him furious.
"They have to receive the necessary punishment for their treachery against
their own kind," he said.
Byline: Abdel Hamid Zebari and Shwan Mohammed
Date: 01 October 2006
ARBIL, Iraq, Oct 1, 2006 (AFP) - Iraqi Kurds were left reeling after two
independent newspapers named scores of people who allegedly cooperated with
Saddam Hussein's feared intelligence services, including many now in
positions of power.
The president of the Kurdish autonomous region, Massud Barzani, ordered the
formation of a committee to study the allegations which come as bitter
memories of the community's savage repression under Saddam's Sunni
Arab-dominated regime have been revived by his latest war crimes trial.
"The committee will be legal and political and will choose a suitable
approach for its work and prove the facts about these files," Barzani's
chief of staff Fuad Hussein said Sunday.
"It will be a fact-finding mission and not a punishment committee," he
said, adding that the committee's members would be appointed by Barzani in
concert with the prime minister of the regional government and the speaker
of the regional parliament.
"This matter has become huge and very sensitive for the people of
Kurdistan," he said.
The names of more than 150 people who allegedly spied on their fellow Kurds
for Saddam's mukhabarat intelligence service after the Kurdish uprising of
1991 were published by the Awina (Mirror) and Hawalati (Citizen) newspapers
Friday.
According to the newspapers, which both went through several print runs on
the day of publication, the mukhabarat recruited people close to the two
main Kurdish rebel leaders, Barzani and Jalal Talabani, now Iraq's
president.
The allegations drew demands for an inquiry from members of both former
rebel factions -- Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Talabani's
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- and by Saturday more than half of the 111
MPs in the regional parliament had signed a petition calling for an
immediate debate.
"Those who worked with the mukhabarat must be tried," said PUK regional
lawmaker Ariz Abdallah.
"These agents of the odious Saddam regime must become examples for others
like them in the future," said KDP counterpart Khiman Zirar.
The allegations also prompted a spate of law suits against the alleged
informers by their victims and a variety of threats against the journalists
by those named.
Adel Omar, who works for a computer maintenance company in the Iraqi
Kurdish cultural capital of Sulaimaniyah said he was "shocked and stunned"
when he saw how many big names in the two main former rebel groups had
worked for the Baathist regime.
"Publishing the files showed how the Iraqi mukhabarat infiltrated the
parties and the Kurdish administration," he said, adding that he hoped the
government would hold them accountable.
The revelations come at a particularly sensitive time for Iraqi Kurds after
Saddam and six co-defendants went on trial charged with genocide over the
1988 Anfal campaign.
The campaign, in which hundreds of thousands were gassed, relocated and
their villages destroyed was not carried out just by Iraqi soldiers, but
also by pro-government Kurdish militias.
Victims' families have been calling for those who collaborated in the Anfal
to be brought to justice too, not just Saddam and his main henchmen.
For Yassin Taha, a high school teacher in Sulaimaniyah, the newspaper
reports of Kurdish spies just made him furious.
"They have to receive the necessary punishment for their treachery against
their own kind," he said.