BAGHDAD: Thousands of Iraqis were detained or abducted in the northern ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk by the Kurdish security services when they controlled the city, Iraqi local officials said on Sunday.
Officials told Arab News that thousands of people in Kirkuk had begun arriving in police stations to report the “abduction” or “detention” of their sons by the Kurdish security services without being given legal justifications.
“More than 7,000 people, all of them Arabs or Turkmen, were either detained or abducted in Kirkuk by Assayish (a Kurdish security service) during the years following 2003,” Rakan Saeed, the acting governor of Kirkuk, said in a televised interview last week. “All these cases and violations are registered in the local government records,” he said.
Kirkuk is at the core of the dispute between Baghdad and Kurdistan as both sides lay claim to it. According to the Iraqi constitution, Kirkuk is a disputed area to be governed by a local council consisting equally of representatives belonging to Arab Sunnis and Shiites, Turkmen and Christians. But Kurds who have claimed that they are the majority in the city took advantage of the weakness of the federal government to ignore all the political agreements and control the city, local officials said. Gaining control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk is vital for Kurds as it represents the backbone of the economics of their planned state of Kurds.
“Kurds have multiple security services operating in Kirkuk, but the detention and abduction were mainly carried out by Assayish,” Sheikh Hatem Al-Taei, the head of the Arab Council in Kirkuk, told Arab News.
“All these detentions were not based on legal arrests, and the targeted people were mainly the Arab Sunnis,” Al-Taei said. “Whoever talked or complained was either assassinated or disappeared.”
Kirkuk’s governor said the Assayish (security services) of both the two Kurdish parties, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, were involved in these detentions and abductions, and the detainees were transferred to Irbil and Sulaimaniya.
Assayish is a Kurdish word meaning “the stability.” It is the service in charge of the internal security in the Kurdish region and identical with the Peshmerga forces, which represent the army in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“We had no official statistics or exact numbers, because people just started formally reporting about these cases,” Najat Hussien, a Turkman member of the local council of Kirkuk, told Arab News.
Kirkuk’s local officials said that these detentions and abductions were not limited to the Arabs but included Turkmen and Christians in Kirkuk and the surrounding towns.
“Most of these operations were targeting the Arabic majority areas inside Kirkuk and the southwestern parts of the city,” Taei said. “It was clear for us that they aim to make a demographic changes, in the city,” Al-Taei, added.
Thousands of Iraqis detained in Kirkuk by Kurds during their rule
Thousands of Iraqis detained in Kirkuk by Kurds during their rule
Israeli settlers attack Palestinian Bedouin community near Jerusalem
- Al-Ma’azi community consists of approximately 40 families — about 200 people in total, 70 of whom are under the age of 18
- Members of the community are frequently attacked by settlers who want to seize its land to expand and connect nearby settlements
LONDON: Israeli settlers on Thursday attacked a Palestinian Bedouin community near the town of Jaba’ in the occupied West Bank, northeast of East Jerusalem.
Jerusalem Governorate said members of Al-Ma’azi community are frequently the targets of attacks by settlers who want to seize land in Jaba’ to expand their Adam settlement and connect it with the Binyamin settlement.
The community consists of approximately 40 families — about 200 people in total, 70 of whom are under the age of 18 — and they live in harsh conditions lacking necessities, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
Bedouins near Jerusalem face ongoing assaults by settlers and Israeli forces designed to displace Palestinians and expand settlements, Jerusalem Governorate said.
More than 33 Palestinian Bedouin communities have been displaced by Israeli authorities from 66 locations in the West Bank since late 2023, resulting in the forced transfer of 2,373 residents, according to officials figures from the Palestinian Authority.
Last week, 20 Palestinian families from the Shallal Al-Auja community moved from their homes north of Jericho to another area in the face of repeated attacks and threats by Israeli settlers.
