Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris
Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris
Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris
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n° 272 • November 2007 <strong>Information</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>liaison</strong> <strong>bulletin</strong> • 9 •<br />
committed several attacks <strong>and</strong> armed<br />
actions”, according to an official<br />
communiqué published by the<br />
semi-official Mehr news agency on<br />
25 November. The members of the<br />
group had “committed a bomb attack<br />
during an exhibition on the sacred<br />
<strong>de</strong>fence (i.e. the Iran-Iraq war),<br />
attacked <strong>and</strong> set fire to a police station<br />
at San<strong>and</strong>aj (capital of the Iranian<br />
province of Kurdistan) <strong>and</strong> caused<br />
several bomb explosions”, the<br />
communiqué ad<strong>de</strong>d. PEJAK, the<br />
acronym for the Party for a Free<br />
I<br />
RAQI Kurdistan is being used<br />
as a haven of peace by numbers<br />
of Iraqi Christians who<br />
have found shelter there for a<br />
peaceful coexistence, after fleeing<br />
other regions where their churches<br />
have been targeted <strong>and</strong> their<br />
priests kidnapped. The large number<br />
of them whose families had<br />
originally come from the region,<br />
have rebuilt houses in villages that<br />
have often been long <strong>de</strong>serted,<br />
near the bor<strong>de</strong>r with Turkish Kurdistan.<br />
Others, coming from Baghdad,<br />
Mossul or elsewhere rent<br />
housing, often at exorbitant rates,<br />
in Christian quarters, like that of<br />
Einkawa, on the outskirts of Irbil,<br />
while waiting for things to calm<br />
down enough for them to return,<br />
or envisage going into exile<br />
Life in Kurdistan, is linked to the<br />
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).<br />
On 8 November, the government<br />
daily Iran had also announced the<br />
<strong>de</strong>ath of three Kurdish fighters in<br />
the province of Kurdistan. For the<br />
last two years, PEJAK fighters<br />
have been multiplying their armed<br />
activities in the Kurdish provinces<br />
of Iran. The province of Kurdistan,<br />
like the provinces of Kermanshah<br />
to its South <strong>and</strong> of Western Azerbaijan<br />
to the North, is mainly<br />
inhabited by Kurds.<br />
IRAQI KURDISTAN<br />
WELCOMES CHRISTIAN REFUGEES<br />
abroad. Mgr. Rabban, Bishop of<br />
Irbil <strong>and</strong> Ahmadiya, estimates that<br />
“the number of Christians who<br />
have sought refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan<br />
is over 70,000”. “Over two hundred<br />
villages that had been ab<strong>and</strong>oned<br />
or <strong>de</strong>stroyed in the years 1987-88 during<br />
Saddam Hussein’s offensive<br />
against the Kurds have been rebuilt.<br />
Those who owned l<strong>and</strong> have put it to<br />
use, others rent it out”. He blames<br />
the attacks on the Christians on<br />
“fanatical fundamentalist <strong>and</strong> the<br />
600,000 hooligans <strong>and</strong> criminals freed<br />
by Saddam Hussein before his fall”.<br />
“Three priests were killed in Mossul.<br />
Churches were burned, dynamited,<br />
machine-gunned. Twenty days ago<br />
two priests were kidnapped in Mossul<br />
<strong>and</strong> held to ransom”. These acts of<br />
violence have aroused a wave of<br />
panic amongst the Iraqi Christians,<br />
he says with alarm, <strong>and</strong> those who<br />
could have sought refuge in Iraqi<br />
Kurdistan, “this area of brotherhood,<br />
where they have been generously welcomed”.<br />
The Christian refugees<br />
complain, however, of the high<br />
cost of living in Kurdistan, consi<strong>de</strong>rably<br />
higher than in other regions.<br />
In view of the lowering of violence<br />
in Baghdad, about twenty Christian<br />
families have returned there<br />
from Einkawa, according to Mgr.<br />
Rabban.<br />
Irbil, the capital of Kurdistan, with<br />
over a million inhabitants <strong>and</strong><br />
lying some 330 Km North of Baghdad,<br />
has a flourishing economy<br />
<strong>and</strong> has become a magnet for the<br />
hundreds of thous<strong>and</strong>s of displaced<br />
persons fleeing violence in<br />
other parts of Iraq. However, faced<br />
with the influx of displaced persons<br />
coming from other provinces,<br />
the Kurdish authorities have set up<br />
a “resi<strong>de</strong>ntial permit” <strong>and</strong> newcomers<br />
must have a Kurdish guarantor.<br />
At the end of 2003, at the suggestion<br />
of the US Army, Irbil was<br />
surroun<strong>de</strong>d by a mechanically dug<br />
ditch or moat, four-metre wi<strong>de</strong> by<br />
three <strong>de</strong>ep, impassable to vehicles<br />
discouraging to pe<strong>de</strong>strians. It has<br />
cut all the unobtrusive points of<br />
access to the city, blocked all diversions<br />
<strong>and</strong> forced all traffic to enter<br />
through eight strictly controlled<br />
crossing points. There is a peshmerga<br />
guard post every 500 metres<br />
all round the moat, each is full<br />
view of the others on either si<strong>de</strong>.