Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris

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