IRAQ. Patrick Cockburn

because she fell in love with a Muslim man has led to a spiral of violence in northern Iraq in which 23 elderly factory workers have been shot dead and 800 Yazidi students forced to flee their university in Mosul. The killings began with an act of brutality horrific even by Iraqi standards.

      A 17-year-old girl called Doaa Aswad Dekhil from the town of Bashika in the northern province of Nineveh converted to Islam. She belonged to the Yazidi religion, a mixture of Islam, Judaism and Christianity as well as Zoroastrian and Gnostic beliefs. The 350,000-strong Kurdish speaking Yazidi community is centred in the north and east of Mosul and has often faced persecution in the past, being denounced as "devil worshippers". On 7 April, Doaa returned home after she had converted to Islam in order to marry a Sunni Muslim who was also a Kurd. She had been told by a Sunni Muslim cleric that her family had forgiven her for her elopement and conversion. Instead she was met in Bashika by a large mob of 2,000 people led by members of her family.

      What happened next was captured in a mobile phone video. It shows a dark-haired girl dressed in a red track suit top and black underwear with blood streaming from her face. As she tries to rise to her feet she is kicked and hit on the head with a concrete block.

      Armed and uniformed police stand by watching her being killed over several minutes. Many in the crowd hold up their phone cameras to record the scene. Nobody tries to help her as she is battered to death.

      The savagery of the lynching led to threats of retaliation. This part of Nineveh, though outside the jurisdiction of the KRG, is strongly under its influence. The murdered girl and her intended husband were Kurds. The KRG's President, Massoud Barzani, held meetings with Yazidi leaders. Kurdish officials in Mosul said at the time that they had the situation under control. The KRG is now calling for an investigation into what happened, though the central government in Baghdad has little authority in the north of the country.

      Retaliation when it came was savage. On 23 April a bus carrying back workers from a weaving factory in Mosul to Bashika, which has a Christian as well as a Yazidi population, was stopped by several cars filled with unidentified gunmen at about 2pm. They asked the Christians to get off the bus, according to the police account. They then took the bus to eastern Mosul city where they lined up the men, mostly elderly, against a wall and shot them to death.

      The revenge killings led to two days of demonstrations in Bashika. Sunni Muslims, also Kurds, feared retaliation. Yazidis say that 204 members of their community have been killed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Some 800 Yazidi students at Mosul university have since fled to Kurdish cities such as Dohuk where they are safe. They say they were told to convert or die.

      In the Baghdad district of Dora the Christian community has been threatened in recent weeks and told to convert to Islam, pay protection money or be killed. Many have fled to other parts of the city.

      Sectarian war continues in Baghdad. A bomb exploded in a market in the Shia district of Bayaa yesterday, killing 35 and wounding 80 people. "What did these innocent people do to be killed by a car bomb?" shouted a witness. "Where is the government? Where is security?" In practice, however, it is impossible to protect the crowded streets of Baghdad from vehicles packed with explosives.

      Thursday, 10 May 2007

TEACHERS’ KILLINGS TURN SUNNIS AGAINST AL-QA’IDA

      The murder of Juma'a, the headmaster of a primary school in the Ghaziliyah district of west Baghdad, explains why many Sunnis are increasingly hostile to al-Qa’ida in Iraq. At the same time, the Sunni community as a whole continues to support armed resistance to the US-led occupation.

      Juma'a, a teacher in his forties with three daughters and one son, was told by members of al-Qa'ida in his Sunni neighbourhood to close his school. Other headmasters got the same message but also refused to comply. The demand from al-Qa'ida seems to have come because it sees schools as being under the control of the government.

      Juma'a knew the danger he was running. A few months earlier, he was detained by another Sunni insurgent group as he queued for gasoline. The insurgents suspected he was carrying fake identity papers and was really a Shia. They held him for three days until he proved to them he was a Sunni.

      Two weeks later, Juma'a was kidnapped again. This time there was no release. Other headmasters were kidnapped at the same time and their bodies found soon after. His family wanted to look in the Baghdad morgue, the Bab al-Modam, but faced a problem. The morgue is deemed by Sunni to be under the control of Shia militiaman who may kill or arrest Sunni looking for murdered relatives.

      Finally, Juma'a's sister-in-law, Wafa, and niece went to the morgue on the grounds that women are less likely to be attacked. They passed through a room filled with headless bodies and severed limbs and looked at photographs of the faces of the dead. In 15 minutes, they identified Juma'a, but they were not strong enough to transport his body home in a cheap wooden coffin.

      The revolt in Iraq against the occupation has been confined hitherto to the five-million-strong Sunni community. The growing unpopularity of al-Qa'ida in Iraq among the Sunni is partly a revulsion against its massacres of Shia by suicide bombers that lead to tit-for-tat killings of Sunni.

      It is also because al-Qa'ida kills Sunni who have only limited connections with the government. Those killed include minor officials in the agriculture ministry, barbers who give un-Islamic haircuts and garbage collectors. The murder of the latter is because it is convenient for al-Qa'ida to leave large heaps of rubbish uncollected on roadsides in which to hide mines.

      The most visible sign of the revolt against al-Qa'ida in Iraq is along the roads passing through the deserts of Anbar province to the west of Baghdad to Jordan and Syria. In recent weeks, the road to Syria has been controlled by members of the Abu Risha tribe, led by Mahmoud Abu Risha and supported by the US. It may be al-Qa'ida has overplayed its hand. In January, its leaders announced the establishment of the ISI based in western Iraq. That united resistance groups sympathetic to al-Qa'ida. The ISI began to purge resistance activists disagreeing with its line. Sunni families were forced to make contributions and send some of their young men to fight alongside the ISI.

      The Iraqi insurgency is notoriously fragmented and its politics are shadowy. By one account, the ISI got chased out of Mosul in the north soon after being formed and took refuge in the Himrin mountains south of Kirkuk. Though shaken, it remains effective under the leadership of Omar al-Baghdadi, a former army officer.

      The ISI, as with other resistance groups, owes its military effectiveness in large part to well-trained officers from the Iraqi army and, in particular, the Republican Guards.

      Windows at the US embassy in Baghdad were rattled by an explosion yesterday during a visit by Dick Cheney. The US Vice-President had arrived unannounced to see Iraqi political leaders. Washington may be getting worried that the so-called "surge", the 30,000 US reinforcements being sent to Iraq, are not producing the dramatic results hoped for by President George Bush.

      Meanwhile, a suicide bomber in a truck packed with explosives killed at least 19 people and wounded 80 in the Kurdish capital of Arbil. It was one of the first bombs in Kurdistan for over a year and blew up outside the Kurdish Interior Ministry, leaving an enormous crater.

      Wednesday, 16 May 2007

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AHMED CHALABI?

      Ahmed Chalabi stands on the bank of the Tigris river within easy sniper range of the opposite side and surveys the twisted steel girders of the al-Sarafiyah bridge in Baghdad, its central spans torn apart by a massive truck bomb last month. The force of the blast impresses him. "I am surprised that the explosion managed to bring down three spans," he says as he looks at the wreckage.

      It is a placid enough scene but nothing in Baghdad is truly safe. I supposed that Mr Chalabi's numerous and heavily armed police and army guards knew their business but I was hoping that we would not dawdle too long. The al-Sarafiyah bridge, once one of the sights of Baghdad, connected the Shia district where we were standing with Wazzariyah, where there had been clashes with Sunni insurgents. I selected a reassuringly vast concrete plinth of the bridge to dodge behind if there was any shooting. Conspicuous in a dark business suit, Mr Chalabi seemed uncaring about our