Turkish Forum

Category: Iraq

  • An aspect of the misfortune to which Kerkuk region is exposed

    An aspect of the misfortune to which Kerkuk region is exposed

    An aspect of the misfortune to which Kerkuk region is exposed: Satellite Maps of 2002 is compared with maps of 2007 

    Date: May 05, 2009

    No: Rep.9-E0509

    In the early morning of Thursday 15 April 2009, the inhabitants of the oldest Kerkuk neighborhood, Musalla, were awakened by the sound of bulldozers destroying the wall and graves of the Seyyid Kızı part of the large Musalla Turkmen graveyard.[1] The Musalla graveyard is the oldest graveyard in Kerkuk and comprises thousands of graves including those of many celebrated Turkmen. Inhabitants flocked to the area, stopping the demolition before complaining to the police office. Nevertheless, about 15 graves were destroyed.

    After investigation, it was found that an official contract was given by the chief of the Investment Commission of Endowments directorate of Kerkuk, a Kurd from Kerkuk, for the building of a commercial complex in that part of the graveyard.[2] The Commission director [3] is a Peshmerga Kurd brought from the province of Sulaymaniya during the distribution of senior posts between members of the Kurdish KDP and PUK political parties directly after occupation. The person who was given contract is a Kurd from Sulaymaniya province, too.

    This is part of policy of the Kurdish political parties, who remain alone in administering Kerkuk since the occupation in 2003, to eradicate the Turkmen characteristics of the region in their attempts to Kurdify the province, control the huge oil reserve and annex it to the Kurdish region. The names of streets, bridges, villages and sub-districts were changed to Kurdish. The signboards inside governmental offices and hospitals were changed to Kurdish, even though a large part of the Kerkuk population cannot read it. Sculptures of prominent Kurds, such as, killed-Peshmerga militants, have also been erected on the streets.

    In 2003, the first Kurds-dominated Kerkuk city council has dramatically Kurdified the administration, which was mainly distributed between the two Kurdish parties, KDP and PUK. Approximately 10,000 staff was appointed to Kerkuk governmental offices, of whom almost 80% were Kurds brought from Duhok, Sulaymaniya and Erbil. Security forces have been completely replaced by Kurds. They dominate the police system. Thousands of Peshmergas militants from other Kurdish regions are also distributed in Kerkuk province.

    Kurdish political parties have also settled tens of thousands of Kurdish families in Kerkuk province. Kerkuk’s population, which was 870,000 at the day of occupation, became more than 1,300,000, [4] Moreover, more than 100,000 Arabs have either left Kerkuk or been expelled by the Kurdish Peshmerga militants. About thirty Arab villages in the south and south west Kerkuk was evacuated. The population of some Kurdish villages has been increased several-fold, for example, Kara Injir and Shuwan.

    The incoming families have built on almost every piece of undeveloped land within Kerkuk city. [Table 1] Many large Kurdish neighborhoods and shopping centers have been erected, particularly to the east and north of Kerkuk city. [Map 1 and 2] The Kerkuk city area is increased about 20 km2 [Map 3]. These lands mostly belonged to Turkmen and also to municipality and government. The number of complaint cases which have been presented to the Property Claim Commission (PCC) in Kerkuk is about 40,000, about 80% of which are of Turkmen. The Kurdified administration of Kerkuk has continually hampered the decisions of the PCC. Today, about 20% of the cases are only completed. Many of those who win the decision of the PCC still could not get their lands.

    UNAMI office in Kerkuk

    The degree to which the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) is involved in Kerkuk issues requires close monitoring of the situation in the province. Furthermore, UNAMI is going to make a historical decision on Kerkuk which is going to influence deeply all the Iraqi communities and the future of Iraq. Despite numerous calls for a UNAMI representation in Kerkuk from Arab and Turkmen groups, it was before about a year such a presence was established and it remains under resourced and challenged in meeting the requirements of the multifaceted Kerkuk crisis.

    The UNAMI representative lacks a permanent staff, and staff members are frequently replaced with others and work only two or three days in a week. Rarely can two staff members be found at the same time. There is no bureau assigned for the UNAMI in Kerkuk. A room had been assigned to UNAMI staff during the meetings of the Kerkuk Article 23 Commission in the building of the Kerkuk governorate. At the time Arab and Kurd, but not Turkmen, translators were present – making Turkmen authorities worry about the accuracy of the translation of such historical negotiations.

    Recommendations:

    ü To the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq

    · Complete the institution of UNAMI office in Kerkuk and provide it with sufficient staff.

    · Provide the office with experts in human rights, public relations, minority issues, urbanization engineers and international law.

    · Provide a Turkmen – English translator

    ü The Iraqi government

    · Provide the requirements to the Kerkuk Article 23 Commission to enable the commissioners to realize their mission

    · Realize the decision, which you made, to evacuate the governmental buildings in Kerkuk

    · Replace Peshmerga militants with Iraqi army units throughout Kerkuk province

    ü The Kurdish parties

    · Abandon the inflexible policies to assist the solution of Kerkuk problem and facilitate the reconciliation processes which certainly quicken building of Democratic Iraq and establishment of regional stability.

    ü The international civil society organizations: Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International

    · Open offices in Kerkuk to closely observe the human rights situation and huge demographical changes [Map 1, 2 and 3] and publish regular reports

    ü To the international community and authorities

    · Actively support the decisions of Iraqi government and the Iraqi parliament, particularly, on Kerkuk, and provide or withdraw your support accordingly.

    ü The Turkmen and Arab groups in Kerkuk

    · Institute a well developed press office staffed with English speaking journalists to enlighten the international community about:

    o Developments in Kerkuk issues, particularly, that of the Kerkuk commission

    o The huge human rights violations since occupation, the dramatic demographic changes and the Kurdish domination of almost all power centers in Kerkuk

    ______________________________

    References:

    1. For centuries, Musalla graveyard is visited every Thursday by thousands of females of Kerkuk. Whilst such phenomenon shows the degree of importance which Kerkuk people give to the dead, at the same time, it is considered one of the very few social activities for females in such a conservative community.

    2. Kurdish families had already built tens of houses at the east and north of Musalla graveyard.

    3. It is well known that almost all the finances and lands which the directorate of endowments of Kerkuk province possesses have been donated by Turkmen.

    4. The numbers of both the Kurds and the Turkmen, who had been exiled from Kerkuk province during the Arabification policies of Ba’ath regime, were 100,000 according to the United States Special Committee for Refugees and 120,000 according to the Human Rights Watch and the Kurdish parties. It should be known that a large number of the expelled Kurdish families were not born in Kerkuk, the came to Kerkuk from other Kurdish province.

    Table No. 1. Estimated Turkmen, municipality and government lands which were appropriated by Kurdish militias and families after occupation

    Numbers
    Address

    4.784.200 m2

    Huge lands has been appropriated and built by Kurdish Peshmerga and Kurdish families:

    ü 4.085.000 m2 Second Army Corps Complexes [Map No. 4 and 5]

    ü 237.500 m2 Khalid Army center (Muasker Khalid)

    ü 305.700 m2 East and North of Musalla Graveyard [Map No. 6 and 7]

    ü 156.000 m2 Arasa Region

    1,915 Houses
    Houses of Army Corps opposite al-Hurriyya Airport:

    ü 30 Houses (300m2 each house)

    ü 30 Houses (300m2 each house)

    ü 94 Houses (450m2 each house)

    Officers Houses / opposite Army Corps:

    ü 40 Houses (400m2 each house)

    ü 23 Houses (400m2 each house)

    Officers Houses / Hay al-Wasiti:

    ü 122 Houses (400m2 each house)

    Non commissioned Officer Houses / opposite Army Corps:

    ü 124 Houses (170m2 each house)

    ü 80 Houses (150m2 each house)

    Army Flats / opposite Army Corps:

    ü 48 Houses (170m2 each house)

    The Houses of Military Bases / opposite al-Hurriyya Airport:

    ü 39 Houses (600m2 each house)

    ü 15 Houses (600m2 each house)

    Houses of Store of foodstuffs

    ü 120 houses

    Houses built on 13800 M2 Lands facing Sahat al-Tayaran

    ü 700 houses

    Houses built near al-Shamal Garage in front of Suq al-Hasir

    ü 200 houses

    Houses built at the side of Gas al-Shamal and given to Kurdish families

    ü 250 houses

    21 buildings
    Baath Party team Centers

    ü al-Arapha (Nearby the Arapha market center) – 1 floor

    ü Domiz Quarter / Behind the Dispensary by Kurdish Democratic Shabiba Union – 2 floors

    ü Iskan Quarter by a Kurdish organization – 2 floors.

    ü 7 Nisan by Kurdish families expelled from Kerkuk – 2 floors (300 m2)

    ü Shahit Mahir Center by Kurdish Shabibat Babagurgur Center – 2 floors.

    ü al-Nakhwa by Congress for the Freedom of Kurdistan / 2 floor

    ü al-Hay al-Askeri – 1 floor

    ü al-Qadisiyya al-Ula on the main street – 2 (375 m2)

    ü al-Qadisiyya al-Thaniyya – 1 (348.66 m2)

    ü Martyr Aoda in al-Qadisiyya al-Thaniyya 1 (359.36 m2)

    ü al-Hurriyya al-Ula – 2 floors

    ü al-Hurriyya al-Thaniya – 1 floor

    ü Hay al-Nasr al-Ula (412.5 m2)

    ü Hay al-Nasr al-Thaniyya – 2 floors

    ü Hay al-Hujjaj – 1 floor

    ü al-Uruba Quarter – 1 floor

    ü al-Shorja – 2 floors

    ü Hay Girnata – 1 (800m2)

    ü Sakr al-Arab – 1 floor

    ü 1 Mart – 2 floors

    ü Hay al-Nidaa – 2 floors

    15 buildings
    Government Buildings: (Few of these buildings were evacuated)

    ü General Security Directorate/close to Kerkuk Secondary School–4 floors

    ü Building of store of Ministry of defense – 1 floors

    ü al-Qudus Fidaiyyi Saddam Center in Hay al-Nur al-Thaniyya – 1 floor

    ü al-Mansur Security Directorate – 1 floor

    ü Military Guest Hose / Atlas Street 1 (800m2)

    ü Mandhuma al-Sharqiyya Lial-Istithmarat – 2 floors

    ü Kerkuk Recruitment (Tajnid) Directorate – 1 floor

    ü Arapha Security Office -1 floor

    ü Kerkuk Inspection (Jawazat) Directorate by Kurdish al-Taakhi Association – 1 floor.

    ü Iraqi Women Union by under the same name by the Kurdish authorities – 2 floors.

    ü Security Unit of Kerkuk/close to Directorate of agriculture by Kurdish Islamic Association–2 floors

    ü Center of Jerusalem Army by Center of Kurdistan Democratic Party – 2 floors.

    ü Workers Union Syndicate by Kurdish Workers Union and Faculty of Science – 3 floors.

    ü Northern Center of Ba’ath Party Organizations by Kurdish Democratic Organizations/ Faili Kurds Foundation – 2 floors.

    ü Building of store of foodstuffs

    265 shops
    215 shops were distributed to the Kurds at the Garage al-Hawija

    12 complexes
    Government complexes:

    ü Both Kerkuk Physicians and Engineering clubs were occupied by the Kurdish Parties.

    ü The Officer Housing complexes, which is turned into Kurdish Students Union Center includes:

    · Officer Hosting department

    · Officers Club

    · Officer Market

    ü The historical large Kerkuk Barracks, were taken by the Kurds and used as Kurdish Cultural Center.

    ü Gunpowder Stores – several buildings

    ü Scutcher

    ü Directorate of municipalities

    ü Directorate for social welfare in al-Wasiti neighborhood

    ü The old large prison of Kerkuk,

    ü Military Police complex in the center of the City. ± 0.5 x 0.5 km

    ü The large Olympic Sports Complex in al-Shorja neighborhood.

    ü National Kerkuk al-Sharika Sports Complex which is about 7 x 5 km2

    ü Kerkuk Sports and Youth Complex by the Kurdistan Shabiba Union. ± 0.5 x 0.5 km

    New Neighborhoods
    Neighborhoods built by Kurds

    1. Several Neighborhoods along the eastern border of Kerkuk city, which is about 25 kilometers. [Photo 1, 2 and 8]

    2. Hundreds of houses on both sides of Leylan Road

    3. Northern boundary of the city is extended about 10 km

    4. Baghdad Road neighborhood behind the Festival Stadium, a public land appropriated by Kurdish families where they built ±100 houses.

    5. Houses built in Hay al-Qadisiyya and Hay al-Askeri Neighborhoods.

    6. Along both sides of the road (± 5Km) between Shorja and al-Qadiaiyya neighborhoods

    7. Hundreds houses at the eastern side of the Musalla graveyard [Map 8]

    8. Fifty houses behind the residential apartments on the football stadium Seyyid Kizi in Musalla neighborhoods

    9. Sixty houses behind the old industry school in Musalla neighborhoods

    10. 59 houses were built near the mosque Ashra al-Mubashshara and military account headquarters

    11. 110 houses behind the police houses and in front of al-Amal al-Shaabi distributed to Kurdish families

    12. Twenty Luxury houses of Domis distributed to Kurds – Korya side

    13. Two hundreds Luxury houses of Domis distributed to Kurds – citadel side

    14. Large number sporadic pieces of lands were built by Kurdish families inside the city

    Enlarge the Map

    SOITM
    www.turkmen.nl

  • Kurdish Jewish History Arrives In Baltimore

    Kurdish Jewish History Arrives In Baltimore

    Kurdish-Jewish history preserved by author and son of an immigrant.

    Rochelle Eisenberg
    Staff Writer

    ariel-sabar

    When Ariel Sabar was growing up in Los Angeles, he was embarrassed by the exotic ways of his immigrant Kurdish-Jewish father, Dr. Yona Sabar. Dr. Sabar, a professor of Aramaic at the University of California-Los Angeles, was born and raised in the remote northern Iraqi village of Zakho.

    Years later, Mr. Sabar decided to travel to Zakho with his father. The result is “My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search For His Jewish Past In Kurdish Iraq” (Algonquin Books), winner of the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.

    Next Thursday, May 7, at 7 p.m., Mr. Sabar will speak at the Center for Jewish Education, at 5750 Park Heights Ave., about his book as part of CJE’s “On The Same Page” initiative. The program was piloted two years to bring together Jewish adults to discuss books with Jewish themes.

    The BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES spoke recently with Mr. Sabar. He worked as a journalist for 15 years, including three years as an investigative reporter at the Baltimore Sun.

    Why did you write the book?

    I was the consummate 1980s L.A. boy. I bought into the L.A. mythology. I boogie-boarded, bought my clothing at a surf shop. As I saw it through a boy’s eyes, my dad didn’t fit in. He didn’t know how to dress, he cut his own hair. I kept him at arm’s length

    The turning point in my life was the birth of my own son, Seth, in 2002. When you have your own kid, it changes your perspective of your relationship with your parents. I felt I was unfair to my own father.

    I also was drawn to the story about a forgotten-but-ancient group of Jews who were part of the oldest community of the Diaspora.

    What was your biggest surprise in Zakho?

    I heard that in Kurdistan (sic), the Jews and Muslims got along. I always was skeptical.

    People knew immediately we were Jews. The first thing the hosts said was, “Welcome to your home.” They invited us to drink tea and eat elaborate meals. There were still fond memories of Jewish life.

    Saddam Hussein tried to rename the Jewish quarter “the Liberated Quarter.” He didn’t want a trace. [After Saddam’s overthrow], my dad’s hometown went back to calling it “the Jewish Quarter.”

    What do you see as disheartening today between Jews and Muslims?

    People look at Iraq and read the headlines. There is this assumption that this was always the way, that they hated each other all the time. The story of the Kurdish Jews and the Jews in Iraq was that when the Israelites were exiled, they formed a pretty good pluralistic society. There were problems, but nothing of the scale of what was seen in Europe.

    What can American Jews learn from the history of the Kurdish Jews?

    What we can take away is the value of reaffirming our ties to our families’ histories. One of the themes of the book is that in the face of so much change, what can we hold on to? Make an effort to talk to grandparents, write down or video their stories and discus what it is about the past you want to preserve.

    Any stories from people you met on your book tours?

    Once or twice, a father of Mideastern background, in one case an Iraqi and in one case even a Kurdish Jew, said to me, “Now I have something to pass on to my child.”

    One son said, “I had no idea I had this history. I didn’t realize we had a rich past.”

    What also came out of the book tour were documents and memoirs that were given to me. I’ve became a repository of Kurdish Jews. I hope to maintain the e-mails and documents that people sent to me.

    What’s your next project?

    It was inspired by the story of how my parents met. My father was in his first year in New York and thinking of going back to Israel. America was not what it seemed. He sees a woman entering Washington Square park, taking photos of people who didn’t succeed in America. It reminded him of the Kurds in Israel. He talked to her and they got married four months later.

    I want to find other stories of people with strikingly different backgrounds, who happen to meet by chance in New York iconic public places.

    Anything else?

    A big Iraqi magazine wrote a four-page spread on the book. I have made friends on Facebook with Kurds in Turkey. An Arab radio station did a piece. The book is being translated into Hebrew, to be published later this year or early next year, and the Dutch have bought the rights to the book. You see the way the book is being received by all three faiths. It’s an affirmation.

    Source:  www.jewishtimes.com, May 1, 2009

  • A family history on the Jews of Kurdistan (sic)

    A family history on the Jews of Kurdistan (sic)

    By SHELDON KIRSHNER, Staff Reporter

    Wednesday, 08 April 2009

    Walter Fischel, an American academic, visited the Jews of  Kurdistan in the 1940s. “Such Jews,” he exclaimed with a sense of wonder. “Men virile and wild-looking. Women wearing embroidered turbans, earrings, bracelets, even ring-noses, and with symbols tattooed into their faces…”

    Roughly 25,000 Jews lived in Kurdistan back then, 18,000 in Iraq and the rest in Iran, Syria and Turkey.

    Largely illiterate but famous as gifted storytellers and speaking the ancient language of Aramaic, Kurdish Jews were found in some 200 Muslim villages and towns throughout the Middle East on the eve of Israel’s establishment.

    Ariel Sabar, an American journalist, has more than a passing knowledge of this exotic Jewish community, most of whose members immigrated to Israel in the early 1950s.

    Sabar, in My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (Algonquin Books), produces a family history and a portrait of Kurdish Jews in this richly documented volume.

    As the title suggests, the book turns on his father, Yona, a linguist, researcher and professor of Hebrew at the University of California in Los Angeles.

    Born in the northern Iraqi town of Zakho, in the heart of Iraq’s Kurdish region, but raised in Israel, Yona Sabar  has published more than 90 monographs and two books on Aramaic – a nearly extinct language today – and the folklore of Kurdish Jews.

    Despite his father’s international reputation as a scholar, Sabar did not appreciate his accomplishments and was even ashamed of him.

    “I swore horribly in front of him, ridiculed him behind his back and took pains to avoid him, to be nothing like him,” he readily admits.

    Sabar, who was born in Los Angeles,  wanted to be part of what he describes as “the California mainstream,” and since his father rejected that ethos, father and son, like oil and water, did not mix.

    “When we collided, it wasn’t pretty,” he writes in this frank and pungent memoir. “I threw tantrums and unleashed hailstorms of four-letter words. He stewed privately over how any son could behave that way toward his father, then consoled himself with the hypothesis that this was how children were in America.”

    The cultural clash he alludes to forms  but a segment of the core of My Father’s Paradise. In the final pages, Sabar comes to terms with him as he reclaims his heritage and visits Zakho.

    The Jews of Zakho lived among 26,000 Kurdish Muslims and were concentrated in the mahala Juheeya, the oldest district, on an island on the Habur River. “Their mud-brick houses lined narrow alleys that zigzagged down to the river,” Sabar writes.

    Since they were so isolated, they spoke Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Middle East until Arab armies from Arabia conquered Mesopotamia in the 17th century.

    By all accounts, Jews and Kurds lived in harmony until Israel’s creation in 1948. To the Jews of Zakho, Sabar observes, Zionism represented, among other things, hopes for a better life and unease over the breakdown of Jewish-Muslim relations.

    The first Jews to make aliyah were the have-nots – the small peddlers, the porters, the beggars. “Most carried only the rags on their backs and perhaps a single clay bowl,” says Sabar.

    Once Sabar’s family was ready to leave in 1951, the Iraqi government passed a law that cancelled the citizenship and froze all the assets and property of departing Jews.

    Sabar’s father was 13 years old when he and his parents and siblings left the country of their ancestors.

    “The end arrived suddenly,” Sabar writes. “A line of motor coaches rolled into town early one April morning, and word went out that the time had come. Under a sky still full of stars, Jewish families, anxious and bleary, dragged suitcases and children out front doors and into cramped alleys that led to the main street.”

    Hundreds of Kurds bid farewell to their Jewish neighbours, but the atmosphere was very different in Baghdad. “At the airport, angry mobs pressed against the barricades, hurling curses.”

    Life was hard for Sabar’s family in Jerusalem, particularly for his grandmother: “Her relatives bought her a washing machine and stove, but the controls confounded her… She trudged off to night classes to learn Hebrew, but quit in frustration after two years, scarcely able to distinguish the letters of the alphabet. She had never learned to read or write her mother tongue. Why did people think she could master a second language?”

    Sabar’s father, Yona, was more adaptable. A good student, he graduated from the Hebrew University with a BA in Hebrew and Arabic. Nevertheless, he felt that Kurdish Jews were patronized by the Ashkenazi elite, and he wondered whether he could pursue a scholarly career in Israel.

    He was thus only too pleased to accept a scholarship  from Yale University, where he plumbed the depths of Aramaic and met his wife.

    In 1972, a year before Sabar was born, he was offered a position at the University of California. And there he thrived.

    “The Promised Land had been a disappointment,” Sabar writes in a reference to Israel. “It had broken his father and his grandfather. It had humiliated and infantilized his mother. A generation of Kurdish Jews had been spit on by a society that should have known better.”

    Yona Sabar’s success as an up-and-coming scholar did not spoil him, but his plain, unpretentious mien, his cheap clothes and his malapropisms in English alienated his insecure son.

    “I didn’t know it as a boy, but he was almost single-handedly turning the field of Neo-Aramaic from a marginal curiosity to one commanding serious and growing attention at major academic conferences,” Sabar adds.

    After Sabar himself became a father, he learned to value his father and his achievements and quit his job so that he could explore the lost world of Iraqi Kurdish Jews on a spiritual journey.

    Having convinced his father to accompany him, the pair set off. They arrived in Zakho after Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, was unseated by the United States and its allies.

    To Sabar, the purpose of the trip was crystal clear: “We could repair our relationship over cups of cardamom tea at cafés by the Habur River. We could walk together through the streets of the old Jewish neighbourhood, summoning the spirits of our ancestors… He would at last see me for the better son I had become.”

    And so, as Sabar relates in this  intriguing book, father and son  finally bonded.

    Source:  www.cjnews.com, 08 April 2009

  • Enduring voices [Editor’s Column]

    Enduring voices [Editor’s Column]

    Andrew Silow-Carroll
    NJJN Editor-in-Chief
    April 9, 2009

    andrew-silow-carrollI was exchanging e-mails recently with a reader about a column I wrote defending endogamy — that is, marriage between two Jews. “A bigot is one strongly loyal to one’s own social group, yet irrationally and prejudicially intolerant or disdainful of others,” he wrote. “If this paper’s chief editor is not a bigot — as he hopes — after reading this [column], I’m left wondering what he thinks he is.”

    I don’t think I am intolerant of anything, unless you count lactose.

    But his question continues to nag at me: Why does any culture value its own transmission, and can I justify the Jewish obsession with continuity in an era of multiple identities and, the flip side, violent tribalism?

    In my defense, I quoted the work of K. David Harrison, a linguist who studies dying languages. According to his Enduring Voices Project, “Nearly 80 percent of the world’s population speaks only one percent of its languages. When the last speaker of a language dies, the world loses the knowledge that was contained in that language.”

    By extension, Judaism is a culture with a rich language — not just Hebrew or Yiddish but a language of ritual, of social norms, of worship, of behaviors that order its practitioners’ world — in short, a rich system of knowledge. To dedicate oneself to preserving that shows no disdain for other cultures. Consider: When colonial powers try to wipe away traces of an indigenous culture, we call it ethnic cleansing. When Jews seek other Jews in order to live as rich a Jewish life as possible, some call it bigotry.

    Soon after this exchange I came upon Ariel Sabar’s beautiful new book, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. Sabar’s father, Yona, is the world’s preeminent expert on Neo-Aramaic, the language he grew up speaking in the Jewish quarter of Zakho, a Kurdish market town in northern Iraq. The book traces Yona’s journey from Kurdistan to Israel to southern California, where he is a professor at UCLA.

    The book is an American-born, journalist son’s attempt to reconnect with a father he once dismissed as an awkward, hopelessly uncool immigrant. But it is also a rumination on language and Jewish culture, and the ways, and worth, of trying to preserve both.

    For perhaps 1,700 years and until the seventh-century rise of Arabic, Aramaic was to the Levant what English is to the modern world: its lingua franca. The language lives on in the Talmud, the Zohar, the traditional wedding ketuba, and other texts. You hear it in the Mourner’s Kaddish and the Kol Nidrei prayer chanted on Yom Kippur eve.

    But “lives” is a relative term — Aramaic began disappearing as a living Jewish language with the immigration of Iraq’s small Kurdish-Jewish community to Israel in the 1950s. Like Yona Sabar, Kurdish Jews made a lightning leap from the 18th century to the 20th, and the language barely made the crossing.

    Ariel Sabar recreates the lost Jewish world of Zakho, where his hard-working grandparents thrived as dyers and textile merchants. Israel is a shock, and Yona’s parents and grandfather are adrift in the ramshackle tent cities and slums built to accommodate the flood of new immigrants. As Kurds, they occupy perhaps the lowest rung on Israel’s strict ladder of ethnic hierarchy. (One of the book’s heroes is Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Israel’s second president, an Ashkenazi Jew who championed the study and preservation of “Oriental” Jewish cultures.)

    Out of this world Yona emerges as an unlikely scholar at Hebrew University with a rare distinction: fluency in a language that other scholars know only from the synagogue and dusty manuscripts. He soon lands at Yale and eventually becomes a lionized academic and teacher in Los Angeles. Writes Ariel: “Teaching Aramaic in America, I came to see, was how he sang God’s song in a strange land.”

    Ariel, meanwhile, grows up a typical California kid, embarrassed by his father’s eccentricities and distant from his plucked Jewish roots. Ariel marries a non-Jewish woman and, while he pledges to raise their son as a Jew, disappoints the family by refusing to have the boy circumcised.

    And here a reader is tempted to cluck his tongue and lament the withering of another branch on the Jewish family tree. But there is something cannier and more surprising going on in My Father’s Paradise. Ariel thinks long and hard about what we owe the past, and the future. He can’t live his father’s life, any more than his father can live in the dusty alleyways of Zakho. But he can tell the story of the Kurdish Jews, of Aramaic, and of his father’s heroic efforts to remember both.

    Ariel Sabar made his choices; you and I might make others. His book suggests the various ways we can embrace diversity while adding new chapters to the cultures we inherit.

    “Jews had carried a flame into the hills of Kurdistan, and they carried it out, still burning, 2,700 years later,” he writes. “My father touched another candle to it and brought it across continents. I didn’t want it to die with me. If my children ever feel adrift, unsure of who they are, I want that candle to still be burning.”

    Comment: [email protected]

    Source:  www.njjewishnews.com, April 9, 2009

  • Statement on attack on the local Turkmeneli TV staffs: An outcome of unilateral domination in Kerkuk region

    Statement on attack on the local Turkmeneli TV staffs: An outcome of unilateral domination in Kerkuk region

    At 12 April 2009, the reporter (Mr. Umit Abdulla) and cameraman (Abbas Mohammed Hasan) of the local Turkmeneli TV (TERT) in Kerkuk city were organizing to report a book exhibition in the faculty of Law, Kerkuk University. They were attacked by a group of students from Kurdish student Union. Both the reporter and the cameraman were severely kicked and insulted and the camera was shattered. The Kurdish policemen and the Kurdish soldiers have only watched the offenses without interfering to stop the attackers.

    This attack on the local Turkmeneli TV (TERT) staffs in Kerkuk demonstrates clearly the unbalanced oppressive attitude of the Kurdish authorities and even activists in Kerkuk region.

    The oil rich Kerkuk region has been controlled since the 2003 occupation by Kurdish political parties supported by Peshmerga militias after occupation. Support of the occupier, resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Kurds and manipulating elections has made the Kurdish parties dominate the political and administration system in the province and remain the only decision-makers at exclusion of the original inhabitants: Turkmen, Arabs and Chaldo-Assyrians.

    The security system is completely Kurdified, with the Iraqi army limited and the Kurdish militia distributed throughout the Kerkuk province. This has psychologically suppressed the non-Kurdish communities.

    The appointment of thousands of Kurds and the enrichment of half a million incoming Kurds with large sums of money, and the granting of large numbers of government contracts to Kurdish contractors who employ Kurdish workers has shifted the economic balance in favour of the Kurdish inhabitants.

    Having only recently left behind the tough guerrilla life, after decades in the harsh mountain regions, the Kurdish administration remains characterized by an authoritarian mentality, and lack of meritocracy. This has brought other burdens on the non-Kurdish inhabitants of Kerkuk in the Kurdified governmental offices.

    The politicized Kurdish education and information systems have since 1991 taught the Kurdish generations that Kerkuk province is their fatherland which has been usurped by other nations. This increased the animosity of particularly Kurdish youth and convinced them to have the region at any cost.

    Under such a biased condition:

    ü When the Iraqi government was totally absent in Kerkuk, the non-Kurdish Kerkuk population survived thousands of dramatic human rights violations since the occupation in 2003.

    ü The Kurdish political parties prevented the normalization in Kerkuk region and are now hindering the implementation of Article 23 which was, recently, enacted by the Iraqi parliament.

    To convince the Kurdish political parties to change their unconstructive attitude in solving of Kerkuk problem, the international community should withhold their support, assistance and cooperation with the Kurdish authorities.

  • Statement on KRG expansion plans

    Statement on KRG expansion plans

    Recent media reports about the political situation in northern Iraq expose an escalating conflict between the KRG and the Iraqi government. Several Kurdish leaders have expressed themselves in the media, going as far as saying there will be a war between Arabs and Kurds if the government continues to assert its authority in areas bordering the Kurdish dominated region.

    In their comments Kurdish leaders fail to reflect the true nature of the areas bordering the KRG. In many of these so called disputed areas there are very few Kurds to be found. In the Nineveh plain for example the percentage of Kurds is at best 5 percent. Still, Kurdish leaders insist these areas be annexed to the KRG. In fact, the stretch of land bordering the KRG is mostly dominated by Turkmens and minorities such as Yezidies, Assyrians, Shabaks and Kakais. Instead of acknowledging this fact Kurdish political groups have launched a fierce campaign to describe minorities like Yezidies and Shabaks as Kurds, while carrying out different programs in an attempt to Kurdify these minority populations. While oppressed in the past, Iraq’s Kurdish political parties have grown to become themselves the new oppressors in Iraq- seen from the perspective of minorities.

    The Kurdish Peshmerga forces were successful in the help against Saddam Hussein as part of the Iraqi liberation movement, but today we note with sadness the transformation of the Peshmerga into a militia which is used to enforce Kurdish expansion plans in non-Kurdish settlements against the will of the inhabitants of these areas. The Peshmerga is today used to instil fear in minority communities in order to ensure compliance with KRG expansion scheme. Any referendum on the future of so called disputed areas carried out under Peshmerga presence will not be free and fair.

    From being a centre of stability the KRG has turned itself into the major source of instability in Iraq today. While most of Iraq is becoming increasingly secure for all Iraqis, including vulnerable non Muslim communities such as Assyrians and Yezidies, the expansion plans of the KRG threatens to destabilize Iraq, its neighbouring countries and severely affect the vulnerable minorities who live in the areas claimed by Kurdish groups.

    The undersigned organizations call on the KRG to refrain from all acts of violence and withdraw its forces from all areas outside the KRG. We also call on Kurdish leaders to respect the rights of minorities, to stop interfering in their internal issues and to stop describing Yezidies and Shabaks as Kurds.

    We hope the UN and the EU will hear the calls of Iraqi minorities for justice and respect of their rights in Iraq.

    April 4, 2009

    Assyria Council of Europe
    Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation
    Yezidi Human Rights Organization
    Shabak Democratic Assembly