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We shut the aircraft down and what we saw was 350 plus people ranging in ages from 6 months to old and gray standing silently at a fence watching our every movement. I walked around the nose of my aircraft a mere 150 feet away from this crowd, I gave a simple smile and raised my arm up over my head and was greeted with the most substantial roar of levity that I have ever heard in my life. 350 plus people were cheering. Not because I play an instrument in some notable band, acted in a big Hollywood movie,...

Syrian President Bashar Assad's..visit was officially described as a goodwill trip to congratulate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his re-election as Iran's president. But what came out following Assad's meeting with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was an idea for an unofficial quadripartite alliance between Syria and Iran, with Turkey and Iraq....Turkey has begun to accept the possibility that its European dreams are unlikely to materialize... Obama...appears determined to announce his Middle East peace plan next month in New York in the presence of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the chairman of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas

SULAIMANIYAH and IRBIL - Weapons loudly welcomed the outcome of Iraqi Kurdistan's latest political contest, and may even discreetly have helped determine it. In the run-up to last month's election, politicians gifted guns to prominent supporters. When the results were announced, celebratory gunfire streaked the night skies. Opposition leaders said the weapons had been dished out to buy votes. Their rivals denied this, arguing that they were honoring Kurdish loyalists with a traditional gift. Kurdistan's fondness for firearms is a legacy of battles against Saddam Hussein's troops and among rival internal Kurdish parties. "Guns are in our blood," said Guevara...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17, 2009 – The top U.S. commander in Iraq has proposed a tripartite arrangement between American, Iraqi and Kurdish forces to shore up security in disputed areas of northern Iraq. The proposal by Gen. Raymond Odierno is only in the discussion phase, but leaders involved in the talks have been receptive, according to a defense official speaking on background. The initiative has been characterized as “a confidence-building measure” aimed at protecting Iraqis and preventing disputed areas “from being used as a seam” by insurgents. Defense officials declined to comment on how the proposed security force would be implemented...

DOKAN, Iraq – Iraq's prime minister headed north Sunday to the self-ruled Kurdish region to defuse rising tensions and address a range of disputes that have poisoned relations and threatened to become a new source of the conflict for the battered country as U.S. forces increasingly disengage. The meeting came as six died in bombs in Baghdad and western Iraq. U.S. officials have warned that Arab-Kurdish tensions could jeopardize security gains, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered U.S. help to mediate during his visit last month to Iraq in which he traveled to Baghdad and the Kurdish city of Irbil....

Many connect US Defense Secretary’s sudden visit to Iraq with a new problem which has appeared in the US administration. The Pentagon has recently announced that the United States would accelerate the withdrawal of US troops from the war-torn nation, although the situation in Iraq is far from being stable. The US administration is particularly concerned about the Kurds’ claims for Iraqi oil wells. It is an open secret that Iraq’s Kurdish minority has been a staunch ally of the United States during the nation’s incursion in the country to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. On the one hand, Gates had...

ERBIL, Iraq, July 29, 2009 – Arab and Kurdish Iraqis should take advantage of the remaining time U.S. forces will be in the country to work out their differences, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said to Kurdish President Massoud Barzani here today. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates meets with Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, at the government’s version of the White House during a brief visit to Erbil, Iraq, July 29, 2009. DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Gates met with Kurdish Regional Government leaders...

Bayram Bozyel, the General Chairman of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Hak-Par (Rights and Freedom Party) has disclosed a plan he claims will soon be implemented to dissolve the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan – PKK) and end the longstanding conflict between Turkey’s military and the Iraqi-based Kurdish militants (Haber Turk, July 6; Sabah, July 11). Hak-Par seeks greater Kurdish autonomy within a Turkish federal system. According to Bozyel, who made the revelations following meetings with leading members of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the four-part plan was drawn up by Turkey, Iraq and the United States and has the full...

With a projected capacity of about 40,000 bbl. a day, the new oil refinery inaugurated on July 18 by the Kurdish regional government of northern Iraq is modest even by the standards of Iraq's dilapidated oil industry. But its significance shouldn't be underestimated: in Kurdish minds, the region's ability to refine the oil it pumps is a vital step toward deepening its autonomy from the Arab-majority remainder of Iraq. (Read "The Reasons Behind Big Oil Declining Iraq's Riches.") Until recently, Iraqi Kurdistan had no refineries of its own, and though the area is sitting on a huge pool of oil,...

At the end of WWI, the victorious allies were creating a massive plan to divide what was left of the once great Ottoman Empire. The allies met in 1919 at the Versailles Conference where then US President Woodrow Wilson unsuccessfully pushed for the establishment of an independent state for the Kurds who at the time were spread out among six countries with the majority in what is now northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey, with lesser numbers in northeastern Syria, northwestern Iran and the Caucuses. They were, as today - known as the world's largest nation of over 30 million people...

BAGHDAD: With little notice and almost no public debate, Iraq’s Kurdish leaders are pushing ahead with a new constitution for their semiautonomous region, a step that has alarmed Iraqi and American officials who fear that the move poses a new threat to the country’s unity. The new constitution, approved by Kurdistan’s parliament two weeks ago and scheduled for a referendum this year, underscores the level of mistrust and bad faith between the region and the central government in Baghdad. And it raises the question of whether a peaceful resolution of disputes between the two is possible, despite intensive cajoling by...

Peter Pilz, the Austrian Green party's spokesman on security, recently accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of taking part in the July 12, 1989 assassinations of Mr. Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou -- the Secretary- General of the Iranian Kurdish Democratic Party -- and two of his colleagues in Vienna, Austria. "I have no doubt he was involved", said Pilz, adding that Ahmadinejad may have pulled the trigger on one of the guns used to kill the men: Pilz said new eye-witnesses had come forward who had identified Ahmadinejad as being involved in the assassination of Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran chief Abdul Rahman...

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Kurdish Mass Grave Discovered in Iraq The Iraqi Human Rights Ministry announced that a mass grave has been discovered in southern Najaf, containing the bodies of 3,000 Kurds murdered by the Saddam Hussein regime. It should be noted that about 100,000 Kurds were murdered by this regime, and that, even six years after its fall, the bodies of thousands of murdered civilians remain undiscovered. In Najaf alone, 48 mass graves have been found. Source: Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), May 17, 2009. Posted at: 2009-05-17

Non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the "Arab" worldOne key element missing from the discussion is the question of non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the "Arab" world.  The Arab nationalists have succeeded in establishing some 23 non-democratic, ethnically (Arab) and religiously (Islam) defined nation-states in over 1 million square miles of territory, often at the expense of non-Arabs, such as the Kurds (Muslims, non-Arabs), Assyrians (Christians, non-Arabs), Copts (Christians, non-Arabs), southern Sudanese (Christian and pagan non-Arabs), Maronite Lebanese (Christian and mostly identified with their Phoenician ancestors) and Mizrahi Jews.  Arab nationalist ideology claims all this territory exclusively as "Arab" despite the legitimate claims...

Brig. Gen. Robert Brown (right), deputy commanding general (support), Multi-National Division - North, and Lt. Col. Stephen Myers, deputy commanding officer, Command Post - North, lay a wreath on the wall that surrounds the grave site of Mustafa Barzani, the most prominent political leader in Kurdish history, during their visit to Barzan, Iraq, April 20. Photo by Spc. Daniel Nelson, 145th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment. MOSUL — When most people think of Iraq they probably don't think of lush, green valleys, twisting ravines, rushing rivers and snow covered mountaintops. Usually, people think of miles and miles of empty desert, with...

In a direct slap to Obama's foreign policy, Iran has shelled a Kurdish village in northern Iraq. Iranian helicopters stayed on their side of the border and sent missiles for over two hours today. This event follows similar action on Saturday.

Iran shelled Kurdish rebel positions in a remote area of northern Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdistan region Saturday, a spokesman for the Kurdish Peshmerga border guards said. "They fired shells at the mountain area of Choma Sar. There were no casualties because it is a mostly unpopulated area," Jabbar Yawar said. The shelling started at around 1:30 a.m. EDT (0530 GMT) and continued for more than an hour. Border guards also spotted Iranian military helicopters bombing an area just inside Iran. The aircraft did not cross into Iraq, he said. Iranian officials did not immediately comment. The shelling followed clashes between...

JERUSALEM, April 27 (Reuters) - Israel is troubled by an unprecedented military exercise between its ally, Turkey, and its arch-foe Syria, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday. Ankara announced on Sunday it would hold its first drill with Syria this week, using ground forces in a border area that has been the focus of a 25-year conflict between Turkey and separatist Kurdish rebels. Israel has extensive defence ties to Turkey, a NATO member and among the few Muslim nations to have built an alliance with the Jewish state. The Israeli and Turkish air forces and navies have held...

I have always seen Israel as the result of the national liberation movement of the region's aboriginal Jews. Liberation of the aboriginal Jews (and anyone else lucky enough to find refuge within Israel's borders) from the twin fascisms of pan-Arabism and Islamism which have oppressed and even eliminated so many of the region’s aboriginal ethnic groups. Israel's aboriginal Jews were not unique in accepting outside help (and even immigration) in their liberation struggle. Lebanon's Maronites; Egypt's Copts, Iraq and Turkey's Kurds, and Iran's Zoroastrians have all sought and received outside help in their liberation struggles, each group according to its...

ERBIL, Iraq, April 25, 2009 – Iraqi Kurds and Arabs must compromise to realize the full potential of the country, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said during a visit here today. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with the president and prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government areas in Iraq. He also visited the U.S. Regional Reconstruction Team for the area. Mullen said there have been tense times between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq, but that any disagreements must be worked out. Cool heads must prevail, the chairman said. “An outbreak of violence between the peshmerga (armed...

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN'S PERSECUTION OPPRESSION OF MINORITIES - ISLAMIC APARTHEID In General, Christians, Baha'i, Kurds, Jews, Azeris, Baluchis, Ahwazi Arabs Again, religious persecution in IranFebruary 20, 2009Ethel C. FenigAs Thomas Lifson noted yesterday Iranian authorities destroyed a Sufi holy site, continuing their practice of pressuring and discriminating against religions that do not strictly follow the Shi'ite form of Islam.  But the Sufis are not the only religious minority suffering discrimination in Iran.   The 2500 year old Jewish community, which numbered over 80,000 thirty years ago at the time of the Khoemeni Revolution which overthrew the Shah, has dwindled to about...

German police charged Thursday that the grisly death of a 20-year-old ethnic Kurdish woman had been an 'honour killing,' and that her brother had confessed to the crime. Germans have been outraged at a recent series of execution-style honour killings of young women by immigrant families. Police said the family had attempted to force Gulsum into a planned marriage and then discovered she was not a virgin and had undergone one or more abortions. Gulsum had left home last year with the help of welfare officials and moved to a safe house, but then returned home to Rees. Honour killings...

Iraq's northern enclave used to be called a model for the rest of the country. Not anymore, say Kurds. Until the old man is out of the way, everyone else who hungers for power in Iraqi Kurdistan is on hold. It could be a long wait. Despite his chronic bad knee and a Mayo Clinic heart operation last August, 75-year-old Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, is a survivor. At present, he and his longtime rival, Massoud Barzani (together with their families and their respective political machines), still control the largest part of what's worth controlling in the three northern Iraqi provinces...

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on all Iraqis on Saturday to unite aboard what he called a "love boat" in a stirring appeal for reconciliation in the war-torn nation. "The security in Iraq has settled down at a level that allowed the leaders of the tribes to come from everywhere," Maliki told a conference of Sunni and Shiite tribal figures in the capital. "National reconciliation has become a principle that we depend on ... I invite everyone to stay in the boat of national reconciliation, the boat of fraternity, love, justice and equality that will lead us...

The Treasury Department has blacklisted an Iranian Kurdish opposition group based in northern Iraq, a move that was greeted enthusiastically in Iran’s state-run media as part of a initiative by the Obama administration to forge better U.S.-Iranian relations. The Party of Free Life of Iranian Kurdistan, known by its Kurdish acronym, PJAK, was created in 2004 and has never engaged in international terrorism or in military activity outside of Iran. But its guerilla fighters have clashed frequently with Iranian Revolutionary Guards units in Iranian Kurdish towns and villages, making it a primary target of the Iranian regime.

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi Christians still reeling from a string of murders last fall find themselves caught in the middle of a power struggle between Kurds and Sunni Arabs that was fueled by this weekend's elections. The minority community has faced years of violence and intimidation from al-Qaida in Iraq and other Islamic extremists. In the northern city of Mosul and surrounding areas, many also fear the Kurds want incorporate parts of the area into their semiautonomous region in northern Iraq. The issue came to the fore in Saturday's vote for members of ruling councils in most of Iraq's...

Fascism in the Arab world - Pan-Arabism, etc. (Part 4)   Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege... by Elizabeth Thompson - 2000 - History - 402 pages...pan Syrianism... pan Arabism... najjada... Lebanese...The fascist nature of the groupshttp://books.google.com/books?id=5L7QGODjdEkC&pg=RA1-PA193   The Baath Party and FascismThe Ba’ath Party and Fascism. (Leadership Cult). ...Unity has taken the form of a pan- Arabism that envisions the elimination of artificial boundaries fixed by imperial powers after the First World War and the foundation of a single Arab State. The nationalism of the Ba'ath calls for an unquestioning faith: a questioning of reason, a doubting of Party...

In May 1988, a prison guard checked Taymour Abdullah Ahmad's name off a list and directed him to a bus idling in the Popular Army camp in Topzawa, southwest of Kirkuk. The camp was one of Iraq's grimmest prisons. During his month-long internment there, the 12-year-old Kurdish boy watched guards beating male prisoners senseless with lengths of coaxial cable. He had seen four children weaken and then die of starvation. He stood helplessly as a guard stripped his father to his undershorts and led him off to his death. So Taymour was not sorry to see the last of Topzawa....

"Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised. There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned. As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let...

A feature story in the January issue of Archaeology Magazine reports that U.S. efforts in Iraq are doing more than just bringing freedom to the once totalitarian state. American scientists are also delivering a measure of justice to the families of tens of thousands of Kurds slaughtered by Saddam Hussein's forces, according to the magazine, which hit newsstands this week. At the prodding of the investigators at Human Rights Watch, who had heard horrific first-hand accounts of the mass executions from survivors, U.S. Army archaeologists and other experts in 2003 began excavating mass graves and gathering evidence for trials that...

Towards another disaster By Aso Karim The Kurdish Globe Thursday, 04 December 2008, 02:04 EST Since the Iraqi State has been established under the hands of the English, only the Kurds asked for power-sharing, decentralization, and autonomy, and are now insisting on federalism, democracy, and accordance. The Arab elite see those demands of the Kurds as separatist and rebellion. In short, Kurds were the makers of change in Iraq, but they couldn't find a large front of change around themselves that can accept part of those demands. As a result they have faced big disasters. [...] ...of the governing [Arab]...

'Chemical Ali' sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam's who is known as Chemical Ali, was sentenced to death for a second time Tuesday for his part in crushing a Shiite uprising in 1991. Mohammed Oraibi al-Khalifa, a judge for the Iraqi High Tribunal, sentenced Majid and other senior figures from Saddam's government. Among them were Abdelghani Abdul Ghafor al-Ani, who headed Saddam's Baath Party in southern Iraq at the time of the uprising and who also received a death sentence Tuesday. The former defense minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, received a 15-year prison sentence. Majid already faces a...

Memories of Saddam's Horror. Those who prefer to put down the efforts of the heroes who serve their country or like to cast aside the historic surge that our military ran in Iraq; also like to point out that the weapons of mass destruction were not found. (which is a debatable point). Those Kings of the Kumbaya set like to point out that there were years if horror for our hero's in Iraq. What they ignore are the horrors that no longer exist. The chemicals that kill thousands of Kurds and the horrible torture by Saddam and his sons. The...

The Middle East - Page 89 by Library Information and Research Service - Middle East - 1999 After Sayyid Jamal, in Arabic countries and especially in Egypt, many individuals were found who, by leaning on racism, Arabism and pan-Arabism, ...http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma1tAAAAMAAJ&q=arabismA New Road for France - Page 30 by Jacques Soustelle, Benjamin Protter - Political Science - 1965 - 278 pagesIsrael and French Algeria were... two barriers against which the totalitarian wave.. embodied by Nasser... a dictatorial pseudo-state type was created in Algeria, firmly tied to a single party, dominated by the racist ideology of a Nasser-type pan-Arabism and by the...

Since January 2008 at least 530 people have been the victim of gross human rights violations by the Islamic regime in Kurdistan. Since January 2008 at least 229 Kurdish NGO and political activist have been detained by the government of the Islamic republic of Iran. Over 58 people have been killed by security forces of Iran and at least 36 have injured. During the last ten months at least 16 people have been killed or injured by land mine, that are being planted by the security forces of regime. During the last ten months at least 102 people have sentenced...

On 16 December 2007, a new phase against the will of our people has been started. At the same time the United States of America provides Turkey with intelligence and simultaneously the fascist state of Turkey passes on the intelligence information to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Turkey and Iran cooperated and coordinated joint attacks on the Kurdistan libertarian resistance in Eastern Kurdistan, pioneered by PJAK. This cooperation resulted in death of six cadres of our party members during the Turkish air strike on our Media center in Qandil mountain. A new stage of direct and indirect cooperation of Turkey...

Who is behind the attacks on Christians in Mosul? The Iraqi government says it does not believe that this is al Qaeda, while media sources note that most of the people struck lived in the area controlled by Kurdish militias. The Kurdish regional government denounces the "malign efforts" of those who want to "conceal the truly guilty," denounced as "religious fanatics," and "orders" all ministers to help those who have been struck. The exchange of accusations over responsibility for the attacks against Christians in Mosul seems to confirm the at least predominantly political nature of what is taking place in...

On BerbersBerber Exploitation [by Arabs, Arabization]- Morocco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymfAxe_XcH8 On Kurds[Kurds, victims of Arab racism] "Halabja" Moments before the Genocide / March/ 16 / 1988 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-C6aSMp6g On AfricansThe Devil Came on Horseback [Arab racism in Sudan] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV7yQY0dQs4On JewsArab Muslim war crimes against the Jewish people (since the 1940's) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JxE1rFRMRsThe Truth About Arab "Palestinian" Terrorism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlwNXd3_cW0 Israel is a victim of Palestinian Terrorism & Islamic Jihad - background on Arabs' war on the Jews http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdH0XxDEjG4

The Turkish military says 15 of its soldiers have been killed in clashes with Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey. At least 23 members of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party were also killed in the fighting near the Iraqi border. The Turkish military says it was responding to a rebel attack on a military outpost. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he will return early from an official visit in Turkmenistan because of the attack. Turkey has carried out several air strikes and a brief ground offensive against PKK targets in northern Iraq this year. Turkey claims that the rebels...

For Iraqi Kurdish mathematics teacher Mohammed Aziz, two wrongs can make a right. After decades of forced exile by the Baath party of Saddam Hussein, he is back with a vengeance. Aziz was just four years old in 1975 when his family was evicted from Bawaplawi village, near the northern city of Khanaqin, and Arab settlers grabbed their home. Now schoolteacher Aziz is back and has done to the Arabs what they did to him. "Our homes were taken over by the Arabs without paying us any compensation," Aziz, 37, said at the modest single-storey brick house which he has...

ISTANBUL: Turkish warplanes hit a suspected Kurdish rebel target in northern Iraq, Turkey's military said on Sunday. The cross-border air assault targeted a rebel shelter late on Saturday where a group of PKK Kurdish rebels were believed to have gathered before a planned attack in Turkey, the military said on its website. The military provided no casualty figures. The reported air raid on the Avasin-Basyan region of Iraq could not independently be confirmed. Turkey's military has launched several air raids and one ground incursion targeting the PKK rebel safe havens in northern Iraq since the parliament authorized cross-border military moves...

" OSLO (Reuters) - Twenty-three people were wounded when a gang of 40-50 men armed with steel bars and machetes attacked residents at a refugee centre in Norway late on Thursday, officials said on Friday. No one was seriously wounded, but 10 were sent to hospital and 13 treated at a local clinic, hospital officials said. An official at the centre in Oestfold south of Oslo said the attackers were Chechens and the victims Kurds. Police declined to confirm or deny that and said they had made no arrests so far. "There was an attack from outside the asylum centre...

Israel has a longstanding relationship with the Kurdish people. In the early 1960’s, Mustafa Barzani and his Peshmerga fighters received training and support in the Jewish State. David Ben Gurion, then Israel’s Prime Minister, possessed an acute vision and understanding of the regional geopolitics – so lacking in today’s realities. He reasoned that Arab hostility encircling Israel necessitated alliances with the leadership and people of non-Arab states like Iran, Turkey and the Kurds (understanding that the Kurdish connection needed to be somewhat secretive, as it continues to be today for fear of upsetting the Turks.) Israel’s military and diplomatic establishment...

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey and Iran have been carrying out coordinated strikes on Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, a top Turkish general said Thursday in the first military confirmation of Iranian-Turkish cooperation in the fight against separatists there. Gen. Ilker Basbug, Turkey's land forces commander, said the two countries have been sharing intelligence and planned more coordinated attacks in the future against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and PEJAK, the group's Iranian wing.

Furniture, windows smashed, three hospitalized in bloody attack blamed on ethnic hatred A mob rampaged through a west-end cafe in a bloody attack yesterday that sent three men to hospital. After the bloodshed, angry Kurds pointed the finger at their Turkish neighbours. "This attack is a well-organized hate crime against Kurds by racist people," said Metin Yesilcimer, who rushed to the scene as soon as he heard about the violence. Two men in their 40s and one in his 50s were taken to hospital with non life-threatening injuries after a group of 20 to 25 armed men stoned Ankara Cafe...

The Muslim convert suspected of detonating a nail bomb in a restaurant is being held in police custody after his release from hospital today. As officers investigating the attempted attack in Exeter searched a house near the home suspect Nicky Reilly, detectives prepared to question the 22-year-old. He suffered eye and facial injuries when the device partially went off in the Giraffe restaurant at lunchtime on Thursday. Two other devices were found nearby said the police. Reilly had been under police guard in hospital. He can now be formally questioned about the Exeter blast. Reilly, arrested under the Terrorism Act,...

Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said on Saturday that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called "honour" killings and female suicides on the increase. "At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone," a doctor told AFP in the region's second largest city of Sulaimaniyah. "Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances" -- apparently the victims of "honour" killings. "Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves," the doctor added,...

MORTALLY wounded and bleeding profusely, Pela Atroshi covered her head with her hands, pleading "please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me". As her sister and her mother screamed, her uncle Rezkar Atroshi raised his gun and killed her. The family's honour had been cleansed. Rezkar had already shot Pela twice in the back in the upstairs room. Helped downstairs by her mother and her younger sister, the 19-year-old Kurdish Swede was confronted by four resolute men - her father and his three brothers. The men pulled the women apart. Her youngest uncle then finished the job, shooting Pela in...

The Kurdish regional government in Northern Iraq is providing a safe haven to several thousand Iraqi Christians who have fled persecution in other parts of the country, government officials and local pastors told Newsmax. Unlike refugee camps set up for some 100,000 Shia Muslims fleeing attacks from Sunnis, which are closely monitored by Kurdish security forces, Christians have been encouraged to live anywhere. “Christians in Iraq need special attention, because they’ve been suffering because they are Christians,” Deputy Prime Minister Omar Fattah told Newsmax in an exclusive interview in Erbil. “Maybe we give some instructions to others where they can...

Thursday, April 17, 2008 Posted By:Catherine MoyPermalinkKurds Want Americans to Stay in Iraq - believe Democracy is taking root The Kurds in Northern Iraq are making safe haven for Christians who are suffering elsewhere in Iraq. At the same time, the Kurds feel blessed that the Americans have freed them from tyranny. Middle Eastern Expert Kennth Timmerman wrote about the Kurds at NewsMax.com. The Kurdish regional government in Northern Iraq is providing a safe haven to several thousand Iraqi Christians who have fled persecution in other parts of the country, government officials and local pastors told Newsmax. Unlike refugee camps...