Jalawla, Sadia seethe in sectarian rivalries

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Sunni residents of Jalawla and Sadia accuse the Shiite militias, which played a role in the fight to liberate the towns from the Islamic State (ISIS), of now imposing their anti-Sunni rule.

“Whatever ISIS did is being repeated by the Shiites,” said Riaz Saad, who left his hometown of Jalawla and is looking for work in Sulaimani, after giving up hope of a happy life in his hometown. He believes that sectarian rivalry will affect the lives of the townsfolk.

“Currently, Shiites are using the same tactics as ISIS to fight Sunnis and take revenge on them,” Saad added.  “The Shiites are not going to leave Jalawla and Sadia peacefully. The Sunni Arabs in these two towns will have to live in fear.”

After fierce fighting that killed 144 Peshmerga and wounded 300, ISIS was driven out of the area. The Kurds entered the towns, but so did the Shiite militias. Their flags fly across the area.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is eager to discuss the appointment of an administrator for Jalawla with Shiite leaders, but a senior official confessed that, “The problem for Kurds is that they don’t know who they should talk to.”

Hazhar Khalil Ibrahim, an Asayish official who was transferred from Sulaimani to Jalawla to supervise the security forces, said that the Kurds are waiting for discussions with the Khorasani Shiite militia, which wields power in Jalawla.

“The fight between Iraqi army and ISIS in Balda has delayed the negotiation,” Ibrahim said.  

Sources say that the PUK will try to convince the Khorasanis to withdraw their militias from Jalawla – though that is unlikely to happen.

Jalawla, with a population of 80,000, is 28 kilometers from the West of Khanaqin and is comprised of 36 villages. The mayor of Jalawla stressed that, in the beginning of the Arabization process, 80 percent of Jalawla’s residents were Kurds, but now Arabs comprise the 80 percent population. He also said that Kurds are present in only 10 of Jalawla’s 36 villages.

Mayor Anwar Hassan said that townsfolk are waiting for the green light by the minesweeping teams to return to Jalawla. Seventy percent of the town has been cleared.

But mines and explosives are not the only obstacles for returning to the town. A security source in the town reveled that “the presence of Shiite militias in the town has created chaos.”

The mayor said that Jalawla is in need of “twenty billion dinars to recover from the damage done by ISIS. We have been told by the governorate of Diyala that 11 billion dinars of the 2013 projects will be delivered to us.”

He added: “Eleven billion dinars for a town which is completely destroyed is nothing. All of the government offices are looted. Nothing is left in the buildings of the directorates of electricity, municipality, water resources, education and banks.”

The return of the Karawis to Jalawla and the cooperation between Khorasanis and Karawis against the Kurds will jeopardize the future of Kurds in Jalawla and Sadia, sources say.

Sheikh Jafar Mustafa, head of the Khanaqin branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) predicted that negotiations with the Shiites would not be fruitful.

“Who will you negotiate with: Sadr, Badr, Khorasan and other groups all have different ways of thinking,” he said, naming some of the Shiite militia groups.

He added that the Shiite groups will never agree to a Kurdish administration in Jalawla.

Prior to the arrival of ISIS in Sadia, 800 families left the town. So far, not a single Peshmerga has entered the town.

Salih Mahdi, member of the Sadia municipality council, said that the Peshmerga have gone as far as the Kobashe checkpoint. “But they have not entered the town.”  Mustafa claimed, however, that the “Peshmerga have been prevented from entering Sadia.”