CoM announces next Tuesday holiday
Sunday, 03 November 2013 23:17
Baghdad (AIN) –The Secretariat General of the Council of Ministers announced next Tuesday as an official holiday on the occasion of the new Islamic Year.
The Secretariat General of the Cabinet reported in a statement received by All Iraq News Agency (AIN) ''The Follow Up and Governmental Coordination Directorate within the Secretariat General of the Cabinet announced next Tuesday 5/11/2013 an official holiday on the occasion of the new Hijry Year.''
US Senators Urge Obama to Press Maliki on Inclusive Government
By Zuber Hewrami
WASHINGTON DC – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s “failure of governance” and “authoritarian agenda” is strengthening al-Qaeda, fueling greater violence and marginalizing the large Sunni and Kurdish populations, a group of US senators said in an open letter to President Barack Obama.
The senators expressed concern about the rising violence in Iraq, which has reportedly claimed around 7,000 lives so far this year. They urged Obama, who met Maliki at the White House on Friday, to press the Shiite Iraqi leader for an inclusive, power-sharing government.
“This failure of governance is driving many Sunni Iraqis into the arms of al-Qaeda in Iraq and fueling the rise of violence,” the letter warned.
"By too often pursuing a sectarian and authoritarian agenda, Prime Minister Maliki and his allies are disenfranchising Sunni Iraqis, marginalizing Kurdish Iraqis, and alienating the many Shia Iraqis who have a democratic, inclusive, and pluralistic vision for their country," said the senators, which included Republicans and Democrats.
“The violence and killing and chaos throughout the country is now at the level that it was at 2008,” Republican Senator John McCain recently told US-based al-Hurra TV. “Prime Minister Maliki, who I have known for years, has not been inclusive,” said McCain, one of the signatories.
American authorities appear to have taken notice of the grievances of Iraq’s Sunnis, who accuse Maliki’s Shiite-led government of persecution and discrimination.
Under US encouragement, the Iraqi government in 2007 reconciled with Sunni tribes in the provinces of Anbar, Nineveh, Salahaddin and Diyala and armed them to combat al-Qaeda.
Kurdish and Sunni leaders have expressed displeasure at US and Russian weapons being sold to Maliki’s government, saying the arms could further strengthen the premier’s hold on power.
“Before we give weapons to him we got to make sure those weapons are aligned with his priorities, which right now is a serious insurgency," McCain warned.
Maliki says that the Iraqi army needs advanced weapons in order to fight terrorism and secure the country’s borders.
"We are talking with the Americans. We are telling them we need to benefit from their experience, from the intelligence information, from training for those who are targeting al Qaeda in a developed, technical, scientific way,” said Maliki at the US Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington.
Maliki has been petitioning the US congress and Obama to accelerate the sale of advanced weapons such as Apache attack helicopters, F-16 fighter jets and perhaps unmanned aircraft.
While Obama made no specific new commitment besides previous arms sale agreements, he assured Maliki of closer US cooperation in combating terrorists.
Shortly after the Americans withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, Maliki angered the Sunnis by targeting some of their leaders in his coalition government. Sunni vice president Tareq al-Hashemi fled Iraq after being charged with alleged links to insurgent groups, and this year Maliki’s government went after the Sunni finance minister Rafaie Al-Esawi, storming his office and arresting his bodyguards.
For his part, Obama urged Maliki to pass an election law so that all Iraqis express their voice through the ballot box.
“We were encouraged by the work that Prime Minister Maliki has done in the past to ensure that all people inside of Iraq - Sunni, Shia, and Kurd - feel that they have a voice in their government, and one of the most important expressions of that will be elections next year,” said Obama.
Maliki secured his second term as prime minister after the Kurds lent him their support following the 2010 elections.
But the Kurds and Sunnis have both accused him of trying to divert attention from domestic Iraqi politics with warnings of terrorist threats.
"We are warning, we fear, and we are worried about the potential success of the terrorist organizations in Syria,” Maliki said at the USIP. “If God forbid they win, we and the whole world should do everything to prevent this, to prevent al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations to win in any country, not only in Syria, but Iraq and Libya," he said.
The US president echoed Maliki’s concern over the situation in Syria and emphasized the need for a peaceful solution to the conflict.
"We had a lot of discussion about how we can work together to push back against that terrorist organization that operates not only in Iraq but also poses a threat to the entire region and to the United States," Obama said.
But in their letter, the senators reminded Obama of Iraq’s alleged support for the regime in Damascus and called on Maliki to stop the flow of Iranian arms to Syria and the Hezbollah group.
“They’ve allowed over flights, Iranian planes, to supply Syria,” said Senator Carol Levin, a democrat from Michigan speaking to the New York Times. Also, former senator Robert Torricelli, supporter of the group, said “Maliki has sold out the soul of his own nation in an unholy alliance with the mullahs of Iran.”
Besides McCain, the letter was signed by Republican senators James Inhofe, Bob Corker and Lindsey Graham, along with Democrats Carl Levin and Robert Menendez.
Iraqi Christian Leaders Appeal for Cross-Faith Unity
By Sharmila Devi
LONDON –Two Christian leaders appealed for unity within and across the different faiths and ethnicities of Iraq at an event celebrating the Christians of Kurdistan in London last week.
“We don’t have a stable government in Baghdad and it doesn’t treat us well,” said Saadi Al Malih, director of Syriac culture and art at the culture ministry of the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
“But sometimes we have our inside problems and we are not fighting together,” he told Rudaw.
Malih and Father Najeeb Michaeel, a Dominican priest who works and teaches in Mosul, both spoke at the Royal Geographical Society about the history of Iraq’s Christian community as well as the current challenges and dangers they face.
Father Najeeb helped to found the Digital Centre of Eastern Manuscripts in Mosul in 1990 that has digitized and preserved some 6,000 manuscripts and parchment documents, including a New Testament dated 942 A.D.
We don’t have a stable government in Baghdad and it doesn’t treat us well,
“We don’t need money for eating and drinking but support for intellectual freedom,” he told Rudaw.
“We do not want to divide Iraq into small units and we do not want to separate peoples or different tribes and religions because we all have the same history or shared history in Iraq, which goes back to thousands of years,” he said in his speech.
Before the two men spoke, there was a performance by Rayia Mato, a deaconess of the Syrian Orthodox Church, who has sung at many events in England and abroad and who studied at the University of Mosul.
An exhibition of photographs of Kurdistan in the 1940s, by Anthony Kersting, was on display along with archive images from the Dominican community of Erbil, the Kurdish capital.
Benam Al-Agzeer, a deacon in the Syriac Catholic church who was granted asylum in Britain in 2003, was present with examples of his calligraphy, in which he depicts verses from the Koran and Bible.
There was also a mini fashion show of costumes from the Museum of Syriac Heritage in Ankawa, a Christian district of Erbil.
Both speakers stressed that they wanted to play an inclusive role in the future of Kurdistan, where Christians make up 5 per cent of the estimated five million population.
“I would like to emphasize that Christians in Iraq do not want only to live in Kurdistan just because they are persecuted everywhere else, or just to live in peace and comfort,” said Father Najeeb, whose first language was neo-Syriac. “But also they want to contribute to the development and construction of this region of Iraq.”
We have 13 political parties for this small nation.
Malih pointed to the success of the teaching of the Syriac language as one of the major achievements of his department.
After being questioned in detail by a member of the audience who said he wished for similar developments in teaching in his native Italy, Malih explained how they started teaching the language in Kurdish schools starting with the first grade and progressing year-by-year to reach all 11 classes.
“There was a lot of enthusiasm because it was something new and for a long time under Saddam Hussein there was very little Syriac teaching. We’ve built something we never had since the fall of Babylon in 538 BC,” he said. “We have 10,000 students. There is a boom in our language that we never had in Iraq.
He praised the fact that Kurdish Christian MPs were guaranteed representation in the KRG parliament under a quota system. “Some are active, some are not so active,” he said, lamenting the splintering of the political process. “We have 13 political parties for this small nation.”
Father Najeeb recalled that when he was studying in France, he was asked when he “converted” to Christianity. He replied by saying 2,000 years ago. Christianity was one of the main religions of Mesopotamia until the Arab Muslim conquests of the mid- to late 7th century
“Over the centuries, Christians in the Middle East translated the most important books in philosophy, theology, astronomy and logic from Greek and Assyrian into Arabic,” he said. “Through them, these sciences arrived in Spain in the Middle Ages and then to Europe.”
Our mission is to help everyone. We don’t want all Kurdistan to be Christian, because we respect each other,
Both speakers denied that the persecution of Iraqi Christians approached that of Armenians, who suffered what most scholars call a genocide under the Ottomans in 1915.
“Saddam Hussein killed dozens of people but not like the massacres of 1915. Now, when Iraqis are being killed in Baghdad, people start to remember the millions killed in Turkey,” said Malih.
“People are defending themselves and are now closer to the church. I remember when Ainkawa had only one church full of old people. Now, there are seven or eight churches full of young people,” he said.
Asked about views held by extreme Muslims who believe converts who leave Islam should be killed. Father Najeeb denied that Christians were seeking converts.
“Our mission is to help everyone. We don’t want all Kurdistan to be Christian, because we respect each other,” he said. “We prefer to be Christians than to be terrorists and kill people.”
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