They knew him as Abdul Qadir, the handyman who repaired air conditioners, refrigerators, TV sets and any added bankrupt accessories in their arctic Iraqi town.
But afterwards Islamic Accompaniment armament took over the predominantly Kurdish boondocks of Birdiya, association abstruse that their pleasant, reliable Mr. Fix-It had addition nickname, Haji, and was arena a chief role authoritative checkpoints for the Sunni Arab extremists. He was dead Aug. 22 in a U.S. airstrike abreast the Mosul dam forth with two added Islamic Accompaniment fighters, according to Kurdish aggressive officials.
"He acclimated to appear to my house. He knows my family," said Yusuf Ibrahim, who fled his home in Birdiya as the militants advanced. "And now we acquisition out he capital to annihilate us."
Amid Islamic State's onslaught, some indigenous Kurds who accept continued lived ancillary by ancillary with Arabs in arctic Iraq are accusing their onetime neighbors of betraying them and acknowledging the militants.
The allegations adjoin Haji — which were corroborated by Kurdish aggressive commanders stationed in Sahela, on the bound with Syria — mirrored claims fabricated by Kurds, Christians, Yazidis and added boyhood groups who said in interviews that some Sunni Arab association either alternate as Islamic Accompaniment fighters overran their towns and villages, or looted non-Arab homes and businesses afterwards the militants took over.
It was not accessible to affirm the accounts apart or to appraisal accurately how abounding Sunnis were balustrade with Islamic State. Abounding Sunnis doubtable of alive with the militants no best alive amid their above neighbors, in aftereffect accepting abolished into the countryside.
Many Iraqi Kurds, who accomplish up beneath than 20% of the citizenry and are concentrated in the north, catechism whether they can anytime afresh alive alongside Arabs, fueling fears that Islamic State's acceleration has burst what already was one of the Middle East's best culturally assorted societies and could accelerate the country's allotment forth indigenous and bigoted lines.
"We can never absolve them," Ibrahim said.
Although some Sunni affiliated leaders vocally argue them, the extremists adore abutment amid abounding Sunnis who are eyeing a aisle aback to the ability they absent aback Saddam Hussein's government fell in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Islamic Accompaniment has artificial alliances with above admiral from Hussein's Sunni-led army and tribes that affronted beneath the Shiite Muslim-dominated government of above Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
The barren Nineveh plains of arctic Iraq accept become a above battlefield as the extremists seek to abd uction what they appearance as a Sunni heartland and as Kurdish leaders seek to accommodate the oil-rich amplitude in a long-sought absolute state.
When the Iraqi civic army fled the breadth during an Islamist abhorrent in June, the Kurdish bounded government beatific its soldiers, accepted as peshmerga, into towns and villages alfresco its borders, exacerbating astriction with bounded Arab tribes.
Andy Abed, a affiliate of a Christian militia in Qaraqosh, east of the Islamic State-controlled burghal of Mosul, said the peshmerga set up a austere award about the boondocks and banned to acquiesce access to Sunni Arab association of adjacent villages. They blocked civilians gluttonous medical treatment, he said, acutely angering the Arabs.
One day the daughter-in-law of a Sunni Arab affiliated baton went to Qaraqosh aback she was in activity but was banned passage; she concluded up giving bearing at the Kurdish checkpoint, he said.
An Arab man who was angry abroad with his son, who had suffered astringent burns, issued a admonishing to the Kurdish soldiers.
"Just delay and see what happens to you," Abed recalled him saying. A few weeks later, he said, a adhesive beforehand launched from one of the Arab villages affected the peshmerga to retreat, and the militants took Qaraqosh afterwards a fight.
Gen. Mansour Barzani, a Kurdish commander, said that aback U.S. airstrikes helped Kurdish and Iraqi armament adios the militants from the cardinal Mosul dam area, Sunni Arab tribesmen holed up in villages opened blaze on the advancing forces, killing at atomic two soldiers.
The Kurdish armament accustomed a ambit about the breadth and were screening Arab association who attempted to acknowledgment home. Those accounted loyal to the militants "will not be accustomed to appear back," Barzani said in an interview.
Kurdish political leaders accept abhorred such talk, which could be interpreted as an attack to booty advantage of the crisis to grab added territory. The admiral of the Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, the commander's father, said afterwards a contempo affair with Sunni affiliated leaders that his armament were arresting their acreage and "have never capital to be complex in indigenous or bigoted wars."
The Sunni leaders, for their part, apprenticed to "take up accoutrements to belch the terrorists and do their best to bottle religious and indigenous coexistence in their regions," according to a account from Massoud Barzani's office. But tribes accept apparent few signs of actively demography on the able extremists.
Many Kurds bitterly anamnesis the 1970s, aback Hussein's Baath Affair accomplished a affairs of "Arabization" that confused Sunni tribes into genitalia of Nineveh and forcibly removed Kurds from prime agronomical land. Later, Hussein was amenable for the annihilation of as abounding as 180,000 Kurds in the belled Anfal campaign.
When Hussein's government fell, Kurdistan's semiautonomous cachet was fabricated official and Kurdish leaders agreed not to seek avengement adjoin Arab families in the north.
"The Arabs who are angry us and allowance [the militants] are the aforementioned ones we forgave in 2003," said Hassan Khalo, an official in Birdiya with the Barzani family's political organization, the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Khalo said the affair appointment frequently active Haji, the repairman, and provided added Arab families with jobs and permits to assignment in Kurdish-controlled areas. But a few months afore the Islamic Accompaniment advance, one such ancestors was active in a artifice to bang explosives abreast the affair offices, he said.
After the extremists took over Birdiya, Khalo abstruse from villagers who remained abaft that the aforementioned ancestors had looted Kurdish homes and businesses, loading trucks abounding of electronics and active off in the administration of Mosul.
In backward August, aback the peshmerga regained ascendancy of Birdiya, the soldiers were triumphant, bouncing their accoutre ments in the air in images apparent on Rudaw, a Kurdish channel. A administrator articular alone as Ali adumbrated that the soldiers planned to stay.
"The peshmerga will never leave this area," Ali said. "The citizens will accept a blessed and affable activity here, and we will assure their freedom."
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
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