Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06BASRAH54
2006-04-12 09:08:00
CONFIDENTIAL
REO Basrah
Cable title:  

SUNNI KILLINGS IN BASRAH

Tags:  PGOV PHUM PREF PREL PTER SMIG SOCI KISL IZ 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO0443
OO RUEHDE RUEHIHL RUEHKUK RUEHMOS
DE RUEHBC #0054/01 1020908
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 120908Z APR 06
FM REO BASRAH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0304
INFO RHEHNSC/WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE
RUEHBC/REO BASRAH 0322
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BASRAH 000054 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 4/12/2016
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREF PREL PTER SMIG SOCI KISL IZ
SUBJECT: SUNNI KILLINGS IN BASRAH

REF: A) BASRAH 51, B) BASRAH 46, C) BASRAH 26, D) BASRAH 27

BASRAH 00000054 001.2 OF 003


CLASSIFIED BY: Ken Gross, REGIONAL COORDINATOR, REO BASRAH,
DEPARTMENT OF STATE.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)



C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BASRAH 000054

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 4/12/2016
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREF PREL PTER SMIG SOCI KISL IZ
SUBJECT: SUNNI KILLINGS IN BASRAH

REF: A) BASRAH 51, B) BASRAH 46, C) BASRAH 26, D) BASRAH 27

BASRAH 00000054 001.2 OF 003


CLASSIFIED BY: Ken Gross, REGIONAL COORDINATOR, REO BASRAH,
DEPARTMENT OF STATE.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)




1. (C) Summary: Since March 30, 12 high-profile killings of
Sunnis have taken place in Basrah. This cable builds on Ref A
and discusses targeted killings of Sunnis in Basrah, as well as
threats and intimidation campaigns against Sunni and Christian
minorities. The local Shia government is at best in denial that
Sunnis are increasingly being killed in Basrah; at worst, local
police may be complicit in the killings. It is too soon to jump
to the conclusion that Sunnis are the victims of a "cleansing
campaign" in Basrah. Nevertheless, warning signs exist of a
concerted effort to kill off influential Sunnis and drive a
significant proportion of the Sunni population out of Basrah.
End Summary.

Targeting of Sunnis in Basrah
--------------


2. (C) Since March 30, 12 high-profile killings of Sunnis have
taken place in Basrah. On March 30, a female Sunni lawyer,
Maimouna Abdul Karim Hamdani, was shot and killed as she exited
a taxi. Maimouna was a well-respected legal advisor to the
electricity directorate. On April 3, six members of a Sunni
family from the Al Sadoon tribe were shot and killed in the Al
Kaddara market in Basrah in the middle of the day. One of the
victims was a four-year-old boy. On April 4, one Sunni police
officer was killed and another injured. Also on April 4, Sheikh
Nawaf Ahmed Al Aqrab, a prominent leader of the Iraqi Islamic
Party (IIP),was killed. On April 5, a well-known Sunni
professor at Basrah Technical institute, Salah Azeez Hashem, was
kidnapped, shot and killed. Also on April 5, a Sunni employee
of the health directorate, Jalal Moustafa, was shot and killed.
On April 6, Nowfal Jasem Al Aqrab, a Sunni sheikh was shot,

injured, and reported to have later died of his injuries. On
April 7, Sheikh Amar Nadir Othman, a local Sunni imam at the Al
Arab mosque, was killed. Thus far, the perpetrators of all of
these incidents have not been identified.


3. (C) In addition to the high-profile killings, other Sunnis
have been killed, shot and injured, and kidnapped. On the
evening of April 7, the Sunni Al Asharah Al Mubashera mosque was
attacked with mortars and small arms fire. On April 5 and 6,
all Sunni mosques in Basrah closed on request of the Basrah
Sunni Endowment in protest to the perceived targeting of Sunnis
(reftel B). Sunni contacts have shown REO staff threat letters
they claim to have received over the past week. They stated
that the threat letters were slid under doors and posted at
Sunni mosques. The letters range from threatening death to all
Sunnis in general terms to direct threats against the Deputy
Head of the Basrah IIP, Dr. Jamal, to telling Sunnis to leave
Basrah or be killed. (Comment: REO cannot verify the
authenticity of these threat letters. All threat letters turned
into the REO thus far have been generic computer-generated
documents. However, the preponderance of letters turned in,
along with the corroboration of threat letters targeting Sunnis
by UN, Danish, and British contacts in Basrah leads us to
believe that it is credible that threat letters against Sunnis
are being distributed in Basrah. End Comment).


4. (C) The result of the high-profile killings and intimidation
campaigns has been to drive a significant number of Sunni
families out of Basrah. (Comment: There are no verified
numbers of the Sunni population in Basrah, although contacts
estimate that the Sunni population in Basrah is around 400,000.
We believe that Sunnis make up around 10 percent of Basrah
province's population. Other estimates range as high as 25
percent. End Comment). The Ministry of Displacement and
Migration (MoDM) provided data collected on April 2 to the April
6 International Organization for Migration (IOM) report that
puts the number of displaced Sunni families from Basrah in Anbar
province alone at 345. (Note: The IOM estimates that each
family has six members. End Note.) As per reftel A, Sunni
contacts report that many of them plan to depart Basrah during
the summer once their children have finished the school year and
they can sell off their property. They list northern Iraq,
Baghdad, Jordan and Syria as destinations. REO contacts report
that the Sunnis who remain in Basrah have begun to group and arm
themselves for protection and retaliation. We have been unable
to verify the creation of Sunni militias or the arming of Sunnis
in general, but, because of the quantities of small arms
available in the streets of Basrah and the number of militias in
the city, we find the scenario plausible. We will continue to
monitor and report on the situation.

The Other Side: Denial or Complicity?
-------------- --------------

BASRAH 00000054 002.2 OF 003




5. (C) REO Shia contacts uniformly deny the threats and
targeted killing of Sunnis in Basrah. In an April 6
Humanitarian Sector Working Group meeting in Basrah, Basrah
Provincial Council (BPC) Member and Chair of the Humanitarian
Committee Seyid Hasanein Al Safi, a Shia imam, estimated that
only about five Sunni families had left Basrah since February 22
because "they felt threatened," denying that any actual threats
could have been delivered. Representatives from Badr
Organization told REO staff during an April 10 lunch meeting
that they had heard about problems with Sunnis in Basrah, but
that in reality, Sunnis and Shia cohabited peacefully in the
city. The Shia Iraqi Officer in Charge of UNHCR in Basrah said
that he was not aware of Sunnis being threatened or targeted in
Basrah, although he described the overall situation as "fragile."


6. (C) When confronted with hard numbers of Sunnis killed in
the past two weeks, Shia contacts say that security overall in
Basrah has deteriorated, and that many murders of both Shia and
Sunni have occurred in that timeframe. As for the high-profile
Sunni killings, many Shia contacts explain the murders as acts
of retribution, either because the victims were former
Ba'athists, terrorists, or had family members who were known
Ba'athists or terrorists. When asked about the numbers of Sunni
families leaving Basrah, Shia officials categorically deny that
this number is high and direct attention to the plight of Shia
families entering Basrah from the north due to threats and
violence perpetrated by Sunnis on Shia.


7. (C) Although we have no hard evidence, contacts report that
Iraqi police or people wearing police uniforms were seen
carrying out at least some of the high-profile attacks. At the
scene of the April 3 murder of the Al Sadoon family, a man
wearing an Iraqi police uniform was witnessed leaving the area.
With high infiltration of politically affiliated militias into
the Basrah police force, their involvement in the killings, not
just against Sunnis, but in the increase in reported murders
throughout Basrah, cannot be ruled out.

Christians in Basrah: The Other Minority
-------------- --------------


8. (C) Christians in Basrah appear to be targeted and
threatened to a lesser degree than Sunnis. A UN contact
reported that Muslim radicals had issued an informal deadline
for Christians to depart Basrah, but he was unable to provide
further information about the deadline. On April 10, Dr.
Juliana Dawood, a well-known Christian professor at Basrah
University, told poloff that, as a Christian from Basrah, she
felt discriminated against all her life, and that now was no
worse than before. Over the past year, she said, she had
noticed an increase in the influence of fundamentalist Islam in
Basrah. This had resulted, she said, in a number of Christians
being attacked and targeted for operating alcohol shops in town.
They were targeted not because they were Christian, Dr. Juliana
emphasized, but because they sold alcohol.

Other Provinces in the South
--------------


9. (C) Thus far, there is no evidence to suggest that the
targeting of Sunnis extends significantly into Maysan, Dhi Qar,
and Muthanna, the other Shia-dominated southern provinces that
border Basrah province. The Sunni population of Muthanna number
only a few thousand. MoDM figures from April 2 published in the
April 8 IOM report, "Displacement Due to Recent Violence,"
record seven Sunni families originally from Maysan registered in
Ana in Anbar and eight Sunni families originally from Dhi Qar in
Ramadi and Heet. REO contacts in the three other southern
provinces outside Basrah do not report an increase in murders or
threats targeting Sunnis.

Comment
--------------


10. (C) There is a preponderance of evidence suggesting that
the Sunni minority in Basrah has been specifically targeted for
murders, threats, and kidnappings over the past two weeks. A
rise in sectarian violence in general has been noted in Basrah
since the February 22 Samarra mosque bombing when the Basrah IIP
headquarters was attacked and burned and twelve Sunni detainees
(five Iraqis, two Egyptians, two Tunisians, one Libyan, one
Saudi, and one Turk) were removed from a Basrah prison and
eleven of them executed (Ref C and D). This most recent
increase in violence against Sunnis began around the end of
March, with the murder of the Sunni female lawyer Maimouna.
Notably, the increase in targeting of Sunnis began before the
April 6 attack on the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.


11. (C) It is too soon to say that a "cleansing campaign" has
been launched against Sunnis in Basrah. Rising sectarian

BASRAH 00000054 003.2 OF 003


violence in Basrah is certainly a problem, but there is as yet
no systematic approach by governing officials to eliminate or
elicit the departure of Sunnis from the city. Rather, in
addition to Sunni-targeted killings and threats, there is
increasing distrust from both Shia and Sunni populations in
Basrah of the other side, and a growing sense that each group
would be better off without the other living in the same area.
If reports that Sunnis in Basrah are stockpiling weapons are
true, however, a trigger incident that would turn Sunni-Shia
sectarian violence into Sunni-Shia sectarian warfare in the
region becomes a greater possibility. We will continue to
monitor and report on the situation.
GROSS