(U) DIYALA REPRESENTATIVES' BIOS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KIRKUK 000062

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: DEATH OF NAMED PERSONS
TAGS: PINR PGOV KDEM IZ
SUBJECT: (U) DIYALA REPRESENTATIVES' BIOS

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CLASSIFIED BY: Scott Dean, Acting Regional Coordinator, REO
Kirkuk, DoS.
REASON: 1.4 (b),(d)




1. (U) This is a SET Ba'qubah cable.


2. (C) SUMMARY: SET has collected background information on nine
of the ten representatives elected from Diyala province in the
December 2005 elections. These representatives-elect share
virtually no common characteristics, but their backgrounds
reveal a little about the priorities and electoral strategies of
their respective blocs. With a notable exception, Diyala's
representatives seem likely to remain in backbencher roles in
the soon-to-be-formed Council of Representatives. END SUMMARY.


555 LIST REVEALS STRONG HAND OF SHI'A INDEPENDENTS IN DIYALA
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3. (SBU) Taha Dira' Taha al-Sa'di is an independent aligned in
national politics with Hussein al-Shahristani; he graduated in
1989 from Baghdad University with a BS in Economics and taught
high school in Ba'qubah until regime change. He became involved
in politics through his activities to promote civil society in
Diyala as a founding member of the Diyala-based al-Nur
cultural/charity organization and the associated al-Huda and
Elaph organizations. (Al-Nur organization members took two of
the top three slots on the 555 list, and at least three of the
top six slots.) Taha Dira' is from the predominantly Shi'a
village of al-Sa'diya, in the far west of the province.


4. (U) Falah Faisal Fahad al-Fayad is a Da'wa member from the
predominantly Shi'a village of Jadidat al-Shat, also in the far
west of the province.


IIP AND SHEIKHS DOMINATE TAWAFUQ LIST
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5. (C) Amer Habib al-Khayzaran al-'Azzawi is the youngest
brother in a very prominent family of 'Azzawi sheikhs based in
Dali Abbas (a town north of the central city of Muqdadiyah); his
grandfather and father were imprisoned in India for rebelling
against the British, which made them folk heroes once Iraq
gained its independence. His (much) older brother Faisal (now
deceased) was one of the members of the founding Ba'ath Party
council in the late 1950s. Another older brother Nizar, current
paramount sheikh of the Azza' tribe, was a member of the
Transitional National Assembly from Allawi's list, but ran on a
minor list in the December elections and didn't win a seat.
Sheikh Amer is generally considered to be the only member of his
family who takes Islam seriously; he was one of the top members
of the Diyala IIP sheikhs' council.


6. (C) Dr. Salim Abdullah Ahmed al-Juburi is one of the Diyala
IIP's ten-member leadership council. The former director of the
Diyala IECI, he was removed on suspicion of packing the IECI
with IIP cadres. More recently, he was selected to be one of
the Sunni representatives on the Constitution-drafting
committee; presumably, his PhD in international law from Baghdad
University was an important qualification for this. He is also
the chief of the legal department of the national IIP. He lives
in the central, IIP stronghold city of Muqdadiyah.


7. (C) Taysir Najih Awad al-Mashhadani is a mechanical engineer
who heads the Engines Department at Diyala Electric Industries,
a state-owned enterprise in Ba'qubah. She also heads the IIP
women's organization in the northwestern qadaa (district) of
Khalis, and is the wife of Hisham Ali Khalaf, a member of the
leadership council of the IIP branch in Khalis. Taysir and
Hisham live in the town of al-Ghalibiya, in Khalis qadaa
(district).

8. (C) Mudhher Sa'dun Awad al-Juburi is the heir apparent to one
of the two most prominent families of Juburi sheikhs in Diyala;
his family is said to be more respected than the other Juburi
family (the al-Hamadeh, headed by Sheikh Mutlaq al-Juburi)
because it had fewer ties to the Saddam regime. Sheikh Mudhher,
an independent, lives in the central, IIP stronghold city of
Muqdadiyah.


MARGINAL KURDISH AND ALLAWI CANDIDATES
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9. (C) Hussam Abdulkarim Abdali al-Azzawi is a former officer in
Saddam's armed forces, who retired in 2000. He claims to have
begun listening to Future Radio in the late '90s, leading to his
resignation from the armed forces. After the fall of Saddam
Hussein's regime in 2003, he made his way to Baghdad and linked
up with Iyad Allawi, returning to Ba'qubah to found the Diyala

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branch of the Iraqi National Accord - an organization that is
almost entirely inactive in Diyala province.


10. (C) Sirwan Adnan Mirza, the first person on the Kurdistan
Brotherhood List in Diyala province, is a KDP member in his
mid-to-late twenties. Originally from the northeastern,
primarily Kurdish city of Khanaqin, he spent his formative years
north of the Green Line in Kalar (in southern Sulaymaniyah),
after his parents fled after the 1991 war. He is now studying
towards his second masters' degree at Salahuddin University in
Erbil, writing his thesis on financial corruption. Sirwan
spends most of his time in Erbil when he is not in Baghdad, but
his family has recently moved back to their ancestral village of
Aliyawa, now basically a neighborhood of Khanaqin.


11. (C) Yusif Ahmed Mustafa was the Director of PUK Khanaqin
media relations and publisher of the monthly magazine "Khanaqin"
prior to being tapped by the PUK in mid-2005 to be a CoR
candidate and attending training sessions in Ankara
(Turkish-sponsored) and Sulaymaniyah (US-sponsored). Yusif
claims to have been an underground recruiter for the PUK
Peshmerga while studying at Baghdad University for a degree
between 1980 and 1986. He then assumed a career as an
agricultural engineer until the 1991 war, after which he fled
north of the Green Line and became a mineral water factory
director. In 1999, he was made an advisor to the
KRG-Sulaymaniyah Minister of Industry and then in 2000 became a
liaison with humanitarian NGO's working north of the Green Line
until coming south in April 2003 with the advancing Peshmerga.
His family, however, has remained behind in the southern
Sulaymaniyah city of Darbandikhan.


COMMENT
--------------


12. (C) COMMENT: The only thing more striking about Diyala's new
crop of representatives than their diversity is their obscurity
within the province. With the conspicuous exception of the
Tawaffuq list, all parties appear to have been betting on
voters' support for the party rather than for individual
candidates on the ticket. An extreme example of this policy is
the selection of the unproven Sirwan Adnan Mirza as the top
Kurdish candidate; he seems very bright and well-spoken, but it
is difficult to suppress the idea that the KDP views the Council
of Representatives as a training ground for the "real work" of
governing the KRG. Similarly, the PUK appears to have reached
pretty far into its roster to come up with its candidate for the
Council, and very few of our Shi'a contacts admit to knowing
anything about either of the successful 555 candidates.


13. (C) Tawaffuq's strategy is a notable exception in a few
ways. Unlike the other lists, it was able to attract - and
chose to attract - well-known and powerful people from the Sunni
Arabs who form its primary constituency. Unlike the other
lists, it did not make any attempt to provide balance at the top
of the list - the IIP took the top three seats, which were the
only ones that the list could reasonably count on. Finally,
Tawaffuq's list is notable in that it contains, in Dr. Salim
al-Juburi, the only Diyala representative likely to make much of
a splash at the national level. END COMMENT.
ORESTE