NINEWA PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR VISITS TAL AFAR AND

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 002157

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/31/2018
TAGS: PGOV PREL PTER IZ
SUBJECT: NINEWA PROVINCIAL GOVERNOR VISITS TAL AFAR AND
MEETS WITH LOCAL LEADERSHIP

Classified By: Ninewa PRT Leader Alex Laskaris: Reasons 1.4 (b and d).

This is a Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) message.


1. (SBU) Summary and Comment: On July 5, Ninewa Governor
Duraid Kashmoula, accompanied by Ninewa Vice Governor Khasro
Goran, the Provincial Directors General of Water and
Electricity, a local journalist, the Third Armored Cavalry
Regiment (3 ACR) Commanding Officer and the PRT Leader,
visited the city of Tal Afar, Ninewa's second-largest city.
Officials from Tal Afar included Mayor Najim, the District
Council Chairman, several local directors of essential
services, and local sheikhs and community leaders. Tal Afar
leaders focused on poor service delivery and displacement
issues; Kashmoula urged them to report such complaints
through the provincial chain of command and said he would
transmit them Baghdad. Comment: Most of the Tal Afar
residents' concerns focused on issues other than security
that were typical to developing economies emerging from
authoritarian rule. End Summary and Comment.

Districts Need to Work Through the Provincial System
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2. (SBU) Governor Kashmoula's visit was his first in more
than a year, and might have been the first small step toward
possibly repairing relations between the provincial
government in Mosul and the District government in Tal Afar.
In the meeting, Governor Kashmoula stressed the need for Tal
Afar officials to pass their problems up through the
provincial leadership to Baghdad. For instance, after
numerous complaints about electricity, the Governor asked,
"Why is it that this is the first time we are hearing this
directly from you? You should be passing these concerns
through your local director of electricity to the Provincial
Director General of Electricity to take to the Ministry in
Baghdad. Otherwise, why do we have local directors at all?"
The Governor chastised Mayor Najim and the Tal Afar officials
for going directly to Baghdad with their problems instead of
working through the provincial system. Mayor Najim and the
Chairman of the Tal Afar District Council responded that they
needed the Governor's help to follow up on all of their
concerns with Baghdad. The Governor agreed to do so, but
insisted that they needed to pass them through the
appropriate channels to the provincial level.

Complaints Were No Surprise
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3. (SBU) Tal Afar district officials' main complaints were:
lack of electricity, lack of fuel, inadequate water supply,
unavailability of food rations, and lack of provincial money
for projects. These needs match closely with what the 3 ACR
and PRT have been hearing, and working to address through the
provincial and district governments, for the last past year.


4. (SBU) The Governor told all present that Tal Afar District
was not alone in its suffering in the province. Other
districts, like Al Hamdaniya and Mosul, were not receiving
their food rations or sufficient electricity either, he said.
Shortly after the meeting, the Governor traveled to a
library with the Mayor to cut the ribbon on a new computer
lab.

Displaced Families Returning, Slowly
--------------


5. (C) Mayor Najim said 42 Sunni Turkmen families displaced
by fighting in the city in 2005 had returned to Tal Afar from
Mosul since June 1, 2008. The Governor said he wanted to
assist families to return to Tal Afar, but complained that
when he started saying publicly that these families needed to
return home, members of the Council of Representatives in
Baghdad told him to stop rushing people back. Mayor Najim
stressed that if the Governor encouraged people to return,
they would.

Possibility for Improved Public Perception of the Governor
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6. (C) Comment: Relations between the provincial
administration in Mosul and local government officials
elsewhere in the province are strained, due both to
structural issues and competing personalities and political
affiliations. Facilitating contact between the governor and
local officials (including sheiks) remains a PRT priority.
Filtering out what was unique to Iraq and Ninewa in this
meeting, what we heard was something approaching a normal
interaction between frustrated citizens and a newly engaged
government official. We feel PRT involvement has enhanced

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provincial-local communication, and while it is not clear
whether these conversations would have happened in our
absence, we will continue to encourage such dialogue. End
Comment.
CROCKER