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 -------------- -------------- ¶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 -------------- ¶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 -------------- -------------- ¶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 BAGHDAD 00002157 002 OF 002 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