NINEWA: SHREWD AND MERCURIAL GOVERNOR FAVORS KRG,

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 BAGHDAD 002966

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/12/2018
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM PINS PINR IZ
SUBJECT: NINEWA: SHREWD AND MERCURIAL GOVERNOR FAVORS KRG,
ALIENATES SUNNIS

Classified By: Ninewa PRT Leader Alex Laskaris for reasons 1.4 (b,d).

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


1. (S/NF) Summary: Ninewa provincial governor Kashmoula is a
pro-KRG Sunni Arab whose administration has contributed to
the socio-economic decline of the province. Elected with US
support by Kurdish and pro-Kurdish members of the Provincial
Council following the 2004 assassination of his cousin, the
former Governor, Kashmoula comes from a prominent Moslawi
(i.e. native to Mosul) family. He professes a devout Sunni
faith, as well as respect for Christianity and Judaism; he is
contemptuous of the Shia, deeply anti-clerical, and
dismissive of tribal authorities. He maintains an active
enemies, list; prominent entries that we have heard him
savage include the head of the Ninewa Operations Command
(NOC),the Mayor of Mosul, the Ministers of Communications
and Planning, the leadership of the IIP and Al-Hudba parties,
and tribal sheikhs. He is highly critical in private of US
actions since the overthrow of the regime but has engaged US
military and civilian interlocutors since 2004. He is prone
to public histrionics. Indicators suggest that he is
corrupt, and we have found him unresponsive to the needs of
his citizens, a policy that likely feeds Sunni alienation,
though it supports the larger political goals of his Kurdish
patrons. He has a broad knowledge of the Koran which even
his detractors acknowledge, understands the workings of the
Iraqi government better than most of his peers, and is one of
the reasons Ninewa so desperately needs provincial elections.
End summary.


2. (S/NF) PRT leader has averaged two meetings a week with
Ninewa Governor Duraid Muhammed Kashmoula since late
June; these have ranged from one-on-one conversations to
large public sessions. We have found him accessible but
generally unresponsive to key issues of governance. He has
an elemental view of power (in his view it can never be
shared) and little aptitude for governance, but displays a
tactical cunning born of survival in a deadly zero-sum
world. He is capable of rational discourse, but is prone to
histrionics and belittling his interlocutors in public. The
exception to this is Americans; he has never to our knowledge
publicly criticized coalition forces, the PRT or the USG. In
private, including with us, he has been critical of all
three. His main complaints against the USG are our
&mistakes8 since 2003, support for the governing structure
in Baghdad, "misguided" advocacy of the
separation of powers, and sponsorship of the Sons of Iraq
program. He has flatly described the SOI as a "serious,
deadly mistake that will come back to haunt the U.S." and
says that coalition forces created the problem and have the
responsibility to fix it.


3. (S/NF) Kashmoula entered the Iraqi army academy in 1965,
graduating in 1967. He told us he reached the rank of LTC in
1982 but was forced to retire when he refused to join the
Ba,ath party. He lost family members in 1959,
when his father protected Kurds during violence in Mosul, and
a brother who was executed during the Saddam Hussein
regime. Following retirement from the army he worked as a
businessman importing goods from Turkey; after the first Gulf
War, he worked briefly as a taxi driver. In a meeting on
September 8, he told us that 16 of his close associates,
mainly his security detail, were murdered since he became
Governor. The latest was a young former police man who
served tea in his office, killed by terrorists this month.


4. He has also lost the following family members:

-- Laith Kshmoula (son),murdered September 7, 2004
-- Walid Kashmoula (cousin),murdered February 20, 2005
-- Ali Kashmoula (nephew),murdered February 23, 2005
-- Older brother (name unknown),murdered September 2005


5. (S/NF) On the eve of Ramadan, Kashmoula inveighed against
the hypocrisy of his fellow Moslawis and trumpeted the virtue
of his family, particularly his son studying in the US at
Drexel University who is actively resisting the temptations
of the flesh, as well as his seven year-old daughter, who is
observing the Ramadan fast for the third time. Unlike his
own family, he claims, other Iraqis drink, gamble, visit
prostitutes and steal from each other. Sunni clerics, he
believes, are mostly corrupt, venal men; the rest are
fanatics who preach violence. When we asked him if he
thought Iraq had any moral leadership, he responded
immediately "Sistani"...but then added that the Shia are a
crazy cult that worships its leaders. Other than Shia,
Kashmoula professes deep respect for the faiths represented
in Ninewa to the extent that he showed us a 1939 photo of his
grandfather standing next to the chief rabbi of Mosul. He

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says he admires the Christian community for its ability to
care for its own; he routinely asks PRT leader if he has ever
seen a poor Christian or a poor Christian neighborhood.
(Comment: Yes and yes, but we treat it as a rhetorical
question. End Comment.)


5. (S/NF) What Kashmoula really admires is the Kurdish
Regional Government, and Keshro Goran, his Kurdish Vice
Governor, is one of only two high-ranking official we have
ever heard him praise. Surprisingly, the other is Minister
of Finance Bayan Jabir, who he praised as a "good,
hard-working man" despite Kashmoula,s repeated rants
against the central government,s failure to deliver
Ninewa,s budget in any sort of reasonable fashion. He
acknowledges that many people believe that Goran is the
"power behind the throne" in Ninewa, but maintains that
Goran is a loyal deputy who answers exclusively to him.
(Comment: We think that is false; Goran is a KDP stalwart who
has made it clear to us that he answers to his party and the
KRG. End Comment.) His main critique of his fellow Sunni
Arabs is that they should have made common cause with their
fellow Sunnis, the Kurds. Kashmoula keeps his family in
Dahuk during the school year and confined to his heavily
protected Mosul residence in the summer.


6. (S/NF) Kashmoula has seized upon the issue of security as
the primary reason for his continued inability to
deliver essential services to the citizenry, though at times
he does point a critical finger at the central government,s
failure to provide resources to the provincial government.
Security is also the means by which he scores points against
one of his nemeses, Ninewa Operations Command (NOC) commander
LTG Riyad. Kashmoula is careful to separate out coalition
forces, who he praises consistently, from the Iraqi army and
police, who he routinely paints as incompetent, corrupt human
rights abusers riddled with terrorists and their
sympathizers. We believe that the source of Kashmoula,s
animus is his belief that all power in the province,
including military and police, should be centralized in his
office, as was the case in Saddam,s time. Kashmoula has
told us that, as much as he despised Saddam, this was the
only way for a governor to be able to function. He politely
deflects our views on the decentralization of power, saying
that they are wonderful for Americans, but "this is Iraq."
We perceive a personal dislike for Riyad, but the conflict
centers around overlapping mandates. Criticizing the
security situation in public and in Baghdad pays off in two
ways for Kashmoula: he weakens Riyad while reducing
expectations on his own administration. Kashmoula routinely
rails, both in private and publicly, against the failure of
the central government to provide Ninewa,s budget in any
sort of timely fashion. He uses this failure as another
excuse for his failure to provide adequate services to
Ninewa,s population.


7. (S/NF) Kashmoula freely identifies people and
organizations as his foes, but likes to add "I do not hate my
enemies." He is critical ) to us ) of our ongoing dialogue
with Iraqi Islamic Party leader Muhammed Shakr and Al-Hudba
leader Athiel El-Nejefi. He says that we are "talking to
terrorists who hate you but want to keep you in
Iraqi long enough for you to hand them power." He has a
longstanding feud with IIP Minister of Communications Farouk
Abdel-Qadr, which culminated in 2004 when Abdel-Qadr walked
out of the Provincial Council when Kashmoula won the
governorship. The fact that Abdel-Qadr ) also a Sunni
Moslawi ) has returned as the PM,s envoy for Mosul
reconstruction infuriates Kashmoula to the extent that we
have little expectation that the two will be able to
cooperate for the good of the province. Kashmoula resents
Mayor Zuhair al-Araji of Mosul, probably because Zuhair
leverages his good relations with the USG into support for
his delivering basic services independently of his nominal
boss ... the governor. The conflict probably is not
personal, but it is another sign of Kashmoula,s inability to
countenance anyone in the province whose power does not
derive from his own.


8. (S/NF) Kashmoula is contemptuous of the tribal leaders,
referring to them always as the "so called-sheikhs." He
routinely berates them in public meetings and claims that
none of them could muster more than 10 followers. The
institution of sheikhdom died before Saddam, he claims, and
the current crop are nothing more that "old men in
traditional dress who Saddam created." Kashmoula reserves
special (and unexplained) animus for Sheikh Abdullah
al-Yawar of the Shammar tribe, but has not offered an
explanation yet, and also dislikes the Minister of Planning.
At the United and Prosperous conference that MND-N hosted in
Erbil in August, Kashmoula seized the microphone when other

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governors failed to refute MoP criticism and delivered a
lucid tirade against the structure of the budget system.
That he would do so in front of the Deputy Prime Minister,
senior KRG officials, the COM, MND-N commander, and key
members of the Iraqi cabinet shows his substantive knowledge
but also his sense that his position is unassailable.


9. (S/NF) Kashmoula,s administration is harmful to our
interests in three ways.

-- His poor record of governance fuels Sunni alienation and
hostility, which likely correlates with insurgent
recruiting and public support;

-- His open support for the KRG distorts the provincial
debate on the subject of internal boundaries - a provincial
government which should reflect the totality of opinion in
the province instead serves the agenda of one party; and

-- His attempt to increase his personal authority blocks
attempts to foster transparency and devolve power to the
districts and sub-districts.


10. (S/NF) All this criticism notwithstanding, Kashmoula was
elected by the established political process and ) as he is
fond of reminding his many detractors ) can only be
dismissed by the provincial council. Our continued
engagement with him is not a benediction, but an
acknowledgement that his is a legitimate mandate, albeit one
that he secured thanks to the Sunni,s catastrophic decision
to boycott the elections and the Kurdish parties, political
skill in assembling a coalition. The best answer to
Kashmoula ) and the broader failure of governance in Ninewa
-- is free, fair and inclusive elections, the sooner the
better.
CROCKER