NINEWA: HADBA LEADER CLAIMS HIS PARTY IS THE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BAGHDAD 000121 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/15/2019 TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM IZ SUBJECT: NINEWA: HADBA LEADER CLAIMS HIS PARTY IS THE STRONGEST IN PROVINCE DESPITE KDP HARASSMENT REF: A. A. BAGHDAD 00119 ¶B. B. BAGHDAD 00092 Classified By: PMIN ROBERT FORD REASONS 1.4 (b) and (d). This is a Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) message. ¶1. (C) Summary: In a January meeting with PMIN DCG of MND-N, Al Hadba ("The Gathering") leader Atheel al-Najaifi, said his party would score do well in the Ninewa election as it was the only party actively campaigning in all parts of Ninewa. Despite his confidence, Najaifi said he was concerned about the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) manipulating the voters roll and intimidating Hadba candidates. Najaifi said he was also concerned with Peshmerga and pro-KDP Iraqi Army (IA) units providing security on Election Day, although he would deploy Hadba elections observers to discourage any intimidation. Najaifi also said the only party he would not ally with in a new Provincial Council is the KDP. Najaifi is well known to the PRT. While his KDP concerns may be well-founded they also point to an anti-Kurd bias which may make forming a ruling coalition in Ninewa's next provincial council more difficult. End Summary. -------------- KDP MALFEASENCE -------------- ¶2. (C) On January 8, PMIN and Deputy Commanding General for Multi-National Division North met with Atheel al-Najaifi to discuss a wide range of topics surrounding the campaign, his party's electoral prospects, and what the new provincial government might look like. Najaifi said his party was suffering at the hands of the KDP; particularly in what he termed as "areas controlled by the Peshmerga." Specifically, Najaifi said that his party's supporters have been arrested, and that Hadba candidates cannot campaign in Zummar and Sinjar in the west and Bashiqa in the east (reftel). To work around these impediments, Hadba has been holding secret meetings in the homes of tribal sheikhs across the province, Najaifi said. ¶3. (C) Najaifi also asserted that the KDP was manipulating the Public Distribution System (PDS) to fraudulently add Kurds to the Province's voters roll. According to Najaifi, adding names to the voters roll after April 15 is illegal, but that the KDP could get around such Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) regulations by pressuring the Ministry of Trade in Baghdad to directly add names to the PDS. Najaifi said he wants a public examination of the voters roll to ensure it has not been manipulated in one party's favor. (Comment: Najaifi did not provide us with evidence to support the allegation. The voters roll in each province is drawn from the records of the PDS, but is compiled by IHEC. Therefore, fraudulently adding names to the voters roll would require fraud in two places: the Ministry of Trade, which is currently headed by a minister from the Da'wa party, and IHEC. Voters' names must appear on the IHEC Voter List for each polling station. Presenting a PDS card alone will not furnish per mission to vote at a polling place. End comment.) ¶4. (C) Najaifi said that he was also concerned about security and KDP-inspired malfeasance on Election Day itself, particularly because of the prominent role to be played by the Peshmerga and the Second and Third Iraqi Army Divisions (2IAD, 3IAD),which he contends are Kurdish dominated. (Note: Although, the 2IAD and 3IAD are now majority Arab, at senior levels and in the ranks, many Arabs still believe they are instruments of the KDP.) Najaifi said that Hadba will deploy 2,000 observers to various voting sites throughout the Qdeploy 2,000 observers to various voting sites throughout the province to discourage wrongdoing by any party. ¶5. (C) PMIN said that Najaifi should take his party's complaints of KDP cheating and coercion of his candidates to the local IHEC representative. PMIN also said he was encouraged to learn that Najaifi planned to dispatch so many elections observers and hoped it was an indication that Hadba, as a new party, would continue to play by the rules of the game and , adhere to the rule of law regardless of the outcome. Doing so was the only way to avoid future violence, PMIN said. PMIN concluded by saying that, on Election Day, in addition to Najaifi's observers, there would also be local civil society observers trained by the UN and the US NGO the National Democratic Institute as well as international observers, comprised, in part, by Embassy and PRT staff. ¶6. (C) Najaifi commented that registering his complaints with the local IHEC representative would ultimately prove fruitless because the local IHEC representative, while a good BAGHDAD 00000121 002 OF 003 man, is under political pressure both in Ninewa and in Baghdad. Najaifi also said that the local IHEC told him violence against candidates is not something they can investigate. (Comment: the IHEC representative told us the same thing, per ref b. PRT and U.S. military will raise incidents of violence with Iraqi security authorities and with possible instigators of the violence. End Comment.) -------------- ELECTORAL PROSPECTS AND POSSIBLE ALLIANCES -------------- ¶7. (C) Najaifi said that Hadba is the only party seriously competing in all parts of the province. Najaifi said he thought the KDP would be their main completion in Article 140 areas. (Note: Article 140 refers to the disputed internal boundaries areas along the border of the Kurdistan Region, which include a half dozen districts in Ninewa.) According to Najaifi, Hadba will do well against the KDP as they have support from the Kurdish Herky and Zebari tribes. Najaifi went on to say that all the Kurdish tribes have some sort of feud with the Barzanis, who lead the KDP. These inter-tribal feuds will swing support to Hadba, according to Najaifi. (Comment: While it is true that Hadba has a Zebari candidate, other Zebaris in the area assert that the tribe is in no way wholly behind Najaifi. The Herkys also have a credibility problem with the Kurdish population in general due to their years of support for the Saddam Hussein regime.) ¶8. (C) Najaifi said that there are ten Sunni Arab lists that are seriously competing for votes around Qayarra, south of Mosul. In other areas, Najaifi said that the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) was Hadba's main competition in Mosul, while the Shia Iraqi Supreme Council of Islam (ISCI) and the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) were Hadba's main rivals in Tel Afar, sorth of Mosul. ¶9. (C) Najaifi said that he did not expect any single party would win a majority of the votes in the province. When asked what alliances he might form to establish a working majority in the new Provincial Council, Najaifi eventually said that he would only rule out the KDP as a possible partner. -------------- GOOD GOVERNANCE -------------- ¶10. (C) Najaifi said that good governance must follow legitimate elections in order for the province to develop. Najaifi charged - without any evidence - that the current provincial government, most of whom do not even live in Ninewa, was most concerned with enriching itself, rather that the people of Ninewa. Najaifi went on to say that if the current pattern of governance repeated itself with the new provincial government, the people would lose faith in the democratic process and resort to violence. ¶11. (C) Najaifi concluded by saying that violence is not endemic to the Moslawi people. Rather, he blamed the ongoing violence on the people on the "margins of Moslawi society" who, since 2003, have been persistently trying to destroy Mosul's 5,000-year-old culture. ¶12. (C) Bionote: Najaifi is believed to have strong ties to many former regime elements and was a well-known landowner and businessman in Mosul himself during Saddam Hussein's reign. The Najaifi family has roots in northern Iraq dating back to Ottoman times when they were tax-collectors for the governor of Mosul. -------------- COMMENT: Hadba's Prospects, in Nujaifi's Mind and in Reality -------------- ¶13. (C) We are not in a position to confirm Najaifi's claims Q13. (C) We are not in a position to confirm Najaifi's claims of strong support throughout the province. In his favor is the sense of grievance widespread among Sunni Arabs resulting from their disempowerment after the fall of Saddam, further reinforced by Kurdish domination in Ninewa after Sunni Arabs boycotted the 2005 election. The party's platform is designed to make the election a referendum on the managerial incompetence of provincial authorities and the intimidation and sometimes brutality of provincial security forces. Hadba's opponents, the Kurdish parties and IIP, will remind voters of the Najaifi family's Ba'athist past. A significant risk to post-election security is that Hadba does worse than Najaifi believes it will (even without election rigging),and his supporters return to violence. End comment. BAGHDAD 00000121 003 OF 003 BUTENIS