AMBASSADOR HILL MEETS WITH MINORITY POLITICAL

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BAGHDAD 001545

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: IZ KIRF PGOV PREL SOCI
SUBJECT: AMBASSADOR HILL MEETS WITH MINORITY POLITICAL
LEADERS

REF: A. BAGHDAD 1539

B. 2008 BAGHDAD 3506

C. BAGHDAD 887

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Summary
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1. (SBU) In their first meeting with Ambassador Hill,
political representatives of Iraq's minority communities
focused on the issues of emigration, greater political
representation, and a perception of societal discrimination,
subjects which they believed to be mutually reinforcing.
They attributed worrying rates of minority emigration to
Western countries to the lack of economic opportunity and
political representation, not to anti-minority persecution, a
point Christian religious leaders also made during their
lunch with the Ambassador the previous day (ref A). There
was broad agreement that minority quotas in the national
elections and the creation of a second chamber of the Iraqi
Parliament with mandated minority representation could help
create the perception among minority communities that they
are an integral part of Iraqi society despite a legal regime
heavily weighted toward Islam. The Ambassador stressed the
importance of finding practical ways to address minorities'
social, political and economic issues. End summary.

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Three Issues Emerge
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2. (SBU) On June 10, Ambassador Hill hosted a lunch for 10
political representatives of Iraq's minority communities:
Minister of Human Rights Wijdan Selim (Chaldean),Minister of
Industry Fawzi Hariri (Assyrian),Deputy Foreign Minister
Labid Abbawi (Syriac),MPs Younadan Kanna (Assyrian),Amin
Farhan (Yezidi),Sadaddin Ergec (Turkmen),and Hunein Qaddo
(Shabak),advisor to the Prime Minister for Christian Affairs
Georges Bakoos, and community representatives Matheel
al-Sabti (Sabean-Mandean) and Abdelrazzaq Abaychi (Bahai).
The conversation was wide ranging, but three themes
dominated: the issue of minority emigration, the need for
institutional mechanisms to ensure greater minority political
representation, and the belief of minority communities that
they are suffering discrimination.

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Emigration
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3. (SBU) The minority political leaders agreed that the
emigration of their communities was their most pressing
concern, although it was notable that the issue of security
played a minor role in the conversation. Minister Hariri
said that in general minorities had fared very badly since
2003 and that their departure was due to a combination of
political, economic and security factors. Hariri said the
Prime Minister and the government were very conscious of
minority issues and were willing to do more to stem
emigration, but that the Parliament had not passed any
legislation that would give them the financial tools to do
so. In contrast, MP Kanna put the blame on liberal
immigration policies in the United States and Europe, which
he claimed were "vacuuming up" all of the minorities from
Iraq. Poloff noted that most minority emigration had been to
Western Europe, not the U.S. Kanna noted that in order for
minorities to stay in Iraq they needed not only security, but
jobs as well. Deputy FM Abbawi added that minorities also
needed "political acceptance." The Ambassador told the
political leaders that the "pull factor" of the economic
opportunities in the West was a challenge in other countries
as well, and said he was pleased to hear that the "push
factor" of persecution was no longer a driver of minority
emigration. (Note: The conversation on emigration mirrored
almost exactly the Ambassador's discussion with Christian
religious leaders on June 9 (Ref A). End note.)

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Political Representation
QPolitical Representation
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4. (SBU) The minority leaders focused on two political
themes: guaranteed quotas for minorities in the upcoming
national elections and the creation through the ongoing
Constitutional amendment process of a second chamber to the
Iraqi Parliament with mandated minority representation. With
respect to election quotas, MPs Kanna and Qaddo noted that
the drafting of an elections law has not yet begun and that
there was disagreement on whether there should open or closed
lists and whether the electoral system should be a single
national district or 18 governorate districts, as it was in

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the 2005 parliamentary elections. However, Deputy FM Abbawi
noted that the quota issue was a big concern for minority
communities and argued that the six seats reserved for
minorities during the January 2009 provincial elections were
insufficient and sent a signal to minorities that they were
unimportant. Abbawi said he believed that now was an optimal
time to give minorities greater representation. Sectarian
tensions are at a low point, he said, and such a move would
send a positive signal to minority communities. Minister
Hariri seconded this notion, arguing the single biggest
setback for minorities was the Parliament's Article 50 vote
(ref B) that gave Christians a single seat in the provincial
councils of Baghdad, Basra and Ninawah. Hariri contended it
would have been better to get no quotas rather than be given
such a token gesture. MP Kanna recounted that Arab-Kurd
tensions -- coupled with fears about creating an unbalanced
provincial council -- sidetracked a plan for minorities to be
given seven reserved seats in the Ninawah Provincial Council.


5. (SBU) The Ambassador asked the minority leaders about the
prospects of adding a second, upper chamber to the Iraqi
Parliament that might function more like the U.S. Senate with
minority groups exercising greater political power relative
to their demographic size. Deputy FM Abbawi said that the
creation of a second chamber was important as it would have
the ability to give recommendations even if it had no power
to initiate legislation. MP Qaddo agreed that a second
chamber was desirable, but complained that no one had any
idea what the Constitutional Review Committee was doing and
therefore could not comment on any specific proposal. (Note:
The Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) has been working
for the past several years to draft a package of
constitutional amendments (ref C). One of these will
establish an upper house, the Federation Council. The CRC
plans to submit its final report to Parliament soon. Septel
will report on this effort and the proposed amendments. End
note.)

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Kirkuk
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6. (SBU) As part of the discussion of elections and
political representation, the minority leaders also discussed
the issue of Kirkuk. MP Kanna, who represents the Christian
community on parliament's seven-member "Article 23" Committee
which is tasked with providing recommendations on how to
resolve the issue of Kirkuk, stated that the Committee had
not met its June 1 deadline of submitting recommendations to
Parliament. Although its mandate had been extended, the
Committee had suffered a total breakdown and no consensus
recommendations were likely to be submitted, he asserted.
The Ambassador asked how this might affect how the national
elections take place in Kirkuk. Minister Hariri stated that
the Cabinet had approved an Article 140 Commission decision
in which new residents in the city of Kirkuk would be allowed
to remain in the city, but would not be able to vote there --
this they could do in their place of origin. Poloff
acknowledged the thorny political dimensions of the Kirkuk
issue, but noted that this electoral modality, by which
certain residents were allowed to choose their provincial
government and others not, could be seen as inconsistent with
majoritarian democratic norms.


7. (SBU) Hariri stressed that quotas were essential for the
Kirkuk Provincial Council in order to move the process
forward. MP Kanna said the 32-32-32-4 principle was still in
play (whereby the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen each have 32% of
the seats on the provincial council with Christians taking
Qthe seats on the provincial council with Christians taking
the remaining 4%). The Prime Minister's advisor for
Christian Affairs, Georges Bakoos, maintained that there was
insufficient political support for that idea. The Ambassador
noted that in the U.S., Congressional districts are redrawn
every 10 years based on census results, a process that
generally ensures that migration is factored into political
representation.

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Discrimination
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8. (SBU) The minority leaders also discussed what they
viewed as examples of discrimination toward their
communities. At the top of the list was the complaint that a
Saddam-era law that requires the conversion of minor children
to Islam in the event that one of their parents should
convert remains on the books. MP Kanna claimed he knew of
2,000 cases in which minor children had had their religion
changed to Muslim and now could not change it back to
Christianity. Minister Hariri said that there were at least
10,000 such cases. Minister of Human Rights Selim told the

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Ambassador that she had raised this issue, not for the first
time, in a letter to the Judicial Council, but had been
rebuffed. She said she planned to continue to press the
issue. Selim warned that Iraq was moving toward being an
exclusively Islamic country, pointing out that while
parliament decided to remove Baathist symbols from the Iraqi
flag, Muslim religious conservatives have prevented the
removal of the words "God is Great." Georges Bakoos pointed
to a recent debate in Parliament over whether to ban alcohol
in Iraq as further evidence of cultural discrimination.
Several MPs also raised the contradictions inherent in the
Constitution's Article 2, which says no law shall violate the
principles of Islam and also that no law shall violate the
principles of democracy and the rights and basic freedoms
stipulated in the Constitution. The MPs also noted that some
religious and ethnic minorities, including Shabaks and
Bahais, are not identified by name as "official" minorities
in the Constitution.


9. (SBU) Acknowledging the importance of minority rights
and identity, the Ambassador noted that the U.S. government
also sometimes uses religious symbols (e.g., on our
currency),and that the Iraqi government's use of
Muslim-majority religious symbols and messages such as "God
is Great" on the flag is not inherently anti-minority. He
said that Iraq is not alone in trying to balance tradition
and maintaining national identity with the civil requirements
of democracy. This is a conversation many countries are
having.


10. (SBU) The minority leaders were also critical of Iraq's
continuous focus on the trilateral relations between Sunnis,
Shias and Kurds to the exclusion of minorities. Minister
Hariri said that the larger ethnic groups always treated any
job given to a minority as a favor done to the group rather
than being based on merit. Minister Selim told the
Ambassador that minorities had been excluded from the recent
creation of a de-Baathification Committee because they "had
not suffered during the reign of Saddam." They missed the
point, she said: a body set up to foster national
reconciliation must be representative of the entire country.
Hariri also quickly pointed out that the assertion that
minorities had not suffered under Saddam was also wrong: "We
all suffered." Abbawi said that there needed to be a shift
in focus from the Sunni-Shia-Kurd paradigm. "Iraq is a
rectangle, not a triangle," he said. The Ambassador agreed
that the Iraqi political landscape was much more complex than
Shia-Sunni-Kurd. He stressed the need for Iraqis now to
transcend sectarian orientations and focus instead on
creating a multi-cultural, civic Iraqi identity.


11. (SBU) Both of the MPs representing the Yezidis and the
Turkmen complained to the Ambassador that their communities
had been the victims of human rights abuses since 2003 from
the Kurds, who had entered their traditional areas. Yezidi
MP Farhan argued for an autonomous region in the north where
minorities could govern themselves and protect themselves
with their own security forces. Both MPs along with Shabak
MP Qaddo were concerned about the national census scheduled
in October, claiming that their communities could be put
under pressure to declare themselves to belong to a different
ethnic or religious group than they really were. (Note:
Many Kurds insist that Shabaks are Kurds. End note.) The
Bahai representative, Abdelrazzaq Abaychi, explained that
Bahais are currently registered as Muslim on their national
ID cards and requested the Ambassador's support in helping
QID cards and requested the Ambassador's support in helping
the Bahai community's efforts to implement an MOI directive
that allows them to change "Muslim" to "Bahai." He said the
MOI directive is not being implemented because the legal
advisor in the Directorate of Nationality and Passports has
determined that such a change is tantamount to the holders'
changing their religion from Muslim to Bahai, and it is
illegal to convert from Islam to another religion. The
Ambassador noted that we have raised this issue at the
Ministry of Interior and would do so again. He also noted
that while this was his first meeting with minority political
representatives, it was by no means his last. This was a
conversation that will continue.

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Christian Conference
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12. (SBU) Minister Hariri told the Ambassador that the Prime
Minister was interested in holding a conference in Baghdad to
review the status of Christians and other minorities in Iraq.
He said that the idea was still in its infancy, but that
there was a lot of concern in the minority community about
whether such a conference would be effective in generating
momentum to address minority concerns. The Ambassador
emphasized that the timing of such a conference would need to

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be calibrated to ensure effective political follow-up.
Poloff suggested that such a conference would be most
effective if it were preceded by several months of minority
collaboration to hammer out a common political agenda and
concrete steps the government could take to advance their
interests. The conference could then be used to spotlight
and catalyze government action on this minority action plan.

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Comment
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13. (SBU) The minority political leaders' strong concern
about their diminishing numbers due to emigration to the
West, and their laying the blame for this on liberal Western
emigration rules and greater economic opportunity in Europe
and the U.S. -- but not, significantly, on persecution -- is
consistent with what we've been hearing from other minority
contacts, both in Baghdad and the KRG. We will continue to
urge our minority contacts to put aside their differences and
work together to develop a political action plan that
advances issues of common concern. The Christian conference
was originally proposed in the summer of 2008. Despite our
follow up with Selim, Abbawi, and Hariri last year, the
conference idea lost momentum. We are encouraged that Hariri
raised it with the Ambassador. We will again follow up.
HILL