MP slams Shabak demands for incorporation into Kurdistan

Iraq participates in kyokushinkai tournament in Japan late Nov BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A parliamentarian from the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) criticized a demonstration staged by hundreds of Iraq’s Shabak people this morning in which they called to include them in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. “Today, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) offices in Sahl Ninewa area mobilized Shabak people to protest, arguing that Shabak are Kurds…,” Shabak MP Hanin al-Qaddo said in a statement received by IraqiNews.com. Qaddo urged the Iraqi government to protect the Shabak community and to defend their rights and ethnic identity. Earlier today, hundreds of Iraq’s Shabak people took to the streets in Ninewa calling to include them in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, according to a local official. The Shabak people are an ethnic group that lives primarily in the province of Ninewa in Iraq. Their language, Shabaki, is a Zaza-Gorani dialect, similar to Kurdish, with many borrowings from Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. According to another source, they speak a dialect of Kurdish with borrowings from Arabic and Turkish. They are scattered throughout 35 villages located in the east of Mosul. While Kurds considered the Shabak ethnically Kurds, they identified themselves as Shiites and a separate ethnic group. Mosul, the capital city of Ninewa, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. There are different communities in Mosul like Christians, Shiites and Kurds along with a Sunni majority. The city is also a historic center for the Nestorian Christianity of the Assyrians, containing the tombs of several Old Testament prophets such as Jonah, Yunus in Arabic, and Nahum. SS (S)/SR 1