MP says KA seeks to deprive Shabak of local representation

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A representative for Iraq’s Shabak in the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) on Saturday accused the Kurdistan Alliance (KA) of attempting to “deprive” the Shabak people of their seat in provincial councils. “The Kurdistan Alliance has fielded its slate, al-Taakhi, to dominate the only seat allocated to the Shabak people. It has put forward Salem Jumaa Khudeir, a prominent KA member, as a representative for the Shabak,” MP Hanin al-Qaddo told IraqiNews.com. Provincial council elections are scheduled to take place on January 31, 2009 in provinces all over Iraq with the exception of Kirkuk and the Kurdistan region. 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. SS (P) 1