Debates on minorities’ rights in elections ignite old row over Shabaks’ identity

BAGHDAD/IraqiNews.com: Iraqi political negotiations on a law article allocating guaranteed seats to minorities unleashed a new row over defining the identity of Shabaks, a community living in lush Ninewa plain. “Shabaks are Kurds and a constituent of Kurdish community in their territories, history and costumes,” Mohamed Jamsheet, a Shabak lawmaker from the Kurdistan Alliance (KA), told IraqiNews.com The MP noted Shabak community has “one seat in parliament through the KC bloc along with their seat in Ninewa’s local council”. Jamsheet lashed out statement voiced by another Shabak MP Hunein Qaddo, noting “he is not representing Shabak community”. Qaddo labelled Shabak minority as a Muslim minority composed of Shiites and Sunnis and not a Kurdish group.  Qusay Abbas, a Shabak local member in al-Hamadaniya district, deemed Jamsheet’s statement as “a political backdrop aiming at annexing Shabak ethnicity to Kurds”. “Jamsheet does not represent Shabaks and was elected by KA votes as he is the deputy chief for Kurdistan’s Democratic Party (KDP) bureau in Ninewa,” he highlighted. Abbas maintained Jamsheet’s statement came along with Kurdish campaign to “exclude Shabaks from a law article setting guaranteed seats for minorities”. The Iraqi parliament endorsed last two weeks a law on the provincial councils election, in which an item that guaranteed seats for Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities seats in the local councils by virtue of the quota system was abrogated. The measure, however, drew outcry from the political and social organizations representing Christians and other minorities despite assurances by the parliament speaker and the UN Secretary-General’s representative after the law was passed. The local member vowed to “stage ceaseless demonstrations if Shabak were excluded from the provincial elections law item”. Yet MP Hunein Qaddo from the Iraqi United Alliance (UIA) asserted “parliament’s coordination factions along with UIA and Iraqi Accordance Front (UIA) supported allocating guaranteed seats for Shabaks in Mosul”. The MP accused the Kurdish bloc that rejected their claims as “trying to Kurdishize Mosul to take control of the province capabilities”. Legal Expert Tariq Harb said “Shabaks were not mentioned in the constitution, but that does not mean they are not a minority particularly as some minorities were cited in the constitution as examples and not as group with special status”. “Defining a group as a minority can be made by the parliament’s simple majority voting and not through a political bloc,” he added. When asked about the origin of Shabaks, Mohamed al-Shabaki from Iraqi Minorities’ Council said “they are an ethno-group that migrated from Azerbijan, which was ruled by the Persian Empire then, to Ninewa plain”. He attributed the name of shabak to an Arabic word meaning intertwine , reflecting their diverse society and interlinks with Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen families. The ethnic expert classified the Shabaks as an ethnic group, citing government documents and Indo-European Aryan language spoken by Shabaks as evidences. For a history professor, the imbroglio over defining the identity of Shabaks rest in accumulated historical problems. “Shabaks are weak Muslim minority that tend to identify itself with the stronger ethnic group,” he said. “Their geographical areas situated in areas predominated by Arabs and Kurds along with other religious minorities, such as, Christians and Yazidis,” he added. The history professor emphasized the Shabaks are “divided between identifying themselves with Kurds as religious group and identifying themselves as separate ethnic group”. “These rows were non-existent and have come to the forefront after 2003 since the old Iraqi constitution did not refer to minorities,” he concluded.