Strife in North Iraq as Sunni Arabs Drive Out Kurds

[cal04]

The letter tossed into Mustafa Abu Bakr Muhammad’s front yard got right to the point.

“You will be killed,” it read, for collaborating with the Kurdish militias. Then came the bullet through a window at night.

A cousin had already been gunned down. So Mr. Muhammad and three generations of his family joined tens of thousands of other Kurds who have fled growing ethnic violence by Sunni Arab insurgents here and moved east, to the safety of Iraqi Kurdistan.

(snip)
While the American military is trying to tamp down the vicious fighting between rival Arab sects in Baghdad, conflict between Arabs and Kurds is intensifying here, adding another dimension to Iraq’s civil war. Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation, Kurdish officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/world/middleeast/30mosul.html?hp

[nealmhughes]

1. You know, Mosul is the Biblical city of Ninevah, where Jonah went to preach.

Historically, it is an Assyrian city, not Kurdish or Arab, but Aramaic speaking and Christian! Isn't that odd now? Talking about a complicated city history! And who can claim a city that has a multi-ethnic history: Kurds? Turkomen? Assyrians? Arab Muslims? All of them?
Oh, stupid nationalism, what a power vacuum has wrought upon an ancient city.