Ninewa

In November 2009 Human Rights Watch released a new report detailing the plight of minorities in Ninewa province entitled “On Vulnerable Ground.” The report covers the history of successive governments in Baghdad to Arabize Ninewa by pushing out minorities and Kurds and replacing them with Arabs, and then the ascendancy of Kurds there after the U.S. invasion. They turned around and tried to Kurdicize those same regions to advance their plans to annex the disputed territories there.

Since April 2009 monthly death counts for Iraq have fluctuated up and down. October was no different as it was higher than the previous month. Iraq’s ministries for example, reported 410 deaths in October, compared to 203 in September and 456 in August.

Despite the recent October 2009 Baghdad bombing, and the previous one in August, attacks in Iraq are at their lowest level since the 2003 invasion. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction recorded drops in weekly attacks in eleven of Iraq’s eighteen provinces from May to October 2009.

One of the major problems with the Iraqi government is its inability to spend its budget effectively. The country’s eighteen provinces do much worse than the central government in Baghdad. The new Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s quarterly report to Congress has the latest numbers on how Iraq’s governorates have done up to October 13, 2009.

Mosul, Iraq's third largest city and second most violent in the country, saw a slight drop in the number of dead and wounded in September 2009. While deaths have gone up and down each month in Iraq overall, violence has basically stayed the same in Mosul. In September there were an average of 2.40 attacks/security incidents per day, compared to 2.48 in August. The real difference was in the casualty counts. There were an average of 2.16 deaths per day last month and 2.00 wounded.

Iraq is facing a drought again. Officially, it has been going on for the last two years. Unofficially the United Nations says four. The lack of rain, no government water policy, and population growth are the main causes, but Baghdad has been blaming its neighbors as well. Iran, Syria, and Turkey have all built dams that affect Iraq’s two main rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, along with smaller tributaries.

In mid-August 2009, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq General Ray Odierno proposed joint U.S.-Iraqi-Kurdish patrols in Ninewa. The Americans made the proposal after a series of mass casualty bombings rocked the province. The offer was later extended to all of the disputed territories in northern Iraq.

Iraq The Model recently reported on a story from al-Sharq al-Awsat on U.S. sponsored talks between the ruling al-Hadbaa party in Ninewa and the Kurdish Ninewa Fraternal List.

August 2009 saw a sharp increase in mass casualty bombings across Iraq. After Baghdad, Ninewa was the hardest hit. On August 9 a suicide bomber struck a mosque in Mosul killing 23 and wounding 130. The next day two truck bombs hit the village of Khazna in eastern Ninewa killing 20 and wounding 110.

The latest report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the number of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced that have returned is now available. Like the last report, 2009 has continued to see a number of Iraqis come back, but varying by month. In June, 2009 14,750 displaced and 3,490 refugees for a total of 18,410 Iraqis made the trip back.