Road from Kalar to Sulaymania

Here are pictures from the road from Kalar to Sulaymania. I took the pictures from the bus window the 21st January 2010.

Beautiful, isn’t it? It has been raining for some days, and when the sun shines, the mountains are green as the grass grows immediately. Like in March.

Yes, it is beautiful. But in January it should not look like in March. Some days after taking these pictures it became very cold.

The mountains are grand, I get never tired on looking at this landscape!
Derbandikhan
Derbandikhan
Rain started in New Halabja.
Sulaymania

Hrant Dink and 19th January 2007

I do not have access to internet every day. My silence on the anniversary of Hrant Dink’s murder does not mean that I would have forgotten him. Today is the first time during several days that I can post anything.

Silence about the Armenian genocide is a sign that Turkey is post-genocidal society. The wounds of the genocide can be healed only by discussing it openly.

Turkey should study how Germany handled the Holocaust. Germans are not paralysed by their past.

A genocide affects also the perpetrators and prevents the normal development of their society.

Turks should keep in mind that the Armenian genocide was not committed by the Republic of Turkey. It did not exist 1915. Armenian genocide happened in the Ottoman empire.

Television programme about Kurdish genocide

Kurdistan TV will send a programme about Anfal and Kurdish genocide this week. I am one of the persons interviewed in the program.

Program times:

Part 1:

Tuesday the 19th January 2010 at 7.15 PM
and second programming Wednesday the 20th January 2010 at 10 AM

Part 2:

Wednesday the 20th January 2010 at 7.15 PM
and second programming Thursday the 21st January 2010 at 10 AM

How elections will go in Khanaqeen?

Flag of Kurdistan in Khanaqeen. I took the photo from a moving car.

I visited Khanaqeen in November 2009 and met governor Mohamed Mala Hasan and the director of PUK office Salah Gokak.

They said that the security situation in Khanaqeen and Diyala province is now much better than one year ago (however, there was in Khanaqeen a bomb explosion in the beginning of January 2010, two people died and 25 people injured.)

The location of Khanaqeen is strategically important: it is the boarder between Erbil (Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG), Baghdad (the Arab Iraq) and Tehran.

The boarder of Iran is about ten kilometres east from Khanaqeen. If the situation in Iraq in general becomes more unstable, there is danger that Iran uses the situation and supports terrorist activities in Diyala to create chaos in whole Iraq.

The capital of Diyala province is Baquba. KRG wants to send peshmergas to Baquba but the Baghdad government does not accept it. Kurds living every where in disputed areas hope there would be peshmergas. Disputed areas are the Kurdish areas of Mosul, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces.

Iran is eager to gain power in Baquba because it is the gate to control Baghdad and whole Iraq. Baquba is located 50 kilometres northeast of Bahgdad.

Kurdish security service Asayish has some offices in Diyala in the areas which are controlled by Baghdad government. Iraqi police forces do not make any cooperation with Asayish in Diyala (opposite than in Kirkuk, where Iraqi and Kurdish security forces cooperate in fight against terrorism). When Asayish and peshmergas catch suspected terrorists they handle them immediately to Americans. Even when it is peshmergas who arrest terrorists in disputed areas, Kurdish courts can not arrange their trials.

Kurdish authorities are worried that there will be problems during the Iraqi parliament elections in March 2010.

There are 8 000 Kurdish families in Khanaqeen who have not been able to register themselves as voters. These people have returned to Khanaqeen after being deported during Saddam's time. They are neither permitted to vote in their previous home towns.

It is half an hour journey from Kalar to Khanaqeen. There are people who travel every day from Khanaqeen to work in Kalar, or from Kalar to work in Khanaqeen.

Happy New Year to Kirkuk!

Happy New Year 2010 to readers of Sahmaran (if there is still somebody)! Sahmaran has been silent for a long time, sorry for that. I live in Kalar, and internet there is too slow to add any pictures to blog and even for text there seems to be all the time problems, for example lack of electricity. This post I write in Sulaymania.

Despite the recent frustrating news from Turkey, let's hope 2010 will be a better year (but there are really no signs that it would be so)!

These pictures are from my favourite town Kirkuk. I took the pictures in October 2009 from a moving car, the typical way to do photographing in Kirkuk.







Pictures: Kristiina Koivunen