Arab Chauvinist Rakan al-Jabouri Should Not be the Governor of Kirkuk!

The Arab Chauvinist Rakan al-Jabouri Should Not be the Governor of the Kurdish City Kirkuk — Rakan al-Jabouri, the governor of Kirkuk, northern Iraq, changed his decision later **allowing Kurds to celebrate Newroz**, March 2022. Photo: Jabouri’s fb

Omar Sindi | Exclusive to iKurd.net

The statement from the malevolent man Rakan al-Jabouri, forbidding Kurdish people of their Newroz celebration, is regrettable at its best and despicable at its worst. The Iraqi people, the Kurds, the Shiite Arabs, and the other minorities have suffered more than enough at the hand of various chauvinistic regimes in Baghdad. The fabric of Iraqi society is broken by this demagoguery of misguided policy and polarization; they are in a state of denial about the diversity of Iraqi society. It doesn’t appear that these demagogues learn any lesson from past Iraqi history. Since recorded history,

The Kurdish people have celebrated the Kurdish New year, Newroz, whether in jails, in mountains, in villages, in the cities, or anywhere else; Newroz is the symbol of Kurdish identity, culture and history; “in Kurdish legend, the holiday celebrates the deliverance of the Kurds from a tyrant {and} there is a poem that tells the story of a Kurd’s lot is one of a thousand sighs, a thousand tears, a thousand revolts, a thousand hopes”. As brutal as the Baathist regime got under the ruinous rule of Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish people in Iraq celebrated Newroz…

“It is not just any ideology. It is an ideology whose view of the world is shared by virtually every group hostile to the life of the mind, in particular, to freedom of thought. Who are these groups? Choose your pick: Islamists of various stripes, Ba’thists, Arab nationalists, communists, Turkish chauvinists, even devotees of sheer terror and human degradation, otherwise known as ISIS”.- Dr. Sabah Salih- Ekurd. The Arab chauvinist Rakan, the so called Governor, must be among one of the group that Professor Salih described and this demagogue may be related to Mohamed Talib Hilal, the Syrian Regime’s minister who in the 1960s tried to completely change the demographic of Rojava Kurdistan with his Arabization policy. Rakan al-Jabouri is aware of the weaknesses of the Kurdish political parties and the disunity among them; therefore he is taking advantage of the crack, he feels no backlash or political retribution, and pays no political price for them…

Now this demagogue who is curtailing the people’s freedom and liberty in the 21st century, is telling the Kurdish people not to celebrate their New Year in their city, and that is unheard of. No matter what the political cost is, the Kurdish Regional government must have an arrest warrant put out for him and his name should be given to Interpol. The Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi should remove this demagogue from his post as the so-called the Governor of Kirkuk, he is not proactive, he is reactive. This demagogue is not a unifier, he is a divider. So far, I have not heard any Iraqi political party(s) condemn the imposter Rakan’s unjust statement on the Kurdish New Year, the Newroz issue. Those politicians or political parties who weigh in and out the pros and cons of Rakan’s provocative statement overall on the Kirkuk Newroz issue, and choose to stay silent should go to see President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine; who is standing up against all the odds fighting what was thought to be one of the most powerful armies in the world, the Russian forces of Vladimir Putin.

After World War I, the British and French set up these colonial Arab States from the ruin of the defeated Ottoman Empire, to serve their interests. If they wanted, they could‘ve set up a Kurdish state too. By force, they attached this part of Kurdistan to the new Iraqi state. Both British and French governments are responsible for this reprehensible betrayal and colossal historical ERROR.

There is a famous example saying, “who would be so naive as to rush to the aid of a wolf howling for help and decry the cruelty of its tormentors, while its chops are still gory with the blood of the lambs it has devoured”. The question is, do the chauvinistic people, just like the wolf example, do not want to hear or see the truth? The ideology of chauvinism does want an easy answer, they do not want or argue that the oppressed is to be defended, just because they are defenseless. On the opposite side, the oppressed people are always discriminated against in every aspect of their life. These chauvinists do not want to understand the reality of history. In 1975, the human rights commission from Europe visited Amadiya and the Iraqi party they were with tried to link the citadel of Amadiya, which was constructed in medieval times, to Iraqi history. They were then told that the state of Iraq was created in 1921, and that the citadel of Amadiya was once the seat of Kurdish principality.

The Iraqi state that the people of Iraq thought they would have is all but gone at the hand of a chauvinistic ruler. Iraq today is more violent, more chaotic, and more driven by extremism that is pushed by its rulers. The eight years of war between Iraq and Iran, is called the “meat grinding war” Ideatic rulers of both sides of the aisle didn’t budge, or step down to say “This is an unwinnable war, let’s have a peaceful dialogue” until foreign powers politically intervened, the war stopped where it started eight years earlier. Because of the political polarizations in Iraq, the Iraqi people have been living in a purgatory state with each war giving birth to another. There are countless examples of misdeeds on how Iraqi society and Iraqi people have suffered at hands of these chauvinist rulers. No one can exactly explain what went wrong, but there is an obvious reason for the colossal failures of the ideologies of political movement in Iraq, starting from Arab nationalism, in its Ba’athist and various Islamic movements, to the nihilistic ISIS, etc.

Rakan al-Jabouri, you should know the history of Kirkuk. In 1958, the Arabs population in Kirkuk was just under 47,000, including those two tribes which were brought in between 1936-37 by the pathetic Monarch rulers. Stop confiscating peoples’ properties under the Ba’athist regime’s fake documentation policy brewed up in the 1980’s and stop the Arabization policy in Kirkuk.

The Kurdish New Year, the Newroz, for centuries has been celebrated, shall be celebrated, in the Jails, in the mountains, in the cities, in the towns… ; the other tyrants failed to prevent the Newroz Celebration; you and your associates will also fail too…

Omar Sindi, a senior writer, analyst and columnist for iKurd.net, Washington, United States.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.