VZCZCXRO9289
RR RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHIHL RUEHMOS
DE RUEHKUK #0062/01 0741158
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 151158Z MAR 06
FM REO KIRKUK
TO RUEHGB/AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD 0527
RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0563
INFO RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE
RUEHKUK/REO KIRKUK 0591

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KIRKUK 000062 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  DEATH OF NAMED PERSONS 
TAGS: PINR PGOV KDEM IZ
SUBJECT: (U) DIYALA REPRESENTATIVES' BIOS 
 
KIRKUK 00000062  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Scott Dean, Acting Regional Coordinator, REO 
Kirkuk, DoS. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1. (U) This is a SET Ba'qubah cable. 
 
¶2. (C) SUMMARY: SET has collected background information on nine 
of the ten representatives elected from Diyala province in the 
December 2005 elections.  These representatives-elect share 
virtually no common characteristics, but their backgrounds 
reveal a little about the priorities and electoral strategies of 
their respective blocs.  With a notable exception, Diyala's 
representatives seem likely to remain in backbencher roles in 
the soon-to-be-formed Council of Representatives.  END SUMMARY. 
 
 
555 LIST REVEALS STRONG HAND OF SHI'A INDEPENDENTS IN DIYALA 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) Taha Dira' Taha al-Sa'di is an independent aligned in 
national politics with Hussein al-Shahristani; he graduated in 
1989 from Baghdad University with a BS in Economics and taught 
high school in Ba'qubah until regime change.  He became involved 
in politics through his activities to promote civil society in 
Diyala as a founding member of the Diyala-based al-Nur 
cultural/charity organization and the associated al-Huda and 
Elaph organizations.  (Al-Nur organization members took two of 
the top three slots on the 555 list, and at least three of the 
top six slots.)  Taha Dira' is from the predominantly Shi'a 
village of al-Sa'diya, in the far west of the province. 
 
¶4. (U) Falah Faisal Fahad al-Fayad is a Da'wa member from the 
predominantly Shi'a village of Jadidat al-Shat, also in the far 
west of the province. 
 
 
IIP AND SHEIKHS DOMINATE TAWAFUQ LIST 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶5. (C) Amer Habib al-Khayzaran al-'Azzawi is the youngest 
brother in a very prominent family of 'Azzawi sheikhs based in 
Dali Abbas (a town north of the central city of Muqdadiyah); his 
grandfather and father were imprisoned in India for rebelling 
against the British, which made them folk heroes once Iraq 
gained its independence.  His (much) older brother Faisal (now 
deceased) was one of the members of the founding Ba'ath Party 
council in the late 1950s.  Another older brother Nizar, current 
paramount sheikh of the Azza' tribe, was a member of the 
Transitional National Assembly from Allawi's list, but ran on a 
minor list in the December elections and didn't win a seat. 
Sheikh Amer is generally considered to be the only member of his 
family who takes Islam seriously; he was one of the top members 
of the Diyala IIP sheikhs' council. 
 
¶6. (C) Dr. Salim Abdullah Ahmed al-Juburi is one of the Diyala 
IIP's ten-member leadership council.  The former director of the 
Diyala IECI, he was removed on suspicion of packing the IECI 
with IIP cadres.  More recently, he was selected to be one of 
the Sunni representatives on the Constitution-drafting 
committee; presumably, his PhD in international law from Baghdad 
University was an important qualification for this.  He is also 
the chief of the legal department of the national IIP.  He lives 
in the central, IIP stronghold city of Muqdadiyah. 
 
¶7. (C) Taysir Najih Awad al-Mashhadani is a mechanical engineer 
who heads the Engines Department at Diyala Electric Industries, 
a state-owned enterprise in Ba'qubah.  She also heads the IIP 
women's organization in the northwestern qadaa (district) of 
Khalis, and is the wife of Hisham Ali Khalaf, a member of the 
leadership council of the IIP branch in Khalis.  Taysir and 
Hisham live in the town of al-Ghalibiya, in Khalis qadaa 
(district). 
¶8. (C) Mudhher Sa'dun Awad al-Juburi is the heir apparent to one 
of the two most prominent families of Juburi sheikhs in Diyala; 
his family is said to be more respected than the other Juburi 
family (the al-Hamadeh, headed by Sheikh Mutlaq al-Juburi) 
because it had fewer ties to the Saddam regime.  Sheikh Mudhher, 
an independent, lives in the central, IIP stronghold city of 
Muqdadiyah. 
 
 
MARGINAL KURDISH AND ALLAWI CANDIDATES 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) Hussam Abdulkarim Abdali al-Azzawi is a former officer in 
Saddam's armed forces, who retired in 2000.  He claims to have 
begun listening to Future Radio in the late '90s, leading to his 
resignation from the armed forces.  After the fall of Saddam 
Hussein's regime in 2003, he made his way to Baghdad and linked 
up with Iyad Allawi, returning to Ba'qubah to found the Diyala 
 
KIRKUK 00000062  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
branch of the Iraqi National Accord - an organization that is 
almost entirely inactive in Diyala province. 
 
¶10. (C) Sirwan Adnan Mirza, the first person on the Kurdistan 
Brotherhood List in Diyala province, is a KDP member in his 
mid-to-late twenties.  Originally from the northeastern, 
primarily Kurdish city of Khanaqin, he spent his formative years 
north of the Green Line in Kalar (in southern Sulaymaniyah), 
after his parents fled after the 1991 war.  He is now studying 
towards his second masters' degree at Salahuddin University in 
Erbil, writing his thesis on financial corruption.  Sirwan 
spends most of his time in Erbil when he is not in Baghdad, but 
his family has recently moved back to their ancestral village of 
Aliyawa, now basically a neighborhood of Khanaqin. 
 
¶11. (C) Yusif Ahmed Mustafa was the Director of PUK Khanaqin 
media relations and publisher of the monthly magazine "Khanaqin" 
prior to being tapped by the PUK in mid-2005 to be a CoR 
candidate and attending training sessions in Ankara 
(Turkish-sponsored) and Sulaymaniyah (US-sponsored).  Yusif 
claims to have been an underground recruiter for the PUK 
Peshmerga while studying at Baghdad University for a degree 
between 1980 and 1986.  He then assumed a career as an 
agricultural engineer until the 1991 war, after which he fled 
north of the Green Line and became a mineral water factory 
director.  In 1999, he was made an advisor to the 
KRG-Sulaymaniyah Minister of Industry and then in 2000 became a 
liaison with humanitarian NGO's working north of the Green Line 
until coming south in April 2003 with the advancing Peshmerga. 
His family, however, has remained behind in the southern 
Sulaymaniyah city of Darbandikhan. 
 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶12. (C) COMMENT: The only thing more striking about Diyala's new 
crop of representatives than their diversity is their obscurity 
within the province.  With the conspicuous exception of the 
Tawaffuq list, all parties appear to have been betting on 
voters' support for the party rather than for individual 
candidates on the ticket.  An extreme example of this policy is 
the selection of the unproven Sirwan Adnan Mirza as the top 
Kurdish candidate; he seems very bright and well-spoken, but it 
is difficult to suppress the idea that the KDP views the Council 
of Representatives as a training ground for the "real work" of 
governing the KRG.  Similarly, the PUK appears to have reached 
pretty far into its roster to come up with its candidate for the 
Council, and very few of our Shi'a contacts admit to knowing 
anything about either of the successful 555 candidates. 
 
¶13. (C) Tawaffuq's strategy is a notable exception in a few 
ways.  Unlike the other lists, it was able to attract - and 
chose to attract - well-known and powerful people from the Sunni 
Arabs who form its primary constituency.  Unlike the other 
lists, it did not make any attempt to provide balance at the top 
of the list - the IIP took the top three seats, which were the 
only ones that the list could reasonably count on.  Finally, 
Tawaffuq's list is notable in that it contains, in Dr. Salim 
al-Juburi, the only Diyala representative likely to make much of 
a splash at the national level.  END COMMENT. 
ORESTE