VZCZCXRO0443
OO RUEHDE RUEHIHL RUEHKUK RUEHMOS
DE RUEHBC #0054/01 1020908
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 120908Z APR 06
FM REO BASRAH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0304
INFO RHEHNSC/WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RUCNRAQ/IRAQ COLLECTIVE
RUEHBC/REO BASRAH 0322

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BASRAH 000054 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL:  4/12/2016 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREF PREL PTER SMIG SOCI KISL IZ
SUBJECT: SUNNI KILLINGS IN BASRAH 
 
REF: A) BASRAH 51, B) BASRAH 46, C) BASRAH 26, D) BASRAH 27 
 
BASRAH 00000054  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
CLASSIFIED BY: Ken Gross, REGIONAL COORDINATOR, REO BASRAH, 
DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d) 
 
 
 
¶1.  (C) Summary:  Since March 30, 12 high-profile killings of 
Sunnis have taken place in Basrah.  This cable builds on Ref A 
and discusses targeted killings of Sunnis in Basrah, as well as 
threats and intimidation campaigns against Sunni and Christian 
minorities.  The local Shia government is at best in denial that 
Sunnis are increasingly being killed in Basrah; at worst, local 
police may be complicit in the killings.  It is too soon to jump 
to the conclusion that Sunnis are the victims of a "cleansing 
campaign" in Basrah.  Nevertheless, warning signs exist of a 
concerted effort to kill off influential Sunnis and drive a 
significant proportion of the Sunni population out of Basrah. 
End Summary. 
 
Targeting of Sunnis in Basrah 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (C) Since March 30, 12 high-profile killings of Sunnis have 
taken place in Basrah.  On March 30, a female Sunni lawyer, 
Maimouna Abdul Karim Hamdani, was shot and killed as she exited 
a taxi.  Maimouna was a well-respected legal advisor to the 
electricity directorate.  On April 3, six members of a Sunni 
family from the Al Sadoon tribe were shot and killed in the Al 
Kaddara market in Basrah in the middle of the day.  One of the 
victims was a four-year-old boy.  On April 4, one Sunni police 
officer was killed and another injured.  Also on April 4, Sheikh 
Nawaf Ahmed Al Aqrab, a prominent leader of the Iraqi Islamic 
Party (IIP), was killed.  On April 5, a well-known Sunni 
professor at Basrah Technical institute, Salah Azeez Hashem, was 
kidnapped, shot and killed.  Also on April 5, a Sunni employee 
of the health directorate, Jalal Moustafa, was shot and killed. 
On April 6, Nowfal Jasem Al Aqrab, a Sunni sheikh was shot, 
injured, and reported to have later died of his injuries.  On 
April 7, Sheikh Amar Nadir Othman, a local Sunni imam at the Al 
Arab mosque, was killed.  Thus far, the perpetrators of all of 
these incidents have not been identified. 
 
¶3.  (C) In addition to the high-profile killings, other Sunnis 
have been killed, shot and injured, and kidnapped.  On the 
evening of April 7, the Sunni Al Asharah Al Mubashera mosque was 
attacked with mortars and small arms fire.  On April 5 and 6, 
all Sunni mosques in Basrah closed on request of the Basrah 
Sunni Endowment in protest to the perceived targeting of Sunnis 
(reftel B).  Sunni contacts have shown REO staff threat letters 
they claim to have received over the past week.  They stated 
that the threat letters were slid under doors and posted at 
Sunni mosques.  The letters range from threatening death to all 
Sunnis in general terms to direct threats against the Deputy 
Head of the Basrah IIP, Dr. Jamal, to telling Sunnis to leave 
Basrah or be killed.  (Comment:  REO cannot verify the 
authenticity of these threat letters.  All threat letters turned 
into the REO thus far have been generic computer-generated 
documents.  However, the preponderance of letters turned in, 
along with the corroboration of threat letters targeting Sunnis 
by UN, Danish, and British contacts in Basrah leads us to 
believe that it is credible that threat letters against Sunnis 
are being distributed in Basrah.  End Comment). 
 
¶4.  (C) The result of the high-profile killings and intimidation 
campaigns has been to drive a significant number of Sunni 
families out of Basrah.  (Comment:  There are no verified 
numbers of the Sunni population in Basrah, although contacts 
estimate that the Sunni population in Basrah is around 400,000. 
We believe that Sunnis make up around 10 percent of Basrah 
province's population.  Other estimates range as high as 25 
percent. End Comment).   The Ministry of Displacement and 
Migration (MoDM) provided data collected on April 2 to the April 
6 International Organization for Migration (IOM) report that 
puts the number of displaced Sunni families from Basrah in Anbar 
province alone at 345.  (Note: The IOM estimates that each 
family has six members.  End Note.)  As per reftel A, Sunni 
contacts report that many of them plan to depart Basrah during 
the summer once their children have finished the school year and 
they can sell off their property.  They list northern Iraq, 
Baghdad, Jordan and Syria as destinations.  REO contacts report 
that the Sunnis who remain in Basrah have begun to group and arm 
themselves for protection and retaliation.  We have been unable 
to verify the creation of Sunni militias or the arming of Sunnis 
in general, but, because of the quantities of small arms 
available in the streets of Basrah and the number of militias in 
the city, we find the scenario plausible.  We will continue to 
monitor and report on the situation. 
 
The Other Side:  Denial or Complicity? 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
 
BASRAH 00000054  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
 
¶5.  (C) REO Shia contacts uniformly deny the threats and 
targeted killing of Sunnis in Basrah.  In an April 6 
Humanitarian Sector Working Group meeting in Basrah, Basrah 
Provincial Council (BPC) Member and Chair of the Humanitarian 
Committee Seyid Hasanein Al Safi, a Shia imam, estimated that 
only about five Sunni families had left Basrah since February 22 
because "they felt threatened," denying that any actual threats 
could have been delivered.  Representatives from Badr 
Organization told REO staff during an April 10 lunch meeting 
that they had heard about problems with Sunnis in Basrah, but 
that in reality, Sunnis and Shia cohabited peacefully in the 
city.  The Shia Iraqi Officer in Charge of UNHCR in Basrah said 
that he was not aware of Sunnis being threatened or targeted in 
Basrah, although he described the overall situation as "fragile." 
 
¶6.  (C) When confronted with hard numbers of Sunnis killed in 
the past two weeks, Shia contacts say that security overall in 
Basrah has deteriorated, and that many murders of both Shia and 
Sunni have occurred in that timeframe.  As for the high-profile 
Sunni killings, many Shia contacts explain the murders as acts 
of retribution, either because the victims were former 
Ba'athists, terrorists, or had family members who were known 
Ba'athists or terrorists.  When asked about the numbers of Sunni 
families leaving Basrah, Shia officials categorically deny that 
this number is high and direct attention to the plight of Shia 
families entering Basrah from the north due to threats and 
violence perpetrated by Sunnis on Shia. 
 
¶7.  (C) Although we have no hard evidence, contacts report that 
Iraqi police or people wearing police uniforms were seen 
carrying out at least some of the high-profile attacks.  At the 
scene of the April 3 murder of the Al Sadoon family, a man 
wearing an Iraqi police uniform was witnessed leaving the area. 
With high infiltration of politically affiliated militias into 
the Basrah police force, their involvement in the killings, not 
just against Sunnis, but in the increase in reported murders 
throughout Basrah, cannot be ruled out. 
 
Christians in Basrah: The Other Minority 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
 
¶8.  (C) Christians in Basrah appear to be targeted and 
threatened to a lesser degree than Sunnis.  A UN contact 
reported that Muslim radicals had issued an informal deadline 
for Christians to depart Basrah, but he was unable to provide 
further information about the deadline.  On April 10, Dr. 
Juliana Dawood, a well-known Christian professor at Basrah 
University, told poloff that, as a Christian from Basrah, she 
felt discriminated against all her life, and that now was no 
worse than before.  Over the past year, she said, she had 
noticed an increase in the influence of fundamentalist Islam in 
Basrah.  This had resulted, she said, in a number of Christians 
being attacked and targeted for operating alcohol shops in town. 
 They were targeted not because they were Christian, Dr. Juliana 
emphasized, but because they sold alcohol. 
 
Other Provinces in the South 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶9.  (C) Thus far, there is no evidence to suggest that the 
targeting of Sunnis extends significantly into Maysan, Dhi Qar, 
and Muthanna, the other Shia-dominated southern provinces that 
border Basrah province.  The Sunni population of Muthanna number 
only a few thousand.  MoDM figures from April 2 published in the 
April 8 IOM report, "Displacement Due to Recent Violence," 
record seven Sunni families originally from Maysan registered in 
Ana in Anbar and eight Sunni families originally from Dhi Qar in 
Ramadi and Heet.  REO contacts in the three other southern 
provinces outside Basrah do not report an increase in murders or 
threats targeting Sunnis. 
 
Comment 
------------ 
 
¶10.  (C) There is a preponderance of evidence suggesting that 
the Sunni minority in Basrah has been specifically targeted for 
murders, threats, and kidnappings over the past two weeks.  A 
rise in sectarian violence in general has been noted in Basrah 
since the February 22 Samarra mosque bombing when the Basrah IIP 
headquarters was attacked and burned and twelve Sunni detainees 
(five Iraqis, two Egyptians, two Tunisians, one Libyan, one 
Saudi, and one Turk) were removed from a Basrah prison and 
eleven of them executed (Ref C and D).  This most recent 
increase in violence against Sunnis began around the end of 
March, with the murder of the Sunni female lawyer Maimouna. 
Notably, the increase in targeting of Sunnis began before the 
April 6 attack on the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. 
 
¶11.  (C) It is too soon to say that a "cleansing campaign" has 
been launched against Sunnis in Basrah.  Rising sectarian 
 
BASRAH 00000054  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
violence in Basrah is certainly a problem, but there is as yet 
no systematic approach by governing officials to eliminate or 
elicit the departure of Sunnis from the city.  Rather, in 
addition to Sunni-targeted killings and threats, there is 
increasing distrust from both Shia and Sunni populations in 
Basrah of the other side, and a growing sense that each group 
would be better off without the other living in the same area. 
If reports that Sunnis in Basrah are stockpiling weapons are 
true, however, a trigger incident that would turn Sunni-Shia 
sectarian violence into Sunni-Shia sectarian warfare in the 
region becomes a greater possibility.   We will continue to 
monitor and report on the situation. 
GROSS