By SALAH BAMARNI

MOSUL, Iraq – Shabak Kurds in the volatile Iraqi city of Mosul are calling on the autonomous Kurdistan Region for Peshmarga protection, after al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch ordered the Shiites to evacuate the city or face death.

Threats against Shabak Kurds have been common, but none has been as serious as a recent warning by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), which gave Shabaks three days to leave Mosul, or be killed.

After expiration of the deadline, three Shabak Kurds were murdered, and ISI claimed responsibility for several explosions in Shabak neighborhoods of the city.

Community members say that many Shabaks have left Mosul and returned to villages in the disputed territories, which are claimed both by Iraq’s central Shiite Arab government and the predominantly Sunni Kurds in the autonomous Kurdistan Region.

Shabak Kurds, who are Shiites, are a minority inside the predominantly Sunni Kurdish community.

Members of the community in Mosul say that 1,200 families have left over the past two weeks.

Sources told Rudaw that over the past week, 11 more people have been killed, most of them Shabaks.

“After the threats by the Islamic State of Iraq, we contacted Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani to send Peshmarga forces to Mosul to protect Shabak neighborhoods,” Ghazwan Hamed, a Shabak representative in Mosul’s Provincial Council, told Rudaw.

He said that security forces in Mosul are incapable of protecting Shabaks.

“We’ve had many meetings with the governor of Mosul about protecting Shabaks, but so far there has not been any positive development and we are deeply concerned about the recent threats against us,” Hamed said.

“No one is protecting us in Mosul; we hope that the government of the Kurdistan Region takes care of us,” said Aisha Mamel, a Shabak resident of Mosul who took the threats seriously and moved back to her village.

Saied Zangana, another Shabak, moved to his village with his wife and eight children. “We have been the victim of Sunni-Shiite rivalry. We are persecuted first for being Kurds and then for being Shiites,” Zangana said.

Sheikh Jasim Bajalani, a prominent Shabak, said, “We receive hundreds of Shabak families on a daily basis who are fleeing their homes in Mosul due to the recent threats.”

Salim Jumaa, the head of the Consultant Board of Shabaks, told Rudaw, “Our demands to the Kurdistan Regional presidency have gone unanswered so far; no Peshmargas have been sent.

However, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has no authority to deploy Kurdish forces in Mosul, which is under administrative control of the central government in Baghdad.

RUDAW