Iraq's Arabs are seeking safety among the Kurds

[ECH1969]

No one was happier at the death in June of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the proclaimed leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, than Jamal Hussein.

The morning before an American air-strike killed Iraq's top terrorist, the 38-year-old civil servant woke up to find a note slipped under the door of his flat in western Baghdad. It called him “a Shia son of the devil” and said he had a week to leave or he would be killed.

He had heard of such threats before and shrugged them off, but this one was different: it was signed by al-Qaeda in Iraq. Within hours Mr Hussein, his wife and two young sons had thrown their worldly goods into the back of a cousin's pick-up truck and were heading north along the bandit-ridden roads out of Baghdad towards the calm of Kurdistan.

Some 1,250 families are relocating every week. “Threats, rumours, revenge killings, terrorism, kidnappings, sectarian strife, trigger-happy American soldiers and just plain old violent crime” are the main causes, says a senior civil servant.

http://www.kurdishaspect.com/doc811100.html

[Fridays Child]

1. This is a development that shouldn't surprise anyone. I just hope...

...it doesn't spread the sectarian war.