Word: assi
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Forman's background is in documentary films, plus a stint writing for the 2005 Israeli miniseries adapted for HBO as In Treatment. (He wrote three episodes for the series' haunted soldier, who was played by Assi Dayan, the son of Defense Minister and war hero Moshe Dayan.) Like generations of Israelis, Forman grew up in a country that is besieged by hostile neighbors even as it occupies land the Palestinians consider their own. That twin feeling, of being both prisoners and police, might give anyone restless dreams. But the soldiers whose commanders did nothing to stop the 1982 massacre, while...
...Kurdization": at the expense of other ethnic groups, Kurds are being recruited back into jobs Saddam's regime pushed them out of. "The oil business needs to be a meritocracy," says Jusef, who has worked at the company for 28 years, "not one based on racial discrimination." Yehya Assi Mahmoud, an Arab attorney in Kirkuk, says he saw Kurdish militias seize 28 Arab homes in his village of Shaheed last April. In June he quit the city council to protest what he considered to be American favoritism toward the Kurds; now he fears that the coming transfer of power will...
Sheik Hassan Assi could see that the burly Kurdish guerrilla leader was in no mood to bargain. The Kurd, he recalls, backed him against a wall and shook his forefinger, saying, "Shame on you, Sheik, for building a house on Kurdish land. You knew we would be back one day, even if it took us 100 years!" For Assi, an Arab, it was not just a house but a dream home, a resplendent country estate on the outskirts of Kirkuk, on which he had spent his life's fortune. The Kurd, Mohammed Abdullah, had moved into the house after...
Confrontations like these between Kurds and Arabs are threatening to make Kirkuk, Iraq's fifth largest city, the world's new Sarajevo, a site of ethnic cleansing and slaughter. Though Assi's encounter with Abdullah ended without bloodshed, at least two gun battles in the city have together left more than a dozen people dead. The trouble is rooted in Saddam's policy of moving fellow Arabs into the Kirkuk area to squeeze out the frequently rebellious native Kurds. The main objective was to secure Baghdad's control over Kirkuk's oil, which represents 6.4% of the world's known...
...Provisional Authority in the city: "We are not here to ethnically cleanse any group. People should be able to choose where they live. These people were the pawns of Saddam's policy, not its architects." That said, coalition forces have not yet agreed to put the disheartened Sheik Hassan Assi--or others like him--back in his dream home...