Iraqi minorities caught in tug of war over land BASHIQA, Iraq -- Kurdish forces have detained Murad Kashtu al Asi three times in the isolated district of Sinjar in Nineveh province.

First, they beat him and accused him of being a terrorist and a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a mostly Sunni Arab political party. The second time, they detained him for several hours, al Asi said. The third time, they hit him in the face with gun butts.

"If you leave alive this time, then work with us or we will kill you," he said his captors told him. He was held six days and released Sunday after U.S. forces intervened on his behalf, he said.

The Kurds never charged al Asi with a crime and even called him "brother." His offense: working with an Arab party in territory that the Kurds covet.

"We don't want you to be with Arabs anymore. … If they controlled the area, (the existence of the) Yazidis will end," al Asi recalled.

He is a member of the ancient Yazidi sect, most of whom consider themselves Kurdish. In Iraq, the Yazidis -- estimated at a few hundred thousand -- are at the center of a tug of war over land between mostly Arab Iraq to the south and mostly Kurdish Iraq to the north.

Three minorities that populate villages near the city of Mosul in Nineveh find themselves under heavy Kurdish pressure: the Yazidis, who are disdained by some Muslims and Christians for revering Malak Tawas, the peacock angel, which other religions see as devil worship; the Shabaks, a small ethnic group of Sunni and Shiite Muslims who claim Persian descent; and the Assyrian and Chaldean Christian communities, who speak Aramaic. Together they hold one key to Kurdish ambitions to expand the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan between Sinjar, near the Syrian border, and Khanaqeen, in Diyala province.

Kurds chafed under the repression of Saddam Hussein's regime but,with provincial elections looming, many non-Kurds fear them.

"Any man who is not with (the Kurds) -- and especially not with the (Kurdistan Democratic) Party -- cannot live in the area because he will suffer, and for this reason I think all of us will leave," said al Asi.

World attention has focused on the battle to control oil-rich Kirkuk, where Saddam once purged Kurds, and now Kurds and Kurdish parties are purging Arabs.

But the strip of villages linking Sinjar to Khanaqeen has turned into a powder keg as Kurds and Arabs compete for the loyalties of the minorities with economic incentives, intimidation, detention and, in some cases, murder.

Now that Iraq's parliament has approved a provincial elections law, Kurds worry that they can't retain the power they wield in Nineveh province.

In a village near Mosul, the Yazidis' spiritual leader said they must be protected from Kurdish and Arab extremists.

"The Yazidis have no problem with the Muslims, but we are in this place and we are considered the winning card," said the leader, Baba Sheikh. "We are the balance, and whoever wins the Yazidis tips the scale."

By Leila Fadel
McClatchy Newspapers