Team members during this period were Peggy Gish, Brad Langendoen, Jo Anne Lingle, Michele Naar, Zach Selekman, Chihchun Yuan, and Dir'k Ziska.

Monitoring cross-border attacks and accompanying displaced villagers
During this period, Iran launched sporadic and often heavy shelling attacks on Iraqi Kurdish villages near the Iranian border in the Choman district of northern Erbil governorate, where Iranian authorities claimed Kurdish rebels [the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK)] were operating.  On one of the nights of heavy shelling—29-30 May—a fourteen-year-old girl in the Balakiyaki border area was killed.  According to the Mayor of Choman, the shelling displaced 215 families from five villages and heavily damaged a number of farms in the villages.

At the same time, Iran shelled villages in the Pshdar district, including three villages that had not previously sustained damaged.  The attacks caused fifteen families to flee to the Prde Hazwe Valley.  About seventy-five people, including many children, were living there in crude tents and drinking water from the river, when CPTers visited the camp on 20 May 2010.  Villagers also brought sheep, chickens, donkeys, and a horse to that valley.

The leaders of nine Zharawa villages continued to work on their plan for building a new cooperative village.  One of the challenges they faced was deciding which families would be part of this project, since some villagers who were displaced years ago and more recently displaced villagers all wanted to be in on the new village.  Another challenge was the disparaging comments of a few local officials, who did not take seriously the danger of the current attacks in their village areas.  One said, “This idea was too much like what Saddam did in the past.  Saddam brought people from different villages and made a collective town.”  Another said, “ If we give them money to build a new village, other people in the conflict zone will ask the same thing,” or “ Some people have two places for two wives so they do not qualify as IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons).”

The village leaders took the proposal to all local and mid-level public officials, accompanied by CPTers.  These officials said they could not move ahead without the approval and commitment to financial resources from top officials in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).  The Iraq team then met with the secretary of the KRG Prime Minister, and with representatives of KRG President Masoud Barzani.  The representatives said that the next step would be to have a larger meeting with government officials, village leaders, and NGOs that might contribute some funds and help with building the new village.  

Accompaniment of persons threatened for political affiliation
Twenty-one-year-old Aziz had been staying inside the Goran (“Change”) Party headquarters since the 7 March parliamentary elections.  He received death threats for publically campaigning on behalf of the party, and claimed the charges that he attempted to kidnap a PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) guard and that he shot into a crowd in front of a PUK building before the elections, were false.  On 30 May, CPTers accompanied Aziz when he went to the court, trying to clear the charges against him.  The judge told him there were no standing charges, but sent him to a police station to finish the investigation.

Other former Peshmerga (Kurdish armed forces) or government employees who also spoke publicly about voting for the Goran list told the team that they continue to receive threatening phone calls and still have cases against them pending in court.  (To watch CPT-Iraq's video interviews of these men go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fykUkbliqI and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpCb1ngkhpE)

Profiles of Courage
After touring the Halabja martyr's museum and cemetery with two team members, Langendoen interviewed Aras Abad Akram to add to the videos in the Iraq team's “Profiles of Courage” series on the Iraq team's web page.  See http://www.cpt.org/work/iraq.