Samarra’s dream of "salvation" by a rejected project before being applied

regarding Samarra, towards a separate province.

Samarra, is a historic city located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River in Salahuddin province, lies 125 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad, which is bordered to the north by Tikrit city, to the west by Ramadi, and to the east by Baquba, with a population of more than 300 thousand people, according to the Ministry of Commerce statistics in 2003.

The province project was not new to Samarra city (120 km north of Baghdad), the largest city in Salahuddin province, especially as it suffers from marginalization and exclusion as activists say under its subordination to Tikrit, the regional capital of Salahuddin.

Salahuddin province was established in accordance with a presidential decree issued at the beginning of the establishment of Baath Party that included Samarra , Dujail and Balad after being affiliated to Baghdad while included Shirqat which was affiliated to Mosul to the new province.

With the passage of several provinces last year , Samarra subject has been raised and the talk about it grows with the fall of large parts of Salahuddin province by ISIS as Samarra stayed out of the cycle of violence .

Samarra is considered a sensitive and strategic center of sacred shrines for Shiite Muslims that also contains a known drug company on the level of Iraq in addition to trade companies and other cultural heritage support it by tourism and other agricultural areas.

Shrines in Samarra are Sufi shrines and the shrine of Imams Ali al-Hadi and Hassan al-Askari, the tomb has a religious position by the Shiites, they consider the tenth and atheist Imams of the 12 Imams of Shia in addition to the tombs of al-Sayeda Hakema , sister of Imam Hassan Askari and al-Sayda Narjis , the mother of Imam Mahdi (PEUT).

There are also shrines next to the crypt, which is the last place that the Imam Mahdi was present in it (as Shiite belief) before his disappearance in the Abbasid era ,1000 thousand years ago.

In case , the province project was accepted , Samarra will join Balad and Dujail, while the rest of Tikrit will stay along with Baiji , Shirqat and al-Dour as another province.

Pages were launched on Facebook bearing the name Samarra province and the Coordinating Committee to move the center of the province to Samarra and other pro-conservative pages.

"Shafaq News" went to a civil activist from Samarra who Sponsor those pages, Mohammed Ali and asked him about the reason for this idea. He said that "Samarra has all the Components, the largest cities in Salahuddin and oppressed by successive local governments in the province."

He added that "Saddam Hussein was interested in Tikrit for being his hometown forgetting Samarra , one of the major cities and the most important in addition to the theft of its resources continuously along these years that followed the fall of Saddam."

Saddam comes from the town of Awja that follow Tikrit as he was buried in it after the US invasion that toppled his government, which had ruled Iraq strongly .

According to a local source who asked for anonymity, there is a coordination by local officials to submit a formal request to the Federal authorities to proceed with the issuance of Samarra province.

But Salahuddin province, the Legislative Council in the province find that the request for deducting Samarra by a new province is very difficult because of the lack of preparedness and the necessary infrastructure.

Jassim Mohammed, Deputy Head of Salahuddin provincial council told “Shafaq News" that "the subject of Samarra province is very difficult, as well as in the case of a region in Salahuddin province."

Muhammad said "Samarra don’t have enough components as well as the presence of Shiite shrines is a very sensitive topic while the population of the province in Salahuddin in general is one million and a half and it separated , the provinces will not get a sufficient number of the population."

While Mohammed finds that this is not the time to announce Samarra as a province.

While the young journalist , Saif Hussain who live in Dhuluiya near Samarra finds that announcing Samarra as a province now is a mistake."

Hussein told “Shafaq News" that "Samarra, a predominantly Sunni city while Balad and Dujail are Shiite , which makes the conflict in its most intense in the case the new province took place between the two parties, especially that the country is living on the sectarian schism occurred years ago."