Also Shabak people suffer from discrimination. Hunain al-Qaddo, a Shabak politician, was quoted by Human Rights Watch that "the peshmerga have no genuine interest in protecting his community, and that Kurdish security forces are more interested in controlling Shabaks and their leaders than protecting them." He also said that they are "suffering at the hands of the peshmerga and that the Kurdish government refuse to let the Iraq armed forces protect them and have rejected the idea of allowing them to establish their own Shabak police force to protect their people.” Kurdish forces have been implicated in some of the attacks against Shabaks. The prominent Mullah Khadim Abbas, leader of the Shabak Democratic Gathering, a group that opposes the incorporation of Shabak villages into the territory of the KRG, was killed in 2008 only 150 meters away from a peshmerga outpost. Abbas had prior to his killing angered Kurdish authorities by criticizing fellow "Shabaks working for the Kurdish agenda and denouncing Kurdish policies that in his view undermined the fabric of the community’s identity." In 2009, Shabak lawmaker al-Qaddo survived an assassination attempt in the Nineveh Plains.The attackers were wearing Kurdish security uniforms, he told Human Rights Watch. He also said that the Kurdish government will have an easier time imposing their will on the Shabak and obtaining their lands if they kill him. Shabak leaders have complained about impunity for killings. In some of these incidents, the KDP was accused of not investigating killings of non-Kurdish civilians by the peshmerga. HRW reported that "the root of the problem is the near-universal perception among Kurdish leaders that minority groups are, in fact, Kurds", and it reported that "Kurdish authorities have sometimes dealt harshly with Yazidi and Shabak members who resist attempts to impose on them a Kurdish identity".