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Kurdish soldiers in northern Iraq face loyalty test
Some wonder if the warriors called to duty are fighting for their country or for Kurds
Bv Christine Spolar Tribune foreign correspondentROVlA. Iraq
The Kurdish term pesh merga "those who
face death" once telegraphed all one
needed to know about the fighters born in the
shadows of the Kandil Mountains.
The Kurds of Iraq fought against Saddam Hus¬
sein for decades, gunning for his ultimate down¬
fall. Their grit was legendary, but, in a new
democratic Iraq, their horizons had to change.
The heroes of Kurdish history could live on in
name but only as the tough pesh merga within
an armed, uniformed Iraqi military.
This week, the soldiers of northern Iraq, the most
disciplined of this country's army, are facing a
loyalty test of sorts: They have been called to
duty in droves every unit on full alert -- to
prepare for a possible fight of enormous signifi¬
cance for Iraq and a region made up of countries
with Kurdish minorities.Turkey has threatened to
invade Iraq over a deadly running battle with
rebel Kurds known as the PKK who agitate for
broader Kurdish rights in Turkey. That prospect
makes for emotional debate about the mission
and its targets that lies before Iraq's Kurdish
troops.
Are the pesh merga fighting for Iraq or for
Kurds? Can they really be expected to battle
Kurds who hunger for the same rights they have?
Are Turkish warplanes buzzing the border to hit
the PKK, or are they aiming, as top Kurdish
leaders have speculated, at the Kurdish-run
regional government in Iraq -- the Kurds' first-
ever democracy and therefore posing a threat
to Iraq's future.
"PKK is fighting for their rights and their land,"
said Hasip Adil, the mayor of Rovia who descri¬
bed himself as a provocateur for Kurdish rights
during the years of Hussein. "Both of us are
Kurdish people, and we need to cooperate. We
know they hurt, we know they feel sorrow, but
how can this go on?
"Adil is a former pesh merga, and at age 35, an
elected elder in Rovia, a blink of a highway town
where boys have always grown up to be pesh
merga. There is a strong sense of nationalism
here and in a string of neighboring villages that
stretch from the Turkish border but their pride
is rooted in Kurdish primacy. Iraq has served as a
launchpad for the Kurds. From Irbil north, they
are in charge. A population of 5 million to 6
million, they live in a place with a legitimate
Kurdish regional government and where Kurdish
language and culture are respected, Kurdish
flags fly, Kurdish history is taught and Kurdish
businesses can thrive.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Key to stability
But they also are bound to wave the Iraqi flag
and they know that Iraq's sovereignty is key to
stability even if hard bargains still lie ahead.
The Kurds have staked a potentially explosive
claim to the city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich town, as
part of their ancestral land. That debate still
flares but, for now, the border risks are para¬
mount.
Kurds are openly debating the likelihood of a
cross-border attack, this time by an ally of the
United States. Rovia, population 1,050, has alrea¬
dy sent dozens of men to the hills just in case.
"Every village is contributing," Adil said. "People
are worried that this will start small and quickly
spread. It could get very bad, very quickly."It is
difficult for some families to sort through what
makes for legitimate Kurd demands. One man
said he had cousins fighting for both Iraq and
rebel Kurdish units. Another man, Mehmet Su¬
leiman, said camps of PKK supporters, also
known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, were
helping the rebels and there was a Kurdish res¬
ponsibility to recognize their demand for equal
rights in Turkey
"The PKK has the right to do this," Suleiman said.
"Turkey is only targeting Kurdish existence
and this democracy too. PKK is only Turkey's
excuse. "Regional President Massoud Barzani
raised the same complaint, that PKK was a
convenient excuse for Turkey, in an interview
with Al-Arabiya television. "The main aim is to
prevent the Kurdish regional development," he
said last week about Turkish threats for incur¬
sions and economic embargoes.
Barzani, a former pesh merga leader and head
of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, is a familiar
figure to Turkish Kurds and has in the past few
years established a political presence in the
southeastern city of Diyarbakir.Barzani's crossborder
dealings in what some see as a bid to be
a Kurdish regional leader -- have been eyed
suspiciously by Ankara. National media outlets,
based in Istanbul, are particularly tough on Bar¬
zani. In the past few weeks, the media have
persistently derided a claim by Barzani and other
Kurdish officials that they can't control the PKK.
It is widely known that official contact with the
PKK is being made, by phone, in Irbil, Iraq's
Kurdish government center. Throughout the
week, reporters have been trooping in and out of
PKK encampments in Iraq. The U.S. govern
By Steve Negus. Iraq Correspondent November 1 2007
Iraq's foreign minister said his
country would reinforce its border
with Turkey to prevent Kurdish rebels
from receiving supplies, in one of the
first concrete proposals made by
Baghdad aimed at forestalling a
Turkish military incursion.
Hoshyar Zebari, who is himself
Kurdish, said yesterday his govern¬
ment would set up checkpoints along
the border with Turkey to prevent
ment, a longtime ally of the Kurds from the days
of Hussein, has made public its demands for
Kurdish authorities to cut off convenient supply
lines for the rebels.As rebels and soldiers skir¬
mish across the border, the Turkish public has
turned out in anger, protesting the rebels and
Iraq's highest-profile Kurds for protecting them.
Nationalism has spiraled in Turkey in the course
of their outrage: Five million flags and banners
were sold in five days, according to news re¬
ports.
Barzani's face is one of those hoisted on pla¬
cards. On Turkish Web sites and television talk
shows, he is regularly derided as a "traitorterrorist."One
columnist in the national daily
Hurriyet went so far as to call for his "elimina¬
tion." Barzani, in an interview published Monday
in Milliyet, another daily, protested that no one
should be calling for violence toward him or
for violence to jump the mountains between Iraq
and Turkey.
"Several times, I have said that PKK should
disarm," said Barzani, who has also rebuffed
questions about how the PKK is able to exist at
all. "The time of weapons and violence has
passed.
"Questions about reports
But one Turkish major, who has pursued missions
along the border in the past and requested ano¬
nymity because he was not authorized to speak
about the current crisis, said media reports about
the extent of the fighting by Turkish troops in
border regions have been sensationalized. It is
impossible to know how far troops are pursuing
PKK because of military restrictions.
But the pace of the pursuit could change at the
end of this week when U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice joins foreign ministers for a
meeting of Iraq's neighbors in Istanbul, and Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan travels Nov. 5 to
meet with President Bush to urge more U.S. and
Kurdish efforts to control the PKK.Then, the
Turkish officer said, the Turkish military could
be ordered into broader battles in the cliffs of
Kandil, and distinguishing between Kurdish
fighters will be difficult.
"They wear similar uniforms," he said of the
Kurdish army and the PKK. "We think they help
each other on those mountains they go back
and forth. There is supposed to be a difference
but, in fact, there isn't."At least that's what it looks
like to us."
Iraq plans to set up checkpoints on
Turkey border
food, fuel and supplies from reaching
the Kurdistan Workers party, or PKK,
which has recently staged a number
of deadly
military.
attacks on the Turkish
Turkey's parliament voted earlier in
October to authorise armed incur¬
sions against PKK bases inside
territory controlled by northern Iraq's
autonomous Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG), which Washing
ton fears could destabilise the only
large secure part of the country.
Turkey has launched airstrikes
against alleged PKK targets but has
held off from a large ground incursion,
which could bring it into conflict with
the KRG's peshmerga security for¬
ces.
The PKK maintains several enclaves
inside Iraq, including some lightly
garrisoned mountain ranges near the
Turkish border and a much larger
base relatively far from Turkish
territory, near Mount Qandil along the
border with Iran.
An embargo that cut off the PKK's
cross-border supply routes, but did
not end its presence within northern
Iraq, might not satisfy Ankara's de¬
mands. The KRG says it has no love
for the PKK, but does not want to incur
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