Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris
Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris
Information and liaison bulletin - Institut kurde de Paris
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Revue <strong>de</strong> Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro <strong>de</strong> la Prensa-Basin Ôzeti<br />
I ,5;."" y.*." "I November 1,2007<br />
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Kurdish soldiers in northern Iraq face loyalty test<br />
Some won<strong>de</strong>r if the warriors called to duty are fighting for their country or for Kurds<br />
Bv Christine Spolar Tribune foreign correspon<strong>de</strong>ntROVlA. Iraq<br />
The Kurdish term pesh merga "those who<br />
face <strong>de</strong>ath" once telegraphed all one<br />
nee<strong>de</strong>d to know about the fighters born in the<br />
shadows of the K<strong>and</strong>il Mountains.<br />
The Kurds of Iraq fought against Saddam Hus¬<br />
sein for <strong>de</strong>ca<strong>de</strong>s, gunning for his ultimate down¬<br />
fall. Their grit was legendary, but, in a new<br />
<strong>de</strong>mocratic Iraq, their horizons had to change.<br />
The heroes of Kurdish history could live on in<br />
name but only as the tough pesh merga within<br />
an armed, uniformed Iraqi military.<br />
This week, the soldiers of northern Iraq, the most<br />
disciplined of this country's army, are facing a<br />
loyalty test of sorts: They have been called to<br />
duty in droves every unit on full alert -- to<br />
prepare for a possible fight of enormous signifi¬<br />
cance for Iraq <strong>and</strong> a region ma<strong>de</strong> up of countries<br />
with Kurdish minorities.Turkey has threatened to<br />
inva<strong>de</strong> Iraq over a <strong>de</strong>adly running battle with<br />
rebel Kurds known as the PKK who agitate for<br />
broa<strong>de</strong>r Kurdish rights in Turkey. That prospect<br />
makes for emotional <strong>de</strong>bate about the mission<br />
<strong>and</strong> its targets that lies before Iraq's Kurdish<br />
troops.<br />
Are the pesh merga fighting for Iraq or for<br />
Kurds? Can they really be expected to battle<br />
Kurds who hunger for the same rights they have?<br />
Are Turkish warplanes buzzing the bor<strong>de</strong>r to hit<br />
the PKK, or are they aiming, as top Kurdish<br />
lea<strong>de</strong>rs have speculated, at the Kurdish-run<br />
regional government in Iraq -- the Kurds' first-<br />
ever <strong>de</strong>mocracy <strong>and</strong> therefore posing a threat<br />
to Iraq's future.<br />
"PKK is fighting for their rights <strong>and</strong> their l<strong>and</strong>,"<br />
said Hasip Adil, the mayor of Rovia who <strong>de</strong>scri¬<br />
bed himself as a provocateur for Kurdish rights<br />
during the years of Hussein. "Both of us are<br />
Kurdish people, <strong>and</strong> we need to cooperate. We<br />
know they hurt, we know they feel sorrow, but<br />
how can this go on?<br />
"Adil is a former pesh merga, <strong>and</strong> at age 35, an<br />
elected el<strong>de</strong>r in Rovia, a blink of a highway town<br />
where boys have always grown up to be pesh<br />
merga. There is a strong sense of nationalism<br />
here <strong>and</strong> in a string of neighboring villages that<br />
stretch from the Turkish bor<strong>de</strong>r but their pri<strong>de</strong><br />
is rooted in Kurdish primacy. Iraq has served as a<br />
launchpad for the Kurds. From Irbil north, they<br />
are in charge. A population of 5 million to 6<br />
million, they live in a place with a legitimate<br />
Kurdish regional government <strong>and</strong> where Kurdish<br />
language <strong>and</strong> culture are respected, Kurdish<br />
flags fly, Kurdish history is taught <strong>and</strong> Kurdish<br />
businesses can thrive.<br />
FINANCIAL TIMES<br />
Key to stability<br />
But they also are bound to wave the Iraqi flag<br />
<strong>and</strong> they know that Iraq's sovereignty is key to<br />
stability even if hard bargains still lie ahead.<br />
The Kurds have staked a potentially explosive<br />
claim to the city of Kirkuk, an oil-rich town, as<br />
part of their ancestral l<strong>and</strong>. That <strong>de</strong>bate still<br />
flares but, for now, the bor<strong>de</strong>r risks are para¬<br />
mount.<br />
Kurds are openly <strong>de</strong>bating the likelihood of a<br />
cross-bor<strong>de</strong>r attack, this time by an ally of the<br />
United States. Rovia, population 1,050, has alrea¬<br />
dy sent dozens of men to the hills just in case.<br />
"Every village is contributing," Adil said. "People<br />
are worried that this will start small <strong>and</strong> quickly<br />
spread. It could get very bad, very quickly."It is<br />
difficult for some families to sort through what<br />
makes for legitimate Kurd <strong>de</strong>m<strong>and</strong>s. One man<br />
said he had cousins fighting for both Iraq <strong>and</strong><br />
rebel Kurdish units. Another man, Mehmet Su¬<br />
leiman, said camps of PKK supporters, also<br />
known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, were<br />
helping the rebels <strong>and</strong> there was a Kurdish res¬<br />
ponsibility to recognize their <strong>de</strong>m<strong>and</strong> for equal<br />
rights in Turkey<br />
"The PKK has the right to do this," Suleiman said.<br />
"Turkey is only targeting Kurdish existence<br />
<strong>and</strong> this <strong>de</strong>mocracy too. PKK is only Turkey's<br />
excuse. "Regional Presi<strong>de</strong>nt Massoud Barzani<br />
raised the same complaint, that PKK was a<br />
convenient excuse for Turkey, in an interview<br />
with Al-Arabiya television. "The main aim is to<br />
prevent the Kurdish regional <strong>de</strong>velopment," he<br />
said last week about Turkish threats for incur¬<br />
sions <strong>and</strong> economic embargoes.<br />
Barzani, a former pesh merga lea<strong>de</strong>r <strong>and</strong> head<br />
of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, is a familiar<br />
figure to Turkish Kurds <strong>and</strong> has in the past few<br />
years established a political presence in the<br />
southeastern city of Diyarbakir.Barzani's crossbor<strong>de</strong>r<br />
<strong>de</strong>alings in what some see as a bid to be<br />
a Kurdish regional lea<strong>de</strong>r -- have been eyed<br />
suspiciously by Ankara. National media outlets,<br />
based in Istanbul, are particularly tough on Bar¬<br />
zani. In the past few weeks, the media have<br />
persistently <strong>de</strong>ri<strong>de</strong>d a claim by Barzani <strong>and</strong> other<br />
Kurdish officials that they can't control the PKK.<br />
It is wi<strong>de</strong>ly known that official contact with the<br />
PKK is being ma<strong>de</strong>, by phone, in Irbil, Iraq's<br />
Kurdish government center. Throughout the<br />
week, reporters have been trooping in <strong>and</strong> out of<br />
PKK encampments in Iraq. The U.S. govern<br />
By Steve Negus. Iraq Correspon<strong>de</strong>nt November 1 2007<br />
Iraq's foreign minister said his<br />
country would reinforce its bor<strong>de</strong>r<br />
with Turkey to prevent Kurdish rebels<br />
from receiving supplies, in one of the<br />
first concrete proposals ma<strong>de</strong> by<br />
Baghdad aimed at forestalling a<br />
Turkish military incursion.<br />
Hoshyar Zebari, who is himself<br />
Kurdish, said yesterday his govern¬<br />
ment would set up checkpoints along<br />
the bor<strong>de</strong>r with Turkey to prevent<br />
ment, a longtime ally of the Kurds from the days<br />
of Hussein, has ma<strong>de</strong> public its <strong>de</strong>m<strong>and</strong>s for<br />
Kurdish authorities to cut off convenient supply<br />
lines for the rebels.As rebels <strong>and</strong> soldiers skir¬<br />
mish across the bor<strong>de</strong>r, the Turkish public has<br />
turned out in anger, protesting the rebels <strong>and</strong><br />
Iraq's highest-profile Kurds for protecting them.<br />
Nationalism has spiraled in Turkey in the course<br />
of their outrage: Five million flags <strong>and</strong> banners<br />
were sold in five days, according to news re¬<br />
ports.<br />
Barzani's face is one of those hoisted on pla¬<br />
cards. On Turkish Web sites <strong>and</strong> television talk<br />
shows, he is regularly <strong>de</strong>ri<strong>de</strong>d as a "traitorterrorist."One<br />
columnist in the national daily<br />
Hurriyet went so far as to call for his "elimina¬<br />
tion." Barzani, in an interview published Monday<br />
in Milliyet, another daily, protested that no one<br />
should be calling for violence toward him or<br />
for violence to jump the mountains between Iraq<br />
<strong>and</strong> Turkey.<br />
"Several times, I have said that PKK should<br />
disarm," said Barzani, who has also rebuffed<br />
questions about how the PKK is able to exist at<br />
all. "The time of weapons <strong>and</strong> violence has<br />
passed.<br />
"Questions about reports<br />
But one Turkish major, who has pursued missions<br />
along the bor<strong>de</strong>r in the past <strong>and</strong> requested ano¬<br />
nymity because he was not authorized to speak<br />
about the current crisis, said media reports about<br />
the extent of the fighting by Turkish troops in<br />
bor<strong>de</strong>r regions have been sensationalized. It is<br />
impossible to know how far troops are pursuing<br />
PKK because of military restrictions.<br />
But the pace of the pursuit could change at the<br />
end of this week when U.S. Secretary of State<br />
Condoleezza Rice joins foreign ministers for a<br />
meeting of Iraq's neighbors in Istanbul, <strong>and</strong> Prime<br />
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan travels Nov. 5 to<br />
meet with Presi<strong>de</strong>nt Bush to urge more U.S. <strong>and</strong><br />
Kurdish efforts to control the PKK.Then, the<br />
Turkish officer said, the Turkish military could<br />
be or<strong>de</strong>red into broa<strong>de</strong>r battles in the cliffs of<br />
K<strong>and</strong>il, <strong>and</strong> distinguishing between Kurdish<br />
fighters will be difficult.<br />
"They wear similar uniforms," he said of the<br />
Kurdish army <strong>and</strong> the PKK. "We think they help<br />
each other on those mountains they go back<br />
<strong>and</strong> forth. There is supposed to be a difference<br />
but, in fact, there isn't."At least that's what it looks<br />
like to us."<br />
Iraq plans to set up checkpoints on<br />
Turkey bor<strong>de</strong>r<br />
food, fuel <strong>and</strong> supplies from reaching<br />
the Kurdistan Workers party, or PKK,<br />
which has recently staged a number<br />
of <strong>de</strong>adly<br />
military.<br />
attacks on the Turkish<br />
Turkey's parliament voted earlier in<br />
October to authorise armed incur¬<br />
sions against PKK bases insi<strong>de</strong><br />
territory controlled by northern Iraq's<br />
autonomous Kurdistan Regional<br />
Government (KRG), which Washing<br />
ton fears could <strong>de</strong>stabilise the only<br />
large secure part of the country.<br />
Turkey has launched airstrikes<br />
against alleged PKK targets but has<br />
held off from a large ground incursion,<br />
which could bring it into conflict with<br />
the KRG's peshmerga security for¬<br />
ces.<br />
The PKK maintains several enclaves<br />
insi<strong>de</strong> Iraq, including some lightly<br />
garrisoned mountain ranges near the<br />
Turkish bor<strong>de</strong>r <strong>and</strong> a much larger<br />
base relatively far from Turkish<br />
territory, near Mount Q<strong>and</strong>il along the<br />
bor<strong>de</strong>r with Iran.<br />
An embargo that cut off the PKK's<br />
cross-bor<strong>de</strong>r supply routes, but did<br />
not end its presence within northern<br />
Iraq, might not satisfy Ankara's <strong>de</strong>¬<br />
m<strong>and</strong>s. The KRG says it has no love<br />
for the PKK, but does not want to incur<br />
11