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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ôzeti sync, both wanting a peaceful solution for this royal mess; but he always points out "we are a nation" which will not accept Turkish threats. US plans for Iraqi Kurdistan, stretching back to that 1990 Israeli-devised Turkish plan, are in jeopardy. And once again all because of the enemy within. Washington played the ethnic card in Afghanistan, pitting Tajiks against Pashtuns; the result, apart from a never-ending war in Afghanistan, was that mxfStaic November 01, 2007 Pashtuns on both sides of the border united and are now destabilizing even further the US ally, Pakis¬ tan. Washington played the Kurd card to destabilize Saddam Hussein's Iraq and as a beachhead for its control of the country after the invasion. Not only Iraq turned into a quagmire, Washington helped to plunge Kurdistan into the line of (Turkish) fire. There's no evidence these lessons have been learned. No matter what happens in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration will still insist on the ethnic card to precipitate regime change in Iran. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@vahoo.com. Iraqfs Kurds: rebel support, war fears By DOUGLAS BIRCH -Associated Press Writer about the need to crack down on the IRBIL, IRAQ --When Turkey accu¬ ses Iraq's Kurdish officials of bac¬ king insurgents, one man they may have in mind is Falkadin Kakei - reportedly on Turkey's wanted list of PKK. "I have seen over the past couple of days the serious commit¬ ment to implement the range of measures that will make a diffe¬ rence," Browne said. Iraqi Kurds. If so, it could signal a major shift in the way Kurdish authorities deal with Kakei, gray-haired and engaging, is the PKK, which has waged war on Turkey since 1984 in a campaign the Kurdish region's minister of that cost an estimated 35,000 lives. culture, a role that includes campai¬ gning to free what he calls Kurdish political prisoners, including Abdul¬ lah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kakei and other government officials say they don't regard the PKK as a terrorist group - though the United States, the European Union and other Kurdish rebel group in Turkey. Kakei's dual loyalties - an official within Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region and champion of Kurdish nationalism - show why Kurdish officials here have been slow to move against Kurdish insurgents, even as Turkey threatens to move across the hideouts. border to strike rebel Many of Iraq's Kurds share Kakei's sympathy for Kurds in Turkey and tolerance of the rebels' past brutal tactics. But their continued tolerance of the guerrilla group risks placing them in the middle of someone else's conflict and could threaten their privileged place as Iraq's most stable and prosperous region. Now they face international pressure to help uproot the rebels, known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, from Iraqi mountain sanctua¬ ries used as staging areas for raids across the border in Turkey. That pressure is expected to rise Friday in Istanbul during a regional confe¬ rence on Iraq's security. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has all but accused Kurdistan's leader, Massoud Barza¬ ni, of helping the PKK. "He is in a position of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization in that region," Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper quoted Erdogan as saying. But British Defense Secretary Des Browne said Thursday said he was encouraged by talks with Barzani 16 governments insist it is. "We fully sympathize with the fact that ... the Turkish government and the Turkish people have faced a vicious set of attacks by the PKK," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicho¬ las Burns said Thursday in Vienna, Austria. The former Marxist group, which once sought independence, now says it is committed to democracy and wants more cultural and political rights for Turkish Kurds, but not a separate state. It also claims to have ceased offensive operations. That hasn't stopped large-scale clashes between the PKK and Tur¬ key, fighting which in recent weeks has killed scores of Kurds and Turks. Kakei, who still wears the olive-drab baggy pants and shirt that was his guerrilla peshmerga uniform for 35 years, denied rumors that the go¬ vernment of Kurdistan turns a blind eye to shipments of food and other supplies to the wild border lands where the group finds sanctuary. He noted that the PKK has in the past waged war against both the Kurdis¬ tan Democratic Party and the Patrio¬ tic Union of Kurdistan - which today share power in Iraqi Kurdistan. For years, Kakei ran clandestine radio broadcasts for peshmerga insur¬ gents battling the regime of Saddam Hussein. "Not only do we not offer them any help, the PKK is fighting us, even now," Kakei said. "And they don't seem to be in need of any help from us, either, militarily or politically." Kurdish Iraqi officials say they have not moved against the PKK because they don't have the resources. The group's seasoned guerrilla fighters, they say, would be impossible to dislodge from their hideouts in the soaring mountains of northern Iraq. But Iraqi Kurds closely identify with their ethnic brethren across the borders in Turkey, Syria and Iran. The Kurdish people feel they have been subjected to political and cultu¬ ral repression in this, their home¬ land, since the days of the Ottoman empire. The current crisis has helped heal some historical divisions among the region's Kurdish communities. "Now for the first time, the govern¬ ment of Turkey has united the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey," Kakei said. "For the first time, Kurds on both sides are demanding the same thing." After Turkey recently demanded that Iraq extradite a number of PKK officials, an Iraqi newspaper reported that Kakei was one of those sought by the Turks. So far, the list has not been made public. But Falah Bakir, Kurdistan's foreign relations chief, told The Associated Press the list included only officials with the PKK. Kakei told the AP he was not a PKK official, but acknowledged he was not popular ment. with the Turkish govern¬ Six months ago, Turkish officials barred Kakei from attending a cultu¬ ral conference in Diyarbakir, in Turkey's heavily Kurdish southeast. The reason? "I think the main thing and the only thing is that I have always been calling for a peaceful settlement of the Kurdish Turkey," he said. issue in "I never hide my sympathy for the Kurds of Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The problem is that anything in support of the Kurdish is considered a terrorist act." In Kakei's view, the current crisis is a result of a political struggle bet¬ ween Turkey's Erdogan and the Turkish military, rather than Anka¬ ra's battle against terror. Erdogan, Kakei pointed out, has gradually given Turkey's Kurds broader cultural rights and political rights, angering nationalists and their allies in the military. The current crisis, he said, is an attempt by Erdogan's enemies to wreck pro¬ gress for peace in Kurdish areas. "The military is trying to roll back the progress on the Kurdish issue over the past five years," he said. "The people who want to go on blasting the border are the military." Kakei said he and other Iraqi Kurdish officials are pressing the PKK to halt its insurrection. PKK leaders agree, Kakei and other Kurdistan officials claim, but have been forced to keep fighting. "Of course they are ready to lay down their arms, but the Turkish government is not allowing them any chance," Kakei said. "The Turks attacked them." Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish officials have called on Ankara to declare a general amnesty for PKK fighters, and to engage in talks with the group over its demands for more autono¬ my. Kurdish leaders here say Turkey could squander an opportunity to resolve the conflict. Since Ocalan's arrest in 1999, Kakei said, more moderate leaders are now charge of the PKK and are ready for compro¬ mise. "They are ready to sit with Turkey and hold discussions," he said. "But Turkey is closing every channel, even with us."
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ôzeti i the Australian November 02, 2007 US helps Turkey to isolate rebels Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent I THE US claimed yesterday to have deployed military resources from elsewhere in Iraq to help Turkish forces pinpoint Kurd¬ ish separatists in the north. The public claim to have secretly simultaneously," Deputy Prime Minis¬ Kurdish administration, but has surveillance information to the Tur¬ pitched in to the counter- ter Cemil Cicek said after a cabinet accused both it and the US of not kish military. PKK rebels operate insurgency campaign is a fresh bid to meeting. "The targets of these mea¬ doing enough to cut off supply lines to mainly from the rugged frontier of convince the Turkish Government not sures are the terrorist organisation the PKK. the Qandil mountains, along a 300km to invade northern Iraq. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due in the Turkish capital, Ankara, last night as part of a high-stakes bid to stop an invasion as fears continue to mount about a new battlefront ope¬ ning in war-ravaged Iraq. and those groups which are suppor¬ ting, aiding and abetting it." Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suggested Massoud Barzani, the leader of Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region, is assis¬ ting the Turkish Kurd rebels. The central Iraqi Government has said it will consider rounding up PKK leaders and handing them over to Turkey if Ankara refrains from inva¬ ding. However, Turkey has so far refused diplomatic overtures from Baghdad and Washington, claiming border between Iraq and southeastern Turkey. "We are assisting the Turks in their efforts to combat the PKK by supplying them with intelligence, lots of intelligence," Defence Department press secretary Geoff Morrell said in Washington. Turkey said this week it would im¬ pose economic measures on the rebels of the Kurdish Workers Party and groups that support it in a move "He is in a position of aiding and abetting the terrorist organisation in that region," Turkey's Hurriyet news¬ they are both offering too little too late. The US announcement of military co¬ He said 10 members of the PKK - which the US considers a terrorist organisation - are in a US "most wanted" database. widely interpreted as sanctions against the Kurdish administration, which runs northern Iraq largely autonomously from Baghdad. "Military, political, diplomatic and economic measures are being taken TIME paper quoted Mr Erdogan as saying. Close to 70 per cent of all imports into the Iraqi Kurdish areas travel through Turkish airspace, giving Ankara significant leverage over the Kurdish authorities. Turkey says its military is not moving against the operation comes a week after US commanders in Iraq had announced their forces there had done "absolute¬ ly nothing" in the north of the country and had no plans to change strategy. The US now says it is flying spy planes over the border area and passing on By Andrew Lee Butters /Salahaddin Nov. Nov. 02, 2007 The executive compound of Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdis¬ tan Regional Government, sits high on a ridge along the northern edge of the Mesopotamian plain, on a spot that was once a summer resort under the former regime. With its eagle's-nest views, helipad getaway and fierce peshmerga guards, the hilltop redoubt feels like the lair of a James Bond villain which is exactly how many Turks think of Barzani. In the uproar over the killings of Turkish sol¬ diers by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) a rebel group of Turkish Kurds fighting the Tur¬ kish state the Turkish media has portrayed Barzani as a warlord gone wild. The Turks ac¬ cuse him of supporting the PKK, which main¬ tains sanctuaries in the mountains of Barzani's domain in northern Iraq, in order to further his own Kurdish nationalist agenda. U.S. officials have pressed Barzani and the Kurdish leadership to take action against the PKK, at least to stem the flow of people and supplies to their moun¬ tain camps, and to arrest PKK leaders based in Erbil, Barzani's regional capital. Some American commentators have even wondered if Barzani is using the PKK as a playing card to be traded away at some future date in exchange for Tur¬ kish recognition of independence for Iraqi Kur¬ distan. But in a recent interview with TIME and other foreign media, Barzani remained adamant that he wouldn't direct Kurdish security forces to act against the PKK, nor would he be intimidated by possible Turkish military incursions into Nor¬ thern Iraq. "I am not an enemy of Turkey; I am a friend of the Turkish people," he says. "But I do not accept the language of threatening and blackmailing from the government of Turkey." "We have given them more and more intelligence as a result of the recent concerns ... There has been an in¬ creased level of intelligence sharing," Mr Morrell said. Kurd Leader Defies Turkish Threats Barzani and the Kurdish lea¬ dership claim they are unable to eject the PKK from Iraq, and that doing so is not their respon¬ sibility, anyway. The PKK made its way into these mountains during the early 1990s, when the no-flight zone imposed by the U.S. against Saddam Hussein's air force created a power va¬ cuum. And although Iraqi Kur¬ dish peshmerga cooperated with some of the many Turkish mili¬ tary operations against the PKK during that period, the bloody experience has left them unwil¬ ling to repeat the same mistakes. "This is not a problem that can be solved by force," says Barzani, himself a former guerrilla commander. "[The Turks] have tried military operations in the last 23 years. Now, it's time for the Turkish people to ask their military what they did in the last 23 years, and why they didn't solve it." Barzani believes that what's needed instead is a political solution to the conflict between Turkey and the PKK. "If they adopt a peaceful approach, we are ready to help as much as we can," he says. "If Turkey came up with a peaceful initiative and the PKK rejects that, then all the Kurdistanis will take up a position against the PKK." Turkey, however, treats the PKK simply as a problem of terrorism. (The U.S. has also desi¬ gnated the organization as a terrorist group.) Barzani claims that the Turks' unwillingness to consider anything but force against the PKK is a sign that Turkey's agenda goes beyond resolving the situation at hand. "Honestly, I am about to be convinced that the PKK is only an excuse and that part of the real target is the Kurdistan re gion itself," he says. The other target, he sug¬ gests, is the moderate Islamists of Turkey's ruling AK party, which is opposed by Turkey's fiercely secularist generals. "This is part of their internal disputes and problems," adds Barzani. The Iraqi Kurdish leader talks tough in the face of threatened Turkish intervention. "If the Kur¬ dish question is not solved, there will not be security or stability in this region," he said. "If there is an invasion it means war. If they invade and enter the Iraqi Kurdistan region and they attack us, of course we have to defend ourselves. If they attack our people, our interests, our territories, then there will be no limit." Even as Turkey ratchets up its threats and Was¬ hington scrambles to avert a showdown between two of its key regional allies by pressing for more action on the Iraqi side, Massoud Barzani is showing no signs of backing down. 17
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