.Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
.Feud Between Kurdish Clans Creates
-ItsOwn War
By C.J. CHIVERS
KALAKIN, Iraq, Feb. 18 - One
. threat to .stability in Iraq after any
.war to removE!' Saddam Hussein
.takes the form of a dapper 45-year
.old man, educated in the United
States and fluent in English, who has
à yen for cologne, pressed shirts and
silk ties.
His name is Najat al-Sourchi. He is
,planning what would be a deeply
destabilizing murder .
.Mr. Sourchi wants to kill Massoud
Barzani, an American ally and president
of the Kurdistan Democratic
pàrty, which has played host to Central
Intelligence Agency teams in
northern Iraq since last fall..
Many people here regard Mr. Barzani
as a resistance hero, the embodiment
of a surname synonymous
with the Kurdish autonomy struggle,
'which Mr. Sourchi himself supports.
This high place in local lore matters
not to Mr. Sourchi. Hè is a Kurd
who wants a Kurdish leader dead.
"I want Massoud's head," he said.
Much of northern Iraq is talking
peace these days, of unifying opposition
groups pledged to defeat Mr.
.Hussein, and of reconciling tensions
lingering from the Kurdish Civil war.
The former combatants in that
,fratricidal fight in the 1990's, the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the
~urdistan Democratic Party, have
achieved a degree of peace, and are
showing signs of cooperation as
.Afnerican forces build in the region,
'preparing to unseat their common
enemy in Baghdad They are to be
,hosts of an opposition conference set
to begin in Erbil any day.
But beneath this sense of common
purpose, t~nsions simmer. from
Photographs by Chang W, Lee/The New York Times
One of the houses, above, that was destroyed in 1996 when Massoud
Barzani, below left, president of the Kurdistan Democratic Party,
advanced with his fighters on a village, looking for a spy. The uncle of
Najat al-Sourchi, below right, was killed, and his family wants revenge.
~RP..~~I!"'-L!-~L,. ___ ___ _ '0
Southern
no-flight zone
o'
A tribal elder was killed in a raid in
the village of Kalakin in 1996.
yéars of plotting, counterplotting and
bloodletting.
.Mr. Sourchi is consumed by a
blood feud, and has sworn to avenge
the death in 1996of his uncle, Hussein
~ha al-~ourchi, 65, for which he
J>lames Mr. Barzani. It is one of
several feuds that exist beneath the
businesslike dialogue of changing
Iraq, and is a worrisome indicator of
the fragilityof peàce in a land where
even people with common goals are
.intent on settling old scores.
"This is a place where ancient
rivalries and practices do not die
quickly," said Barham Salih, prime
minister of the eastern Kurdish zone.
"There are lots of animosities that
may come to the fore after Saddam
is gone."
During the decades of dictatorial
rule before Kurds broke free of Mr.
HUSSeinÙl an uprising after the. Persian
Gulf war in 1991,many Kurdish
tribes served the Baghdad government.
They formed military units,
known as jash, which sometimes
fought other Kurds, including the Bazarnis,
who led much of the Kurdish
resistance to' Baghdad. One of the
jash tribes was the Sourehis.
In a gesture of reconciliation after
the uprising in 1991,when Mr. Hussein's
arm~ withdrew from northern
Iraq, the Kurdish resistance granted
amnesty to most jash, including the
Sourchis, who controlled a network
of villages along a. strategic road
through Jraq's northern mountains.
When the civil war between Kurds
broke out in 1994,however, loyalties
shifted anew.
In 1996,the Barzanis accused the
Sourchis or collaborating with the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. On
June 16of that year Barzani fighters
100