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

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn ()zeti
sur la stabilit~ ' «donner leur opinion », afde
la région,Il firme Jalal Talabani, le leader premiers jours de lll.confélilzad
a tenté pend,ant les deux
y aura des ,de l'UPK, « ils ne peuvent pas rence de dissiper les doutes des
prob 1è mes, nous l'imposer ».
. opposants irakiens sur les intentions
américaines et d'obte-
des clashs et " Inquiétude également sur la
nous ne l'ac- possibilité régulièrement évocepterons
pas », prévient Ho-, quée d'instaurer un gouvernetions
les plus délicates. Il a
nir un consensus sur les quesshyar
Zebari, le porte-parole ment militaire américain et ainsi promis aux délégués que
du Parti démocratique du Kur- provisoire à Bagdad. Pour Modistan.
Il regrette le flou qui hammad ßa,qir al-Hakim, le libre de choisir sa forme de
l'Irak, une fois libéré, « serait
continue, d'entourer l~s négo- leader du Conseil suprême de gouvernement» et que les
ciations entre les États-Unis et ,la révolution islamique en Irak Etats-Unis « n'avaient aucun
la Turquie. « Les Américains (Sciri, chiite), une hégémonie désir ,de gouverner l'Irak ». «Il
et nous avons un objectif com- étrangère sur l'Irak et ses resmun
: la libération de l'Irak. ''sources représente le « princi- s'engag'ent dans toutes les
est crucial que les Irakiens
Mais tant que les problèmes pal danger» de l'après-Slidne
seront pas clarifiés, il sub- ' dam Hussein. Qui risque même semble pour un nouvel Irak.
communautés à travailler en-
sistera des malentendus. Nous selon lui de relancer « les Vous, l'opposition irakienne.
espérons que l'accord entre forces du mal» dans la région avez consacré des décennies
, Washington et Ankara ne se' et de contrecarrer « la stratéfera
pas au détriment du gie politique américaine de pays. Ce moment est proche. »
de vos vies à. libérer votre
peuple kurde qui a déjà tant lutte.contrele terrorisme». Il s'est enfin engagé sur la
souffert. » Et si les Turcs, les, L'jlnvoyé spécial du prési~. question de l'armée turque :
Iraniens et les Arabes peuvent dent Bush en Irak Zalmay Kha-
« Nous arriverons dans le
cadre d'une coalition et nous
répartirons dans ce cadre. »
Sans pourtant convaincre les
délégués de-l'opposition qui at-,
tendaient davantage de « garanties
».
Le leader de l'UPK, Jalal Talabani
résume les relations des
opposants kurdes avec Wahington
: « Avec les Etats-Unis
nous avons eu des hauts et des
bas. Aujourd'hui cela va
mieux. Mais j'aimerais que
cela aille encore mieux. J'ai dit
à nos amis américains qu'il
était facile de libérer l'Irak
mais plus difficile de le
diriger.»
Iraq's poisonedbames
have made ,mea hawk
JULIUS STRAUSS
in Sulai,mania, Iraq
here's something singular about a J:1UU1
T,who has beim severely tortured.
i Maybe it's the way he struggles against mn-
, ing eyesight caused by repeated blows to
the kidneys. Or his lo~sided p()sture, the
result of multiplebroken bones that have
mnedto mend properly. Sometimes thereis
a tremor in the hands or a twitch,à minuscule
outer sign ofthetormentWitlün.
The man who sat opposite!lle in a small,
bare'room at the Kurdish bOrder post this
week had all the symptoms of a man who
had been systematically broken. Slowly,
sometimes reluctantly, he relived for me
theterror ofthe 21months he spent in Saddam
Hussein's torture chambers. .
"They put me in a œn at the secret polièe
headquarters, tied,my hands togètherwith
wire andthen suspended me from the ceiling,"
he said quietly. "Then they beat me '
with batons and cables and ran electric
, shocks through my fingers and genitals. It
went on for months. They ney.er told me
whatmycrimewas."
I had seen such men before. When Serb
forces,.unleashed a wave of expulsions,
beatings and killings on theethnicAlbanians
in 1999, I met a teacher in a refugee
camp on the' Macedo~ border I had
known before the war. He was quiet and ,
modest and hadcounselled moderation to
,the hOtter heads in his village. When the
war began, the Serbs had arrested him and
beaten him within an inch of his life. So
great Were the physical ~es~~
wroughtonhim thatitWQ,sevèia1~
.before i'inade the leap Of.recognition.
When I càme to autonomous northern
Iraq - wbicbsinœ 1991has been protected
from Saddam's reach by British and U.S.
warplanes - I was intensely skeptical of
the wisdom ofWashington's insistence on
deposing Saddam. Its claims of links between
al-Qa~ and Baghdad seemed tenuous.
As forthe assertion that Saddam will
soon have the bomb, weD, the eVidencewas
, prettyf1imsy.'
Indeed, I could have reeled off a host of
coun~er-arguments. At a time when the
Westerriworld is entering along, draWD~
out struggle against Is1amist terroris~, it
made Httlesenseto fritter awayresourœs to
oust amanwhose regime was weakerthan
ever. A war also risked alienating hundreds
of millions of moderate Muslims whose
. support would be essential ifthe threat of
Is1amist extremism was to be neutered.
I agreed with the quiet-spoken Muslim
men I met iD Pakistan, Afghanistan and
central Asia who said a Middl~ East peaœ
deal was.a greater priority than ousting
Saddam. As long as Palestinians continued
to die in the streets, they 8liid, the fires ofIs-
1amist~ wouldkeep burning.
Ihave not renounced these aigunlents entirely.
But after little more than a week in
northemIraq, myeyes have beenopened to
the sheer scale of savagerythat Saddam has
wileashed on hispeople.
I have visited villages, refugee camps, tea '
houses and bazaars. Over tiny cups of
Strong, sweet tea I have listened to the steries
of the manypeople who live in this
mountainous refuge. Some are Kurds who
have flourished under 12years of self-rule,
~ reœntarrivals who~ expeUedor
fled Saddam's' territories to the south. In
Sulaimania, where I am based, Arabs,
Thrkomans and Assyrians now co-exist
peacefullywith the Kurdish majority, but
they all have temble tales to tell: Itis as if '
thè entireJ8Dd and all its inhabitants have
been visi~ by a calainity ofbiblical proportions.
", '
As a journalist, I have seen the ethnic '
cleansing of Bosnia and the burning villages
of Kosovo. I watched as Milosevic's '
stotmtroopers, their minds addled byparanoia
and hatred, levelled entire villages
with Httlemore than a cigarette lighter and
a few cans of gasoline. In Sierra Leone, I
saw children - arms or legshaclœd offby
drugged-up thugs - struggle to haul themselves
into broken wheelchairs. I even intervieWed
the thugs that maimed them, 15-
and 16-year-olds with glazed eyes and
heads full Ofdenions. In Afghanistan and
Chechnya, the misery and suffering
wroughtoften beggareddescription.
But nothing could have prepared me for
theodious evilofSaddam Hussein's rule.
In the 1980s, while the West railed
against Nicolae CeauseScu's plan to destroy
3,000 villages, Saddam Hussein actuallydid
it. Then he murdered 180,000
Kurdish men above the age of15 simply
becaùse he 'thought they might one day
, turn againsthim. ,
B,aclœd by Western governments who
~ the spreadoftheAyatollah's Is1amist
revolution, he launched a speculative war ,
against Irari that left the better part of a
mßlionmendead.
Nor has the killing stopped since. Thou-
11I0USANDS
OF IRAQIS ARE
EXECUl1ID WITHOUT llUAL,
TENSOF11IOUsANDSARE
ROUTINELYTORTURED
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