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The Kurds are being driven out again, this
time by Iran
26.8.2006
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Kandil mountains,
Kurdistan-Iraq, - A secret war is being waged in
Iraqi Kurdistan’s isolated Kandil mountain range.
Since April Iran has been bombing the area in an
attempt to expel Kurdish separatists, who have
turned the rugged terrain into their own mini-state.
An estimated 400 families have fled the mountains to
escape the Iranian attacks. No let-up appears in
sight as fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK) refuse to abandon their enclave.
Murat Karayilan, the PKK’s bristly, grey-haired
number two commander believes the campaign is an
attempt by the Islamic republic to curry favour with
Turkey, the PKK’s sworn enemy.
“The Turkish and Iranian forces have made an
alliance to attack us,” Mr Karayilan told The Times
inside his group’s enclave. “Iran is attacking us to
make friends with Turkey and to send a message to
the United States.”
In turn, Mr Karayilan claims the PKK’s sister group,
the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJK), a grouping of
Iranian Kurdish separatists, has carried out
reprisals in Iran. Since May the PJK has killed 94
Iranian soldiers, the PKK claims.
“You may ask why does Iran attack us. It is because
of the larger issues of the Middle East,” said Mr
Karayilan.
This week the Royal Institute of Strategic Affairs,
a UK think-tank, gave warning that Iran had become
the most influential country in the Middle East,
three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The Iranian campaign in Kandil has coincided with
renewed Turkish artillery strikes against PKK camps
along the Iraq-Turkey border. The attacks are seen
as a way to pressure Iraqi Kurdistan and are also
revealing of Turkey and Iran’s skittish nature when
it comes to their own restive Kurdish populations.
Mr Karayilan believes that Turkey is using the PKK
as a pretext to intimidate Iraq’s Kurdish regional
government about the future of the oil-rich Iraqi
city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds want to annex
despite Turkey’s adamant opposition. Kirkuk boasts
large Arab and Turkmen populations.
The PKK fought Turkish security forces for much of
the 1980s and 1990s. Their guerilla war in Turkey
cost more than 30,000 lives, but the PKK declared a
ceasefire in 1999 after the capture of Abdullah
Ocalan, its leader.
They returned to armed struggle in 2004 in anger
over Ankara’s failure to engage them.
Flanked by his Kalashnikov-toting women and men, Mr
Karayilan is confident no one will be able to force
his men out of the Kandil mountain range on the
triangle border of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Mr Karayilan and his troops, clad in their olive
soldier uniforms, cruise the serpentine mountain
roads in Nissan Patrols. PKK soldiers man
checkpoints and sentry posts from hilltop to
hilltop. Their green flags adorn mountainsides. At
the entrance to their enclave, concrete blocks mark
the road and a giant poster of Ocalan stares down
from a slope.
Iraq’s Kurdish regional government professes
helplessness about the situation with the PKK and
Iran.
“Kandil is a very difficult terrain. Because of the
geographical terrain in Kandil, no one in the
Kurdish Government, the Iraqi government . . . has
been able to control this place,” said Othman Haji
Mahmoud, interior minister for Sulaimaniyah.
“We hope the PKK leaves Kandil. We remind the
Iranian Government to stop its shelling.”
Meanwhile, the refugee population continues to grow.
Along stream beds south of the Kandil mountains,
villagers have staked up tents.
On August 18 Rasul Hama Ahmed fled his village of
Karosh when Iranian shells rained down from the sky.
Everyone ran to hide in caves, ditches and behind
trees. One shepherd was killed in their village
three hours by foot from the Iranian border.
Twenty-five homes were destroyed. “The shells fell
like stones from the sky,” he said and hoisted up
his leg to show a knick from shrapnel.
It was the second time his village had been struck
since April and Ahmed said he was not taking any
more chances. He estimated that 4,000 people had
been uprooted since the start of the Iranian
offensive.
Ahmed complained the women and children were getting
sick from the stream’s water. He said the village
had still not decided whether to return home.
Looking at his ramshackle makeshift camp of four
tents, Ahmed added: “I want freedom, not to be a
prisoner of bombing and fighting.”
REBELLIOUS KURDS
The PKK founded by Abdullah Ocalan in 1974
Began fight for a separate homeland in Kurdish areas
straddling Turkey’s borders with Iran, Iraq and
Syria in 1984
The EU and US class the PKK as a terrorist group.
Its armed struggle included bombings, kidnappings
and assassinations which cost more than 30,000 lives
In 1999 Ocalan was captured by Turkey. He urged the
PKK to continue the struggle politically and it
announced a ceasefire
Source: timesonline co.uk
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan". These
political implications are claimed to involve
primarily the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in
Turkey's current political scene.
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France.
About half of all Kurds which estimate to 20 million
live in Turkey
Officially the Kurdish flag flown in Iraqi Kurdistan
but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag
is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it
is a criminal offence
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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