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Iraq Kurd veterans predict Turkish defeat
against PKK 8.11.2007
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November
8, 2007
RANIYA, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', -- Veterans
of the Iraqi Kurds' long war against Saddam
Hussein's regime on Thursday predicted defeat for
the Turkish army if it attacks Kurdish Turkey's
rebels hiding in the rugged Qandil mountains
bordering Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Adib Kawa, a former peshmerga who fought Saddam's
army and is now a local politician in the Kurdish
town of Raniya not far from the mountains, said
Turkish soldiers would "never" be able to flush out
the rebels of the Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK).
"Saddam's soldiers were hunting for us. They bombed
us. They mounted hundreds of offensives, but they
failed," said Kawa, who hid in the Qandil for a
whole decade between 1981 and 1991 to escape
Saddam's forces.
"The valleys are so narrow with thick forests that
we hardly ever needed a cave to escape from their
helicopters and if they came on foot, they suffered
huge losses. They used to retreat," he said.
The massive mountain range, between 120 and 150
kilometres (75 and 90 miles) north of the regional
capital Erbil, stretches from the tip of
southeastern Turkey along the border with Iran.
It is a place described by Iraqis as a natural
fortress with its tall peaks, deep valleys and
forests that make the perfect terrain for guerrilla
warfare.
The Iraqi army is not deployed in the autonomous
Kurdistan region in the north and access to the area
is controlled by peshmerga fighters loyal to the
regional government.
Kawa scoffed at the threats of military action
emanating from Ankara following a series of deadly
PKK attacks against the Turkish army in recent
weeks.
"The PKK men are stronger than we were. They are
very disciplined and their hideouts, some even
underground, are formidable. The Turks can't do much
to disturb them," he said.
In 1992, the Iraqi Kurds, still reeling from the
offensive by Saddam's forces that followed the Gulf
war the previous year, backed Turkish troops in an
offensive against the PKK. Kawa was one of the
peshmerga involved.
www.ekurd.net
"Whenever we came near them, they disappeared like
ghosts," he recalled.
"You can capture one of their positions, but it will
be empty and you never have enough men to retain
it."
He remembered searching caves that had been
transformed into warehouses loaded with ammunition
and food, carefully packed in plastic bags.
"They are seasoned, trained and fast," Kawa said of
the PKK fighters. "Even with little bread, rice and
tea, they can survive for months. And as they pay
well, there will always be smugglers to provide them
with supplies from Iran or Turkey or here."
Another former peshmerga, Mohammad Abdullah, 38,
carrying a pistol in his belt and hugely built, also
swears by the impregnable Qandil range.
For five years, he hid out in the mountains which he
dubs "the Kurdish Tora Bora," in reference to the
rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan where
Al-Qaeda fighters eluded US troops and their Afghan
allies.
"Nobody ever in the history of the world has
conquered these mountains. If you know the Panjshir
valley of (Afghan guerrilla leader) Ahmad Shah
Massoud, then Qandil is even more difficult to
attack."
Massoud was eventually killed by Al-Qaeda in 2001
but for years he held out against Russian troops in
his valley stronghold north of Kabul.
Abdullah even brushed off Washington's assurances to
Ankara that it would provide Turkey with real-time
intelligence on the rebels, expected to be largely
images taken by drones.
"Do the Americans have cameras that see what is
under the trees?" he asks with a smile on his broad,
hard face.
Abdullah said that the fact that mountains lie where
the borders of Iraq, Iran and Turkey meet would also
play into the hands of the PKK.
"When the pressure of Saddam used to be high or when
he used chemical weapons, we used to run into Turkey
or Iran. The PKK will do the same," he said.
"They just have to stay there for a month and anyway
they have supporters there."
Abdullah agrees with Iraqi Kurdish leaders that the
solution to the crisis lied in political dialogue
rather than military action.
"You think the Turkish army does not know this? They
have launched 20 offensives and always failed," he
said referring to Ankara's 23-year war against the
PKK.
www.ekurd.net
"It will be the same again," he added.
Over 37,000 Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK
guerrillas have been killed since 1984 when the PKK
took up arms for self-rule in the country's mainly
Kurdish southeast of Turkey.
AFP
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