|
The Kurdish mountain army awaiting the
next invasion of Iraq
19.7.2007 |
|
|
|
July
19, 2007
Hiding in the high mountains and deep gorges of one
of the world's great natural fortresses are bands of
guerrillas whose presence could provoke a Turkish
invasion of Kurdistan (northern Iraq) and the next
war in the Middle East.
In the weeks before the Turkish election on Sunday,
Turkey has threatened to cross the border into Iraq
in pursuit of the guerrillas of the Turkish Kurdish
movement, the PKK, and its Iranian Kurdish offshoot,
Pejak.
The Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, warns
that there are 140,000 Turkish troops massed just
north of the frontier.
"Until recently, we didn't take the Turkish threat
that seriously but thought it was part of the
election campaign," says Safeen Sezayee. A leading
Iraqi Kurdish expert on Turkey and spokesman for the
Kurdistan Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, the
president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG),
Mr Dezayee now sees an invasion as quite possible.
The Iraqi Kurds are becoming nervous. The drumbeat
of threats from Turkish politicians and generals has
become more persistent. "The government and
opposition parties are competing to show nationalist
fervour," says Mr Dezayee. Anti-PKK feeling is
greater than ever in Turkey.
Most menacingly, Turkey is appalled that the Kurds
are key players in Iraqi politics and are developing
a semi-independent Kurdistan state in northern Iraq.
After the election, Ankara may find it impossible to
retreat from the bellicose rhetoric of recent weeks
and will send its troops across the border, even if
the incursion is only on a limited scale.
If the Turkish army does invade, it will not find it
easy to locate the PKK guerrillas. Their main
headquarters is in the Qandil mountains which are on
the Iranian border but conveniently close to Turkey.
It is an area extraordinarily well-adapted for
guerrilla warfare where even Saddam Hussein's armies
found it impossible to penetrate.
To reach Qandil, we drove east from the Kurdish
capital Arbil to the well-watered plain north of
Dokan lake. In the town of Qala Diza, destroyed by
Saddam Hussein but now being rebuilt, the local
administrator Maj Bakir Abdul Rahman Hussein was
quick to say that Qandil was ruled by the PKK: " We
don't have any authority there." He said there was
regular shelling from Iran that led to some border
villages being evacuated but he did not seem to
consider this out of the ordinary. "The Iranians do
it whenever they are feeling international
pressure," he said.
We hired a four-wheel drive vehicle and a driver in
black Kurdish uniform who was from Qandil. Just
below the mountains, we were stopped by the
paramilitary Iraqi Frontier Guards. A
red-white-and-black Iraqi flag, a rare sight in
Kurdistan, flew over their headquarters which is
built like a miniature medieval castle.
Kurdish officials close to Qandil are strangely
eager to disclaim any authority over their own
sovereign territory. In a stern lecture, after
consulting with his superiors by phone, Lt- Col
Ahmad Sabir of the Frontier Guards said we could go
on but "we have no control beyond this point and no
responsibility for what happens to you. You may meet
PKK, Iranians on the border or shepherds with guns."
The road to the mountain climbs up the sides of
steep hills dotted with small oak trees, past
hamlets with flat roofs made from mud and brushwood.
The road is at first pot-holed asphalt, then broken
rock and finally, after crossing a bridge over a
mountain torrent, it gives up being a road at all
and becomes a track, parts of which had been swept
away by avalanches.
The first sign of the PKK was a sentry box
confidently in the open with two armed men in khaki
uniform who confiscated our passports and mobile
phones. Driving on, we came to a strange and exotic
mausoleum to the PKK dead. Its walls are painted
white and red and inside the gates are ornamental
ponds and flowerbeds overlooked by a white column
30ft high, on top of which is miniature yellow star
in metal or concrete, the symbol of the PKK.
The cemetery, built in 2002, holds 67 graves and
stands in the middle of the deserted Marado valley
inhabited only by grazing cattle. "Just three of
those buried here died from natural causes," says
Farhad Amat, a PKK soldier from Dyarbakir in Turkey
who is in charge of the mausoleum.
Founded in the 1970s, the PKK fought a lengthy but
ultimately unsuccessful guerrilla war in south-east
Turkey in which at least 35,000 people died. A
Marxist-Leninist separatist Kurdish organisation,
its leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999 and
its 4,000 well-trained fighters sought refuge in
northern Iraq.
The inscriptions on the grave-stones tell the tragic
history of the PKK. Almost all of those who died
were Turkish Kurds, many of them very young. For
instanc,e a girl fighter whose nom de guerre was
"Nergis" and real name Khazar Kaba was just 16 when
she was killed on 30 July 2001.
At a PKK guest house by a brook shaded by ancient
trees, we met several women guerrillas, who,
contrary to patriarchal Kurdish traditions, play an
important role in the PKK. They were wearing uniform
and with them was an Iranian Kurdish family
consisting of a mother, father and son. Their
presence was unexplained until we were leaving when
the father, Agai Mohammedi from Sina in Iran,
suddenly blurted out that they were trying to find
and bring home his 25-year-old son who had run off
to join the PKK.
They were going from camp to camp looking for him
but were always told he was not there. "Please, can
you help us," asked Mr Mohammedi but there was
nothing we could do.
The scale of the fighting is small. Pejak launches
sporadic raids into Iranian Kurdistan. The PKK
stages ambushes and bombings in Turkey and has
escalated its attacks this year, killing at least 67
soldiers and losing 110 of its own fighters
according to the Turkish authorities. But this
limited skirmishing could have an explosive impact.
The attacks provide an excuse for Turkish action
against an increasingly independent Iraqi Kurdish
state. "They [the Turks] want an excuse to overturn
what has been achieved in Iraqi Kurdistan," says Mr
Dezayee. A referendum is to be held in northern Iraq
by the end of 2007 under which the oil city of
Kirkuk may vote to join the KRG. The incentive for a
Turkish invasion is growing by the day.
"Everything depends on the result of the Turkish
election," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi
Kurdish politician.
If the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
wins a two-thirds majority then the pressure for an
invasion may be off. But if he believes he lost
votes because his anti-PKK and Turkish nationalist
credentials were not strong enough then he might
want to burnish them by ordering a cross border
incursion.
The lightly armed PKK, knowing every inch of the
mountainous terrain at Qandil, will be able to evade
Turkish troops. But the Iraqi Kurds worry that they
and not the PKK are the real target of the Turkish
army. After making so many threats before the
election, Turkey may find it difficult to back off
without looking weak.
independent co.uk
** Ankara is anxious to prevent the emergence of a
Kurdish state in Kurdistan region (northern Iraq),
fearing this could fan separatism among its own
large Kurdish population in southeast Turkey .
Kurdish politician says, Turkey is using a Kurdish
separatist PKK rebel group as an excuse to invade
Kurdistan region (Iraq) to prevent the establishment
of Kurdistan state in the Kurdish autonomous region
in (northern Iraq).
Ankara fears that if the oil-rich Kirkuk joins
Kurdistan, the Kurds will have the economic
foundation they need for an independent state
** 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" Southeast
Turkey.
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in
Turkey and are denied rights granted to other
minority groups. Under EU pressure, Turkey recently
granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and
education in the Kurdish language, but critics say
the measures do not go far enough.
Others estimate over 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.
Turkey is home to over 25 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed
severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language,
prohibiting the language in education and broadcast
media.
The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized
in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q
which do not exist in the Turkish
alphabet has led to judicial persecution in 2000 and
2003
The Kurdish flag flown officially 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
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 