|
Shelling near Iranian border is forcing
Iraqi Kurds to flee
13.9.2007
|
|
|
|
September 13, 2007
RANIYAH, Kurdistan region (Iraq), -- They
have made camp below the mountainsides that smolder
and smoke in the thin alpine air. They live in caves
now, or old tents, or under goat-hair tarps, and
sleep on woven rugs over a bed of stones. Their
villages are empty of all but ducks and chickens,
because the villagers will not hike back until they
can no longer hear the sounds.
"Do you hear that?" asked Taban Koha Rasheed, over a
deep, distant rumbling, as she knelt under her tarp
in a creek bed sheltered by the walls of a steep
ravine. "It's started again."
For four weeks now, Kurdish villagers in this far
northeastern corner of Iraq have endured a punishing
barrage of rockets and artillery shells from what
they say are Iranian troops across the border. The
seemingly indiscriminate shelling has burned acres
of orchards and grassland, damaged homes, killed
livestock and driven about 2,500 people to abandon
about two dozen villages.
The attacks are an ominous reminder that the
emergence of an increasingly self-sufficient
Kurdistan region in northern Iraq could provoke
reprisals or even invasions by Iran and Turkey. |
Mir Hamza Farha prays as the sound of shelling
thunders in the ravine where thousands of fearful
Kurdish villagers in northern Iraq have taken
refuge. Photo.Washington post |
"This is the worst bombing that this area has ever
seen," said Ibrahim Muhammed Amin Muhammed Sor, a
37-year-old Kurdish chicken farmer.
For a few days in August, Sor endured the barrage.
These rugged mountain dwellers are accustomed to
violence: The area was shelled repeatedly during the
eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s.
In more recent years, neighbors Iran and Turkey have
staged sporadic attacks in an attempt to drive out
Kurdish separatist guerrillas who reside in the
hills. The attacks grew more intense beginning Aug.
16, and one night, leaflets floated down onto Sor's
farm.
"The Islamic state of Iran sends its greetings,"
began the letter, written in a Kurdish dialect
called Sorani. It accused the United States of using
"hired agents and spies" in the area to "destabilize
security in our country, through your borders."
"And we would like you to be aware that our land and
air operations will go on through the coming days to
chase away those elements," it read. "We are making
you aware so that none of you get hurt."
Villagers and Iraqi officials in the area say their
territory is now caught up in a growing regional war
made worse by deteriorating relations between Iran
and the United States. Some accuse Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has close ties with
Iran, of failing to protect the Kurds.
"I don't like Saddam Hussein, but he considered this
Iraqi territory and he defended it," said Aziz
Khuder Hussein, 75, a shepherd and fruit tree farmer
who fled his village when the shelling began. "Maliki
is an ally of Iran and he would not damage his
alliance for us."
In diplomatic meetings in Tehran and Baghdad, Iraqi
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, has
demanded that Iran cease its attacks in Iraq.
"We want this shelling to be halted, because it's
causing damage to the border population and is
disproportionate to the level of threat that some of
the armed groups or terrorist groups are causing to
the interests of the Islamic Republic" of Iran, he
said at a news conference Sunday in Baghdad.
An official at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad said
that within the past three months, Kurdish rebels
have staged suicide attacks and committed other
violence that killed at least 10 members of the
Iranian security forces. "This is why Iran wants to
solve this security matter on the borders," he said.
But the official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, insisted that the accounts of shelling
were "rumors and not true" and that "everything that
we have done is inside the Iranian territory, not
inside Iraq."
"No Kurds have been wounded or affected by that," he
said.
Iraqi and U.S. soldiers do not regularly patrol the
steep slopes and narrow rocky paths that make much
of the border region nearly impassable. The de facto
authorities here are the Kurdish guerrilla groups --
considered terrorist organizations by the Turkish
and Iranian governments -- whose grenade-strapped
fighters stand lonely sentry on the mountain
switchbacks.
The young men and women who hail from the Kurdish
diaspora in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria fight for
greater Kurdish influence in those countries. The
most prominent among the guerrilla groups is the
Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which focuses its
efforts against Turkey. Its affiliate organization
of Iranian Kurds is called the Party for a Free Life
in Kurdistan, or PJAK.
"They are targeting the area under the pretext that
the PKK and PJAK are there, but they're not hitting
the positions," said one PKK official on condition
of anonymity. "Iran's actual goals, which they will
not announce, is to strike the U.S. and destabilize
Iraq."
At a safe house on a desolate slope in the Qandil
range, the head of the PKK, Murat Karayilan, said he
believed the recent campaign arose because Iran,
Turkey and Syria have aligned against what he calls
the "Kurdish freedom movement." Karayilan, a stout,
mustachioed man in olive-drab fatigues and a thick
leather belt, has taken control of the rebel group
in Iraq while its highest leader, Abdullah Ocalan,
languishes in an island prison in Turkey.
While Karayilan now is pushing for more rights for
Kurds across the Middle East, he suggested that his
organization's long-term goal is to establish
semiautonomous regional entities in those countries
similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government in
Iraq. Many politicians in Iraqi Kurdish territory,
however, say they are hostile toward the PKK and
would like to drive out the rebel group but cannot
spare the soldiers.
This year, Turkey sent tens of thousands of troops
to the Iraqi border, raising fears of a major
invasion, in what Turkish officials said was a
response to PKK attacks in southern Turkey. The
shelling by Iranian troops, Karayilan said, serves
as a vote of solidarity with Turkey in the campaign
against the rebels and the larger Kurdish community.
But the timing, he indicated, also reflects an
attempt to delay an important Iraqi referendum,
scheduled for later this year, on whether to include
the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as part of the Kurdish
region.
"The third aim of these attacks is to try to give a
message to the United States of America and the
other international forces," he said. "The Iranians
are against the Kurds but at the same time they are
very much against the Americans as well."
Iran's deputy foreign minister for Arab affairs,
Mohammad R. Baqiri, told reporters in Baghdad on
Sunday that an Iranian committee had been formed to
look into the border response. But he also accused
the U.S. military of supporting Iranian Kurdish
rebels in Iraq and said that "if a terrorist group
wants to launch attacks from the territories of the
other country . . . we should discipline those
people who conduct those operations."
A U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col.
Jonathan Withington, said in an e-mail: "I am not
aware of any support being provided to the PJAK."
The Kurdish refugees from the shelling say they are
the victims of the Iranian strategy. Ahmed Shilhan,
89, said his son lost an eye when he was struck by
shrapnel. Several of Baiz Aziz Khuder's sheep died
in the shelling. His father, Aziz Khuder Hussein,
recalled watching his apple orchards burning, then
piling his family into his Nissan Patrol to escape.
A shell burst nearby, spraying shrapnel into his
vehicle, he said.
"My daughter-in-law is pregnant and I am afraid she
will miscarry," he said, huddled with 30 relatives
and neighbors under a tree where they are living.
"It feels like we have lost everything."
When the shelling started, Taban Koha Rasheed, 28,
was sitting at her breakfast table with a bowl of
goat's milk yogurt. The first shells fell high on
the mountain above Upper Arcae village, then dozens
more swept down into the valley. Her dishes crashed
down off the shelves. The windows in her stone house
shattered. A shell slammed into the outhouse. "It
was like an earthquake hitting the house and
everything fell down," she recalled.
Rasheed, a nurse, led several relatives and children
into a nearby cave, but a shell burst next to the
entrance, spraying them with rocks and dirt, so they
rushed farther down the mountain. "The kids kept
crying and we couldn't keep them silent," she said.
"During the bombing it felt like they wanted to
eliminate us."
After walking for several hours, Rasheed and her
neighbors camped along a creek, with little more
than a few blankets and the food they could carry.
The Iraqi Red Crescent and officials in the Kurdish
region have contributed additional supplies.
Residents from different villages have staked out
territory in these ravines. As the days passed, they
brought their goats, sheep and cattle down to the
river, and arguments have sprung up over animals
crossing into other villages' campsites.
Rasheed now passes her days treating scorpion bites,
fevers and stomach sickness from drinking creek
water. Other villagers milk goats, cook rice and tea
over wood fires, and watch over the children.
One morning last week, after a few days of respite
from the shelling, the sound of thunder filled the
ravine, but there were no clouds in the sky. Mir
Hamza Farha, an elderly woman with bright red hair
under her black and white head scarf, knelt by the
shallow creek. She closed her eyes, raised her face
and open palms to the sun, and prayed she would be
spared.
"The bombs are coming," she shouted across the
water. "You must leave now!"
Smoke from the shelling began to rise from the tan
hills above their campsite. Farha herself had no
place left to go.
Special correspondents Saad al-Izzi and Dlovan
Brwari contributed to this report.
washingtonpost com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 