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Iraqi Kurdistan villagers say rebels Iran
seeks are near
25.9.2007
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Iraqi
Kurdish villagers said they're caught in the middle
of Iranian mortar attacks along the border targeting
rebels fighting for a Kurdish homeland.
September
25, 2007
KOZENA, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', -- Mohammed
Ahmed Aziz and the other Kurdish villagers are in
the heart of one of the world's oddest diplomatic
tangles.
The parties including five countries, a
semi-autonomous region that acts like a country, at
least two groups of Kurdish fighters branded as
terrorists and two ongoing border skirmishes.
Most of that doesn't interest Aziz and his extended
family of 18. They have more pressing problems: Last
week, an Iranian rocket hit the mountaintop above
their mud-and-twig-roofed house, scorching a
shopping center-sized patch of the crown.
"We decided at that moment to move," he said. "But
then the shooting stopped again, so I don't know
what we will do."
For more than a month, Iran has been raining down
mortar rounds on villages in the border area,
complaining that they've become a refuge for Kurdish
rebels operating in Iran from the Party for a Free
Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK).
The group is a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party
, or PKK, which for years has been blamed for
terrorist attacks in Turkey in its quest for a
Kurdish homeland.
The PKK is on the State Department's list of
international terrorist organizations, but in this
part of Iraq — where Kurds have established an
autonomous regional government— the PKK and PEJAK
are tolerated.
The man who's essentially the defense minister for
Iraq's Kurdistan regional government said in an
interview that Kurdish leaders had no interest in
sending the region's crack militia, the peshmerga,
after the PKK or PEJAK. The peshmerga's name
translates as "those who face death."
"We don't believe in fighting them," said Jafar
Mustafa Ali , the minister of state for peshmerga
affairs. "We are trying to prevent a fight against
anyone. If we find them in our territory, we would
make them leave."
He said that if Iran and Turkey wanted to fight the
groups, they should do so within their own borders.
"If you fight them, they will just get stronger,
because they have something to believe in," he said.
Kurds are spread across Syria , Turkey , Iran and
Iraq .
None of those nations wants to give up territory to
create a country called Kurdistan , though the
Kurdistan regional government in Iraq has been
operating almost as if it were a nation for more
than a decade.
Turkey and Iran have accused the Iraqi Kurds of
protecting the Kurdish rebel groups. Turkey , a NATO
ally of the United States , has demanded that the
U.S., which has only a small military presence in
northern Iraq , do something to stop the PKK.
Iran accuses the United States of supporting PEJAK,
and the issue seems destined to get tangled up in
the U.S.-Iranian rivalry in Iraq , where the
American military seized an Iranian member of a
trade delegation last week in the Kurdish city of
Sulaimaniyah .
The U.S. said the man had smuggled sophisticated,
armor-piercing roadside bombs into Iraq , but the
Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani , a Kurd, demanded
the Iranian's release, saying he was in Iraq by
invitation. On Thursday, Iran closed at least two
border crossings into Kurdistan 'northern Iraq' in
protest.
Last week, at the final peshmerga checkpoint before
the villages and the Iranian border, the commander
confirmed that PEJAK and PKK fighters are operating
in Kurdish Iraq. Four times he warned a group of
journalists that the groups' fighters were in the
mountains just beyond the post and that he couldn't
help if they went farther and something went wrong.
The shelling, which started Aug. 16 , has assumed a
pattern. It starts every two or three days and
stops, then starts again, said Ali, the peshmerga
minister.
No one's been killed so far, but two women have been
wounded, and Aziz said the occupants of eight
villages had been forced from their homes.
"We're trying hard to prevent the use of additional
force," Ali said. "We'll try to find a diplomatic
way.
"War would be the last choice, because every single
battle is not to anyone's benefit."
For the villagers, it's hell now.
The first rounds Aug. 16 fell near Kozena, where
Aziz lives. Then the Iranians began targeting other
villages.
Aziz agrees that there are PEJAK fighters in the
area, but said the shelling was hurting only the
village families that weren't involved. One remote
village among the group that's closest to Iran ,
tiny Zerkam, has nearly been destroyed.
"Every day, it seems like, they get hit two times,
maybe three times," Aziz said.
Zerkam's residents, like most of those from the
seven other villages, have moved out of their homes
to live alongside their cattle under the stunted
trees that dot the mountainsides. Among them are
more than a dozen of Aziz's relatives, he said.
"They are scattered all over these mountains now,"
he said.
Kozena is farther from the border, and somewhat
safer, but Aziz isn't sure it's safe enough.
Every time he hears mortar fire, he wonders whether
it's time to leave, after spending all 53 years of
his life among these mountains.
"If it gets worse, we will have to go," he said.
"Where, I'm not sure yet, but we don't want to die."
MCT
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