Brad Pitt and the Girl Guerrillas

The celibates of Ocalan

Reese Erlich

March/April 2007 Issue

The green and brown scrub brush in the Qandil Mountains acquires a thick layer of snow by late fall. In happier times, these peaks at the border between Iraq and Iran would offer tourists spectacular views, but these days the only sightseers are men and women with AK-47s slung over their shoulders. They are Iranian Kurdish guerrillas based among their Kurdish brethren in northern Iraq, and at the moment, they may be the closest thing the Bush administration has to an ally in its confrontation with Tehran.

Kurdish and American sources say the United States has been supporting guerrilla raids against Iran, channeling the money through organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan; last fall, The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported that Israel is also providing equipment and training. When I arrived in Sulaymaniyah, the Kurdish city closest to the Iranian border, it was hard to miss the Green Berets in civvies walking down the main street. "Suli is like some Balkan city years ago," one U.S. officer told me. "You've got spies everywhere. Everyone wants to know what everyone else is doing." The seedy Ashti Hotel looked like something out of a Graham Greene novel, its smoke-filled lobby a meeting place for obscure diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and spies. Men sat around staring at glasses of strong tea; every now and again they'd pour a bit of tea into their saucers, let it cool, and slurp it down. I met a Kurdish military adviser at the Ashti, and when the U.S. Army came to escort me for a story on its operations, Humvees pulled up by the hotel.

Getting to the actual guerrilla camps was relatively easy. Kurdish officials unconvincingly insisted they had no idea how to find the fighters, but cabdrivers had no trouble pinpointing the camps. As my four-wheel-drive vehicle climbed the mountainside, young women in green pants and the distinctive twisted Kurdish headscarf appeared along the road. They were fighters with the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or pjak, which claims its troops are almost 50 percent female.

Part underground movement, part cult, pjak requires its fighters to eschew sex and study the teachings of Abdullah Ocalan, a Nietzsche-quoting Turkish Kurd who is its spiritual leader. Ocalan's political organization, the radical Kurdistan Workers Party (pkk), is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. pjak's relationship with the party is supposed to be arm's length, but I had to pass through two pkk checkpoints on my way to the guerrillas' camp, each of them relaying information up the line via walkie-talkie. Finally, the fighters welcomed me into a room with a threadbare carpet on the floor and a kerosene stove blasting heat; posters of Ocalan hung on the wall along with the pkk flag. While waiting for their leaders to descend from the mountains, I asked one of the women what they did to stave off boredom. "We watch satellite TV," she said, insisting that they cared only for news programs before confessing, with a shy smile, "We like Brad Pitt and Mel Gibson."

That was about the only American influence anyone at the camp would admit to. The fighters' commander had recently died in a flash flood, and his replacement—a fortysomething man with prematurely gray hair who stood perhaps 5 feet 5 inches—introduced himself as Zenar Agri. He informed me that in 2006 the guerrillas had killed about 100 Iranians in their cross-border skirmishes. He said they were not getting U.S. help, then smiled, "But we would love to have American support." He also told me that before the pkk's emergence, "the Kurds didn't know about their history and how to struggle," but now Kurds could follow Ocalan's road to liberation.

Back in the valley, I found a different kind of Kurdish organizing at the University of Sulaimani, where many Iranian Kurdish activists have come to study. The scene could have been any U.S. campus; almost everyone wore blue jeans, and only a few of the women had their heads covered. I sat down with two Iranian students who said they had come to Iraq illegally, following smugglers' trails over the mountains. They talked openly about the competition between Iranian Kurdish parties to attract U.S. support. Hiwa, a film student who described himself as the future Stanley Kubrick of Kurdistan, told me Washington ought to be ecumenical: "All parties should have connections with the U.S."

So far, Washington seems to feel the same way. The two main Iranian Kurdish parties, Komala and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (kdpi), have been allowed to operate openly in northern Iraq; both say their focus is on political organizing within Iran. "We have not opposed armed struggle," Mustafa Hejri, leader of the kdpi, told me. "But for now we believe political activity benefits the party more." Hejri, along with other top kdpi and Komala officials, went to Washington last year for meetings at the State Department and on Capitol Hill. They "listened to us and asked questions," Komala leader Abdullah Mohtadi told me. "It was a step forward." Most other Iranian opposition leaders I spoke to were critical of U.S. policy toward Tehran and said the administration's allocation of $85 million to "promote democracy" in Iran had backfired by making the population rally around the embattled Islamist government. The Kurdish Iranian parties, on the other hand, told me they were looking forward to getting U.S. funding. "We're pragmatists," Mohtadi told me. The United States "can't make democracy by force, but it can topple dictators."

Reese Erlich's book, "The Iran Agenda: The Truth Behind US Policy and the Middle East Crisis," will be published in September 2007. See his interviews with Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and other Iranian opposition leaders at: motherjones.com/iran_dissidents.

The Kurdish problem

This situation has the potential to blow up the world.
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Related
How an ex-Mossad chief, a German uberspy, and a gaggle of top-dollar GOP lobbyists helped Kurdistan snag 15 tons of $100 bills
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03:51pm

The EU today voiced predictable alarm after Turkey's top brass said a cross-border incursion into northern Iraq "was a must" to deal with Kurdish rebels. A large-scale incursion into northern Iraq would hardly boost Turkey's chances of joining the EU club, and has been a long-standing nightmare scenario for the US as it desperately tries to stabilise Iraq.

With his hands full in Baghdad, the last thing the US general in charge of Iraq, General David Petraeus, needs is for northern Iraq, one of the few havens of stability in the country, to descend into conflict pitching two of its allies at each other's throats.

As Juan Cole notes: "The Turkish-Iraqi border is now a tinderbox. This is the other shoe in the Iraq conflict."

What set alarm bells ringing in Brussels and Washington were remarks from Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey's chief of staff. In comments probably even too candid for Turkey's civilian leaders, the be-medalled general said: "Should there be an operation into northern Iraq? From a solely militaristic point of view, yes, there should be."

The general did acknowledge that such a decision would ultimately have to come from parliament, but the Bush administration will find such remarks unsettling. Although part of Nato, Turkey refused to allow its territory to be used for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Tension between the Turks and the Iraqi Kurds has been steadily rising. Recent clashes have left a dozen Turkish soldiers dead and Turkey has complained about American unwillingness or inability to crack down on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) insurgents operating out of northern Iraq.

Recent remarks by Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader of northern Iraq, have infuriated Turkey. He effectively told the Turks to butt out of Kurdish affairs, and said if the Kurds wanted to make Kirkuk their capital that was their business and threatened to interfere in Turkish interests for good measure.

Turkey's biggest worry is that the Iraqi Kurds will form a separate region - or even achieve independence - in northern Iraq with the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as their capital. They fear it would become a magnet for Kurdish separatists in Turkey as well as Kurds in Iran and Syria.

Turkey has been rehearsing its arguments for intervention, including its claim to be the protector of the Turkmen ethnic minority in northern Iraq. American and European diplomats will have to work overtime to dissuade Ankara from military action that will only add to the chaos in Iraq.

By Mark Tran / World news

Turkey Launches Attacks on Kurd Rebels

AP forgets to mention Turkey attacked Kurds in Iraq as well. AP= the voice of the Pentagon.
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Thursday April 12, 2007 1:01 PM

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's army chief said Thursday the military had launched several ``large scale'' offensives against separatist Kurdish rebels in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern region.

The offensives were launched to coincide with spring, when the rebels intensify attacks on Turkey, with melting snow making mountain passes easier to access, said Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, the head of Turkey's powerful military.

The announcement came as Turkey has been intensifying pressure on Iraq and the United States to crack down on the rebels who launch raids from bases in northern Iraq.

Just a little "Gossip" ...

Cheney and the gang love the Kurds who are cutting their own oil deals, contrary to the Iraq government oil law.

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

This week was full of little pieces of "gossip". I like to call it "oral narrative historiography" not gossip.
But call it what you will...

Rumors, gossip, grapevine news, off the wires...does not matter...it's juicy and fits perfectly well into the overall picture...

The American ambassador, Khalilzad visited "Kurdistan" today. He was joyfully watching some kurdish folk dance and the american flag was waving next to the kurdish one in a tranquil pastoral scenery.

Everyone looked very happy and content. Mission accomplished.

I wonder why I have not read anyone from the "left" accusing Barazani or Talabani of being CIA agents propped by the American government? Ah, I remember they were oppressed...

Well,thought I would mention it "en passant"...just a detail, really.

Talking about the kurds again. My relative Mona came by for a cup of tea.

Mona is half kurdish, half arab. We talked about various subjects.

One of them, Kamel and Omar...and the discussion drifted to the first day of the invasion.

Mona revealed something to me she had not mentioned to me in past discussions. Namely, during the first week of the invasion, in the Hay al Dhubat, where she was visiting a friend, she saw with her own two eyes, 3 tanks. 2 kuwaitis and 1 american followed by a couple of humvees and around 30 iraqis brought in buses from Madinat Al Thawra (now known as the illuminated Sadr City).

She stopped and watched what they were doing.

A new multi speciality clinic had just opened next to her friend's house.

The guys from Sadr city protected by the Kuwaitis and the Americans went on a looting spree, stealing dental and surgical equipment which they have no use for, lab ustensils, ophthalmological machines and the like...

They then proceeded to smash them to pieces, tearing whatever they could tear apart...

Mona was surprised to see Kuwaitis there. Only today she learned that 48% of the Kuwaiti population is Shia too and very pro-Iran.

Still on Kuwait, another piece of gossip.

Fifi Abdo, the famous Egyptian belly dancer said in an interview the following:

" Listen darling, I am no politician. I was born a belly dancer and will die as a belly dancer...but I tell you one thing for Truth's sake, one highly prominent member of the Sheikh al Sabah family told me personally...of course darling I cannot reveal his exact name...but he said to me: We pay money for every Iraqi killed..."

I choose to believe Fifi Abdo the belly dancer over Bush and his stooges in the Gulf and in Kuwait. Mind you, this piece did not surprise me at all.

One saudi "diplomat" told me a few months before the 2003 invasion "we, saudis will not have peace until we see one dead in every single Iraqi family and the first dead one will have to be Saddam and his own..."

Back to Mona, she then gives me another story and she swears she saw it with her own eyes.

She saw again a couple of american tanks and a bunch of Iraqis from "illuminated" Sadr city.
This latter were trying to break into Baghdad Technology University.

The gates were locked with thick metal chains. The americans facilitated the job...They just rolled with their tanks into the gates, smashing them down...

Our brave iraqis then went onto another destruction rampage, looting the university, smashing all the furniture and computers, burning the books...

-What do you think is the reason behind all of this Mona?

-It is clear, they wanted to destroy Iraq and all the educated classes and take us back to the dark ages...That is also why they killed some many academics. You know I did not fear the Americans...my biggest fear during the first week of the invasion was Iran..I knew Iran was involved in all of this...and I am sure the Mossad was too.

- of course the Mossad was and is still involved. It is common knowledge in Baghdad.

Then our discussion moved to the Kurds.

-He did oppress kurds though...
-Who built Sulaymania University and the whole academic curriculum was in kurdish?
-Hmm... the previous regime, Saddam did
-Who forced secondary school students in Baghdad to learn kurdish as a second language?
- Well, yes, true...the previous regime.
- Was there forced arabization ?
- No of course not...a lot of my kurdish relatives cannot speak arabic.
- Where are the alleged mass graves of Al Anfal?
- Hmm, they are there...
- Where there? Who saw them?
- Well, they said they were there...but I also heard recently Iran used chemicals too.

It's a little too late now...Why did they not tell us this before? (referring to Halabja)
- Who else gave autonomy rule to the kurds apart from Iraq? Iran? Turkey? Syria?
- No, no other country did...

I further confronted her with M.Barazani and Talabani's peshemergas being trained by the Mossad, Iran and the CIA. She could not refute it. Since it is not only common knowledge but Massood Barazani himself never denied it and confirmed his secret agreements with the CIA back in the 70's.

- So why don't you call them CIA and Mossad agents as well?

She still could not answer me ... Oh well, just another detail.

At that point, Mona finished her tea quickly and left...I don't think I will be seeing Mona again. Not for quite some time at least.

An eventful week indeed. Uncle Zayd came by.

Now Uncle Zayd is well over 70 years old and he is known to be a walking encyclopedia.

He knows everything that needs to be known about "who is who" in Baghdad.

He can give you in an instant the full personal resume of X, tracing X's lineage from his ancestry till this very day.

Uncle Zayd is a very learned man and I usually listen to him intently when he talks...

Except he has this annoying habit of speaking in such a low voice, one has to practically sit in his lap to hear him...apart from this detail...when Uncle Zayd talks, I am full ears.

More tea was served and I don't know how but the discussion took a sudden bifurcation and landed on Muqtada al Sadr, Chubby checkers and his drill boys.

I remember now, it was Kamel's dissapearance that pushed the conversation in that direction...

Now the exciting bits. I nearly fell off my chair when I heard this.

Chubby checkers was never a mullah and had hardly studied theology.

Now Uncle Zayd is an old man and he has been around...and this is what he had to say.

" Muqtada's father was killed by the Iranians...They had this long conflict in the Hawza's amongst themselves. The Iranian wing of the Hawza (theological authority) wanted Qum to become the point of all ultimate reference (Marja'iah) whilst Muqtada's father and his branch believed that Najaf should remain the ultimate Marja'iah - Basically a clerical conflict...When Muqtada's father was killed...Muqtada had nothing to do with religion per se...He used to be a football addict, a street boy, a bully and a thug, hated reading or studying and was considered a spoiled brat by everyone...
When he became orphaned, Saddam took pity on him and spoiled him even more with gifts...Now he has become a mullah...How? Only Allah knows...I have studied law all my life and I still do not consider myself a judge..."

Aha! That explains Chubby Checkers hatred for football... Relieving his guilty conscience for all the days he wasted in the streets banging that ball instead of studying...and that also explains the nature of his disciples, the drills boys...

And to think that he is considered the great anti-imperialist, anti-occupation force in today's Iraq is beyond comical...

Incidentally, the number of tortured, drilled bodies has shot up from 7-15 bodies a day dumped in various parts of the city to 30-40 a day...

Seems Chubby and his drill boys have made a comeback after some intensive training in both Iran and Kurdistan...Oh well, yet another detail.

Now for another piece...

Ammar al Hakim, the golden child. Son of Al Hakim, the daddy of the Badr Brigades of the Ministry of Interior, the leader of Iraq's Islamic revolutionary Council, referred to as "your eminence" by Bush. The one who came from Teheran after 25 years of "exile" and is now considered a leading role player in the "new Iraqi democracy".

Remember him? Oh Good.

Well, Ammar is his son. The one who was a bit roughed by the americans upon his return from Iran. Yeah that's him.

Seems that Ammar al Hakim has turned Basrah into his own personal market playground.
He trades the oil with whomsoever he wants, selling it, giving it away, making contracts...and of course collecting the cash witn absolutely no accountability...

And one more ...

It seems that satellite pictures of Basrah after the invasion showed a pipeline that was non existent in pre-invasion satellite pictures of that same area.

So the story goes, a special pipeline has been constructed since the invasion to pump oil for free...in order to pay the costs of "operation freedom", i.e to cover the costs of our liberation.

So Iraqis are paying with their own blood and oil for their "liberating" death.

How about that for a new juicy piece of gossip for the coming week?

Do keep me informed if you hear more like the ones above and you are very welcome to drop by for a cup of tea as well...

And do check Fifi Abdo, the belly dancer...she is a mighty good dancer too.

Or maybe check with Al-Sabah family, they may be able to give you more details on her undulations...and on the american-iranian-israeli agenda for the region.
And if that fails, you can always contact the Saudi diplomat, he must be gleeing with satisfaction by now.
A bientot.

P.S: I just remembered something else that completely slipped my mind.

Mona was talking about one of her best friends, a communist. She said:

"I have seen a lot in my life, but a communist supporting the american invasion and occupation, this I have never seen."

It is true, a few communists, actually more than a few, did vote for Allawi during the first round of our "free" elections. Oh well, yet another detail.

Painting: Iraqi artist, Shakir Al-Alousi.

Posted by Layla Anwar at 1:21 AM

IRAQ: Sparks Rise From a Time Bomb

Mohammed A. Salih

ARBIL, Feb 26 (IPS) - The security situation in Iraq's northern oil rich-city Kirkuk has deteriorated over the past few weeks as a constitutional deadline approaches to determine the fate of the city.

The city is home to a mix of Kurds, Turkomens and Arabs, with the population of each hotly disputed.

Bombings on Feb. 3, 6 and 16, and three more Feb. 21 rocked the disputed city. The bombings coincided with a move by an Iraqi government committee to implement Article 140 of Iraq's constitution that seeks to reverse demographic changes brought about in Kirkuk by the regime of former president Saddam Hussein.

Under Saddam, tens of thousands of Kurds and Turkomens were deported from Kirkuk and were replaced by Arab settlers from the south to tighten the regime's control over the northern oil fields of the country.

That move eroded the traditional dominance of Kurds. But the new move to reverse the changes threatens also the Turkomens, a local people of Turkish origin.

"Without doubt the situation is very bad, and it has been become worse recently," Nazhat Abdulghani, a senior official of the Iraqi Turkomen Front (ITF) told IPS.

Iraq's new constitution sets out a three-phase plan to "normalise" the situation in Kirkuk.

In the first phase, Kurdish and Turkomen refugees will return to Kirkuk, and Arab settlers will be given financial incentives to return to their areas of origin. The Iraqi government is offering each of these Arab families 15,000 dollars and a piece of land. The returning settlers can transfer jobs to the areas they return to.

Also, in this first phase, predominantly Kurdish districts that were cut off from Kirkuk, like Kalar, Chamchamal and Kifri east of Kirkuk, will be re-attached to Kirkuk province. This phase is due to be completed by April this year.

Those settlers who do not want to leave will not be forced to, but will lose the right to vote, and denied other forms of participation in official decision-making.

The second phase provides for a census. That will then be followed in the third and last phase by an official referendum by the end of this year in which the population will vote on the destiny of the province.

Officials told IPS that the questions to be raised in the referendum have not been agreed yet. Some speak of a choice whether Kirkuk should be a part of the northern autonomous Kurdistan region or under the central government. Others say there must be a third choice whether Kirkuk should stand as a separate federal region similar to Baghdad.

The International Crisis Group, an international organisation that works on conflict resolution, recommended in a report released last summer that Kirkuk must stand "as a stand-alone federal region falling neither under the Kurdish federal region nor directly under the federal government for an interim period."

Based on Article 53 of Iraq's post-war interim constitution, many Turkomens and Arabs also demand the status of an independent federal region for Kirkuk. But that is strongly opposed by Kurds.

The debate on Kirkuk's fate has gone beyond Iraq's borders. Turkey, that has a sizeable Kurdish population, vehemently opposes Kurdish control of Kirkuk, fearing it would embolden its own Kurds.

At a meeting with Iraq's Shia vice-president Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Teyyip Erdogan called for postponing the referendum on Kirkuk. "The conditions for holding the referendum in Kirkuk have not materialised yet," Erdogan told Abdul-Mahdi.

With outside and inside pressures increasing, some Kurdish circles now speak of a compromise to appease the city's Turkomens, who would be the second major ethnic group after Kurds if and when Article 140 is implemented.

"We are ready for dialogue with the ITF or any Turkomen party on Kirkuk," Arez Abdullah, member of the Kurdistan regional parliament in Arbil told IPS.

A Kurdish compromise with Turkomens could be in the form of some power-sharing formula and "safeguarding their national and cultural rights," Abdullah said.

"For example, they can run the administration in the areas where they constitute the majority of the population...and can have more effective participation in Kurdistan government institutions and parliament."

Kurdistan parliament speaker Adnan Mufti said last year that Turkomens should be given autonomy in areas where they make up most of the population. That statement was intended to encourage Turkomens to vote for bringing Kirkuk within the Kurdistan region.

With ethnic tensions rising, and given the short period of time left and the security problems on the ground, many doubt the Iraqi government's ability to implement Article 140.

"From a practical point of view, implementing Article 140 is impossible; there are many technical problems on the ground which have to be worked out," said Abdulghani.

He said his party is working "first for annulling, second postponing and third modifying" the constitutional article.

Many Iraqis see Kirkuk as a time bomb that might go off at any moment and drag Iraq into a real civil war. Several urge a delay in implementing Article 140. Kurds see it differently. "The real bomb will explode if Article 140 is not executed," said Abdullah.

Turkey mulls 'invading' Iraq

By Jonathan Gorvett in Istanbul

Turkey considers the PKK a terrorist group and continues to fight it in the southeast [EPA]

Turkey's parliament went into secret session this week to debate sending troops to invade and occupy northern Iraq for security purposes.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in the confrontation between the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish army – about 400 last year alone, according to Turkey's Human Rights Association.

Onur Oymen, the deputy chairman of the Opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said: "Northern Iraq is the only place in the world where a terrorist group can operate without being pursued."

"If the Iraqis and the US are not prepared to take action over this, then we must."

--MORE--

UN WARNS OF LOOMING CRISIS IN KIRKUK

All commit to Gulf, Iraq security; Bomb kills 70

KUWAIT (Agencies): Foreign minister of the GCC, Egypt, Jordan, and the US welcomed in their meeting on Tuesday the commitment by the US to defend security of the Gulf, territorial integrity of Iraq, and to ensure a successful, fair and inclusive political process that engaged all Iraqi communities to guarantee stability of the country. This came in the final communique of the fourth consultative meeting foreign ministers of six GCC member states, Egypt, Jordan, and the US. Participants agreed that a stable, prosperous, and unified Iraq was in the interest of all countries and that efforts to achieve national reconciliation that encompassed all elements of Iraqi society was strongly supported. Moreover, they condemned sectarian violence that undermined the ability of the Iraqi people to live in peace and security, and called for the dismantlement of all militias. They expressed desire to “prevent Iraq from becoming a battle ground for regional and international powers” and urged all to help end sectarian violence in Iraq, hoping the Iraqi government would “actively engage all components of the Iraqi people in a real political process and act in a manner that ensures inclusiveness and paves the way for the success of national reconciliation.” The ministers considered the pursuing of these objectives as “the responsibility of the Iraqi government and called for amending the constitution accordingly, and expressed their readiness to support its efforts in this regard.” Violence has been indiscriminate in Iraq since the US-led coalition liberated the country from the grip of the former baathist regime in March 2003. tens of thousands of civilians and military personnel were either killed or injured since the liberation. Conflict On the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the ministers considered it “a central and core problem (of the crises in the Middle East) and that without resolving this conflict the region will nor enjoy sustained peace and stability.” They affirmed their commitment to achieving peace in the Middle East through the “two-state solution”, saying the foundation for this path included the Arab Peace Initiative, UN Security Council resolutions 242, 338, 1397 and 1515, as well as the Road Map. Furthermore, they called on parties to abide by the 2005 Sharm El-Sheikh Understandings, and the Agreement on Movement and Access. They hoped the December 2006 meeting between the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert would be “followed by concrete steps in this dialogue.” They reiterated their commitment to support Palestinian economy, building and strengthening the institutions of the Palestinian state. Hamas and Fatah — the two major Palestinian factions — are engaged in lengthly dialogue with other factions to establish a government of national unity with the aim of breaking the international isolation and pave way for assistance. As for Lebanon, the ministers underscored their commitment to full implementation of UN Security Council resolutions 1559, 1680 and 1701. They called for respecting the sovereignty of Lebanon and “non-interference in its internal affairs”. They looked forward to a successful Paris III meetings, due in the French capital later this month, “which will support Lebanon’s long term development and fiscal stability.” The ministers strongly condemned all terrorist attacks in Lebanon since Oct 2004 and affirmed that all those involved must be held accountable. The Lebanese parties are at odds over the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri, who was murdered in downtown Beirut on Feb 14 2005. Support Kuwait on Tuesday signalled Arab states’ support for a US military build-up in Baghdad, saying they hoped President George W. Bush’s plan would help stabilise Iraq. “We expressed our desire to see the president’s plan to reinforce American military presence in Baghdad as a vehicle ... to stabilise Baghdad and prevent Iraq from sliding into this ugly war, this civil war,” Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Al-Salem Al-Sabah told reporters. Sheikh Mohammad was speaking at a joint news conference with visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is on a regional tour to drum up support for Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new troops to stabilise Iraq. Rice earlier held a meeting in Kuwait with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and the six Gulf Arab states — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The United States won Saudi backing on Tuesday for a US plan to stabilise Iraq, but Washington’s Gulf ally said success depended on Baghdad tackling sectarian strife driving the country towards civil war. As part her Arab tour to lobby support for the new US plan for Iraq, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Kuwait from Riyadh and began a meeting with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Gulf Arab states. Many Arab countries, including heavyweight Saudi Arabia, fear the plan announced by US President George W. Bush to stabilise Iraq would lead to an early departure of US troops from Iraq, leaving the violence-ravaged country moving towards civil war that might spill beyond Iraq’s borders. “We agree fully with the goals set by the new strategy, which in our view are the goals that — if implemented — would solve the problems that face Iraq,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a joint news conference in Riyadh. But he said the Iraqi government needed to play its part. “(The government) must stop the resistance, bring everyone into the political process and realise the hopes of the people,” he said, adding Shiite militias must be disbanded and the US-backed constitution, seen as pro-Shiite, revised. “(The government) must deal with the issue of militias. “Implementation (of US strategy) requires a positive response by the Iraqis themselves to these goals ... Other countries can help, but the main responsibility in taking decisions rests on the Iraqis,” he said. The US administration has been urging Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to play a greater role in backing Iraq. In Kuwait, Rice was meeting the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates — to try to forge a common position on Iraq. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, fears an early US troop withdrawal would solidify Shiite power and leave minority Sunnis at the mercy of Shiite militias. Rice, who met King Abdullah on Monday night, acknowledged the Saudi concern about militias but raised the issue of Saudi debt relief for Iraq, which Washington says would be a big help. “We will continue to work with the Iraqi government to make sure networks running dangerous militias are stopped ... The financial issue will need to be worked out,” Rice said. “We have the same goal, which is an Iraq unified with its integrity and territory intact which doesn’t face outside interference,” she said. The Saudi minister declined to say what Riyadh would do if the new US strategy failed to stabilise the country, though he rejected suggestions that Saudi Arabia would use oil as a political tool to pressure Iran over its policies in the region. Both Washington and Riyadh accuse Shiite power Iran of encouraging militia violence in Iraq. US forces are holding five Iranians after raiding an Iranian government office in the Iraqi city of Arbil last week — the second such operation in Iraq in the past few weeks. A Saudi official said on Monday Iran had asked Saudi Arabia to help ease tensions between the Islamic Republic and the United States, as Washington held out the possibility of “engagement” with Tehran if it changed tack in Iraq. But an Iranian newspaper on Tuesday quoted a foreign ministry official denying a request for mediation, and both Rice and Prince Saudi also played down such talk. “There is no need for mediation,” Saud al-Faisal said, but added: “Our relations with the United States are longstanding ... Iran is a neighbour of Saudi Arabia, so obviously we hope to avoid any conflict.” Rice said on Monday she would bring Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas together soon for informal talks on how to set up a Palestinian state. A senior US official said the meeting would be held in three to four weeks, probably in the Middle East. Arab states are anxious for Washington to renew efforts to find a solution to the historical conflict, which they say is the underlying cause of the region’s political problems. Explosion An explosion outside a Baghdad university as students were heading home for the day killed at least 65 people today, in the deadliest of several attacks on predominantly Shiite areas. The attack came on a day the United Nations said more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died last year in sectarian violence. Attacks in Baghdad — the university explosion, blasts at a marketplace for used motorcycles and a drive-by shooting — came as at least 109 people were killed or found dead nationwide in what appeared to be a final spasm of violence ahead of an imminent security operation by the Iraqi government and US forces to secure the capital. The violence also came a day after the Iraqi government hanged two of Saddam Hussein’s henchmen in an execution that left many of the ousted leader’s fellow Sunni Muslims seething after one of the accused, the ousted leader’s half brother, was decapitated on the gallows. Cabinet ministers and legislators loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were instructed to end their six-week boycott of the political process, a parliamentarian in the political bloc said today, indicating that the decision was linked to the new security drive. “We might be subjected to an attack and we should try solve the problem politically. We should not give a chance for a military strike against us,” said the legislator, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public. The lawmaker said the group’s return was conditional, including demands that the government set up a committee to establish a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops and a second that would set a date by which Iraqi forces were to take control of security nationwide. Until the walkout, the al-Sadr faction was an integral part of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s governing coalition. Six Cabinet ministers and 30 legislators who belong to the movement called the boycott after al-Maliki met with President Bush in Jordan in late November. Much of the violence has been blamed on Shiite militias, particularly the Mahdi Army militia loyal al-Sadr. Dozens of bodies turn up on the streets of Baghdad daily, many showing signs of torture. Tuesday’s largest attacks took place in primarily Shiite neighborhoods and appeared to be the work of Sunnis, who largely make up the insurgency targeting the Iraqi government and US forces. Raad Abbas, a 26-year-old who received shrapnel wounds in the attack at the motorcycle market that killed 13, said he went to the market because the city had been quieter over the past two weeks. “Shortly after midday, I heard an explosion. Motorcycles were flying in the air, people were falling dead and wounded,” he said from his hospital bed. As the curious gathered to look at the aftermath of the first explosion — a bomb attached to a motorcycle — a suicide car bomber drove into the crowd and blew up his vehicle. The attack appeared to target the mainly Shiite neighborhood near the market but also was near the Sheik al-Gailani shrine, one of the holiest Sunni locations in the capital. The bombing near Al-Mustansiriya University took place as students were boarding minivans waiting outside the building to take them home, police said. Some police saying the explosion was caused by a suicide car bomber and others saying two of the minivans blew up as students were boarding. Gunmen About 45 minutes later, gunmen in a minivan and on two motorcycles opened fire on an outdoor market in a mainly Shiite neighborhood in nearby section of eastern Baghdad, police said. At least 11 people were killed. While most of those killed were in Baghdad, two Christian brothers and a Sunni Arab mechanic were shot to death in two separate attacks in Mosul, police said. They also found the bullet-riddled body of a man in the northern city. Gianni Magazzeni, the chief of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq in Baghdad, said 34,452 civilians were killed — an average of 94 per day — and 36,685 were wounded last year in sectarian violence. The Iraqi Health Ministry did not comment on the UN report, which was based on information released by the Iraqi government and hospitals. The government has disputed previous figures released by the UN as “inaccurate and exaggerated.” Iraqi government figures announced in early January put last year’s civilian death toll at 12,357. Magazzeni said the UN figures were compiled from information obtained through the Iraqi Health Ministry, hospitals across the country and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad. He also criticized the government, saying urgent action was needed to re-establish law and order in the country. “Without significant progress in the rule of law sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control,” he warned. The UN report also said that 30,842 people were detained in the country as of Dec 31, including 14,534 in detention facilities run by US-led multinational forces. It pointed to killings targeting police, who are seen by insurgents as collaborating with the US effort in Iraq. The report said the Interior Ministry had reported on Dec. 24 that 12,000 police officers had been killed since the war started in 2003. The report also painted a grim picture for other sectors of Iraqi society, saying the violence has disrupted education by forcing schools and universities to close as well as sending professionals fleeing from the country. At least 470,094 people throughout Iraq have been forced to leave their homes since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra. In Monday’s execution, a thickset Barzan Ibrahim plunged through the trap door and was beheaded by the jerk of the thick rope at the end of his fall, in the same execution chamber where Saddam was hanged a little over two weeks earlier. Dozens of people, mostly schoolchildren, read Quranic verses at the graves in Tikrit as mourning continued for Ibrahim, Saddam’s half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court under Saddam. Some 150 youths also staged a demonstration in Saddam’s hometown, 80 miles north of Baghdad, chanting “down with the pro-Iranian government” and “glory to Barzan,” but it was calmer than the day before when at least 3,000 angry Sunnis assembled for the burials in nearby Ouja..A government video of the hanging, played for reporters, showed Ibrahim’s body passing the camera in a blur. The body came to rest on its chest while the severed head lay a few yards away, still wearing the black hood pulled on moments before by one of the five masked executioners. Crisis The United Nations warned on Tuesday of a “looming crisis” in the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk where it said ethnic Turkmen and Arabs were being intimidated by Kurdish forces. Sitting atop one of the world’s richest oil fields and just outside the borders of the largely autonomous Kurdistan region, Kirkuk could become a regional flash-point, a UN report said. Events in the area are already closely watched by neighbouring countries such as Turkey, which has historic links to the Turkmen and is deeply suspicious of Kurdish ambitions. Kurds want to annex the city for their capital and Iraq’s new constitution mandates a local referendum on the issue later this year. Under Saddam Hussein, Kirkuk was subject to an “Arabisation” policy that drove many Kurds from their homes and brought in Arabs, mostly Shi’ite Muslims from the south. Since the US invasion of 2003, many Kurds have returned and Turkmen and Arabs in the city now complain of “ethnic cleansing”. The Iraq Study Group, which reported to US President George W. Bush last month, said there was a “great risk” of the referendum sparking further violence in Kirkuk. In its bi-monthly human rights report on Iraq, the United Nations said the deterioration of the situation in Kirkuk was a major concern, particularly the rights of Arabs and Turkmen, which it called “minorities” although census data is disputed. “They face increasing threats, intimidations and detentions, often in KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) facilities run by Kurdish intelligence and security forces,” the report said. “Such violations may well be the prelude of a looming crisis in Kirkuk in the coming months,” it said. The report cited arbitrary detentions by security forces and by Kurdish militias, and said ethnic groups have started moving closer to their own communities for protection. Turkey fears the Iraqi Kurds will turn Kirkuk into the capital of a new independent Kurdish state, which could reignite separatism among the Kurds of southeast Turkey. Last week Turkey said it could not stand idly by if Kurds seize control of Kirkuk, although analysts say military intervention by Turkey, a Nato ally of the United States, is unlikely. But, Ankara could increase diplomatic and commercial pressure since Turkish territory provides crucial land routes for potential Iraqi oil exports to the West. The UN report warned that violence was also rising in Mosul, another city near Kurdistan where Kurds and Arabs live in uneasy coexistence. It said 40 civilian and police deaths were reported each week on average recently.

A 16-year cycle of treachery

<>IHT
Diane E. King

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

PULLMAN, Washington

The United States abandoned the Kurds in 1975 and again in 1991. Sixteen years separated these first two betrayals. Another 16 years have elapsed, and America may be on the verge of another betrayal, however unintended and inadvertent, of the residents of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iraqi Kurds (and members of other ethnic groups in the Kurdistan region) have been unflinching allies of the U.S. forces in Iraq. Some of their support has entailed acting under a Kurdish banner, like when Kurdish fighters, the peshmerga, provided logistical support and hospitality to paratroopers landing in the north as the war began.

But much more of their support has been under an Iraqi rubric. On my several trips to Iraq since 2003, I have observed that at least in the northern part of the country, Iraqi troop composition is very heavily Kurdish. I also saw strong evidence of a warm, cooperative relationship between Kurdish Iraqi and U.S. soldiers. Statistics on the makeup of the Iraqi Army released in late 2005 also suggest that ethnic Kurds are probably the heaviest participants, proportionally, in the Iraqi military.

--MORE--

'Unintended and inadvertent'? Now that's a laugh. The owner of the IHT supports escalation.

FIRST, A NEW KIND OF DRAFT. THEN ATTACK THE KURDS!

Tue Dec 19, 12:01 PM ET

How America Can Make Penance to Iraq

LOS ANGELES--It's over. We're pulling out of Iraq. It's a question of when.

Don't get me wrong. To paraphrase Richard Hell, I said we should get out of there before we even went in. And to paraphrase Katrina and the Waves, the fact that 91% of Americans agree with me feels like walking on sunshine. (My solemn pledge: There will be no more music references in this column.)

I am vindicated. More than that, I love that good sense has prevailed and that the end of this unprovoked, nightmarish conflagration is finally drawing nigh. The day that the last occupation soldier leaves Iraq will mark the beginning of our country's opportunity to redeem itself, to prove to the world that the United States can become a force for good. Even so, I can't shake the feeling that cutting and running from the inferno of Iraq--and the misery we chose to create--is reprehensibly irresponsible.

The U.S. military has slaughtered at least 600,000 Iraqis--twice as many as Saddam, who ruled seven times longer. We've begun the political disintegration of Iraq by allowing the creation of a Kurdistan that's an independent state in everything but name. Our bombs have destroyed schools, ministries, museums, bridges and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure; our laissez faire approach to security has ruined the economy. About 10% of Iraq' prewar population has fled into exile. Imagine the level of chaos that would have to be present here to turn 30 million Americans into refugees!

So what do we say? "Our bad!" Or something more elaborate? "Sorry, but in 2000 nobody knew Bush was crazy, and then we had anger issues after 9/11, and our schools don't teach geography anymore, and what with Cheney wanting a war so bad we figured why not let him just have one, and hell, we're Americans and being American means that every now and then we have to kick ass"?

Afraid not. "Sorry! Bye bye, gotta run" may have cut it after Panama or Grenada, but we've trashed Iraq so thoroughly that apologizing can only be a first step toward making up for what we've done. We owe the Iraqis some serious, hardcore penance.

First up: Campers are supposed to leave a place in the same condition or better than they found it. In Iraq, that same principle means that it falls to us to set up a stable government. Given the sectarian divisions and dozens of armed militias, only a strongman--a brutal, despotic dictator--will be able to pull Iraq back together. Only one man has the experience for the job: Saddam Hussein. We have to put the Butcher of Baghdad back in charge (and promise not to overthrow him anymore.) And let's be quick--the dude could get executed or murdered any second.

Next: those 600,000 dead people. We can't bring them back. But we can replace them. The fairest solution is to hold a national lottery to randomly select 600,000 Americans, who will be trained in local culture, languages and mores before being shipped off to live out the remainder of their lives as replacement Iraqis. With our 300 million-plus population, it's not like we'll notice they're gone. It's the least we can do, and hopefully the Iraqis will appreciate our sincere gesture.

Unfortunately, several thousand of the new American-Iraqis will have to submit to torture, rape and murder. After all, we must atone for Abu Ghraib.

If we truly believe that going to war against Iraq was a mistake, it follows that we should pick up the tab for all the apartment buildings and orphanages and other stuff we blew up there. Unfortunately, recent experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and New Orleans proves that we don't know how to build anything. So let's come up with a big round number--say $500 billion--and give the Iraqis the cash. Yeah, they might waste it on video games and torture appliances, but remember how it works when the insurance company pays out for damage to your car. You get the dough, but no one checks to make sure you had the dent fixed. How the Iraqis spend our penance money is their business.

Finally, we have to put Iraq back together again. True, Woodrow Wilson welched on his promise to give the Kurds their own country after World War I, and yeah, they have a rich and distinct culture that deserves nurturing, and it's true they've been oppressed for ages. Be that as it may, we're going to have to put an end to de facto independence for the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. That's right: it's time to invade Kurdistan.

Make no mistake: rebuilding the Old Iraq will be painful. A lot of innocent Kurds are going to die. We'll probably have to torture a few, to show them who's boss. While major combat operations against Kurdistan can probably be accomplished within months, the occupation could last years, costing thousands of American lives. But it will all be worthwhile in the end, or it will create a model of stability in a unified Iraq that will inspire stability and unity throughout the Middle East. Best of all, we'll also get to kick a little ass!

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)

An urgent appeal from the prisoners in (Akrah prison) in the north of Iraq

December 3, 2006

استغاثة من سجن عقره.... سجناء عقره يصرخون بأي ذنب يسجنون؟

شبكة البصرة

An urgent appeal from the prisoners in (Akrah prison) in the north of Iraq within the authority of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), we spent almost two years in this prison, without any accusation, without any trial.

We are suffering all kind of inhuman treatment, torture and discrimination. Our families are also subject to the bad and inhuman treatment when they come to visit us.

We appeal to all those who could help us to interfere and use their pressure on the authorities in what so-called Kurdistan area to release us immediately.

من سجناء عقره في شمال العراق الواقعة ضمن نفوذ الحزب الديمقراطي الكردستاني الذي يرأسه مسعود البرزاني نناشدكم ونناشد كل صاحب ضمير حي ان يلتفت الى معاناتنا ونستغيث بإخواننا في العراق وإخواننا المسلمين والعرب والى الشرفاء أصحاب الضمائر الحية في العالم والى المنضمات الإنسانية ونود ان نشرح لهم ماساتنا ومعاناتنا في هذا السجن الرهيب :

1- مضى على اعتقالنا في سجن عقره أكثر من سنه ونصف وبعضنا بلغ سنتين بحجة دعم الإرهاب ولم يثبت أثناء التحقيق ضدنا أية ادانه ومع ذلك لايوجد في الأفق ما يشير الى إطلاق سراحنا.

2- تعرضت وتتعرض عوائلنا الى الاهانه والتحقير والإذلال والاستهزاء في نقاط التفتيش والسيطرات عند حضورهم لمواجهتنا ولقد طلبنا نقلنا من سجن عقره الى سجن بادوش في الموصل لغرض التخفيف عن كاهل عوائلنا وعدم جعلهم ينتظرون ساعات طويلة تحت رحمة البيشمركه ولكننا لم نحصل على أي جواب.

3- قمنا بعملية إضراب في السجن مرتين لغرض إيصال صوتنا الى العالم وكانت المرة الأولى يوم الخميس 17/8/2006 والمرة الثانية يوم السبت 2/9/2006 وقد تعرضنا بعدها الى الضرب والتعذيب ونسمع يومياً كلمات الشتم والتوبيخ والعنصرية ويقال لنا بأننا لانعترف بحكومة العراق الحالية وانتم الآن في دولة أخرى غير دولة العراق هي دولة كردستان.

4- أصدرت حكومة مسعود عفواً عن السجناء وكان العفو يشمل سجناء الأكراد فقط وعددهم (120) معتقل ولم يشمل العفو أي من السجناء من القومية العربية.

5- نتعرض يومياً الى الضرب والأهانه والقتل وأحياناً يتعرض بعض المعتقلين الى الاعتداء الجنسي، وكنا قد تعرضنا في مراحل التحقيق في سجون الأمن التي تسمى بالكردية (الاسايش) ولاسيما في سجن الأمن العام (اسايش كشتي) حيث تعرضنا هناك الى أبشع صنوف التعذيب الجسدي والنفسي وهي تفوق في وحشيتها ما نسمعه عن ما حصل في سجن ابو غريب او في سجون الداخلية.

إننا نستغيث بإخواننا المسلمين في كل مكان لكي يوصلوا صوتنا ومعاناتنا الى العالم ونناشد الأحرار والشرفاء وكل من يقرأ رسالتنا هذه ان يسعى بجهده لتحريك قضيتنا وإطلاق سراحنا فلا توجد أي ادانه ضدنا وقد انتهت مراحل التحقيق ولم نحال الى المحاكم وليس هناك من أمل في إطلاق سراحنا... أغيثونا.... أغيثونا... أرحمونا يرحمكم الله... ونذكركم بقول المصطفى صلى الله علية وسلم (من فرج عن مسلم كربة فرج الله عنه كربة من كربات يوم القيامة).

أخوانكم المعقلين

في سجون شمال العراق عامة وسجن عقره خاصة

30/10/2006

شبكة البصرة

الجمعة 12 شوال 1427 / 3 تشرين الثاني 2006

يرجى الاشارة الى شبكة البصرة عند اعادة النشر او الاقتباس

New Labour's War on the Kurds

[Tuesday 21-11-2006]
By STUART CROSWAITHE Early morning on September 5th security guards burst into the sleeping quarters of Colnbrook detention centre in west London. The guards had come to take thirty two Iraqi Kurdish men away.

Barefoot, handcuffed, with the guards swearing at them, the thirty two were taken to RAF Brize Norton. Their threatened forced deportation to Arbil in northern Iraq was imminent. In response, one man slit his throat and up to fourteen others took overdoses or cut themselves in a desperate attempt to avoid "removal". One eye witness described the scene at the holding area at the airport as "carnage with blood on the walls".(1) The Kurds knew the danger of returning to Iraq. They had fled the country years before because of that danger. The UK Home Office is alone in their view that northern Iraq is safe for Kurds to be forced back to. Amnesty International, the Refugee Council, and even the UK Foreign Office all stress the lethal danger to those entering northern Iraq. (2) But if northern Iraq, like the rest of the country, isn't safe; if Saddam's weapons of mass destruction never existed, then why was the war on Iraq waged? In a speech entitled "A War Not of Conquest But of Liberation", delivered in March 2003, Prime Minister Blair laid out Labour's reasons for its planned war on Iraq. "Our objective is to protect the people in the Kurdish autonomous zone" and, he added, "to secure the northern oilfields" (of northern Iraq/Kurdistan) (3). The latter was certainly true. This article aims to show that the first stated objective - protecting the Kurds - was a calculated lie. That Britain has in fact waged war on the Kurds over eighty years; that this war has followed the Kurds from their homeland to the streets and detention centres of this country. The Kurds are the biggest stateless ethnic group in the world. (4) This fact is not unconnected to their repeated abuse and manipulation by the imperial powers and their proxies. Britain's record is particularly shameful. Winston Churchill set the standard in 1919 when he told the War Office (referring to the Kurds and Afghans): "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes". (5) Six years later the RAF did just that against the Kurdish town of Sulaymaniya. In 1988 Saddam Hussein took Churchill's advice and killed five thousand Kurds at Halabja using poison gas supplied with the knowledge of the West. After the first Gulf War in 1991, the UK joined the US in encouraging a Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein. After one month, Kurdish fighters and civilians were fleeing Saddam's (western-supplied) tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships. Thousands of peshmerga (militia fighters) and civilians were killed, hoping for a western military intervention that never came. Over one and a half million people were made refugees. Most Kurdish refugees tried to escape to Iran or Turkey. Over one thousand people died each day as they crowded at the borders, abandoned by their self-appointed "protectors" in the West.(6). In the following decade, many abandoned their lives in Iraq in an attempt to reach the apparent safety of Europe. No surprise then, that the UK's Iraqi Kurdish population rose from a few thousand in the early 1990's to over 30,000 in 2006. (7) They were trying to escape from an Iraqi state that terrorised them because they were Kurdish; from a civil war between the two main Kurdish political parties during the 1990's; from ethnic tensions deliberately fostered by the Iraqi state and, particularly for Kurdish communists, from repression by Islamic groups. It wasn't the opportunity to claim UK state benefits that brought them to this country. As one Iraqi Kurdish man explained at a public meeting in Sheffield in September 2005: "I am a solicitor in Iraq, Kurdistan is a rich country. I didn't come here for a £35 a week food voucher." Nor did Kurdish engineers and scientists arrive with the hope of serving kebabs or working in a car wash. It was the chance to live safely, to find asylum in the UK - the country that had claimed to protect them. Most hoped to return soon to northern Iraq, to their families, to their oil-rich and culturally rich homeland. But northern Iraq, like the rest of the country was, of course, never made safe by the West's war and occupation. These refugees were to find that the cynical manipulation that led to them fleeing their homes in Iraq was echoed by their treatment in the UK. "Protecting the Kurds": Forced Deportation #1 The UK Government is alone in western Europe in carrying out mass forced deportations of Iraqi Kurds. Their first attempt was in November 2005. On that occasion, successful legal challenges limited the number to twenty from an original intention to deport seventy. (8) Then Home Secretary Charles Clarke was forced to admit to a "regrettable mistake" when one man was deported in error after he had been denied access to legal representation. (9) This case prompted High Court Judge Justice Collins to criticise Government policy: "Frankly, the court has got a little fed up with how the Home Office is putting these removals into practice. It is not good enough." (10) "Protecting the Kurds": Forced Deportation #2 Judge Justice Collins would have, doubtless, been rather peeved with Home Secretary John Reid's handling of the second forced deportation in September 2006. In an unprecedented move, Reid warned the duty High Court Judge that the Home Office would ignore any last-minute applications for a judicial review of individual cases which would defer or prevent deportation.(11) Despite the huge difficulties facing potential deportees in obtaining injunctions to stop their deportation, six of them applied for an injunction, with the support of the Refugee Legal Centre. Of the six applications, five injunctions were granted, halting their immediate deportation. The National Audit Office estimates the cost of each deportation at £11,000. The Home Office was determined to get its money's worth, despite legal niceties. Their response to the successful injunctions was simple: select another five from the pool of around seventy who they had captured and served deportation notices on during previous weeks. This gruesome version of an airline "stand-by" system adds weight to the claim that the Home Office has scant regard for an individual's circumstances in its pursuit of quota-fulfilment. The forced deportation of September 5th 2006 is significant not just because of its calculated brutality and its attack on the legal rights of detained asylum seekers. It marks a shift in the tactics of the Home Office towards Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in the UK. "Protecting the Kurds": Blackmail In February 2004 the UK Home Office announced its intention to deport "thousands" of Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers. The deportations were to begin in April that year at a rate of thirty per week. Even the Home Office could not claim that Iraq was safe to return to - or that there was a safe route of return - until August 2005. (12) Until then their policy was to encourage voluntary return to northern Iraq, organised by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). There were few takers amongst Iraqi Kurds in the UK. From August 2005 letters were sent to all traceable Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in the UK. The Home Office used these letters to claim that there was now a "safe route of return" to northern Iraq. Casual observers, not directly affected by events in northern Iraq, could have been forgiven for accepting this claim made by the UK Government. However, for Iraqi Kurds threatened with forced "removal" the claim that there was "a safe route of return" was an incredible one. It was not lost on them that the "safe route" included Highway 10 from Jordan to Iraq, a road so hazardous that the occupying US and UK military forces hesitated to use it. Arbil airport in northern Iraq was to be the destination for direct flights carrying those returning to Iraq. In 2005 neither UK nor US military aircraft were prepared to land there, such was the danger. These Home Office letters stipulated a new condition for the receipt of "Section 4" support. Named after a section of the 1999 Asylum and Nationality Act, Section 4 support consists of a £35 per week food voucher and rent paid on accommodation provided through the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). (13) The ultimatum from the Home Office stated that unless Section 4 recipients agreed "voluntarily" to return to "safe" Iraq they would "be required to leave your accommodation and will not be entitled to any other form of support". (14) This blackmail sparked nationwide protest from refugee support organisations and from Iraqi Kurds themselves. One man, Naseh Ghafor in Sheffield, sewed his lips up and refused food for over forty days stating, "I would rather die here than go back and get killed in my own country" (15). "Protecting the Kurds": Kidnapping Those Kurds who agreed to return voluntarily to Iraq lost any legal right to contest their deportation. They also became immediately traceable to the authorities through the practice of monthly signing at reporting centres. Such centres are usually at local police stations. From late 2005 it became increasingly common for those entering reporting stations never to leave them: except in an Immigration Service van on the way to a detention centre. This practice, had it occurred in Iraq, would have been labelled "kidnapping" by the UK Government. One of the men deported in November 2005, Karwan, was kidnapped in this way when he reported to Dallas Court in Bolton for a Home Office "interview". "Protecting the Kurds": Creating Destitution Many Kurds refused to sign the Home Office letter which bound them to return to northern Iraq. Destitution became widespread. In Leeds around 250 Iraqi Kurds lost their homes and all state support between September-December 2005. In Sheffield, about 200 Kurds were forced onto the street with nothing.(16) These "failed" asylum seekers do not have the right to work legally, leading to a boom for employers wanting a desperate workforce prepared to work for a pittance. From summer 2006 there has also been an increase in the scale of Immigration Service raids on those forced to work illegally. (17) All routes, except that of returning to lethal danger in Iraq, are being closed. "Protecting the Kurds": Bribery "The Kurd has the mind of a schoolboy...He requires a beating one day and a sugar plum the next." So wrote Major WR Hay, a political officer in the British army, stationed in Arbil, northern Iraq in 1919. (18) Eighty six years later, the UK Government supplemented the beatings of deportation, kidnapping and destitution with a £500 sugar plum. The Voluntary Assisted Return and Reintegration Programme (VARRP) was extended from June to December 2006. Operated by the IOM, the scheme offered voluntary returnees to Iraq a £500 cash "relocation" grant and a further £2500 conditional on strict "reintegration" criteria.(19) Immigration and Nationality Directorate figures show that only 1,020 Iraqi Kurds in the UK took up this offer in the whole period from June 2004 - December 2005. (20) The latest forced deportation of September 2006 is surely aimed (along with the weapon of destitution) at increasing the number of "voluntary" returns. I met Kawa (not his real name), a local Kurdish man, in the Sheffield restaurant where he worked illegally, and asked him why he planned to return to Iraq with VARRP. Kawa was working twelve hour shifts for £1.50 an hour and sleeping on friend's floors at night. He explained: "If I go back I might die, but here I die every day." He also recounted the story of a man who had previously returned to Iraq with VARRP. After the plane landed at Arbil airport this man was robbed of his £500 (in $US) by a taxi driver. He knew other men who had stepped off the plane at Arbil and were immediately taken into detention by the security forces of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). (21) "Protecting the Kurds": Corruption and Collaboration The establishment of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), was cited by the UK Government as a vindication of their war on - and occupation of - Iraq. However, the human rights abuses and corruption of the KRG have been well documented.(22) Ahmed (not his real name), from Sheffield's Kurdish community, described the KRG: "That dictatorship - it's worse than Saddam Hussein's." Why, he asked, did the leadership of the KDP need to travel around Kurdistan in 200-car convoys for its own protection? (23) The two main Kurdish parties, the KDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have long collaborated with Western governments (and with Saddam Hussein at times) in their desperate attempts to achieve Kurdish statehood, or any form of regional or national autonomy. Since 2005 there have been regular meetings between senior civil servants representing the UK Home Office, Iraqi Embassy officials, representatives from Iraqi Kurdish community organisations and KRG officials, including members of the KDP and PUK. Publicly both KDP and PUK have opposed forced deportations of Iraqi Kurds from the UK to Iraq. (24) However, at a meeting in March 2006, KDP representatives urged the UK Home Office to continue and to increase deportations of Iraqi Kurds from the UK. Iraqi Embassy officials at the meeting supported this position. (25) In northern Iraq young Kurds are fleeing KRG persecution, corruption and poverty at a rate of 2000 per week. (26) This leaves the area short of labour and potential recruits to the armed and security forces of the KRG and its main constituent parts - KDP and PUK. The return of political opponents, through forced deportation, from the UK to northern Iraq also gives the KDP and PUK the chance to settle political scores. These two parties, now in an uneasy governmental alliance, spent much of the 1990's embroiled in a civil war between themselves and against communist and Islamic Kurdish organisations. Sherzad Ahmed, an Iraqi Kurd demonstrating against the September deportation, told a reporter: "I don't understand how anyone could think I will be safe if I'm sent back." He explained that his wife had been murdered and his family targeted for their communist sympathies and opposition to the KDP and PUK.(27) The KDP has not condemned the September 5th forced deportation of thirty two Iraqi Kurds from the UK. With the cooperation of at least one of the two main Kurdish political parties, all the links in the chain of the deportation process have been fastened: an Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeker signs at a reporting centre each month to entitle him/her to Section 4 support. There they can be seized and held by police. Immigration officials can then take them to a detention centre. They are then served deportation notices en masse, denied access to legal support and taken (usually at night) to an airport. When the plane flies to northern Iraq, its destination is Arbil - controlled by the KDP. "Protecting the Kurds": Abandonment What happens to people after they get deported to northern Iraq? According to European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) guidelines "member states should implement an effective system for monitoring forced returns." (28) Questions to Home Secretary John Reid's office have yielded replies explaining that the UK Government has put no such monitoring system in place for northern Iraq (or indeed for anywhere else). Nor, it seems, does it have any plans to do so. Reports about those forcibly deported have come only from the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees and phone contact between individuals in the UK and their fellow Kurds back in northern Iraq. Recent reports suggest that the September 5th forced deportation was not the last: at least twenty two more Iraqi Kurds were seized through dawn raids and kidnapping at reporting centres in September. There were at least two workplace raids by immigration officials in Sheffield during October. Many of those held are now in detention centres. We can now expect beatings without sugar plums. The Tony Blair regime is in its final months. Home Secretary John Reid is positioning himself to continue Blair's work. The same Labour Government that launched a war in 2003 against Iraq to "protect the Kurds" has now declared another war: on Iraqi Kurdish asylum seekers in this country. Stuart Crosthwaite can be reached at: stuartqqqq@yahoo.co.uk Notes: 1. The Sun Online, "32 Iraqis are booted out of UK", 7/9/06 2. Amnesty International, "Forcible return to Iraq would be unlawful". Refugee Council, "Forced removal of Iraqis expected to begin today". UK Foreign Office, "We advise against all but essential travel to the north of Iraq". 3. "A War Not of Conquest but of Liberation", 24/3/03 4. Kurdish statelessness makes exact figures impossible. A reasonable estimate seems to be 30 million. See D McDowall, "The Kurds: A Nation Denied". 5. War Office minute of 12/5/1919, quoted in Martin Gilbert, "Winston Churchill" companion Volume 4, Part 1. 6. Observer, 14/4/91. 7. Precise figures are not available: official figures do not recognise Kurds as a nationality. The quoted figures are arrived at through use of Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) statistics for asylum applications from Iraq along with estimates from the Refugee Council on the number of Kurds in the UK and the proportion of those Kurds who are from Iraq. See the Refugee Council's "Asylum by Numbers 1985-2000" and IND website. See also European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) report. ECRE gives numbers of Iraqis (not solely Iraqi Kurds) seeking asylum in the UK as increasing from "about 4,200 in 1989" to "over 41,200 in 2001".www.ecre.org/publications/gmfreport.pdf 8. Refugee Council, "Response to the Forced Removal of 15 Iraqis", 20/11/05 9. Daily Telegraph, "Clarke to bring back wrongly deported Kurd", 20/12/05 10. Independent Online, "Search for Kurdish refugee deported to Iraq by mistake", 20/12/05 11. Guardian Society Online, "Reid warns judges not to block Iraqi's deportation", 5/9/06 12. Refugee Council briefing, "Iraq-return and Section 4 support", December 2005 It was also difficult for the UK Government to carry out their policy because beforesummer 2005 Kurdish members of the interim Iraqi Government were vocal in their opposition to forced deportations from the UK to northern Iraq. 13. The NASS vouchers (set at two-thirds the rate of UK subsistence benefit levels) can only be used at certain supermarkets and no change is given. 14. Home Office letter, undated. Copy held by author. 15. Personal communication to author, July 2005 16. Leeds Today, "250 Iraqis forced on to the streets", 14/12/05 and estimates made by Sheffield Kurdish Community Centre. 17. See Committee to Stop Deportations to Iraq (CSDIraq), 18. FO 371/5068, "Note on Rawanduz", 26/12/1919. Quoted in D McDowall: "A Modern History of the Kurds". 19. European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), "Guidelines on the treatment of Iraqi asylum seekers and refugees in Europe", PP1/03/2006/EXT/SH, March 2006 20. IND figures quoted on CSDIraq website, 21. Personal communication to author, January 2006 Ominously, all returnees are required to sign a waiver stating, "I acknowledge that IOM has no responsibility for me or my dependents once I return to Iraqi territory and I hereby release IOM from any liability in this respect." See Refugee Council briefing, Iraq-return and Section 4 support, October 2005. 22. See, for example, Amnesty International's view quoted in The Guardian, "Home Office makes sure asylum flight is full", 6/9/06. Also, ECRE March 2006 report and CSDIraq website, 23. Personal communication to author, September 2006 24. For example, Kurdmedia, "Barzani slams Britain for returning Kurds to war-torn country", 20/8/05, www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=7534 25. Personal communication to author, March 2006. 26. CSDIraq website, 000043.html 27. Quoted in Independent Online, "Iraq: Deported refugees fearful of persecution on their return", 8/9/06. 28. ECRE guidelines, www.ecre.org/positions/returns.shtml#MONITOR Also, "All returns should be safe, dignified and sustainable", URL