30 July 2007

Kurdish rebels threaten to draw regional players into Iraq

By Liz Sly
Chicago Tribune, 30 July 2007

MT. QANDIL, Iraq

The paved road runs out about 10 miles from the Iranian border, and so does the authority of the Iraqi government. High in the jagged peaks above lies territory controlled by a radical band of Kurdish leftists that has emerged as the latest threat to the region's imperiled stability.

At the last Iraqi border checkpoint, a squat gray castle flanked by fields of sunflowers and melons, Col. Ahmed Hamid warns travelers that he can't guarantee their safety.

"If anything happens to you, the Iraqi government is not responsible," he cautions. "There could be bombing, and there are terrorists everywhere."

He was referring to fighters of the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers' Party, who have been launching guerrilla attacks against Turkey from the borderlands of the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan for the last 16 years, in pursuit of their dream of an independent Marxist-Leninist state encompassing the Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Now this forgotten frontier and the leftist revolutionaries living off its land risk becoming the flash point for a future conflict that could draw in players from across the region.

In response to a recent surge of PKK attacks, Turkey has massed up to 140,000 troops along the Iraq border. They have fired periodic bursts of artillery toward remote villages on the Iraqi side and threatened to launch military action unless the PKK halts its attacks.

Iran also has been reinforcing its side of the border to deter attacks by a PKK-affiliated Iranian Kurdish group. The Iranians also have been shelling the area, most recently on July 22, local villagers say. Since a U.S. warplane flew over it a little over a week ago, the Iranians have bolstered their positions in the area with 2,000 more men, according to Hamid, though he said he thinks the Iranian move is defensive.

"They don't want Kurds escaping into Iran if Turkey attacks the area," he said.

Iraq's Kurds are hoping it won't come to that. They point out that Kurdistan is the one relative success story that the U.S. can point to in Iraq, and they believe the U.S., as one of Turkey's NATO allies, will be able to restrain Ankara.

"The only safe area in Iraq is Kurdistan, and if Turkey destroys this area, it will blacken the face of the Americans," said Gen. Jaber Manda, the deputy commander of the Kurdish pesh merga, the former guerrilla army now responsible for security within Kurdistan.

Iraq's Kurds attribute much of the Turkish saber-rattling to the Turkish election campaign and are hoping that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's victory in the July 22 election will diminish the threat of imminent military action.

Erdogan has invited Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for talks to discuss the PKK. If the talks fail, he warned in an election eve pledge, Turkey will launch military action against northern Iraq.

Kirkuk referendum feared

The Kurds suspect that the real goal of Turkey's military buildup goes far beyond the PKK bases. A referendum is to be held in December in Kirkuk on whether to absorb the oil-rich Iraqi city into the region of Kurdistan, something that Turkey fears would further encourage Kurdish aspirations to independence. Turkey has made it clear that it does not want the referendum to go ahead, citing the potential for civil strife in Iraq, and Kurds speculate that the troops' presence along the border is intended to pressure Iraq into delaying the poll.

If that is the case, then Turkey's military presence along the border threatens to cast a long shadow over Kurdistan's future, deterring investment and undermining stability in the one region in Iraq that is viewed as safe.

"Turkey has a disease, a sensitivity that Kurds should not have anything. They don't want Kurdistan to succeed," said Maj. Gen Aziz Wesyi, commander of the pesh merga's border guards. "If Kurds are a success anywhere in the world, even in Siberia, Turkey will interfere. This is the problem."

In Turkey's view, the PKK is a terrorist organization that has killed more than 15,000 Turks in the past three decades, and Turkey has as much right to wage war against it as the U.S. has to fight terrorism elsewhere. If the U.S. and the Iraqi government do not do more to crack down on the PKK, Erdogan warned in a pre-election TV interview, "We will have to do whatever it takes. And that 'whatever' is obvious."

Iraqi Kurds in no mood to fight

Struggling to recover from decades of conflict, Kurdish officials say they are in no mood for another fight. At most, Turkey will launch limited strikes against the PKK's bases, and Kurdistan will have little choice but to look the other way, predicted Sadi Ahmed Pire, a top official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, one of the two main Kurdish parties governing the Kurdish region.

"It takes two sides to make a war," said Pire, an adviser to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is a Kurd. "We have to ignore it. We have not one penny to spend on a another war."

But the Kurdish regional government is equally disinclined to bow to Turkish pressure to rein in the activities of the PKK, leaving uncertain the prospects for dialogue. Iraqi Kurds have fought three times against the PKK over the last 15 years, twice alongside Turkish troops, and on each occasion they were unable to dislodge the PKK from its bases.

That was back when Turkey and Kurdistan enjoyed relatively warm relations, before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 formalized Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq. Turkey now accuses the Iraqi Kurds of helping the PKK, but Kurdish officials say they have had no contact with the rebel group since a 2000 cease-fire.

"We have nothing to do with them. They do not have our permission to be there," said Ahmed Hussein, the mayor of Qaladiza, the last town before the Iraqi border post. "They don't come here, and we don't go there."

Turkey's past failed incursions demonstrate that military action won't work in the forbidding terrain, said Manda, the Kurdish security official.

"These are very harsh, very high mountains, and they cannot be controlled by the Kurdish government, nor could they be controlled by Saddam, and they couldn't be controlled by Turkey," he said. "They are uncontrollable. Even America couldn't control them."

An oasis in the harsh terrain

A visit to Mt. Qandil, where the PKK's main base in northern Iraq is located, illustrates the challenges inherent in taking on the rebels in their mountain fortress, where soaring cliffs offer natural defenses for a guerrilla army.

The first PKK checkpoint, marked by two flagpoles flying the group's sunshine-logo flag, lies a grueling 20-minute drive from the Iraqi post, up a perilously twisting dirt track that winds high above a steep gorge. Two youthful guards, dressed in olive fatigues bound at the waist with thick Kurdish-style sashes, peer suspiciously at visitors, then wave them on.

At the second checkpoint, an older fighter takes journalists' passports and assigns them an escort wielding an AK-47 to visit the Martyrs' Shrine, an unexpected oasis in the harsh terrain. The shrine is planted with geraniums, peach trees and roses and contains the graves of 67 fallen fighters, all killed in battles with Iraqi Kurds. A lily pond features a running fountain and jumping fish.

This is as far as visitors are permitted to go because of the sensitivity of the situation, according to Farhat, 30, a PKK fighter guarding the shrine who would only give his first name.

"This is a very hot area so we are expecting an attack at any time," he said. "That is why we're here."

The main camp, which includes guest houses, a restaurant and classrooms, lies farther up the mountain; it is sustained by crops grown by the PKK fighters and the proceeds of cross-border smuggling, local Kurds say. They say it is not a military command center so much as a training facility that draws young Kurds from across the region to be schooled in Marxist-Leninist thought, Kurdish nationalism and how to survive in the forbidding terrain.

Though it is safely out of reach of gunners on the Turkish side of the border, nearly 50 miles away, Iranian artillery is just over the mountain ridge. The area is well within the reach of Turkish warplanes, which launched air strikes against the camp in 1992.

Disdain mixed with kinship

Local villagers, living among the PKK in rough-hewn stone houses with satellite dishes perched on their roofs, are nervous. Two days earlier, they cowered in fear at the sound of artillery exploding in the distance.

"They hit the mountains and killed some goats. We were very afraid," said Fatma Hajji. "We expect the attacks to increase."

Officials in the pro-American, pro-foreign investment Kurdish government do not attempt to hide their disdain for the leftist revolutionaries who are jeopardizing their stability. The U.S., as well as Turkey, has designated the PKK a terrorist organization, and Kurdistan would be "more than happy" if the PKK went away, said Pire, the PUK official.

Yet a bond of Kurdish kinship inevitably ties the Kurds governing their own territory to those still fighting for an independent Kurdistan.

"The PKK represents a nation without rights just as we used to be in the past," said Hussein, the Qaladiza mayor and himself a former pesh merga fighter.

"Once it was us who was fighting in those mountains, and Mam [uncle] Jalal was our leader," he said, using a term of endearment to refer to President Talabani. "We suffered thousands of martyrs until we reached the point where we are today, and now Mam Jalal is our president.

"It's a dream come true."

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Citation: Liz Sly. "Kurdish rebels threaten to draw regional players into Iraq," Chicago Tribune, 30 July 2007.
Original URL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-pkk_sly_jul30,1,4929359.story?ctrack=3&cset=true
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