Kurdish Green Line, Turkish Red Line

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version Translate Topic

   Auzubillahi minash shaitan ir rajeem,
Bismillah ir rehman ir rahim
Kurdish Green Line, Turkish Red Line

Quil Lawrence

March 11, 2005

(Quil Lawrence is a BBC reporter who covers Iraq and Turkey for "The 
World,"
a BBC/PRI radio program.)

Election day on January 30 was a day of celebration for the Kurds in 
Kirkuk,
an ethnically mixed city just below the Zagros Mountains in northern 
Iraq.
Despite the threat of car bombs, Kurds stood in long lines for hours
awaiting their chance to cast a vote. A teenager was killed by a 
solitary
mortar attack on a soccer stadium full of Kurds displaced by the
"Arabization" campaigns of the former Iraqi regime -- but his death did 
not
deter even the boy's family from voting. They buried him and went to 
the
polls. The two main Kurdish parties swept the local elections and won a
kingmaking role in national politics, with 75 seats in the transitional
national assembly.

Before the elections, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic 
Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) pushed through the registration of about 60,000 
extra
Kurdish voters they said were returnees to Kirkuk -- like the ones in 
the
stadium. The parties called this number the bare minimum to compensate 
for
the hundreds of thousands of Kurds killed or driven out of Kirkuk and
surrounding villages by Saddam Hussein's regime. Successive central
governments in Baghdad had long sought to alter the demographic balance 
in
the oil-rich region by expelling Kurdish and Turkoman residents, 
settling
Arabs from the south and redrawing the provincial borders to include a
larger proportion of Arabs. According to Human Rights Watch and the US
Committee for Refugees, intensified "Arabization" after the 1991 Gulf 
war
forcibly displaced over 120,000 Kurds and other non-Arabs from the 
Kirkuk
region.

If the Kurdish parties saw the extra registrations as redressing a 
historic
injustice, Arabs and Turkomans in Kirkuk saw them as aiming to stack 
the
electoral deck. The sweep for the Kurdish parties strengthened their 
hand in
pressing their perennial demand that Kirkuk be annexed to one of the 
three
majority-Kurdish provinces in the north. Perhaps the only people more 
angry
about the Kurdish parties' maneuver were the Turks.

DARK SUSPICIONS

The dream that may be coming true for the Kurds of Iraq -- making 
Kirkuk an
official part of Kurdistan -- is a nightmare for the Turkish 
government.
Deeply protective of the Iraqi Turkomans and ever fearful of separatist
sentiment among the substantial Kurdish population in Turkey, the Turks 
now
also fear that the Kurds of Iraq have the support of the United States.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to dispel those fears when 
she
visited Ankara, the Turkish capital, in February. Rice assured the 
Turks of
"the commitment of the United States to a unified Iraq which is at 
peace
with its neighbors." She mentioned the separatist PKK (the Kurdistan
Workers' Party that recently renamed itself Kongra-Gel) in the same 
breath
as the number one enemy in the US war on terrorism, al-Qaeda. Her words
should have been music to Ankara's ears, but the Turks are not in a 
terribly
trusting mood.

A surprising range of politicians and intellectuals in Turkey are 
voicing
dark suspicions about the shape of Iraqi Kurdistan to come. "The US is
creating a puppet state in northern Iraq and it is a very serious 
problem,"
said Turan Ozlu, sitting in the Istanbul office of the 
leftist-nationalist
Isci party. "And the Kurds -- they're calling it 'Southern Kurdistan.'" 
An
ex-military man would not normally find himself in the same camp as 
Isci,
but these are interesting times in Turkey. After a 20-minute preamble 
about
the proud history of US-Turkish relations, Mesut Hakki Casin, a former
Turkish air force officer now at Istanbul's Yeditepe University, 
explained
his concerns. "The main problem is how [the Kurds] use their oil," he 
said.
"Within ten years the Kurds will have an army and air force, same as 
the
Israel model, and they will request some of the territorial parts from
Turkey. The US says, 'Don't worry.'" With hurt and anger on his face, 
he
added, "But now we have a confidence problem with the US. Do you want 
the
Turks as allies or as enemies?"

Casin thinks that, at some point, Turkey will be forced to make a 
preemptive
strike into northern Iraq to prevent the rise of an independent Kurdish
state bolstered by revenue from the Kirkuk region's petroleum. With ten
million barrels of proven reserves, the area's oil fields are the 
second
largest in Iraq. Many Turks consider the scenario of military 
intervention
farfetched, but it has brought together an array of leftists and
nationalists. Intervention over Kirkuk is the subject of "Metal Storm," 
a
Turkish-language novel that wraps up with an all-out war between Turkey 
and
the United States. The book, by first-time authors Burak Turna and 
Orkun
Ucar, is a bestseller.

"DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL"

Perhaps the biggest fly in the ointment Rice was peddling in Ankara is 
the
PKK, which fought a bitter separatist war with the Turkish military in 
the
1990s. On June 1, 2004, the group called off a five-year ceasefire that
Turkey had never recognized. The PKK remains on the State Department's 
list
of terrorist organizations, as Rice sought to underline when tacitly
equating it with al-Qaeda. But the US military has something of a 
"don't
ask, don't tell" policy about the several thousand PKK fighters who are
living and training in the mountains inside northern Iraq. "If we ran 
into
them, one of the terps [interpreters] would let us know and we would 
look
the other way," one former US military officer in northern Iraq 
confided. As
long as the PKK was not carrying out terrorist acts in Iraq, he 
continued,
they would not be a priority for the US military.

It galls Ankara that Washington's emissaries condemn the PKK in such 
sharp
language and then US soldiers merely watch as journalists hike up into 
the
hills to visit the party's guerrillas outside Ranya in northern Iraq. 
The
PKK has blasted deep caves into the hills, just in case the Turkish or 
US
air forces bombard their camp. In the fall of 2003, months after US 
forces
moved into the area, young men and women were conducting weapons drills 
and
learning PKK doctrine, dressed in the traditional Kurdish trousers and 
sash,
living on rice and beans and revolutionary zeal. Osman Ocalan, brother 
of
the captured PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, was resident in the camp.

In February 2005, Osman Ocalan had left the PKK, reportedly to live in 
the
city of Mosul. He is still among Turkey's most wanted men, but Iraqi 
Kurdish
officials said US forces know that Ocalan is there. With the chaos of
insurgency in Mosul, it is not clear whether the US lacks the will or 
the
resources to apprehend him.

The PKK volunteers who remain in the camp are Kurds from Iran, Iraq, 
Syria
and Turkey. At the base of the trail leading to their training 
facility,
they tend a cemetery for the movement's martyrs. Though most of the
gravestones date from a war they fought with Iraqi Kurdish militias in 
the
late 1990s, there were nine fresh burial mounds this winter. The 
guerrillas
said five of the dead perished in skirmishes with Iranian border 
guards.
They said the other four were killed in Mosul, but they would not 
specify
how.

As much as their presence in Iraq enrages Ankara, the PKK do not seem 
to
pose a great threat at the moment. There have been a few clashes 
between
militants and Turkish security forces, both inside Turkey and along the
country's borders with Syria and Iraq, but the PKK leadership is in 
flux.
Many of the volunteers seem to be trying to return home and enter the
political system -- some demobilized Iraqi PKK members even ran for 
local
posts in the January 30 elections.

Entering and leaving the area where the PKK camp is located is like 
crossing
a border. The peshmerga of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, dressed 
now in
their Iraqi National Guard uniforms, check all the cars coming in and 
out.
There is even a customs official. The border there is just one of the 
many
green lines that mark what the Kurds plan will become an autonomous
Kurdistan. They may not be on the maps, but they are on the ground.

KURDISH BORDERS

Northern Iraq is one of the only places where one can buy maps of
"Kurdistan." At the bazaars in Suleimaniya and Erbil, merchants display 
a
small poster-sized copy that shows an area spanning mountains and 
plateaus
from Iran to the Mediterranean. On the map, southeastern Turkey, 
western
Iran, northern Iraq and eastern Syria are labeled as Northern, Eastern,
Southern and "little South" Kurdistan, respectively.

When the great powers carved up the region after World War I, they left 
the
Kurdish homeland divided such that Kurds were a minority in Iran, 
Turkey and
the two majority-Arab proto-nations defined by the new borders. After 
Iraq
and Syria became independent of colonial rule, their governments 
suppressed
Kurdish nationalism, as did Iran and Turkey. The ethnic gerrymandering
practiced by Iraqi governments -- most violently by the regime of 
Saddam
Hussein -- was an attempt to dilute Kurdish political strength further.

Since 1991, the Kurds have enjoyed a de facto state in northern Iraq
protected by a superpower with a guilty conscience. When the elder 
President
George Bush told the Kurds and Shiite rebels in the south to "take 
matters
into their own hands," the peshmerga rose up against Saddam Hussein's
regime, only to be mowed down when the US army stopped short of 
Baghdad. A
wave of refugees overwhelmed Turkey, and the Gulf war coalition 
commenced a
major humanitarian operation in the northwest of Iraq. In April 1991, 
the
US, Britain and France started patrolling a no-fly zone north of the
thirty-sixth parallel. That was an arbitrary line as well -- in fact 
the
Kurds set up fortifications along more natural borders like mountain 
ridges
and rivers. In October, the Iraqi army withdrew entirely from the three
northern provinces of Dohuk, Erbil and Suleimaniya.

When Baghdad fell on April 9, 2003, the 12-year old de facto Kurdish 
border
seemed obsolete. Since 1991, the Kurds had patrolled a green line
corresponding to the boundaries of the provinces the Iraqi army had 
left.
April 10 was a day of euphoria. Kurdish refugees, peshmerga and happy
looters rushed across the green line into Kirkuk, where they replayed 
the
now infamous scene in Baghdad's Firdous Square -- except that in 
Kirkuk, the
Kurds knocked over Saddam's statue without the assistance of a US tank.

The Kurdish parties kept up much lighter patrols along the green line 
until
eid al-adha (the Muslim feast of the sacrifice) on February 1, 2004. On 
that
day, two suicide bombers killed about 110 people in the city of Erbil. 
The
next day the green line was up again. That night, unaccompanied Arabs 
were
being arrested in Erbil. Outside the city toward the town of Makhmur,
journalists saw peshmerga at a checkpoint rough up an Iraqi Arab 
journalist
who had become indignant with them. The green line had never extended 
as far
south as Makhmur, but the Kurds had decided that if they were going to 
set
it up, they might as well move it out a few dozen kilometers first.

Now the green line may be here to stay. The formerly warring Kurdish 
parties
have cut a deal among themselves and with the United Iraqi Alliance, 
which
holds 140 seats in the new national assembly, whereby the PUK's Jalal
Talabani will go to Baghdad in the ceremonial post of president, and 
the
KDP's Masoud Barzani will run the autonomous provinces of Kurdistan. 
The
president's job may appear more prestigious, but many Kurds say all 
they
want Talabani to do in Baghdad is defend their right to ignore the 
chaotic
mess to the south of their green line. As president, Talabani also will 
have
a say in where that line is finally drawn.

REDRAWING THE LINES

Having tasted autonomy since 1991, the Kurds living behind the old 
green
line certainly will not give it up. But Kirkuk is not the only place 
where
the parties are feeling pressure to extend the line southward. Another 
is
the town of Kifri in what the Kurds call "warm country" at the 
southernmost
tip of the Kurdish area. Since the 1970s, Kifri has been part of the
province of Diyala, a mostly Arab region lying between Baghdad and the
Iranian border and administered by a Sunni Arab governor. But 14 years 
of de
facto Kurdish rule has made the town reluctant to change its ways.

Kurds in Kifri see no reason to be part of a province that includes 
trouble
spots like the city of Baquba -- where numerous US soldiers and members 
of
the nascent Iraqi National Guard have been killed by insurgents. Even 
the
Arabs in town tell reporters they would be happy to be permanently 
absorbed
into the north. Nazha Hussein came to answer the door with her 
daughter.
They have lived in Kifri for 20 years. They own another property south 
of
here, but Hussein doesn't want to leave. "My husband says we should go, 
but
I still say no. Here is a better and calmer place," she said. Her 
teenage
daughter Iman listened modestly from the hallway a few steps back into 
the
house. She shook her head when asked if she had ever traveled to 
central or
southern Iraq, saying simply "infijar" -- the Arabic word for 
explosion.

The governor of Diyala has been to Kifri a few times to assert his
jurisdiction. At one point, he came to town accompanied by US soldiers 
who
nearly ended up in a shootout with Kurdish fighters. The town has been 
quiet
since then, but the atmosphere remains tense. Peshmerga at the city 
limits
insisted on escorting visiting journalists to the mayor's office. Kifri
might be Kurdish on the ground, but it could be a fight in Baghdad to 
get
any of the provincial lines redrawn.

Meanwhile, there have been reports of Kurdish families fleeing Hawija, 
west
of Kirkuk near Tikrit, since 2004. The town is dominated by Sunni 
Arabs.
Haybad Rostam and her 12 children fled Hawija in January, after 
graffiti
appeared around town that read, "Kill the Kurds first, then the 
Americans."
"They threw threatening letters into our houses telling us to leave.
Otherwise, we could be killed. At the end, when they killed my nephew 
and
his friends, we decided to leave," she said. Rostam says eight other 
Kurdish
men were also killed. Along with hundreds of other Kurdish families, 
Rostam
took her family to Kirkuk. Kurdish officials in Kirkuk corroborated 
Rostam's
version of events.

Rostam's new house is in a neighborhood that in April 2003 was full of 
poor
Shiite Arab families who, having been "imported" to Kirkuk by the old
regime, were nervous that vengeful Kurds would evict them or worse. 
When
asked who had lived in her house before she fled here from Hawija, 
Rostam
said she did not know.

With their success at the polls on January 30, the Kurdish parties were 
able
to drive a hard bargain with the United Iraqi Alliance, composed mainly 
of
Shiite religious parties and their supporters. According to press 
reports on
March 10, the Kurds have agreed to back the alliance's candidate, 
Ibrahim
Jaafari of the Dawa Party, for prime minister in the new transitional
government. In exchange, Talabani will assume the presidency, but the 
Kurds
also claim to have wrung a territorial concession from the Shiite 
parties.
"Regarding Kirkuk, we agreed that the first phase will be 
normalization,"
PUK spokesman Azad Jundiyan told the Associated Press. "Normalization" 
is
the word the Kurdish parties use to refer to returning displaced Kurds 
to
their areas of origin. "As for annexation of the city, that will be
discussed after the government is formed, while writing the 
constitution."

Any official redrawing of provincial boundaries will have to be 
approved as
part of the slated referendum on a permanent Iraqi constitution. But 
since
PUK peshmerga rushed into Kirkuk in 2003, the Kurds have been creating 
facts
on the ground in the disputed city. Kurdish businessmen from prosperous
Suleimaniya and Erbil have carried out most of the reconstruction. With
peshmerga now wearing uniforms of the Iraqi National Guard, it would 
not be
difficult for the Kurdish parties to extend their green line down 
around
Kirkuk -- exactly what Turkey maintains is unacceptable.

-----

For background on the dispute over Kirkuk, see International Crisis 
Group,
"Iraq: Allaying Turkey's Fears Over Kurdish Ambitions," January 26, 
2005.
The report is accessible online at
http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=3241&l=1

Edited by administrator