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 - http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=3241&l=1

I discussed this subject on another Islamic discussion board some one week ago.

I use the identity "Mathsson" there. Below is the discussion among myself and a sister who's using the identity "Turkgirl" and another brother who's using the identity Abu Turaba.

Mathsson (i.e. Mustafaa) wrote:

Turkish troops deploy in N Iraq

Saturday 05 March 2005, 2:33 Makka Time, 23:33 GMT

The Turkish army has deployed 1357 soldiers in northern Iraq to fight Kurdish separatists, Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul said.

Gonul, in answer to parliamentary questions, said the Turkish troops, deployed since 1992 in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, were there mainly to pursue the Kurdish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Turkish officers in the area also act as a liaison with US troops deployed in Kirkuk, Mosul and Tal Afar, the minister added.

An estimated 5000 Kurdish separatists have taken refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq, according to Turkish authorities.

The PKK waged a bloody 15-year war for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish eastern and south-eastern parts of Turkey before announcing a unilateral ceasefire in 1999.

The war is estimated to have killed 36,000 people.

The group called off the truce in June last year, threatening to carry out attacks and warning tourists and investors to stay away from the country.

Since then, there has been a sharp increase in clashes between the rebels and Turkish government troops.

 

Turkgirl wrote in reply:

Thank you all for your awfully kind words and rep points. I consider myself a Turkophile of sorts or more accurately an Osmanli Irredentalist, if u will. I studied the history of the Osmali in college and subhanAllah there is much to be proud of and aspire to emulate there, despite all the typical flaws of any empire. Even OBL mentions 1924 as a significant sad turning point in the history of the Ummah. I don't even like calling them Ottomans, for one they r not Germans, despite all the Turks in Germany now (lol, who needs Vienna, we will skip them and go right for Berlin ) and it shows u the thinly veiled contempt they have for us when they name a piece of furniture to rest one's feet on an "Ottoman."

I agree with our psychotic teddy buddy, I think in all the talk of oil in the middle east we lose sight of the fact that the most precious thing for millennia in that area has been water. Turkey already exports water to Israel and controls significant water shed regions of Tigris, Euphrates and several smaller rivers. May well be the cause of future armed conflict.

I advise all of u interested in the subject to try and read another fascinating book. It's called "The Peace to End All Peace - The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the Modern Middle East." It's by David Fromkin, who is a typical British Orientalist type but it's the best work I have ever come across, at least in English. Not an easy read though, very complicated story, took me a couple years to get thru it all.

Es_Selam'un Aleykum ve Rahmetullahi ve Berakatuh,

 David,the issue is so acute for me;i scare to making an wrong comment;because there are many points which can't see in the game...i am watching the game from an interesting point coming from one of my parent(a close one) who is the leader of nationalist movement party and who was the former co-prime minister of the previous government.There are so many things which we don't know and explaining my thoughts and experiences on the issue will not be good for me;)no need...All i know is we should unite inside the name of Islam leaving our sected names and visions...

 Coming to Israel and US Army in Iraq;i can honestly say that if the Turkish army wants to kick them out from the North Iraq,three days will be enough for them for protecting the united Iraq...i trust my hidden sources and they are ready to do...US Army is sleeping and does not know the real picture...i wish they will not pass the redlines...Amin;this will not be good for the bothside...hardwork...

I think America will not establish Oil-istan, err, Kurdistan before it invades Iran and Syria as well. Then everywhere around Turkey will be full of American soldiers, and Americans will easily add much of Turkey to the newly founded state of Kurdistan.

I hope Americans will be smashed in the Middle East before they do that, and won't succeed in making Turks and Kurds fight each other.

But David, please first read my above post.

David,there will be no war between Kurds and Turks;we can't compare a nation with the persons living under the tents separated into 10.000 pieces....you can talk about Turkish/USA war but;we have no chance of saying,comparing a group with a country who has a past more than 5000 years having the world's second big army...please,search on more about Turkey....there will be no war with kurds only can be with Israel and USA,whenever the turkish army wants to kick them out;it will be only for united Iraq,not for it's benefits while they are sitting on the oil,Turks are permanent nation as Aleem Maulana Maududi stated in his tafseer which is called Tafheem'ul Qur'an...we don't use force for money and oil,just for peace and happiness.....Wa Salaam.

Turks are permanent nation as Aleem Maulana Maududi stated in his tafseer which is called Tafheem'ul Qur'an

Does Mawdudi infer that from the Qur'an itself? Strange!

Mustafaa wrote: Turks are permanent nation as Aleem Maulana Maududi stated in his tafseer which is called Tafheem'ul Qur'an Does Mawdudi infer that from the Qur'an itself? Strange!

 Brother,there is no ayat telling about Turks,in his tafseer;he was talking about the history,giving the Turks as an example;as you know Maududi is one of the big historians in the world who put the history and the science of shariat in one box confirming each other...it was just an example telling that their backgrounds(Turk's) carries good potential for Islam....Wa Salaam...

fezziwig wrote: I believe that the constant interneccine problems we see between sects illustrates the wisdom of church/state separation. If it were just words and some civil injustice that might be tolerable, but war and genocide are so common between religion-dominated nations that it makes one sad.

That sounds like an "automated response". What religious sects are you talking about? We were talking about two separate nations that are both led by secularists. Religion-dominated nations? So funny when only about 10 per cent of Turks and Kurds are practising Muslims, and all their leading elites have nothing to do with Islam.

If Turks and Kurds were religiously motivated nations, the fight between the Kurdish rebels of PKK (=the Labour Party of Kurdistan =a secularist, socialist organization) and the secularist army of Turkey would not have taken place.

Suleyman wrote: David,there will be no war between Kurds and Turks;we can't compare a nation with the persons living under the tents separated into 10.000 pieces....you can talk about Turkish/USA war but;we have no chance of saying,comparing a group with a country who has a past more than 5000 years having the world's second big army...please,search on more about Turkey....there will be no war with kurds only can be with Israel and USA,whenever the turkish army wants to kick them out;it will be only for united Iraq,not for it's benefits while they are sitting on the oil,Turks are permanent nation as Aleem Maulana Maududi stated in his tafseer which is called Tafheem'ul Qur'an...we don't use force for money and oil,just for peace and happiness.....Wa Salaam.

Excuse me for my little poking into the issue as I caught something strange here. Though I have poor knowledge about the kurds, however, to my understanding your reasoning is similar to what Israel try to portray to the world when it comes to genocide of innocent palestinians or when saddam hussain was crushing the kurds (his own muslim brothers and sisters in Islam). Your reasoning seems to say that since these kurds don't have a seperate national identity hence they don't have any logical grounds to raise their voice against these atrocities? If turkey also follow the same path as that of Sadam, then this action shall not be considered as war but a local issue? This is a strange view... However what will happen if the kurds do get some physical ground from new Iraqi settlement under the support of USA? Then the issue between the two (Turky and the kurds) would not be seen as a local issue but a war between the two nations. Regarding your notion of turks being permanent nation and its authenticity from Maulana Moududi, suffice to note that this concept of nation-state is quite recent in history. You can't extrapolate your analysis beyond, lets say, 4 to 5 centuries back what to talk of 5000 years. Who knows these turks and kurds, which we now see as two seperate identities, would have coexisted back then centuries ago? It would not be out of logic to even consider them two brothers from the same family, one opted to wander in one land and the other opted to go somewhere else; afterall, we are all from the same one seed of Adam. Isn't it?