When I woke up and checked the news on 16th,
Dec I realized that Turkey bombed Iraqi Kurdistan. I became very sad and
disappointed because of what we did for supporting the US from the first moment
of their mission until now.
Kurds have been always the victims of the
US foreign policy in the past. Now it calls PKK the enemy of the United States.
While Not an American troop have even been hurt by PKK or the Kurdish people in
Turkey or Iraq. Calling PKK the enemy of the US by President Bush certainly
fuels anti American feelings in all the countries where Kurds live. It’s true
that Kurds live in different geopolitical boundaries now. But we all have the
same nationalist feeling to each other.
PKK came to existence in a time when the
concept of terrorism did not exist in the world. The US and international
community need to seek for the factors formed PKK in 1983. Listing PKK as a
terrorist organization by the US and European Union is another injustice
committed against the Kurdish people.
Iraqi Kurds have been the best allies of the
US since the liberation of Iraq in 2003 and Iraqi Kurdistan is the only safe
place for the US troops as since 2003 up to the moment, Not a single US military
personnel’s have been hurt in Kurdistan.
Kurdish problem has existed in the Middle
East for more than a century and it still continues. Despite the fact the all
the regimes have oppressed Kurds in Middle East, but we have been able to
preserve our identity as Kurds and always forced to take up arms to protect our
Kurdishness. Through out our history of resistance, the Mountains of Kurdistan
have been only our real friends, protectors and shelter!
There has been attempts by both the
successive regimes of Turkey and Iraq to erase our identity and change our
culture, there has been campaigns of Arabaization and Turkishziation of the
Kurds in the past by preventing us from speaking our language and deprived from
education by our language and even Kurdish music and Kurdish traditional
festivities were forbidden in Turkey and for years and still continue.
Given the hard and harsh backgrounds of the
Kurds in the past, has caused creation of Armed groups to defend Kurdish people
in these countries as the regimes of Turkey and Iraq have not showed their
approval to negotiate with the Kurds and always we have been considered as a
part of the Arab world or Mountainous Turks.
I am from the town of Halabja, spent all my
childhood sheltering in basements and fleeing from Iraqi regime and finally my
town was gassed in 1988 by Saddam Hussein and killed thousands of people in
seconds, thousands of villages were razed to the ground and more than 100,000 of
men, women and children were taken and buried alive in 1980s but still
international community was silent before all these crimes.
The first gulf war weakened Saddam regime
and accidentally gave us the chance to rise up against Saddam Hussein and get
control over northern Iraq. But in the final minutes, US stopped backing the
Kurdish people, and let Baghdad use its forces to crash Kurdish uprising in
1991, resulted in committing atrocities by Iraqi army against Kurdish civilians
and fleeing millions of people to the neighboring countries when the former
regime recaptured the Northern Kurdish part of Iraq.
Later Iraqi troops retreated and we got a
partial independence from the Iraqi regime as Alliance forces provided Non fly
zone protection for the Kurds in Northern Iraq through UN resolution in April
1991. This assured us that we would not be killed and bombed by Iraqi regime
again as international community especially USA protects us from any aggressive
regimes in the area.
But the older generation was still skeptical
about American stance towards us as we have had bad experience with the western
countries especially USA. We have been always used by US for its interests and
in the final moment, US has left us to the ironic and oppressive hands of the
regimes where the Kurds live. Betrayal followed by betrayals in the past century
by the USA against us and we still trusted US for third time.
But unfortunately for another time, we put
our trust in the United States government and received US troops in 2003 very
warmly unlike the other parts of Iraq where US troops were resisted and fought.
By the time, I was working for the foreign
press as a fixer, I was seeing how warm and friendly the Kurdish girls, boys and
children from all Northern Iraq were receiving American troops when they were
driving in the cities of Kurdistan. Children were throwing flowers and roses to
the US troops as their appreciation for coming and liberating Iraq from the
oppressive hands of Saddam Hussein.
I myself was one of the craziest and most
American influenced guy and hoping that these new generation and children of the
Kurds will not study in the basements because of violence and war as I did when
I was a child. I did not think that again the schools of the Kurdish children
would be razed to the ground by war jets of Turkey with the help of the US as my
school was destroyed by bombardment during Iraq-Iran war.
Everybody was thinking that our future is
bright and US is the light in the end of the tunnel to help the Kurds exercise
freedom and democracy that they were allegedly brought by the US tanks to the
new Iraq.
In the last couple of years we have been
able to secure our area and made it as the most prosperous part of Iraq both
economically, politically and security wise. Hundreds of foreign companies have
invested in Kurdistan because of its good security and the tolerance of the
Kurdish people towards the western values as we have embraced a lot since the US
invasion into Iraq.
There are less than 4oo US troops in whole
Kurdistan as Kurdish Peshmargas (fighters) have been able to secure not just
Kurdistan but the US troops too. Since the US invasion up to now, there has not
been any US casualty in Iraqi Kurdistan because Kurdish people have always done
their best to protect US troops and considered them as our best friends and
alliance in the war against terrorism in Iraq.
We fought alongside the US troops for
liberating Iraq and then fought and still fighting against terrorism. Kurdish
peshmargas and American troops shed their blood against the common enemy.
US troops come to Iraqi Kurdistan for
vacation and walk without the fear of IED being exploded and even they don’t
carry their weapons when they go shopping because of the true and loyal love of
the Kurdish people to them.
All the people in the Middle East with the
exception of Israel call us traitors because of our help, friendly treatment
with the Americans and belief in Democracy. We lost and sacrificed our trust to
the Arabs, Persians and the Islamic state of Turkey for the sake of the
Americans because we deeply believed the phony slogans of Freedom and Democracy
that American government claimed. I can say that we put all our eggs in the
basket of the Americans and did not leave any space for backup.
I visited those villages where Turkey is
targeting many times in the last couple of years for reporting with the American
journalists. PKK did not exist inside the villages where Turkey is bombing and
destroying. The loss has been just for the Kurdish villagers. I was seeing the
villagers were reconstructing those houses, schools and hospitals that were
razed to the ground by former Iraqi regime they were optimistic about the future
as there was not the fear of Saddam Hussein to bomb and destroy them, Children
going to the schools with hope about future. But this time Turkey acted like
Saddam Hussein to kill us and destroy our land.
it does seem that being a real friends of
the Americans and belief in the mission the US is trying to accomplish in the
Middle East, does not work as long as you are not strategic for what US wants
you to be. Again US proved that it’s not changed its immoral and vicious
position towards those people who served to help USA accomplish its mission in
the Iraq.
US have a history of rewarding its enemies
and punishing its friends. The Iraqi Sunnis, who started resisting US troops and
killed thousands of American troops, are rewarded well by increasing their power
in the Iraqi Government, arming them and special financial aid to the Sunnis.
Even the Sunni resistances made Gorge W Bush come all the way from Washington to
Anbar province to have a meeting with the Sunni tribes. Bush shook hand with the
leader of an Iraqi insurgent group who used to kill and fight Americans.
But now as a punishment by the Bush
administration to the Kurds, US has opened Northern Iraq’s sky to let the
Turkish war jets to bomb the Kurdish villages under the pretext of (PKK)
Kurdistan workers party bases in those areas.
Despite the threats of Turkey to bomb and
invade Northern Iraq, We the Kurds did not think that US would ever let Turkey
attack the Kurdish villages of Northern Iraq, killing innocent civilians and
livestock and destroying the newly built schools and hospitals. This is an event
which has surprised all the Kurds, including our leadership because we strongly
believed that we are protected by US.
Its really strange that US is preserving
this duplicity policy towards the Kurds. I remember the former US secretary of
state Collin Powel visited my town in Sep, 2003 and addressed to the people of
Halabja, giving his word that Kurds will not be bombed and oppressed again,
saying I promise what happened in the past will not happen again. “No longer
just the mountains are friends of the Kurds But USA is the real friend of the
Kurds now” .on 16th, Dec, 2007 when the secretary of state
Condoleezza Rice visited Northern city of Kirkuk, US let Turkey send its war
jets to bomb the Kurdish villages.
But the American permitted Turkish
bombardment proved that we don’t have real friends and its only the mountains
which are our real friend and protector.
Probably Kurds should fight American troops
in the way the Arab Sunnis did since the invasion in 2003 so that we would be
respected, protected and considered as a strategic alliance of the west.
