Kurdish Soldiers In Southern Kurdistan Face
Loyalty Test
Some wonder if the warriors called to duty are fighting for their country or for
Kurds
By Christine Spolar | Tribune foreign correspondent
November 1, 2007
ROVIA, (Southern Kurdistan)—The Kurdish term peshmerga—"those who face
death"—once telegraphed all one needed to know about the fighters born in the
shadows of the Qandil Mountains.
Turkey has threatened to invade Iraq over a deadly running battle with
guerrillas Kurds known as the PKK who agitate for broader Kurdish rights in
Turkey. That prospect makes for emotional debate about the mission—and its
targets—that lies before Iraq's Kurdish troops.
Are the peshmerga fighting for Iraq or for Kurds? Can they really be expected to
battle Kurds who hunger for the same rights they have? Are Turkish warplanes
buzzing the border to hit the PKK, or are they aiming, as top Kurdish leaders
have speculated, at the Kurdish-run regional government in Iraq—the Kurds'
first-ever democracy—and therefore posing a threat to Iraq's future.
"PKK is fighting for their rights and their land," said Hasip Adil, the mayor of
Rovia who described himself as a provocateur for Kurdish rights during the years
of Hussein. "Both of us are Kurdish people, and we need to cooperate. We know
they hurt, we know they feel sorrow, but how can this go on?"
Adil is a former peshmerga, and at age 35, an elected elder in Rovia, a blink of
a highway town where boys have always grown up to be peshmerga. There is a
strong sense of nationalism here and in a string of neighboring villages that
stretch from the Turkish border—but their pride is rooted in Kurdish primacy.
Iraq has served as a launch pad for the Kurds. From Arbil north, they are in
charge. A population of 5 million to 6 million, they live in a place with a
legitimate Kurdish regional government and where Kurdish language and culture
are respected, Kurdish flags fly, Kurdish history is taught and Kurdish
businesses can thrive.
Kurds are openly debating the likelihood of a cross-border attack, this time by
an ally of the United States. Rovia, population 1,050, has already sent dozens
of men to the hills just in case.
"Every village is contributing," Adil said. "People are worried that this will
start small and quickly spread. It could get very bad, very quickly."
It is difficult for some families to sort through what makes for legitimate Kurd
demands. One man said he had cousins fighting for both Iraq and rebel Kurdish
units. Another man, Mehmet Suleiman, said camps of PKK supporters, also known as
the Kurdistan Workers' Party, were helping the rebels and there was a Kurdish
responsibility to recognize their demand for equal rights in Turkey.
"The PKK has the right to do this," Suleiman said. "Turkey is only targeting
Kurdish existence—and this democracy too. PKK is only Turkey's excuse."
Regional President Massoud Barzani raised the same complaint, that PKK was a
convenient excuse for Turkey, in an interview with Al-Arabiya television. "The
main aim is to prevent the Kurdish regional development," he said last week
about Turkish threats for incursions and economic embargoes.
Barzani, a former peshmerga leader and head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party,
is a familiar figure to Turkish Kurds and has in the past few years established
a political presence in the Turkish-occupied Kurdistan city of Diyarbakir.
Barzani's cross-border dealings—in what some see as a bid to be a Kurdish
regional leader—have been eyed suspiciously by Ankara. National media outlets,
based in Istanbul, are particularly tough on Barzani. In the past few weeks, the
media have persistently derided a claim by Barzani and other Kurdish officials
that they can't control the PKK.
It is widely known that official contact with the PKK is being made, by phone,
in Irbil, Iraq's Kurdish government center. Throughout the week, reporters have
been trooping in and out of PKK encampments in Iraq. The U.S. government, a
longtime ally of the Kurds from the days of Hussein, has made public its demands
for Kurdish authorities to cut off convenient supply lines for the rebels.
As rebels and soldiers skirmish across the border, the Turkish public has turned
out in anger, protesting the rebels—and Iraq's highest-profile Kurds for
protecting them. Nationalism has spiraled in Turkey in the course of their
outrage: Five million flags and banners were sold in five days, according to
news reports.
Barzani's face is one of those hoisted on placards. On Turkish Web sites and
television talk shows, he is regularly derided as a "traitor-terrorist."
One columnist in the national daily Hurriyet went so far as to call for his
"elimination." Barzani, in an interview published Monday in Milliyet, another
daily, protested that no one should be calling for violence toward him—or for
violence to jump the mountains between Iraq and Turkey.
"Several times, I have said that PKK should disarm," said Barzani, who has also
rebuffed questions about how the PKK is able to exist at all. "The time of
weapons and violence has passed."
Questions about reports
But one Turkish major, who has pursued missions
along the border in the past and requested anonymity because he was not
authorized to speak about the current crisis, said media reports about the
extent of the fighting by Turkish troops in border regions have been
sensationalized. It is impossible to know how far troops are pursuing PKK
because of military restrictions.
But the pace of the pursuit could change at the end of this week when U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joins foreign ministers for a meeting of
Iraq's neighbors in Istanbul, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan travels
Nov. 5 to meet with President Bush to urge more U.S. and Kurdish efforts to
control the PKK.
Then, the Turkish officer said, the Turkish military could be ordered into
broader battles in the cliffs of Kandil, and distinguishing between Kurdish
fighters will be difficult.
"They wear similar uniforms," he said of the Kurdish army and the PKK. "We think
they help each other on those mountains—they go back and forth. There is
supposed to be a difference but, in fact, there isn't.
