KurdistanObserver.com

Terror As It Is. Part 3

By: Aryan Akrayi
Aryan.akrayi@gmail.com

July 24, 2005

Terrorism, which takes its roots back to thousands of years, has never gained international attention as it has been getting in the past several years. After the September 11th attack on New York and the Pentagon, the world's super power declared an international war on terror and the new world order came into affect. With the new world order, new alliances have formed. Former allies like the Soviets have become today's allies, and yesterday's allies like the Taliban have become today's enemies.  To maintain this new threat facing the world, the international community and world leaders have come into cooperation in many levels to face today's terrorism that has crossed all borders.

In the wake of recent developments in Southern Kurdistan and the capture of many terrorists, the Kurdish nation and Kurdish leaders are facing the same challenges that most of the democratic nations are facing around the world.

On July 18, 2005, KurdSat Televison station released new information about Shiekh Zana who was the leader of one of the terrorist organizations that was captured in Southern Kurdistan. KurdSat reported that Sheikh Zana was captured and imprisoned in the early 1990's by PUK forces when he was caught with large amount of TNT explosives and large amounts of money totaling nearly 350,000D(old Iraqi Dinars). However, during the PUK and KDP clashes in the mid 1990's, Shiekh Zana was able to escape prison, blend into the population and reorganize his terrorist group to do his crimes once again.  A decade later and after numerous criminal acts, only then was the government able to recapture him.  This time however, he was identified as a terrorist for all the crimes he has done in the past decade.

With today's challenges facing the international community, the Kurdish government in Southern Kurdistan must step up to form new security measures to make it possible for the local police to share information about criminals like Shiek Zana, which will make it impossible for these criminals to escape and operate in any place inside Kurdistan. Winning is possible if the enemy is known; but in order to identify the enemy, cooperation between the local police is necessary to make it easier to identify people like Shiekh Zana who will use all the unconventional means to be invisible to the authorities.