{"id":78,"date":"2002-11-24T21:29:45","date_gmt":"2002-11-24T21:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucefinley.com\/pre-war-reporting-from-southwestern-turkey-syria-jordan-lebanon-and-yemen\/a-nation-with-no-country\/"},"modified":"2007-12-04T21:37:46","modified_gmt":"2007-12-04T21:37:46","slug":"a-nation-with-no-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/pre-war-reporting-from-southwestern-turkey-syria-jordan-lebanon-and-yemen\/a-nation-with-no-country\/","title":{"rendered":"A Nation With No Country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font><font color=\"#000000\" face=\"Arial\" size=\"2\"><em>NORTHERN IRAQ<\/em> – For 11 years, U.S. fighter jets kept these<br \/>\nhoney-colored mountains safe from Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n<p>But now the 3.5 million Kurdish people thriving here pose dangerous<br \/>\nproblems for a possible U.S. war on Iraq, and for the country that<br \/>\nwould remain if Hussein falls.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. air patrols have inspired Kurds – such as woodcutter Burus<br \/>\nOlmez – in their decades-long push for an independent Kurdistan.<br \/>\nOlmez, 28, who enters Iraq from a village in Turkey to load logs<br \/>\nand trade in cigarettes and sugar, looks forward to increased<br \/>\ncommerce under Kurdish rule. In Turkey, he must work as a “village<br \/>\nguard” against Kurdish separatists, a job he hates.<\/p>\n<p>“I don’t want to kill anybody,” he said recently, leaning on a<br \/>\nconcrete security post that once bore Hussein’s eagle insignia.<\/p>\n<p>“We want all Kurdish people to be free.”<\/p>\n<p>This yearning for freedom is forcing a very tough play for the<br \/>\nUnited States – balancing the goal of replacing Hussein, Kurdish<br \/>\nambitions and the concerns of neighboring Turkey, a key ally that<br \/>\nopposes Kurdish independence.<\/p>\n<p>The Kurds are the world’s largest group without a country – 25<br \/>\nmillion people in all, scattered across Iran, Iraq, Syria and<br \/>\nTurkey. Nobody has ever controlled the Kurds. They are mostly<br \/>\nMuslims, ethnically distinct from Arabs, Turks and Persians, known<br \/>\nfor their intricate language and fine, hand-tied carpets.<\/p>\n<p>Entrenched in ancient stone hamlets, Kurds control vast oilfields,<br \/>\nas well as water sources such as the Tigris River that the Middle<br \/>\nEast desperately needs. And Iraqi Kurds have amassed armies with an<br \/>\nestimated 80,000 troops.<\/p>\n<p>Their leaders are grateful for the U.S. protection they’ve received<br \/>\nsince the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and pledge support if disarmament<br \/>\nefforts fail and America launches war on Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>But Iraqi Kurds insist any war must give them freedom from a<br \/>\ncentral government in Baghdad.<\/p>\n<p>“We want to make sure we are not oppressed,” said Qubad Talibani,<br \/>\nrepresenting the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main<br \/>\nKurdish factions. “We are not satisfied with what we have.”<\/p>\n<p>Neighboring Turkey bristles, concerned that independence could<br \/>\ncause chaos in Iraq and incite the 13 million Kurds in Turkey who<br \/>\nalso want to be free.<\/p>\n<p>The United States labors to keep Turkey calm. Turkey’s modern<br \/>\nmilitary bases are critical for a war on Iraq. F-16s poised on<br \/>\nrunways at Incirlik, northwest of the Turkey-Iraq border, fly the<br \/>\npatrols over northern Iraq. An underground hospital is ready to<br \/>\ntreat victims of chemical attacks. U.S. cargo planes hauled in<br \/>\nsupplies and bombs last week, and nurses gave anthrax vaccinations,<br \/>\nas diplomats negotiated for Turkish approval to use bases for a war<br \/>\non Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Turkey meanwhile has sent tanks and camouflage-clad troops to the<br \/>\nTurkey-Iraq borderlands. And it backs the Iraqi Turkomen Front in<br \/>\nnorthern Iraq. This group, with a 500-member militia and a<br \/>\nWashington lobbyist, asserts interests of non-Kurdish Turks in the<br \/>\nregion.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mishmash of policies, treatment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>U.S. officials face additional complications from internal Kurdish<br \/>\nfeuding. Rival factions in Iraq – the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan<br \/>\nand the Kurdistan Democratic Party – run separate governments. A<br \/>\ncivil war between these factions in the mid-1990s claimed 5,000<br \/>\nlives.<\/p>\n<p>The Kurds also clash with other Iraqi groups. There are Shiite<br \/>\nMuslims supported by Iran, Sunni Muslims for and against Hussein,<br \/>\nroyalists wanting to bring back a king, and an exile-run Iraqi<br \/>\nNational Congress. All try to curb the Kurds.<\/p>\n<p>Kurdish factions act “as if they are de-facto governments,” said<br \/>\nINC director Entifadh Qanbar in Washington, warning that Iraq seems<br \/>\ndestined for “maximum fragmentation” if Hussein is removed.<\/p>\n<p>This month, squabbling between Kurds and other opposition groups<br \/>\npostponed a unity conference that U.S. diplomats helped organize.<\/p>\n<p>For decades, U.S. policy toward the Kurds has been a mishmash.<br \/>\nAmericans treated Iraqi Kurds as allies when that was convenient.<br \/>\nKurds in Turkey were ignored.<\/p>\n<p>On one hand, the United States supplies combat helicopters that<br \/>\nTurkey’s military uses to enforce martial law in Kurdish regions.<br \/>\nTurkish forces emptied more than 3,000 Kurdish villages in the<br \/>\n1990s, uprooting an estimated 400,000 Kurds. Then they installed<br \/>\nsome 46,000 “village guards” to squelch support for the banned<br \/>\nKurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK.<\/p>\n<p>Turkish authorities continue to detain and torture Kurds, using<br \/>\nelectro-shock and other methods, said Sezgin Tanzikulu, a<br \/>\nhuman-rights lawyer in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, walking<br \/>\nnear a helicopter base where U.S.-supplied helicopters fly in and<br \/>\nout daily.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past 11 months, Kurds in southeastern Turkey filed 159<br \/>\ncases alleging abuse by military gendarmes or civilian police,<br \/>\nTanzikulu said, adding that most abuses aren’t reported.<\/p>\n<p>Freelance journalist Yilmaz Akinci, 25, recalled how a gendarme<br \/>\ncollared him as “one with an illegal face,” put a gun to his<br \/>\nhead, and said, “You know, I can easily kill you.”<\/p>\n<p>International human-rights organizations accuse U.S. officials of<br \/>\ntolerating abuses in Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, U.S. Air Force patrols over northern Iraq –<br \/>\ndozens of fighter jets scream overhead enforcing a no-fly zone<br \/>\nagainst Iraqi forces – guarantee safety across an area the size of<br \/>\nMaryland. As a result, Iraqi Kurds savor what they call a golden<br \/>\nage.<\/p>\n<p>They’ve built thousands of schools, including a new university.<br \/>\nLeaders conduct parliamentary debates and recently drafted a<br \/>\nconstitution declaring Kirkuk, just outside the safe haven, a<br \/>\nKurdish capital. Kirkuk is the site of one of the world’s largest<br \/>\noilfields.<\/p>\n<p>This month, covert U.S. agents headed through southeastern Turkey<br \/>\ntoward northern Iraq. U.S. officials decline comment on what they<br \/>\nmay be doing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>‘No friends but the mountains’<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>U.S. military planners count Kurds as allies in any war on Iraq.<br \/>\nThey have identified thousands as candidates for possible combat<br \/>\ntraining, said Lt. Col. Dave Lipan, a Pentagon spokesman. The Kurds<br \/>\noffer access to strategic runways and turf within 100 miles of<br \/>\nBaghdad.<\/p>\n<p>But first, Kurdish leaders demand a U.S. guarantee of protection<br \/>\nshould Hussein launch a pre-emptive attack against them. They<br \/>\nremind U.S. officials how, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf<br \/>\nWar, the first President Bush urged Kurds to rise up against<br \/>\nHussein. The Kurds did so. The United States failed to help. Iraqi<br \/>\nforces crushed the Kurds, sending refugees north into Turkey and<br \/>\nreinforcing an ancient Kurdish proverb: “We have no friends but<br \/>\nthe mountains.”<\/p>\n<p>That could happen again, said Farhad Barzani, a Kurdistan<br \/>\nDemocratic Party envoy in Washington and nephew of its leader<br \/>\nMassoud Barzani. “Without moving a single soldier, the Iraqis can<br \/>\nshell us with chemical weapons,” he said. “We think America<br \/>\nshould publicly say: ‘If Iraq attacks, we will respond immediately.<br \/>\nImmediately.”‘<\/p>\n<p>U.S. officials won’t comment on whether they would protect Iraqi<br \/>\nKurds.<\/p>\n<p>But U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Robert Pearson has told Turkey’s<br \/>\nrulers Kurds would be contained after a regime-toppling war.<\/p>\n<p>“We oppose any independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq,”<br \/>\nPearson said in a Denver Post interview at his residence in<br \/>\nAnkara.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, U.S. officials talk of a democratic system designed to<br \/>\ngive all factions equal opportunity in a post-Hussein Iraq – a<br \/>\nmodel for the rest of the authoritarian Middle East. The details of<br \/>\nhow much control a central government could have still are under<br \/>\ndebate. State Department bureaucrats guide “future of Iraq”<br \/>\nbrainstorming sessions involving some of the 100,000 Iraqi<br \/>\nimmigrants in America.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts warn that any U.S. reliance on Kurds or other factions<br \/>\nwill have strings attached – as in Afghanistan, where warlords who<br \/>\nhelped the United States now seek favorable treatment.<\/p>\n<p>The stakes, experts say, are much higher here.<\/p>\n<p>“The Kurds could destabilize the whole Middle East,” said<br \/>\npolitical scientist and former government consultant Michael Gunter<br \/>\nat Tennessee Technological University. He emphasizes the Kurds’<br \/>\npresence in four countries, and global dependence on Mideast oil.<\/p>\n<p>Today’s talk of eliminating Hussein and then delivering “a nice<br \/>\ndemocratic baby” is unrealistic, said Gunter, a former consultant<br \/>\nto the U.S. government on Kurdish issues who in March 1988 met with<br \/>\nTurkey’s now-imprisoned Kurdish separatist leader, Abdullah<br \/>\nOcalan.<\/p>\n<p>Nor will America’s past “use-them-when-we- need-them” approach to<br \/>\nIraqi Kurds suffice given U.S. interests in oil and regional<br \/>\nstability.<\/p>\n<p>“The solution would have to be some type of long-term American<br \/>\ninvolvement. You need the United States in there. But you’d also<br \/>\nneed cooperation from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. If you think<br \/>\nyou are going to get that, you probably believe in the tooth<br \/>\nfairy,” he said. “It’s not easy to be optimistic about this. …<br \/>\nThis problem will come back and burn us if we walk away.”<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line: U.S. air protection already has created a de facto<br \/>\n“Kurdistan” in Iraq, said former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter<br \/>\nGalbraith, who has visited Iraqi Kurdish territory nine times over<br \/>\nthe past two decades.<\/p>\n<p>After any war, Kurdish forces “are not going to meekly go back<br \/>\nunder Baghdad control,” said Galbraith, now a professor at the<br \/>\nNational Defense University, a government think tank.<\/p>\n<p>“We can’t use force to bring them under Baghdad control. They are<br \/>\ngoing to be our allies. Besides, that wouldn’t be just. We are just<br \/>\ngoing to have to come to terms with it. So is Turkey.”<\/p>\n<p><strong>Negotiating postwar arrangements<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Now in the run-up to a possible U.S. war, Kurdish leaders are down<br \/>\nfrom the mountains, jockeying in Washington, London and Turkey’s<br \/>\ncapital, Ankara, for favorable postwar arrangements.<\/p>\n<p>Consider the scene one recent evening in Ankara, beyond clusters of<br \/>\nblack Mercedes at a grand hotel. In the glowing atrium, Turkish<br \/>\ngenerals with medals on their lapels commanded prime, padded chairs<br \/>\nwhile intelligence agents skulked about murmuring into cellphones.<\/p>\n<p>In strode a burly man with a mustache, Sanaan Kassap, leader of the<br \/>\nIraqi Turkomen Front that asserts Turkish interests in northern<br \/>\nIraq. The group seeks U.S. funding under the 1998 Iraqi Liberation<br \/>\nAct, said Mustafa Ziya, the front’s coordinator. The act provides<br \/>\nmillions of dollars for Iraqi opposition groups.<\/p>\n<p>Across the lobby, leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party watched<br \/>\nwarily. They’re feuding with the Turkomen Front over its 500 armed<br \/>\n“guards” in Iraq, said Safeen Dizayee, the KDP representative in<br \/>\nTurkey. The Turkomen “totally disregard our regional Kurdish<br \/>\nadministration,” he said, and the militia is “a security risk.”<\/p>\n<p>Iraqi Kurds want independence, but without support from the United<br \/>\nStates they will settle for autonomy within a federation of Iraqi<br \/>\ngroups, Dizayee said. “I mean, we are actually independent now.<br \/>\nBut if we declared it, how long would we survive? We have to be<br \/>\npragmatic. It’s the right of the Kurds to be independent. But the<br \/>\ngeopolitical situation does not allow that.”<\/p>\n<p>Iraqi Kurdish leaders have proposed expanded turf, while a central<br \/>\nIraqi government would guide foreign, military and economic<br \/>\npolicy.<\/p>\n<p>Turkish officials reject this.<\/p>\n<p>“A federation can lead, in the long term, to a dismantlement of<br \/>\nIraq,” said a diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.<br \/>\n“There is no experience of ‘a federation’ in the Middle East. If<br \/>\nthere is instability in Iraq, it could be worse than it is under<br \/>\nSaddam Hussein.”<\/p>\n<p>And instability in a postwar Iraq could spread to Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>Interviews with Kurds in southeastern Turkey reveal the push to<br \/>\ncreate a Kurdistan under U.S. protection in Iraq – and the arrival<br \/>\nof a new Turkish government – are raising expectations for better<br \/>\ntreatment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>‘We are second-class’<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These rolling hills where scarf-clad women pick cotton and rusting<br \/>\noil trucks whoosh past bullet-pocked shells of former shops long<br \/>\nhave been a hotbed of anti-Turkish sentiment. The name of every<br \/>\ntown has been changed from Kurdish to Turkish. Parents give their<br \/>\nsons and daughters Turkish names, and teachers punish children who<br \/>\nspeak Kurdish.<\/p>\n<p>Turkey’s 15-year crackdown to suppress any sympathy for the banned<br \/>\nPKK cowed many Kurds.<\/p>\n<p>Yet at the roadside village of Svik, sharecroppers proudly told how<br \/>\nthey refused Turkish offers of $190 a month each to serve as<br \/>\n“village guards” against separatists. That money would have<br \/>\nbought medical care for sick and deformed children, and paved<br \/>\nSvik’s muddy streets.<\/p>\n<p>“Any true Kurd would refuse,” said Bedirhon Gokhan, 42. “If we<br \/>\ncould, we’d make a Kurdistan. We want all the Kurdish people to<br \/>\nlive together. If the U.S. war against Iraq will help us live<br \/>\ntogether, we want this.”<\/p>\n<p>The Kurdish-run People’s Democracy Party, successor to the PKK, now<br \/>\nwins more than 50 percent of votes in southeastern cities. Kurds<br \/>\njoin because “they see that in Iraq, as in Iran, Kurds can teach<br \/>\nKurdish in school,” said Aydin Unesi, a gas station manager who<br \/>\ndirects the party in the town of Batman along the Tigris River.<\/p>\n<p>Kurdish schools and newspapers in the Iraqi safe haven are “an<br \/>\nexample for us,” he said. “Kurdish people in Turkey, we want<br \/>\nthis.”<\/p>\n<p>Some party members envision new arrangements for Kurds to cross<br \/>\nTurkish, Syrian, Iranian and Iraqi borders. “They are Kurds. We<br \/>\nare Kurds. Why not?” said Sehnaz Turan, 28, a party administrator<br \/>\nin Diyarbakir. “I know those outside Turkey have better<br \/>\nconditions. They are free to express the culture, the language. We<br \/>\nhaven’t seen freedom in practice yet here.”<\/p>\n<p>Turkish Kurds already press for cross-border commerce.<\/p>\n<p>Thousands of oil trucks line up at the main border crossing at<br \/>\nHabur. There drivers wait for weeks as Turkish border guards parse<br \/>\nout permission to enter Iraq and buy oil, then return and sell it<br \/>\nfor a profit.<\/p>\n<p>This defies United Nations sanctions against Iraq, but long has<br \/>\nsustained Turkish Kurds. “People depend on it here,” said butcher<br \/>\nBayram Yakut, 30, pouring tea as trucks rolled past his shop just<br \/>\nnorth of Habur. “We want the door open.”<\/p>\n<p>Turkish soldiers posted in the borderlands say they will block any<br \/>\nIraqi Kurdish refugees who might flee north to Turkey in a war.<\/p>\n<p>A U.S. war may prompt an extension of martial law in southeastern<br \/>\nTurkey, said Selahattin Demirtas, 29, a lawyer leading a<br \/>\nhuman-rights group in Diyarbakir.<\/p>\n<p>“If Turkey’s government would give equal rights to the Kurds,” he<br \/>\nsaid, “then people would accept being part of Turkey.”<\/p>\n<p>Turkey’s ailing economy adds urgency to the Kurds’ call for<br \/>\nchange.<\/p>\n<p>Huddled in burlap-and-plastic tents by a roadside near Batman, a<br \/>\ngroup of migrant $1.90-a-day cotton pickers complained they can’t<br \/>\nget medical attention. Rain pattered on the tent roofs and mud<br \/>\noozed around them. They went to big cities looking for jobs, “but<br \/>\nwe are second-class,” said Mehmet Titiz, 45, a father of six.<\/p>\n<p>Even the childrens’ hands were calloused from picking. Parents said<br \/>\nthey are ashamed that their children don’t attend school. They<br \/>\nwould also prefer to give their children Kurdish names and listen<br \/>\nto radio news in Kurdish, said Mehmet Guli Tepe, 41, gesturing<br \/>\nhelplessly at his skinny 12-year-old boy.<\/p>\n<p>“We can’t keep living like this.”<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NORTHERN IRAQ – For 11 years, U.S. fighter jets kept these honey-colored mountains safe from Saddam Hussein. But now the 3.5 million Kurdish people thriving here pose dangerous problems for a possible U.S. war on Iraq, and for the country that would remain if Hussein falls. The U.S. air patrols have inspired Kurds – such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-war-reporting-from-southwestern-turkey-syria-jordan-lebanon-and-yemen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}