THINKING FOR OURSELVES

War on the Kurds

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Dec. 25, 2007

Turkey’s invasion of Iraq sharpens the importance of immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. It highlights the impossible situation the U.S. has created by turning to force as a solution to political problems.

Before dawn on Sunday 50 Turkish warplanes flew over northern Iraq and unleashed three hours of bombs on ten villages. This was the largest attack on Iraq since the U.S. invasion and the second assault from Turkey in the last month. The first attack was on December 1 when Turkish artillery pummeled Kurdish territory. By midweek 300 Turkish troops had followed up on the bombings by moving into a mountainous area.

According to the Turkish government, this attack was justified in its pursuit of Kurdish terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers Party known as the PKK. Over the last year there have been increased incursions by PKK rebels into Turkey. In November Turkey’s Parliament voted to allow military operations into Iraq and authorized the deployment of 100,000 troops near the border.

Using both the logic and methods of the Bush administration in fighting terrorism, Turkey is now justifying a military campaign against the Kurds. The recently-elected Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said, “We as the government are determined to use all political, geopolitical and military vehicles against the separatist terror organization in the most effective way.”

The oil rich lands to the north are about to become a much more complicated problem. And the Kurds, long subject to discrimination, are about to be betrayed again. This time by the U.S.

Everyone knows the U.S. endorsed these raids against the Kurds. Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, condemned the assaults and said, “These attacks hinder the political efforts exerted to find a peaceful solution based on mutual respect.” “The Americans are responsible,” he added bitterly, “because the Iraqi sky is under their full control.”

The U.S. endorsement of these assaults betrays the one group of people in Iraq who hold out the best promise for creating a stable, peaceful state. They have been our strongest allies. Now they are being sacrificed to more of Bush’s ineptness.

The Kurds are an ethnic and linguistic minority that have lived for at least two thousand years in the mountainous area that borders Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Since 1920 the international community has promised them a homeland. Numbering about 25 million people, inhabiting a region equal to Germany and Britain combined, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state.

Historically the Kurds have been exploited by nation states. They were the targets of chemical and biological warfare in Saddam Hussein’s campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Kurdish resistance to these assaults has been persistent, and in 1991 Iraq was forced to withdraw its administration from Kurdistan, allowing Kurds for the first time to govern themselves with free elections. In spite of internal and external pressures, the new Kurdish government established basic political freedoms, provided public services, established NGO’s, and supported three universities.

In mid-2002, anticipating the Bush invasion, they set up transition preparation committees in hopes of establishing independence. Frustrated by the occupation, the Kurds worked to participate in the national government, aiming for an autonomous region of their own. Their army, the Peshmerga, has been key to developing an independent Iraqi force. Numbering 75,000 strong, these men are playing a major role in the development of the Iraqi Defense forces and have been the dominant group in assisting U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.

But the Bush doctrine of war is spreading. We need to stop the whirlwind now.

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