-Caveat Lector-
SubjectKurds Background
DateWednesday, February 24, 1999 5:14 PM
<<Note On the surface, there may not seem to be any relationship to
'conspiracy' or political intrigue as far as the Kurds, Turkey, Syria,
Iran, Iraq and all the others are concerned. But, if one looks at the site
from which this article was borrowed, about half the way down is a map
{<PictureMap showing territory inhabited by Kurds>} that shows an
extensive area of Kurdish inhabitation. This area is that through which an
anticipated pipeline for Caspian oil-black gold-Texas 'T'
will/might/should/could flow. Now, our friends at several many oil
companies (could/might/should) have an eye on this and the Iraqi problems
when considering investment and exploration options. "A 'senior American
official' -- undoubtedly Secretary of State Baker -- told the New York
Times Saturday <<early August 1990>>, '" The response of the West will not
be driven by the Saudis alone. We are talking about oil. Got it? Oil,
vital American interests. There is no way we will let the Saudis go down
the tubes."' " [from Desert Slaughter] A<>E<>R >>
>From slate.com / The Gist 09-26-96
The Kurds
By David Plotz
(1,105 words; posted Thursday, Sept. 26; to be composted Thursday, Oct.
3)
Early this month, the United States bombed Iraq in retaliation for
Saddam Hussein's invasion of the Kurdish city Irbil. Who are the Kurds, and
why do they feature so often in news stories from the Middle East?
There are between 20 million and 25 million Kurds--one of the
largest ethnic groups in the world without its own state. Almost the entire
Kurdish population lives in a mountainous area that covers eastern Turkey,
northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran, as well as slivers of Syria, Armenia,
and Azerbaijan. The Kurds, descendants of Indo-European nomads, call this
region Kurdistan, and have lived there at least 2,000 years.
Although the Kurds consider themselves a nation, they share neither
a common language nor a common religion. Kurdish consists of several
mutually unintelligible dialects, linguistic relatives of Persian, the
language of Iran. The vast majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, but there
are also Shiites, Christians, Zoroastrians, Jews, and others.
The Kurds have spent most of the last two millennia fighting
against, or allying with, the Arabs, the Persians, and the Turks. They
joined the Muslim crusades (Saladin, the 12th-century Muslim hero who
recaptured Jerusalem, was a Kurd). They have ruled their own mountain
kingdoms at various points in history. More recently, they were subjects of
both the Persian and Ottoman empires.
<Picture>
<PictureT>he history of the Kurds in the 20th century has been one of
almost constant warfare and disappointment, as they have sought
autonomy--with little success--in each of their three principal homelands.
The Kurds of what is now Turkey were promised a state after World War I,
but Kemal Atat�rk annexed them. With Soviet help, Iranian Kurds founded a
state called Mahabad in 1946, but the Shah crushed it less than a year
later. Iraqi Kurds have been warring for autonomy since the 1930s. Today,
separatist movements continue in all three countries.
<PictureMap showing territory inhabited by Kurds>
IraqKurds number about 4 million, approximately 15 percent of the
Iraqi population. The recent Kurdish unrest is rooted in 60 years of
rebellion, betrayal, and defeat. Between the early 1930s and 1975, Mulla
Mustafa Barzani repeatedly warred against Iraqi authorities. He and his
Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) controlled much of northern Iraq at several
points, and the Iraqi government even granted the Kurds some autonomy in
1970. That arrangement soured, and in 1974, Barzani again took up arms
against Iraq, this time backed by Iran, the United States, and Israel. But
Iran signed a peace accord with Iraq in 1975 and immediately abandoned the
KDP. So did the United States and Israel. Iraq smashed the Kurdish
uprising. Barzani left for the United States, where he died in 1979. The
Iraqi Kurds split into factionsBarzani's son Moussad took over the
clannish, conservative KDP; Jalal Talabani founded the urban, vaguely
leftist Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s revived the Kurds. The PUK and KDP
made common cause with Iran. In 1988, Saddam Hussein savaged the Kurds. His
troops razed hundreds of Kurdish villages, massacred thousands of Kurdish
fighters and civilians, and forcibly relocated many more to southern Iraq.
A poison-gas attack on the town of Halabja killed as many as 7,000 Kurds.
About 100,000 Kurdish refugees fled to Iran and Turkey.
<Picture><PictureT>hree years later, after the Gulf War, the Kurds rose
again at the urging of the United States and its partners in the
anti-Saddam alliance. But Hussein stomped them. The allies intervened only
when nearly 2 million Kurdish refugees surged toward the Turkish and
Iranian borders. The United States, France, Britain, and Turkey delivered
humanitarian aid, established a no-fly zone, and pressured Hussein to
withdraw from Kurdish territory. With Western help, the Kurds elected a
Parliament in 1992. Based in Irbil, the Parliament split evenly between the
KDP and the PUK.
Democracy didn't last. With no Iraqis to fight, the Kurds turned on
each other. Civil war broke out in 1994, and more than 2,000 Kurds were
killed before the United States brokered a peace in 1995. That peace
collapsed this summer. The PUK helped Iran conduct an incursion into
northern Iraq. Barzani's KDP, in turn, asked for Hussein's help (even
though Hussein had slaughtered thousands of Barzani's supporters during the
1980s). Hussein accepted the invitation. On Aug. 31, 30,000 Iraqi troops
and thousands of KDP fighters drove the PUK from Irbil. This raid inspired
United States cruise-missile strikes on southern Iraq. After securing
Irbil, Barzani's men quickly routed the PUK from its other strongholds.
Talabani fled to the Iran border, and the PUK is all but defunct. Barzani
insists that he's not Hussein's puppet, and that Iraqi troops have
withdrawn to the south. But Hussein's secret police have settled in; the
Kurdish Parliament has collapsed; and experts doubt that the KDP can resist
Iraqi bullying.
<Picture><PictureT>urkeyKurds constitute 20 percent of Turkey's 60 million
citizens. In his effort to build nationalism across Turkey in the 1920s,
Atat�rk instituted a campaign to suppress Kurdish identity that continues
today. Teaching and broadcasting in Kurdish are banned. And as recently as
1994, the government jailed for treason politicians who expressed mild
pro-Kurdish sentiments. This suppression has helped legitimize the Kurdish
Workers' Party (PKK), a quasi-Marxist guerrilla group that champions
Kurdish autonomy. Since 1984, Abdullah Ocalan and his army of between 5,000
and 10,000 fighters have been waging a vicious war against Turkey from
bases in northern Iraq and Syria. More than 18,000 people have died. The
PKK has murdered Turks who teach Kurdish children, Kurds who side with the
Turks, and thousands of Turkish soldiers. The PKK has also bombed Turkish
targets in Germany. Both Germany and the United States classify the PKK as
a terrorist organization.
The Turkish army has responded with equal brutality. It has
"de-Kurdified" much of southeastern Turkey, bulldozing as many as 2,500
Kurdish villages and forcing thousands of Kurds to move to cities in
western Turkey. And since 1995, Turkish troops have invaded northern Iraq
three times to destroy PKK bases.
IranThe Iranian Kurds are much quieter than those in Turkey or Iraq.
Kurds constitute only 10 percent of Iran's population; their culture and
language are much closer to Iran's than they are to Turkey's or Iraq's; and
Iranian governments have permitted them limited cultural expression, though
no political autonomy. In 1979, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI)
joined Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution, but he quickly snuffed any hope for
Kurdish autonomy. His tanks and fighter planes crushed a budding Kurdish
resistance movement. The Iranian government has assassinated two KDPI
leaders. This summer, the government and the PUK raided KDPI hideouts in
northern Iraq. This assault, in turn, helped reignite the PUK's war with
the KDP.
<Picture><Picture> Links
<Picture>
<Picture* >LinksThe Kurds may be struggling in the field, but they
are thriving on the Internet. There are plenty of unofficial Kurdish Web
pages--this one features an elegant map of Kurdistan and a great list of
Kurd proverbs ("better a calf of one's own than a jointly owned cow").
The Switzerland-based Kurdistan Web offers a trove of information,
including a special children's page, about the Kurdish economy, politics,
and culture. An anarchist group in San Diego maintains an archive about the
PKK and other Kurdish resistance movements.
David Plotz is an assistant editor of SLATE.
>From CSIS
Volume 4 � Number 2
February 10, 1999This Issue:
Searching for Europe's Agenda
Bringing in the Baltics
Iran and TurkeyEurope's Dilemma
EuroWatch - February 1999
<Picture>
Iran and TurkeyEurope's Dilemma
Relations between Turkey and the European Union have been strained sincethe
December 1997 Luxembourg summit when the European Commission declared
Turkey eligible for EU membership but stopped short of a commitment to
start accession talks. The recent row between Turkey and Italy over the
extradition of Kurdish guerrilla leader Abullah Ocalan, which prompted the
EU to warn Turkey that it would face European retaliation should it boycott
Italian goods, has further exacerbated existing political, and even
cultural, tensions.
Furthermore, the rise of the Virtue Party, a successor to the Welfare Party
forced from power by the military in 1995, has raised concern among
Turkey's Western neighbors, who fear the Islamization of the current
secular regime. With mainstream parties weakened by a six-week leadership
crisis following the collapse of the Yimaz government in late 1998, Virtue
is expected to win a parliamentary majority in Turkey's April 18 elections.
Should that be the case, it will be increasingly difficult for Turkey's
secular parties to keep it from power. Turkey's elections could therefore
be a major turning point for Turkish domestic politics and for its
relations with Europe.
Conversely, EU-Iranian relations have entered a friendlier phase during the
past 15 months. The visit to Tehran last summer by Italy's then-prime
minister Romano Prodi confirmed growing willingness to develop deeper
diplomatic and commercial ties. Italian foreign minister Lamberto Dini and
his French counterpart Hubert V�drine have both expressed support for the
more moderate policies of Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who in late
March is expected to become the first Iranian head of state to visit
Western Europe (France and Italy) since the 1979 revolution.
Recent collaboration between Iran and Italy have empowered a number of
Italian companies to sign contracts or enter negotiations with Iranian
enterprises, including the steel company Danieli that is investing in steel
production in Isfahan. These developments, however, are not limited to
southern European states. The Iranian government's recent decision to
distance itself from the 1989 fatwa placed by Ayatollah Khomeini on British
novelist Salmon Rushdie has improved Anglo-Iranian relations. Britain
recently contacted Iranian officials in efforts to strengthen Tehran-London
bilateral relations and upgrade diplomatic ties.
The nature of the EU's relations with both Turkey and Iran has important
consequences for the development of landlocked energy reserves in the
Caspian Sea basin, and subsequently for Euro-Atlantic relations. At
present, this wealth of petroleum and natural gas can be exported only
through lengthy pipelines transiting unstable territories-thus giving one
of several regional rival states great influence (if not outright control)
over the Caspian's energy resources. At present, pipeline routes through
Turkey or Iran remain the two most viable strategic and economic options.
The Clinton administration supports the Turkish route despite concerns that
this option would be too expensive. Turkey's geography, membership in NATO,
and role as a key U.S. ally in the region are central considerations in the
U.S. position. Iran's strategic location, however, with proximity to
Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, the Caspian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, has led
European oil companies to favor the more economical and less expensive
Iranian option.
Pressure from European oil companies and the EU, and a growing interest in
the Iranian route among U.S. petroleum firms have lead to a relaxation of
U.S. trade restrictions against Iran. Last May, the United States and EU
signed an agreement waiving U.S. sanctions against Total, Gazprom, and
Petronas for their involvement in the $2 billion South Pars offshore gas
project in Iran. This move encouraged a flurry of oil and gas companies
including Shell, British Petroleum, Lasmo, Elf, and Agip to signal their
intentions to pursue contracts in Iran. If sanctions are further relaxed or
entirely removed, Iran will likely become the route of choice--a
development that could lead to the further political and economic isolation
of Turkey from the European structures that it seeks to join and the
transatlantic alliance of which it is already a part.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
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Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved
the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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