-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.ataa.org/spotlight/s_aug13.html
Latest News August 13, 2002 One Iraqi obstacle you haven't heard of Asla Aydintasbas,City Limits,The New Republic, 08.07.02 - As Washington finally begins its long-awaited debate over war with Iraq, skeptics are having a field day with all the potential obstacles to an American march to Baghdad: international opposition; the difficulty of targeting Saddam's diffuse chemical and biological weapons; the fear that he might use them; the potential for American casualties. But there's one potential problem that so far has slipped under the radar screen: the little-known city of Kirkuk. The oil-rich town, which lies just south of the Kurdish safe haven established at the end of the Gulf war and 150 miles due north of Baghdad, has long been central to the Kurds' nationalist aspirations. It also happens to be home to some of Iraq's oldest oil fields, which are still among the world's most lucrative. So it's hardly surprising that the Kurds--who have so far proved cool to America's war planning--have made control of the city in a post- Saddam Iraq a key condition of their support. A post-Saddam Iraqi constitution, drafted by one of the main Kurdish parties and circulated in Washington last month, designated Kirkuk as nothing less than the capital of an autonomous Kurdish federation. The problem for the Bush administration is that the Kurds are not the only contenders for the city. Iraq's Turkmen minority--ethnic Turks who insist they constitute a majority in the city--vow they will not live under Kurdish rule. And Turkey, which greatly fears Kurdish nationalism (given the secessionist inclinations of the Kurds within its borders), considers itself the guardian of its ethnic brethren inside Iraq. The government in Ankara recently informed Washington that it will do whatever it takes to protect Turkmen interests-- including invading Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. "This is a nonstarter, a red line for us," a senior Turkish official told me. During a recent visit to Ankara, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was told by Turkey's military brass that if Kirkuk is promised to the Kurds, they won't back an American attack on Iraq. With reports that tensions between Kurds and Turkmen are escalating on the ground, U.S. policymakers need a creative solution soon. Otherwise a city you have never heard of might just undermine our entire plan for Iraq. At Ankara's urging, senior State Department officials have been negotiating with Turkmen leaders about their interests in a post-Saddam Iraq since the mid-'90s; the Turkmen Front, a coalition of Turkmen groups, is active within the Iraqi opposition to Saddam. But just as that opposition is finally garnering serious U.S. support, the Turkmen are growing skittish about whether their participation will bring them what they want most: control of Kirkuk. Turkmen complain that they never get as much attention as the Kurds despite the fact that they too have suffered repression and mass deportations at the hands of Iraq's brutal regime. "Whenever Iraq is mentioned, it is about Saddam, the oil, or the plight of the Kurds. We are absent from the debate," protests Kirkuk-born Orhan Ketene, Washington representative of the Iraqi Turkmen Front. Backed by Ankara, Turkmen publicly oppose Kurdish proposals to establish a federative Iraq divided between Kurdish and Arab entities, and they argue that the country's future should be determined after Saddam is overthrown. Privately, Turkmen concede that if the future administration of Iraq ends up being federative, as most in the opposition assume, there should be a Turkmen federation on the "Turkmen strip" stretching from the Syrian border to the Iranian border and including, you guessed it, Kirkuk. A recent statement by the Turkmen Front reads: "Turkmen areas in Iraq cannot be the subject of negotiations. ... The world has to know that if there is an attempt to negotiate the land we live on, we would protect it at all costs." The Kurds--whose epic history of persecution is better known--are at least as adamant that an American overthrow of Saddam leave Kirkuk in their hands. "Turkmen are really overreacting," says Dr. Najmaldin Karim, president of the Washington Kurdish Institute and a leading Iraqi Kurdish voice in Washington. Karim, also born and raised in Kirkuk, argues that the decade of Kurdish selfrule in northern Iraq has benefited the country's Turkmen and that most of the tensions between the two communities stem from meddling by Ankara. At a conference at American University earlier this summer on the future of Iraqi Kurds, someone from the audience asked the panelists, "If there is a Kurdish federation in future Iraq, will you demand Kirkuk to be part of that?" The audience erupted in boisterous applause. But the truth--as is so often the case in such conflicts--is that it's virtually impossible to determine which side has a better claim to the city. The 1957 census--the sole reliable count in Iraq and the only one in which Iraqis were allowed to declare their mother tongue--placed Turkmen as the country's third-largest ethnic group, after Arabs and Kurds (8.5 percent to 21 percent of the nation as a whole). Based on that ratio, Iraq today is estimated to contain between 1.5 million and two million Turkmen, largely city dwellers who live in areas still controlled by Baghdad, including Kirkuk. Within Kirkuk, claims Ketene, "despite years of Arabization, we still have the majority inside the city." It's impossible to know whether he's right, especially since Saddam's government frequently encourages Turkmen to register as Arabs, which further muddies an already confused picture. History is no help in settling the matter either. "Starting from the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the area around Kirkuk has been dominated by Turkmen, and that remained unchanged till the establishment of the modern state," says Magnus Bernhardsson, a historian of Iraq at Hofstra University and the author of an upcoming book on the use of archaeology in forging nationalism in modern Iraq. Bernhardsson notes that Kirkuk's demographics started tilting toward the Kurds in the 1930s, with an influx of migrant Kurdish workers who came to labor at profitable oil wells, and continued into the 1970s and 1980s--when Kurds fled to Kirkuk after their villages were destroyed by Saddam. It's conceivable, according to Bernhardsson, that the city now has more Kurds than Turkmen. "Kirkuk," he says, "is a classic case of demographic reality versus historic rights." Had Kurds and Turkmen lived easily together in Kirkuk all these years, finding some joint arrangement for the city might not be so hard. But, in fact, periods of tension have marked the last century. The worst episode came in 1959 when, instigated by the Iraqi Communist Party, a group largely comprised of Kurds went on a rampage against the city's more prosperous Turkmen, leading to a three-day massacre of Kirkuk's Turkmen leaders that only stopped when Baghdad intervened militarily. Ketene, then six years old, still remembers the chants from street mobs as they cruised his neighborhood before beating to death a neighbor, a rich Turkmen merchant, and hanging his body on a pole. In 1996, when one of the two major Kurdish parties (in a brief rapprochement with Baghdad) invited the Iraqi military into the Northern city of Erbil, about 50 miles from Kirkuk, Saddam's troops executed 17 Turkmen activists and officials and captured another 20, who are presumed dead--a slaughter the Turkmen blame on the Kurds. In 1998 and 2000, there were clashes between the Turkmen Front and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Erbil. And as recently as last week Turkmen say the city's Turkmen Cultural Center was fired upon in an atmosphere of escalating tension with Kurdish security units. Since the Gulf war the Kurdish-controlled safe haven to Kirkuk's north has experienced a kind of renaissance--"the Kurdish spring"--and Turkmen and other ethnic groups have benefited enormously from the liberalizing of education and media. There is now a private Turkmen TV channel and 19 Turkish- language schools--something unthinkable in those regions under Baghdad's control. But even in the safe haven, tensions between the two communities are boiling to the surface--especially in the areas held by Mesud Barzani's KDP, which also house the main offices of the Turkmen Front and other Turkmen groups. The Turkmen Front, a group criticized by Kurds for its tight relationship to Ankara, recently provided me with a long list of alleged cases of KDP harassment--including discrimination in hiring, ethnic harassment, not being allowed to sing the Turkmen national song, and being forced to fly the KDP flag in Turkmen schools. Ketene says Turkmen in Kirkuk worry that a Kurdish takeover of the city could bring similar repression or even produce a repeat of the massacre of 1959. All of which presents the Bush administration with a little-known, but major, headache. "[The United States] won't be able to solve this problem ahead of time, especially with no reliable data. What is needed is a census with an independent body after the city is occupied by someone other than Saddam Hussein," says Michael Rubin, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (and an occasional tnr contributor), who recently spent nine months in northern Iraq. Rubin is almost certainly right. America's best bet is probably to avoid any commitments about the city's future and to remind both sides of their deep mutual interest in getting rid of Saddam. But that's not going to be easy. "Kirkuk is our Jerusalem," Jalal Talabani, leader of one of Kurdistan's two main parties, said not long ago. And as recent U.S. administrations have learned all too well, compromise on Jerusalems may be the hardest thing in the world. Asla Aydintasbas is a New York-based journalist who has traveled extensively in Northern Iraq. Home | About Us | Membership | Component Associations | Events | The Turkish Times | Bookshop | Reference Assembly of Turkish American Associations Home of 54 Turkish-American Associations across US, Canada and Turkiye 1526 18th St., NW,Washington, DC 20036 Phone: (202) 483-9090, Fax: (202) 483-9092 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; I don't believe everything I read or send (but that doesn't stop me from considering it; obviously SOMEBODY thinks it's important) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." --- Ernest Hemingway <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
