Rohan Pearce
Thousands of Kurds took to the streets of towns in northern Iraq on October 2 to call for a referendum on autonomy for southern Kurdistan (the portion of Kurdistan incorporated into Iraq). In the city of Sulaimaniya, Associated Press estimated the number of demonstrators to be "about 100,000".
According to Reuters, demonstrators called for a referendum on Kurdistan's future and for unity between the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two main Kurdish parties in Iraq, in the lead-up to the Iraqi elections scheduled for January.
Demands for autonomy or independence by the Kurds, who make up 15-20% of Iraq's population, are thorny issues for the White House. The KDP and PUK are firm allies of Washington and supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Their peshmerga militia has provided the only armed force in Iraq that the US has been able to rely on. The US-recruited Arab Iraqi security forces have repeatedly suffered from mass desertions.
Support for the US occupation regime in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq has been consistently greater than among the Arabic-speaking majority of Iraq. The Kurdish region, under the control of the KDP and PUK, has been a US protectorate autonomous from the rest of Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. Additionally, the region didn't suffer from the crippling economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN after the Gulf War, estimated by the UN to have killed more than half-a-million Iraqi children.
While the US has met no serious Kurdish opposition since the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, the issue of southern Kurdistan's future has remained a sensitive one. Kurds are still without a state of their own, being divided between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Washington is opposed to the formation of an even nominally independent Kurdish state. In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the White House was at pains to emphasise that it would countenance no challenge to Iraq's "territorial integrity".
Washington's pre-war reassurances were aimed at securing support from Ankara, which was already under massive popular pressure to not cooperate with the Iraq invasion. For decades Ankara had fought a brutal war against a Kurdish national liberation movement in Turkey's south-east, home to some 10 million Kurds. In 1999, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which had led the Kurdish armed struggle, declared a cease-fire after Ankara captured Abdullah Ocalan, one of the party's central leaders.
Even proposals for significant autonomy for the Kurdish-dominated regions of Iraq are likely to meet with hostility from Washington and Ankara. Deputy US defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz told CNN-Turk on January 28: "I think the United States and Turkey have a common vision about the future of Iraq which is that it has to remain a single country, that the national government has to be in charge of the foreign policy and in charge of the army and in control of the borders."
Wolfowitz's statement echoed what he told a February 23, 2003, meeting of Iraqi Americans: "Turkey has very big interests in what takes place and they're nervous, but we are telling Turkey a democratic Iraq which will be unified and preserves its territorial integrity will be good for a democratic Turkey."
The status of northern Iraq is a particularly sensitive issue since the PKK, now named the Kurdistan People's Congress (Kongra-Gel), reportedly ended its cease-fire in June. The October 1 New York Times reported: "Clashes between the [Turkish] army and the [Kurdish] rebels have become a weekly occurrence, badly straining relations between Turkey and its southern neighbour, Iraq. Turkish officials, already nervous over de facto Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq, say the guerrillas are operating unmolested from bases in the Iraqi Kurdish zone."
Significant autonomy for southern Kurdistan might provide a spur to the struggles of Kurds in neighbouring states, as well as providing a base for the Kurdish national liberation movement in Turkey.
While the PUK and KDP may be eager to continue their collaboration with Washington, the anti-Kurd policies of Turkey could see them under pressure from Iraqi Kurds not to collaborate with any repression of a Kurdish insurgency against Ankara.
Turkey has ostensibly ended many of its explicitly anti-Kurd policies in order to win admission to the European Union. A report released by the European Commission on October 6 claimed that on the "basis of a comprehensive report assessing the situation as regards human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the protection of minorities, the European Commission today recommended to start accession negotiations with Turkey, provided that certain key legislation which is in preparation enters into force".
However, Ankara's oppression of Kurds continues, with the complicity of the US government, which designates Kongra-Gel as a "terrorist organisation". Amnesty International released a statement on June 8 expressing concerns over the torture and possible murders of Nurettin Basci, Gazi Aydin, Mehmet Kahvecioglu and Veli Karadeniz, all of whom were arrested by Turkish police and accused of being members of Kongra-Gel. AI's fears emerged after the extrajudicial execution of Siyar Perincek, another alleged Kongra-Gel member.
The human rights group reported that during Basci's detention by the "anti-terror" branch of the Turkish police he was allegedly "tortured using a method known as 'Palestinian hanging' which involves being hung by the arms whilst they are tied behind the back. He was also sprayed with pressurized water and given electric shocks to his fingers, toes and sexual organs and threatened with rape. He was reportedly deprived of sleep, food and water whilst continuously blindfolded. He was also reportedly taken out of the police station to an abandoned area where he was threatened with death and subjected to a mock execution when a gun was fired several times close to his head."
If the Iraqi elections scheduled for January proceed despite the strength of Iraqis' anti-occupation insurgency, then the drawing-up of a new constitution is planned for early in 2005. The October 2 mobilisation of Iraqi Kurds was an indication that any lukewarm federalism written into the constitution, along the lines likely to be pushed by Washington, may well be unacceptable to Iraqi Kurds and not placate their desire for national self-determination.
From Green Left Weekly, October 13, 2004.
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