[NYTr] Iraqi Kurdish leader defies Turkish invasion threat

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Independent - Oct 29, 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3106916.ece

Iraqi Kurdish leader defies Turkish invasion threat

By Patrick Cockburn in Iraqi Kurdistan

Masoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurds of northern Iraq, expressed
defiance yesterday in the face of a threatened invasion by 100,00
Turkish troops, and was scornful of Turkey's claim that it wants only
to pursue Turkish-Kurd rebels.

"We are not a threat to Turkey and I do not accept the language of
threatening and blackmailing from the government of Turkey," he said
from his mountain fortress of Salahudin 10 miles north of Arbil. "If
they invade there will be war."

Mr Barzani is President of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the
autonomous Kurdish area in northern Iraq which enjoys
quasi-independence from Baghdad and has stronger military forces than
half of the members of the UN.

He was in no mood to buckle under Turkish pressure to take military
action against the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who
have their hideouts in the mountain ranges along Iraqi Kurdistan's
borders with Iran and Turkey. "My main mission would be not to allow a
Kurdish-Kurdish fight to happen within the Kurdish liberation
movement," he declared.

Mr Barzani said Turkey's attempt to solve its Kurdish problem by
military means alone had not worked in the past 23 years and would not
work now. It was in 1984 that the PKK took up arms, seeking
independence or autonomy from the Turkish state that refused to admit
that it had a Kurdish minority of 15 million.

Mr Barzani also said that he was increasingly convinced that the
Turkish objective was not the PKK but Iraqi Kurdistan, which has
achieved near-independence since 2003. He said he was convinced
Turkey's claim that its target was the PKK "is only an excuse and the
target is the Kurdistan region itself". When the KRG put its peshmerga
(soldiers) on the border with Turkey to control the areas where the PKK
has sought refuge, Turkish artillery had shelled them, he said.

Mr Barzani appears to believe there is no concession he could offer to
Turkey which would defuse the crisis because he himself and the KRG are
the true target of Ankara.

Turkish military action might be largely symbolic with ground troops
not advancing very far, but even this would have a serious impact on
the economy of the KRG. The Iraqi Kurds would also be badly hurt if
Turkey closed the Habur Bridge, the crossing point near Zakho through
which passes much of Kurdistan's trade. Some 825,000 trucks crossed the
bridge in both directions last year. Asked what the impact of the
closure of Habur Bridge would be on Iraqi Kurdistan, Mr Barzani said
determinedly: "We would not starve."

Turkish artillery is already firing shells across the border in the
high mountains around Kani Masi, a well-watered border village in
western Kurdistan, famous for its apple orchards. The shelling is
persistent and is evidently designed as warning to the Iraqi Kurds. "We
are afraid but we have nowhere else to go," said Mohammed Mustafa, an
elderly farmer.

For the moment, the villagers are staying put. Many of them in this
area are Syriac Christians whose parents or grandparents emigrated to
Baghdad but had returned recently because of fear of sectarian killing
in the capital. Omar Mai, the local head of Mr Barzani's Kurdistan
Democratic Party in Kani Masi, said that seven villages in the area had
recently been shelled.

He said that there were no PKK in the villages and that they stayed
permanently in the high mountains. Another reason for the PKK
guerrillas making themselves scarce in this area is that there are
Turkish outposts and garrisons already inside Iraq, set up during
previous incursions. At one point near the village of Begova the snouts
of Turkish tanks point menacingly down the road.

Driving to the top of a mountain where peshmerga were dug in, Mr Mai
explained with some pride the intricate geography of the frontier. On
one hilltop below us was the Turkish army, identifiable by the red
Turkish flag, while a few hundred yards below the hill, separated by a
flimsy fence, were Iraqi Kurdish frontier guards living in a long white
barracks. In a grove of trees behind this building was a villa that was
also occupied by Turkish troops.

Further north, hidden by folds in the mountains, are the Turkish guns
that intermittently bombard this area. If the Turkish army does want to
advance here there is not much to stop them, but it is unlikely that
they would find any PKK, scanty in number and well-hidden in caves, in
this vast range of mountains and valleys.