17
April 2003
2. "Top Kurdish leader assesses the costs of war", for the Kurds, this may be the first war to end without massive casualties and political defeat.
3. "Invasion of Iraq: What next?", the war in Iraq has passed like a tornado leaving behind death and destruction on a massive scale. The question now on everyone's mind is what next?
4. "Some Bush Aides Wary of Autonomy for Iraq Regions", some Bush administration officials are concerned about Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni regions having a great deal of autonomy as part of a postwar Iraqi government, people familiar with the deliberations said on Wednesday.
5. "Denktash shuns talks in Cypriot south", the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, said yesterday that government parties from the Turkish north of Cyprus would not attend the talks, called by the Greek prime minister, Costas Simitis, which are to be held in the southern portion of the island.
6. "Ocalan’s projects are kept from being conveyed to people”, Bekir Kaya, one of the lawyers of the Century’s Law Bureau, stated that KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan was kept under solitary confinement because they did not want his thesis to be learnt by the society.
Dear reader,
Due to the
holiday time from 18-04 to 21-04-03 our "Flash Bulletin" will
not be forwarded to email addresses nor will there be an internet edition
during this time.
The next edotion will be available on Tuesday, April 22.
1. - The Washington Post - "Kurds Redrawing Map by Memory, With Force":
MUNTASIR / 17 April 2003 / by Daniel Williams and Karl
Vick
With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority
has achieved a long-held dream: restored control over broad swaths of
territory the Kurds consider their own. But as the U.S.-led war that
toppled the Iraqi president comes to an end, Arabs, Turkmen, Americans
and the Kurds themselves are struggling to prevent that dream from becoming
a nightmare.
The new map of Iraqi Kurdistan is being drawn with politics, blood and ethnic conflict. Northern Iraq is seething with tension between Kurds and other ethnic groups. The two main Kurdish political parties are at odds over how to administer the north. And U.S. forces are trying with mixed results to balance the various factions while a new, post-Hussein Iraq takes shape.
The outlines of the conflict are visible on the walls of mud huts in Muntasir, a hamlet a few miles south of Kirkuk, the region's oil capital. Muntasir is an Arab village, created in the aftermath of a failed Kurdish revolt in 1975 as part of Hussein's program to expel Kurds from the area and replace them with Arabs.
On Tuesday, however, Kurds from the neighboring village of Indijah came to Muntasir and told the Arabs they had 24 hours to leave. Across the fronts of buildings in the hamlet, Kurds scrawled the initials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two militia-backed political parties in the north. The names of Kurdish peasants were written on three houses that they evidently planned to occupy.
"We are defenseless," said Hamad Oweid, an Arab shepherd and father of five daughters. "Many families left to hide in the mountains. We don't know what else to do."
In Kirkuk, meanwhile, the city's two new de facto mayors are taking a more measured approach to ethnic tensions.
One of the men, the PUK's interior minister, Faraidoon Abdul Qadir, listened to an ethnic Turkmen couple who had been told by Kurds that they must give up their home. He sent them away with a security squad to confront the ruffians. The other mayor, Kamal Kerkuki, a native of Kirkuk and member of the political bureau of the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said the people who have poured into Kirkuk since it was liberated -- including Kurds displaced by Hussein's Arabization campaign -- have been told to leave. Property disputes will be settled by judges, he said.
"Now everybody who came from outside must go out," Kerkuki said. "The population of Kirkuk will decide who is powerful in the future."
>From the region's dusty villages to its halls of power, there are countless examples of how the war has overturned decades of Kurdish misfortunes. But the war has also left key questions: Can Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds live together peacefully after years of bitter warfare? Will the Kurds be allowed to retain control of key northern cities and the lucrative oil fields in this impoverished region? And if so, can the Kurds create order and a measure of prosperity out of a chaotic situation?
The conflict between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen in northern Iraq predated the U.S.-led war and could last well beyond it. Earlier Kurdish drives for independence, expanded autonomy and territory have been powerful fissures in Iraqi political life.
For many years, the PUK and KDP held almost no territory and were pursued relentlessly in mountain refuges by Hussein's armies. It was only after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the failed Kurdish uprising that followed that an autonomous region took shape, existing outside government control and protected by U.S. and British planes enforcing a "no-fly" zone over northern Iraq.
Hussein's government maintained control of Kirkuk, Mosul and the rich northern oil fields, however -- until last week. With the collapse of Iraqi authority, the PUK sent its forces to Kirkuk without U.S. permission, a breach of an agreement to keep its militia under U.S. command. Looting and mayhem resulted, and although the United States ordered the PUK to withdraw, a PUK administration is still trying to govern the city.
One recent morning, that administration was embodied by a line of 70 garbage trucks, road graders and dump trucks parading through downtown Kirkuk, occasionally honking. Many bore the city seal of Sulaymaniyah, the city in the Kurdish zone where many Kurds from Kirkuk had fled the Arabization campaign.
"We come to serve the people of Kirkuk and keep the city clean," announced Ahmed Ali Hamamin, a municipal employee in Sulaymaniyah. "According to the instructions of [PUK leader Jalal] Talabani, we are to serve the people of Kirkuk whether they are Turkmen, Kurd or Arab."
Hamamin spoke on the city's main street. Graffiti written in Arabic on a wall facing him declared: "Kirkuk without the Turkmen is worth nothing, and the Turkmen without Kirkuk is worth nothing." Behind him, a sign in Turkish read: "Kirkuk Is Ours."
In theory, the nascent administration answers to an 18-member governance committee made up of six Kurds -- three from the PUK and three from the KDP -- six Arabs and six Turkmen. At its first meeting, last Thursday, proceedings were conducted in Arabic and, in a sign of where higher authority lies, translated into English for the U.S. Army officer who ran the meeting.
Brig. Gen. James Parker, the senior commander for U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said the American approach "to all these issues is one of balance. . . . I told them we're not going to order -- and I'll stop it if I find out about it -- any evictions. We're not putting any people out. We're not going to arbitrate property."
"It's not a government," the general said of the transitional structure. "A government will be installed sometime later."
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based human rights organization, criticized the United States and its allies for failing to bring "law and order to Kirkuk and ensure the security of civilians."
"Kirkuk now is a tinderbox," said Hania Mufti, a Human Rights Watch monitor in northern Iraq. "U.S. troops should stop the violence. And PUK leaders should take immediate steps to halt any expulsions of Iraqi Arabs from their homes."
About 90 miles to the north, the Kurds have also taken control of the city of Mosul, where Arabs are the majority of the population. When Iraqi forces abandoned the city five days ago, Kurds were among the most avid looters. In the past two days, 17 people have been killed -- at least seven by U.S. troops -- and 18 wounded in disturbances in the city, according to hospital officials.
The Kurds "say they want to be part of Iraq, but they act like conquerors," said Mahmoud Qusai, a retired Arab ship captain in Mosul. A crowd that had gathered around him murmured, "Let them come, let them come, and they will see."
In the countryside, the PUK is not only deploying armed riflemen, it is taking steps to expel Arabs they say are settlers on the land. Anyone who was transferred from other parts of Iraq by the Hussein government and put on Kurdish land must leave, officials say. "We want it orderly, but the Arab settlers must go," said Gen. Ako Ahmed, self-styled provisional governor of Daqoq district, a county south of Kirkuk that includes Muntasir.
Ahmed denied that the PUK was expelling residents of Muntasir and a half-dozen other rural hamlets in his region. "They will go voluntarily. They have relatives in the south and will live with them," he predicted.
The KDP has actively discouraged the forced expulsion of Arabs. Like the PUK, the KDP says settlers must eventually leave but under an agreement of international organizations and the new Iraqi administration, when it appears. "Kurdish citizens have no right to threaten any Arab citizen or attack any Arab village belonging to indigenous Arab tribes," the KDP's leader, Massoud Barzani, said in a statement.
Barzani's appeal followed several shootouts between Arabs
and marauding Kurds. Over the weekend, 12 Kurdish militiamen were killed
in an assault on the Arab town of Hawijah, south of Kirkuk. Ezzedin
Mohammed, an official of the Red Crescent medical aid society, said
he had buried the bodies of 38 people, Arabs and Kurds, involved in
fighting in the past two days. "This thing is getting out of hand.
We are going from one war to another," he said. 
2. - The Christian Sience Monitor - "Top Kurdish leader assesses the costs of war":
SALAHUDDIN / 16 April 2003 / by Ilene R. Prusher
For the Kurds, this may be the first war to end without massive
casualties and political defeat.
But to Massoud Barzani - leader of one of two main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq - the war is rife with disappointments and far from over.
Mr. Barzani, born on the same day in 1946 that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) he now leads was founded, headed to a US-sponsored conference Tuesday in Nasiriyah as one of the key players set to determine Iraq's future.
But after a lifetime spearheading the Kurdish struggle, the present situation has him deeply troubled. One of the biggest Kurdish gains in a generation - the downfall of Saddam Hussein - has been marred by mayhem, looting, and violence. And the unfettered fall of Kirkuk late last week set in motion a chain of events that derailed a limited but well-controlled northern front, setting the stage for Kurdish infighting.
In an interview, Barzani lays blame for the chaotic turn of events in Kirkuk and Mosul - another northern city unchained by the disappearing Iraqi regime - on the doorstep of his rivals in the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan). The PUK is the other main party in the territory that has come to enjoy de facto self-rule since the 1991 Gulf War. Its pesh merga fighters rushed into Kirkuk on Thursday, Barzani charges, in violation of an agreement painstakingly hammered out with US officials - and tailored to keep a vigilant Turkey from marching into the fray.
"The PUK violated that agreement," says Barzani, who spoke to the Monitor and the Associated Press at his headquarters, ensconced in a mountain resort. "We made an agreement with the Americans that large [numbers of Kurdish] troops would not enter Kirkuk," he says. "We have lost the opportunity," to show the world the face of responsible behavior as Mr. Hussein's dictatorship disintegrated, "and we are very sorry for that."
While KDP forces stayed outside the city, Barzani charges, the PUK's poured in, raising the ire of Ankara. Turkey, vehemently opposed to the creation of any form of Kurdish state, worries that a Kurdish seizure of oil-rich Kirkuk could make an independent Kurdistan economically viable - and recharge its own sizable Kurdish minority.
As Kirkuk fell, Turkey threatened to send in troops. According to Barzani, that made the US skittish about allowing KDP forces to secure Mosul, which was sucked into a violent power vacuum the following day. The KDP's forces were delayed, waiting for an American go-ahead - giving looters and shooters a head start.
"If that delay had not taken place, we would have been able to stop the looting," he says. "If they had allowed us to go in within 12 hours we would have been able to stop this. When our troops went in, it was at the request of the people of Mosul themselves and the request of the Americans and with coordination with them."
All of this, he says, forced the Kurds to accept the presence of 20 Turkish military observers in Kirkuk.
The words of rebuke do not bode well for Kurdish unity as leaders from around Iraq meet to formulate an interim government to run the country until elections are held. But the KDP and the PUK, which split off from the former in the mid-1970s, have had more than their share of differences. After forging an uprising against Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, they wound up fighting each other in the mid-1990s. At one point, Barzani even turned to Hussein for help, although KDP officials say he was trying to counterbalance the military and financial assistance the PUK received from Iran.
Moreover, the conclusion of the war reveals strains in the Kurds' relationship with the US. Barzani, whose father founded the KDP, has in past interviews pointed to many letdowns by the US, from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1975 to former President George Bush in 1991. In this war, the Kurds were Washington's only fighting regional ally, marking the first time the Kurds have had a world superpower on its side.
But the war, like much of Barzani's life as a pesh merga - meaning those who face death - has taken a personal toll. A week ago, US airplanes accidentally bombed a convoy of KDP fighters advancing toward Mosul with US special forces. Eighteen of the KDP's most elite pesh merga were killed, and Barzani's younger brother and son were injured. "It was very unfortunate, but it was not deliberate because there were also American soldiers and officers with them," he says.
While wholesale looting and vandalism has tapered off, parts of Mosul and Kirkuk are still seething with ethnic tensions. In Kirkuk, for example, Arabs say they are being told by pesh merga that they have three days to leave the city, while Turkmens say they are also being targeted for theft and violence.
None of that will be tolerated and minority rights will be respected Barzani says. But the Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk by Hussein will have to leave, he says. "All those Arabs who have been brought to this area under the Arabization process ... should be taken back." He adds that "an international body should oversee the process."
But any attempt to quickly undo decades of forced population shifts under Hussein is not likely to reflect well on the Kurdish cause. Many Arabs in Kirkuk, for example, say pesh merga are already pressuring them to leave. Whether Kurdish leaders can keep a lid on people's desires for revenge and property reclamation - after decades of murder and mistreatment by Hussein - could be their most challenging litmus test in the coming weeks.
Having been a willing partner when Washington saw so many allies' doors slammed shut, Iraqi Kurds find themselves in a historically rare moment of power - a turning point Barzani acknowledges feels sort of strange. "We, as Kurds ... should not forget where we stand, and we should always look to the future," he says.
What that future holds is unclear. For all their differences, the KDP and PUK both say they hope to have a Kurdish state as part of a united, federated Iraq - not an independent Kurdistan. But worried neighbors, Turkey in particular, are not convinced.
Barzani warns Turkey not to send its own troops over the
border. "We should all speak the language of dialogue and understanding
and not military action, because when you send troops in it would further
complicate the situation."
3. - The Daily Star /Lebanon) - "Invasion of Iraq: What next?":
17 April 2003 / by Arshad-uz Zaman *
THE war in Iraq has passed like a tornado leaving behind death and
destruction on a massive scale. The question now on everyone's mind
is what next?
It has been a strange war. On the one hand there was the foremost military power, the USA and to give it a fig leaf of legitimacy, the UK. The two together are capable of destroying the world many times over. Faced with this might there was Iraq, with weapons so crude that the two big powers would not touch them.
A campaign was launched through the world media, which are dominated by the American CNN and the British BBC, that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction and the matter was taken over by the Security Council of the UN. By a unanimous vote the Council decided to send two venerable gentlemen Hans Blix of Sweden and El-Baradei of Egypt to look for such weapons in Iraq. They reported that they found nothing worthwhile. In the meantime the US and the UK assembled a formidable array of weapons as destructive as WMD close to the border of Iraq. The Secretary General recalled his two inspectors from Iraq and the two big powers launched a totally unprovoked war on Iraq.
The US took a very big risk. It totally bypassed the Security Council effectively destroying its role in the world. It alienated its partner France, partner within the NATO with whom it has a long standing friendship. She alienated Russia, whose armaments and technological achievements are easily comparable with the US and with whom she is building daily new bridges. And the US totally ignored another big power China.
The US came to near conflict with another NATO ally -- Turkey. She tried every kind of stratagem to entice Turkey into war against Iraq. The traditional Turkish policy of territorial integrity of Iraq is too deeply embedded for her to change her stance now. Then a bargain was struck that the US would station 62,000 troops, who would cross into northern Iraq in exchange for a hefty packet of money to compensate for the losses to be sustained by Turkey. This proposal presented to the Grand National Assembly was voted down by the lawmakers.
This sudden turn of events led to a total change in the US strategy. The idea was that a pincer movement would be launched, from the south through Basra and from the north through northern Iraq, ultimately joining up in Baghdad. When this plan was foiled the US and Britain started a massive campaign of bombing Baghdad, effectively destroying that city of five million. From destroying weapons of mass destruction the new plan became the destruction of President Saddam Hussein and his regime. The new plan looks amazingly similar to the plan executed in Afghanistan last year. In Afghanistan a search lasting for months has failed to give any clue regarding the whereabouts of Bin Laden. Since Afghanistan is mainly barren rocks the US appears to have tired of that country.
But the situation is dramatically different in Iraq. Iraq is the cradle of one of the oldest civilizations and is an archeologists' paradise. Iraq has the second largest oil reserve in the world and the oil 'Sheikhs' surrounding President George W. Bush are very aware of this fact. The giant US oil corporations, who succeded in putting Bush in the presidency are ready for their pound of flesh.
As US and British leaders gloat over their success, Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel must be chuckling with quiet satisfaction. Since the present US President assumed power Sharon has built excellent relations with him to the point where he has sent his adversary Yasser Arafat of Palestine to exile from the White House. Now with the ouster of Saddam Hussain from Baghdad, he has achieved his target of ridding the Middle East of Arab leaders who could pose a challenge to him. He is thus on his way to becoming the lone policeman in the Middle East on behalf of his master, the USA.
The great tragedy of the world is that the preeminent power, rather than creating stability, is fast becoming the cause of total disorder in the world. Take the Middle East for example. The predecessor of President Bush President Bill Clinton presented a perfect example of evenhandedness in his dealing with the Palestinians and the Israelis and brought them within a whisker of settlement of their dispute. For the US, who alone can have influence on Israel, there is no other policy. Yet President Bush has taken a demonstratively pro-Israel stance. By his thoughtless action he has caused severe strain within the Atlantic alliance. Mercifully at the last moment he has pulled back from going too far with his friendship for the Kurds, thus averting another crisis situation with Turkey.
The blow administered upon Iraq has been felt throughout the Arab world and beyond. The Arabs are no longer the helpless sorts that they used to be. Even in the field of media they have come up with their Al-Jazeera. The Arabs are bound to recover from their wounds.
President George W. Bush has unleashed forces whose consequences are going to be far reaching.
* Arshad-uz-Zaman is a former Ambassador.
4. - Reuters - "Some Bush Aides Wary of Autonomy for Iraq Regions":
WASHINGTON / 16 April 2003 / by Adam Entous 
Some Bush administration officials are concerned about Kurdish,
Shi'ite and Sunni regions having a great deal of autonomy as part of
a postwar Iraqi government, people familiar with the deliberations said
on Wednesday.
President Bush hailed advocates of Kurdish autonomy visiting the White House last month, saying he envisioned replacing Saddam Hussein's government with a "federation" made up of the country's major ethnic groups.
Saman Shali, executive vice president of the Kurdish National Congress of North America, said he had received assurances the Kurds would have the "autonomy to run their own affairs" after the war.
"Please do not sell out the Kurds again," Shali implored White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice at the end of the visit. "We will not, I promise," Rice said in response, according to Shali's account.
In subsequent meetings with lawmakers, administration officials raised the possibility of a federation of states drawn along ethnic lines, congressional sources said.
Officials say they have not committed to a federation or any other structure for a future Iraqi government.
"We're going to leave those decisions to the Iraqi people where they belong," one official said, putting the onus on yet-to-be-named Iraqi leaders to draft a constitution with the help of American and other outside advisers.
But some Bush administration officials see "potential pitfalls," including a heightened risk of power struggles, in a federal system that grants autonomy to regions based on ethnicity, sources close to the deliberations said.
Iraqi Kurds want to retain at least the autonomy they now have as the price for remaining part of a federated Iraq and as a reward for helping American forces fighting in the north.
"In the end, some kind of federated system -- with local governments that takes into account regional differences in the population -- may work," said a source. "But when you have a country as ethnically diverse, with certain ethnicities concentrated in certain areas, you have the potential for ethnic conflict."
POTENTIAL PITFALLS
U.S. policy-makers hope to avoid the fate of Afghanistan, where lawless regions dominated by warlords pose a real threat to future stability.
The fear in Iraq, officials say, is that semi-autonomous regions could work at cross-purposes, undermining centralized authority in a nation with a history of divisions between Kurds and Arabs, Sunni Muslims and Shi'ite Muslims.
Regions might vie for independence, undercutting a central principle of U.S. policy: maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity.
A federation could also give undue weight to regional powers, which are in some cases hostile to the United States. Saudi Arabia might shape policies in a semi-autonomous Sunni region, while Iran could influence Iraq's Shi'ite majority.
The politics of setting up a semi-autonomous Kurdish region within Iraq could be especially difficult.
Turkish leaders are uncomfortable with the degree of autonomy the Iraqi Kurds have gained since Saddam lost control of a slice of northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. But for the Kurds, that autonomy is the baseline from which they expect to improve their lot in a post-Saddam Iraq.
The capture of the northern oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul underscored the danger. When Kurdish fighters swept in, they triggered an immediate threat of Turkish military intervention. American troops were sent to the city to ensure Turkey stayed on the sidelines.
Kurds, who had a majority in Kirkuk and a share of its oil wealth before Baath party ethnic cleansing "Arabized" the city, want Kirkuk as their capital. "We have to strengthen what we have, not weaken it," said Shali.
Mike Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish
Institute, warned of a public outcry and "maybe violence"
if the Kurds' autonomy is rolled back. "The genie is already out
of the bottle," he said.
5. - The Guardian - "Denktash shuns talks in Cypriot south":
NICOSIA / 17 April 2003 / by Gokhan Tezgor 
The Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, said yesterday that government
parties from the Turkish north of Cyprus would not attend the talks,
called by the Greek prime minister, Costas Simitis, which are to be
held in the southern portion of the island.
But Mr Denktash, who is blamed by EU diplomats for the collapse of UN sponsored reunification talks, said that all opposition parties from the north would probably join Saturday's meeting.
Mehmet Ali Talat, leader of the opposition, the Turkish Republican party, said he would attend.
The internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government is due to sign an EU accession treaty for the entire island, at a summit in Athens next week before joining the EU in 2004. The Turkish Cypriot state is at the moment recognised only by Turkey.
Greek Cypriot membership of the EU without the Turkish north could raise tensions between Greece and Turkey, and severely damage Turkey's own drive for membership.
"The invitation has been extended to the leaders of all political parties ... only opposition groups are attending," Mr Denktash said during his recent visit to Bursa, in Turkey.
Mr Talat said: "As representatives of the Turkish Cypriot people we have every right to attend this sort of meeting. Denktash has alienated himself from his people."
Turkish Cypriot opposition parties severely criticised
Mr Denktash after his failure to agree on the UN's reunification plans.
6. - Kurdish Observer - “Ocalan’s projects are kept from being conveyed to people”:
Bekir Kaya, one of the lawyers of the Century’s Law Bureau, stated that KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan was kept under solitary confinement because they did not want his thesis to be learnt by the society.
URFA/KONYA / 15 April 2003
Bekir Kaya, one of the lawyers of the Century’s Law Bureau,
participated in a panel organized by DEHAP Urfa Provincial Organisation
and said that the reason behind KADEK President Abdullah Ocalan’s
solitary confinement was not only his lack of communication with his
lawyers and family members. The lawyer drew attention that Ocalan had
made detailed statements on the Kurdish question and the Middle East,
saying the following: “The existing government does want his thesis
to be conveyed to people. Therefore he is under an unprecedented solitary
confinement. And Ocalan himself established the link between his isolation
and the government, because before he took the office Prime Minister
Erdogan had spoken of making Ocalan a canned food in the island of Imrali.”
“ECHR could not reveal the international conspiracy”
Kaya pointed out that Ocalan’s thesis were quoted by several strategists: “They quote him but without mentioning his name. Ocalan has said that AK Party quotes his statements and implements them. Ocalan has produced politics Turkey and created stirrings in the Middle East by his policies. The forces that were involved in the international conspiracy realized it and helped his kidnapping. The rules of the European Court of Humna Rights are legally of importance but not of that importance as far as their political dimensions are concerned. Because the court must have revealed the conspiracy. Its strength did not suffice to do it and completed the legal aspect of the conspiracy.”
“US onslaught is only a beginning”
Another panel “War, peace and Youth”, organized by DEHAP and EMEP Selcuk District Youth Wings, was attended by Firat Aydinkaya, another lawyer of the Bureau, and journalist Suna Parlak. Aydinkaya stated that the US-led onslaught on Iraq was only a beginning and said the following: “Its intervention is a war for hegemony and it will not contend to limit itself with Iraq. In order to understand today we must look at the French Revolution.”
And Suna Parlak said that wars were started by dominant
male powers and peace did not meant pasifism.