5 April 2007

1. "Kurdish demonstrators clash with Turkish soldiers on Ocalan birthday", Police and soldiers fired warning shots into the air and used tear gas and truncheons Wednesday to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing Kurdish protesters in southeastern Turkey.

2. "DTP mayor arrested in Sirnak", after giving his testimony at the prosecutor's office, a district mayor from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) was taken into custody yesterday due to a speech he gave during last month's Newroz celebrations.#

3. "Government Pressured to Clear Land Mines", initiative for a Mine-free Turkey says at least 39 people died last year because of land mines and abandoned ammunition. "Government should implement the Ottawa Treaty and clear all 1 million land mines on ground by 2014", the rights organization said.

4. "Kurdistan TV Correspondents Under Pressure", based at the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in Northern Iraq, Kurdistan TV's Diyarbakir bureau chief Eren says they face discrimination and pressure from local officials. "We're continuously surveilled by the police and receive anonymous threats".

5. "The Kurdish region seeks more foreign investment", you would be hard pushed to find an area keener on attracting foreign investors than Iraqi Kurdistan. The region is almost entirely dependent on imports, as the authorities search for ways to rebuild an economic base that was all but destroyed during the Anfal campaign of Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s.

6. "Kirkuk bomb foreshadows city dispute", Turkey, which has been fighting a Kurdish insurgency for decades, also has warned Iraq against such a move.

1. - AP - "Kurdish demonstrators clash with Turkish soldiers on Ocalan birthday":

4 April 2007

Police and soldiers fired warning shots into the air and used tear gas and truncheons Wednesday to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing Kurdish protesters in southeastern Turkey.

The protesters wanted to travel to the village of Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan to mark his 58th birthday, reports said.

The clashes erupted when police and soldiers blocked a highway and stopped a convoy of around 4,000 Kurds near the town of Halfeti in Sanliurfa province. Angry Kurds, shouting slogans in support of Ocalan, began throwing stones at the soldiers and police, prompting them to open fire into the air, the private Dogan news agency said.

Some of the protesters and at least one police officer were slightly injured, it said. The group wanted to travel to the village of Omerli, where Ocalan was born, near the town of Birecik.

Ocalan is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul for leading a war for autonomy in Turkey's southeast.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 37,000 people since 1984.

2. - The New Anatolian - "DTP mayor arrested in Sirnak":

ANKARA / 4 April 2007

After giving his testimony at the prosecutor's office, a district mayor from the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) was taken into custody yesterday due to a speech he gave during last month's Newroz celebrations.

Aydin Budak, the mayor of Sirnak's Cizre district, will be prosecuted under Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 215, which is on praising crime and criminals, and for inciting hatred and enmity amongst the populace according to TCK Article 216.

A group of DTP members and municipality workers gathered in from of the Cizre courthouse after learning of Budak's arrest.

DTP's Kirici released pending trial

Meanwhile, a Bingol court released DTP Central Executive Committee (MYK) member Medeni Kirici pending trial.

In a speech, Kirici used the honorific "Mr." to describe Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). After 12 days in prison, Kirici was released at the application of his lawyer Fethi Gumus.

3. - Bianet - "Government Pressured to Clear Land Mines":

Initiative for a Mine-free Turkey says at least 39 people died last year because of land mines and abandoned ammunition. "Government should implement the Ottawa Treaty and clear all 1 million land mines on ground by 2014", the rights organization said.

ISTANBUL / 4 April 2007 / by Tolga Korkut

April 4 marks the first annual observance of the UN designated International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.

Muteber Ögreten from the Initiative for a Mine-free Turkey told bianet that no one can stay silent on the issue anymore:

"As peoples, NGOs, academics, intellectuals of this country, we have to monitor government's compliance with the Ottowa Mine-Ban Treaty, which was ratified by Turkey on March 12, 2003".

The treaty obliges the government to clear and demolish all anti-personnel land mines within a specified time frame. This is to say all stored mines until 2008 and all which are already laid until 2014.

The latest report submitted by the government to the UN quotes 3 million land mines in stocks and further 1 million already laid down.

Ögreten refuses the arguments about the financial cost of clearing land mines, saying tens of thousands of lives are at stake.

the Initiative's statistics show that at least 39 people have died last year in Turkey because of land mines and abandoned military explosives. A further 106 have been injured.

Four of those who lost their lives were children while 25 of them were soldiers.

Originally titled the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer or Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, the Ottawa Treaty is the most comprehensive international instrument for ridding the world of the scourge of antipersonnel mines.

It deals with everything from mine use, production and trade, to victim assistance, mine clearance and stockpile destruction since its implementation in 1997.

The treaty banned the production of land mines all around the world but rights activists say arms producers replaced it by another deadly mass explosive: cluster bombs.

Ögreten explains the situation: "Land mines were invented during the American civil war. since then 350 variants of them have been produced. Now it's forbidden another deadly arms with the same effects, namely the cluster bomb has been introduced. We can't limit our objection to land mines, we've to consider the effects of those weapons on civilians".

The last case of such was seen when the Israeli army occupied Lebanon last summer. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the time Jan Egeland said Israeli forces dropped 90 percent of cluster bombs during the last 72 hours before retreating.

All those didn't explode at the time covered the ground and continued killing civilians long after the end of the occupation.

4. - Bianet - "Kurdistan TV Correspondents Under Pressure":

Based at the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in Northern Iraq, Kurdistan TV's Diyarbakir bureau chief Eren says they face discrimination and pressure from local officials. "We're continuously surveilled by the police and receive anonymous threats".

DIYARBAKIR / 4 April 2007 / Ahmet Un

Northern Iraq based Kurdistan TV's correspondents in Diyarbakir claim that they face arbitrary discrimination by local officials and receive random threats.

The station's Diyarbakir bureau chief Mehmet Eren told bianet that they established the necessary infrastructure in 2006 but try to work under pressure since then:

"Although we totally comply with the legal framework, we can't cover official events, can't get accreditation without a reason, face random and arbitrary pressure such as identity checks etc.

Our focus is on news related to the Kurdish issue in Turkey and such coverage results in increasing pressure and obstruction on us".

Noting journalists who work for the station are continuously under surveillance, Eren said: "Our houses and offices are surveilled by the police. We also received anonymous e-mail threats".

5. - The Economist - "The Kurdish region seeks more foreign investment":

4 April 2007

You would be hard pushed to find an area keener on attracting foreign investors than Iraqi Kurdistan. The region is almost entirely dependent on imports, as the authorities search for ways to rebuild an economic base that was all but destroyed during the Anfal campaign of Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s.

Local industry and, especially, agriculture (once the dominant employer in Kurdistan) were all but annihilated by the time Kurdistan gained its autonomy in late 1991. Large parts of the local population had been forcibly evicted from their razed villages to the towns by Saddam, and subsequently employed in the public sector in an effort to ensure their dependence on Baghdad (even now some 1.1m people out of the Kurdistan population of 5m still work in the public sector). Meanwhile, infrastructure was left to deteriorate, and several universities and schools closed. From such an unpromising beginning, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was born, comprising the three governorates of Dohuk, Erbil (the regional capital) and Suleimaniyah. A civil war between the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties—the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—between 1994 and 1996 hardly helped matters, and led to a splitting of the administration into their respective strongholds in Erbil and Suleimaniyah. Since that time, however, the region's fortunes have revived, as the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the descent into anarchy in Baghdad and much of central Iraq, combined with a rapprochement between the PUK and the KDP (most state ministries are now merged and located in Erbil), has seen the KRG area emerge as a relative haven of stability.

Gateway

This has allowed the KRG to project itself as a "gateway to Iraq", aiming to draw in foreign companies seeking to take advantage of the reconstruction opportunities in "Arab Iraq", but which are deterred by the lack of security throughout much of the rest of the country. However, even this is proving a challenge. Despite there having being only two bomb attacks in Kurdistan since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the region's image continues to suffer from the headline-grabbing horrors witnessed daily in other parts of the country, and Western officials and businessmen still often prefer to hire private security firms to ferry them around. Such attitudes exasperate some in the KRG—as well as the general public—and it is easy to sympathise with their frustration. At least in the cities, the Peshmerga maintain a reassuring, albeit somewhat pervasive, presence, and the locals are friendly, and, as such, Westerners are often seen walking unaccompanied.

The government has sought to supersede security concerns by passing one of the most foreigner-friendly investment laws in the entire Middle East. Under the investment law of 2006, foreigners not only enjoy some of the advantages on offer in various other Arab states—such as a ten-year tax holiday, and free repatriation of capital—they can also purchase land (for only a "symbolic" fee), which will be theirs for perpetuity. The law has been widely praised by both local and foreign businesses in the area, and, according to the head of the Board of Investment, Herish Muhamad, as of March some 17 firms had already registered. Yet his admission that most of these were connected to property projects highlights the unbalanced nature of the region's current economic recovery.

Real estate boom

The property sector in Kurdistan is booming. The massive US$1bn "Nishtiman" shopping mall is under construction in the centre of the Erbil, and a swathe of housing projects, including notably "Dream City" on the outskirts of the city, are presently in-build. A leading local businessman, Ahmed Rekami, whose US$20m "New City"—which boasts a shopping mall, and 52-room hotel—recently opened in the centre of town, likens the situation to Dubai in the 1990s. Indeed, the bullish Mr Rekami relates that he has turned down the opportunity to move to the emirate because the opportunities in Kurdistan are so vast.

Yet, with this economic upturn has come associated inflationary pressures—according to Professor Almas Heshmati, head of the department of economic and finance at the newly-constructed University of Kurdistan Hawler, house prices have doubled over the past few years—and Mr Rekami says that the price of cement has risen from US$50/tonne in 2003 to US$170/tonne. A new cement plant built by Egypt's Orascom Construction Industries (in partnership with the local Farouk Rasool Group) near Suleimaniyah is set to open in August, but this will provide only partial respite. In addition, not all the blame for inflation can be laid at the door of the property sector—intermittent influxes of budgetary cash from Baghdad cause sudden fluctuations in the money supply, and fuel prices have leapt because of a shortage of refined products (leading to a thriving black market). However, perhaps more importantly, it is not excess cash but the supremacy of cash that is holding back the Kurdistan economy at present.

Cash economy

The banking sector in Kurdistan is severely underdeveloped. Cash dominates, to such an extent that when asked what people buy their houses with, Adham Darwesh, the general manager of the Central Bank of Kurdistan, replied (through a translator): "piles of cash". In interviews, the trade and planning ministers, as well as the head of the investment board, all acknowledged the lack of a developed financial system as a serious hindrance. However, there may well be room for optimism. Although Mr Rekami's complaint that the banks offer little more than a money transference service may be true at present, the arrival of new foreign banks, including Dar Es Salam (80% owned by HSBC) and most recently Lebanon's Byblos Bank, should help increase capacity. The head of the investment board also revealed that another Lebanese bank, Bank Audi, is in negotiations about setting up in the region, and he argued that the banking situation will be "sorted out very soon". Achieving this will be crucial, and not just because of the extra support it will offer to private-sector ventures. The opacity associated with having to deal almost solely in cash can often prove a deterrent to foreign businessmen, and corruption in Kurdistan is a widely-acknowledged problem.

However, for those within Kurdistan, the most urgent need is for substantial foreign investment. The government is seeking foreign money to finance the huge infrastructure upgrades needed—including a proposed road linking all three of Kurdistan's main towns with their borders—and Mr Muhamad floated the intriguing option of "sharing management services" usually associated with the government, such as greater private-sector participation in the education sector, and even potentially PFIs in road and bridge construction. With the constitution confining sovereign debt issuance solely to the federal government, and the KRG allocated just 17% of federal oil revenue (after current spending)--the planning minister, Othman Shwani, among others, has argued that Kurdistan needs more, considering Saddam's legacy in the Kurdish areas—foreign money is desperately needed.

Local businessmen are extremely keen on forming partnerships with foreign firms, with Baz R. Karim, the president of local KAR Group, putting forward the argument that joint ventures are the most successful model for doing business in the country as a whole. His firm's record would seem to support his view, having completed a raft of projects across both the civil and oil sectors. For example, in partnership with USAID, the firm has supplied furniture to over 2,800 schools all over Iraq, successfully installed a fibre-optic cable in Baghdad and further north with Bechtel of the US, and says it is more than halfway through the US$175m Hamrin oilfield project, a joint venture with OGI Group of Canada, located south of Kirkuk. Yet finding sufficient foreign enthusiasm for such joint ventures is perhaps proving the greatest challenge.

Although Turkish firms have poured into Kurdistan over the past ten years, the much sought-after Western firms, with their up-to-date technology and high-quality products, have so far proved more reticent. Legal concerns have deterred the arrival of new oil firms—although five small- and medium-sized companies have signed contracts with the KRG—as the federal oil law awaits approval in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, security concerns also still appear to predominate, and not just among Western companies. Despite the warm words of Western governments towards the KRG, these sentiments do not seem to be shared by their visa offices. Dara Jalil al-Khaymat, the president of the Erbil Chamber of Commerce, highlighted EU countries' regular refusal to issue local businessmen with visas as a major impediment, while Mr Muhamad pointed out that one of his keynote official speakers could not attend a business forum in London because UK immigration had refused his visa request. Meanwhile, direct bilateral aid has been in short supply and often misdirected—a finance official in Suleimaniyah said that the area has received only US$80m from the US in direct aid, most of which was spent on police stations they did not want. A plan to set up two free zones in the region may help, although it is not entirely clear what extra incentives these could provide beyond those included in the Investment Law. As such, the KRG is still struggling to attract the Western firms and finance it so desperately needs. Although the old lament that the Kurds have "no friends but the mountains" may no longer be entirely true, it appears, at the moment at least, that some in Kurdistan still need convincing.

6. - AP - "Kirkuk bomb foreshadows city dispute":

BAGHDAD / 4 April 2007

A suicide truck bomber, his deadly payload hidden under bags of flour, crashed into a police station in a Kurdish neighbourhood in the disputed city of Kirkuk.

At least 15 people were killed, including a newborn girl and a United States soldier, and nearly 200 were wounded.

Several girls walking home from school were among those wounded in Monday’s (local time) bombing, a possible prelude to far greater violence in this oil-rich city 290km north of Baghdad. The attack came just days after the Government adopted a plan to relocate thousands of Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk decades ago in Saddam Hussein’s campaign to displace the Kurds.

Bombings elsewhere in Iraq killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 40, and police found the bodies of at least 35 victims of sectarian killings.

The government plan to move Arabs both Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims out of Kirkuk was a victory for the Kurds, who have 58 seats in the 275-member Iraqi Parliament and are closely aligned with the ruling Shi’ites. Thousands of Kurds have returned to Kirkuk after being forced out by Saddam, who accused them of siding with Iran in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

But many Arab politicians have rejected the plan, saying it would facilitate attempts by non-Arab Kurds to absorb the city and its surrounding oil riches into the ethnic group’s semi-autonomous region in the northeast of Iraq. The strongest opposition has come from Sunnis, who are dominant in regions that lack oil reserves and fear the Kurds will not share oil revenues.

Turkey, which has been fighting a Kurdish insurgency for decades, also has warned Iraq against such a move.

Monday’s blast bore the hallmarks of a series of al Qaeda suicide bombings aimed at further provoking sectarian tension and fighting. It followed three suicide bombings last week. More than 600 people died in sectarian attacks in Iraq last week alone.

The ancient city of Kirkuk has a large minority of ethnic Turks as well as Christians, Shi’ite and Sunni Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians. The city is just south of the Kurdish autonomous zone stretching across three provinces of northeastern Iraq.

Iraq’s constitution sets an end-of-the-year deadline for a referendum on the status of Kirkuk, where Kurds now are believed to constitute a majority of the population. That means a referendum on attaching the city to the Kurdish autonomous zone would pass easily.

On a separate legislative issue, Sunni politicians denounced remarks attributed to Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, opposing a draft law that would allow former members of Saddam’s ruling Baath Party to resume government positions.

The proposal, long demanded by the US, is designed to appease Iraq’s once-dominant Sunni Arabs in a bid to blunt the country’s insurgency and return members of the Sunni minority to the political process. The law would allow those in the feared security and paramilitary forces to resume government positions but would exclude former regime members already charged with or sought for crimes.