International Herald Tribune, France
Dec 26 2007
Turkey again hits Kurdish hide-outs in Iraq
The Associated PressPublished: December 26, 2007
ANKARA: Turkish warplanes hit eight suspected Kurdish rebel hide-outs
in northern Iraq on Wednesday, the third cross-border air assault in
10 days, Turkey’s military said.
The warplanes struck in an "effective pinpoint operation" targeting
eight caves and other hide-outs being used by the separatist rebels
of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the military said in a
statement on its Web site. No rebel deaths were immediately reported.
On Tuesday, Turkey’s military claimed that more than 200 Kurdish
rebel targets in northern Iraq had been hit since Dec. 16, killing
hundreds of rebels. The military also has confirmed that it sent
ground troops to hunt down the rebels on Dec. 18.
Inside Turkey, troops said they had killed six Kurdish rebels on
Wednesday, raising the rebel death toll from a two-day operation to
11. Two other rebels were captured, the military said.
The PKK has waged a war for autonomy in parts of Turkey for more than
two decades. The fighting has cost tens of thousands of lives.
The United States, the European Union and Turkey consider the PKK a
terrorist organization, but the United States in particular has been
concerned that Turkish operations affecting northern Iraq could
destabilize one of the war-torn country’s most stable areas.
In Iraq, Jabar Yawar, the deputy minister of the Kurdistan regional
government’s Peshmerga forces, said Turkish planes had carried out a
half-hour raid near the border, starting at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
"Because the areas were deserted, there were no civilians
casualties," he said.
The Turkish military said Tuesday that as many as 175 rebels had been
killed on Dec. 16 alone in "unprotected buildings" in the mountainous
areas in northern Iraq. The military said scores of rebels wounded in
the operations were taken to hospitals in Iraq’s northern cities.
Other hide-outs and antiaircraft weapons were struck in a
cross-border air assault on Saturday, followed by artillery fire from
inside Turkey.
Separately on Wednesday, the Kurdish regional Parliament in Iraq
voted to postpone by six months a debate on holding a referendum over
whether the city of Kirkuk will join the semiautonomous Kurdish
region in the north.
According to the Parliament’s deputy speaker, Kamal Karkuki, the
111-seat chamber decided unanimously to put off discussion on a
controversial section of the Iraqi Constitution – article 140 – that
calls for a census and referendum on Kirkuk’s status by the end of
this year.
"The Parliament voted today unanimously to postpone article 140 for
six months," Karkuki said.
There was no immediate comment from the Iraqi government in Baghdad,
but the referendum was widely expected to be delayed by months.
The Iraqi Constitution requires that a referendum on the future
status of the city be held by the end of 2007 to determine whether it
will remain under Baghdad’s control, become part of Kurdistan or gain
autonomy from both.
Kirkuk is an especially coveted city for both the Shiite-dominated
Iraqi government in Baghdad and the Kurdish one in the city of Irbil.
Much of Iraq’s vast oil wealth lies under the ground in the Kirkuk
region, as well as in the Shiite-controlled south. Kurds refer to
Kirkuk as the "Kurdish Jerusalem," and control of the area’s oil
resources and its cultural attachment to Kurdistan have been hotly
contested.
The city’s Arabs generally favor continued rule by Iraq’s central
government, while many Kurds want Kirkuk to join the Kurdish zone to
its north. The city’s minority Turkomen – ethnic Turks – have said
they prefer to stay under Baghdad’s control, but would lobby for
their own autonomous region if Kirkuk ends up being part of
Kurdistan. Kirkuk also has significant minorities of Christians,
Armenians and Assyrians.
The Constitution also calls for a census to be held in Kirkuk by the
end of 2007 to determine how many Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen reside in
the city.
Kurds dispute the results of censuses conducted under the late Iraqi
dictator, Saddam Hussein.
Tens of thousands of Kurds and non-Arabs fled Kirkuk in the 1980s and
1990s when Saddam’s government implemented its "Arabization" policy.
They were replaced by pro-government Arabs from the mainly Shiite
south, after Saddam accused the Kurds of siding with Iran in the
1980-1988 war with Tehran.
Watch group members killed
Four members of a local American-backed Awakening group in Diyala
Province were killed Wednesday when a house they were raiding
exploded, the police said, The New York Times reported from Baghdad.
The blast, in an area just north of Baquba, the provincial capital,
also wounded at least four people. It was one of several attacks this
month against the volunteer neighborhood watch groups and their
members, who are known also as Concerned Local Citizens. On Tuesday,
several members of an Awakening group were killed by a suicide truck
bomber near a checkpoint outside the Baiji oil refinery in northern
Iraq.
The Awakening groups are predominantly Sunni, and have grown to
number 72,000 volunteers in nearly 300 communities in Iraq. They have
been credited for reducing violence in some of the country’s most
violent areas even as many Iraqis – mainly Shiites, but also some
Sunnis – worry that the groups could destabilize Iraq because many of
them include former insurgents who still battle each other for power
and denounce the Shiite-led national government as an illegitimate
pawn of Iran.
Both American and Iraqi officials have said in recent weeks that the
groups eventually need to be disbanded so as not to compete with
Iraq’s army and the police. Under a proposal from the Americans, who
still pay most members about $300 a month to take part, some of the
Awakening groups would be integrated into the security forces while a
larger portion would get civilian jobs from the government or private
industry.
The details of the jobs program are still being worked out. Phil
Reeker, a spokesman for the American Embassy in Baghdad, said
Wednesday that the Americans and Iraq’s Ministry of Finance had each
contributed $155 million for the transition, which would include
vocational training at some of Iraq’s technical colleges.
"The logic behind the Concerned Local Citizens program, the Awakening
movements, was always to have them link up with government of Iraq,"
Reeker said. He added: "The nature of these linkages is what we’re
still working through."
At a joint news conference with Reeker in Baghdad, Major General
Kevin Bergner, the top American military spokesman in Baghdad, said
that the movements had grown very quickly and that Iraqis were still
learning how to trust former enemies.
"This is a period of transition and as we all know transitions take
time," he said. "They require confidence building and flexibility and
they require transparency and teamwork. The Concerned Local Citizens,
the government of Iraq and the coalition are all focusing on exactly
those issues."
He emphasized that the groups only began to spread across Iraq this
summer, taking on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni
extremist group that American intelligence officials say is led by
foreigners.
Although some Awakening members have been involved in vigilante-style
violence and the government has become more vocal in its criticism of
the groups over the past week, Bergner called for a deeper
appreciation for what the groups had accomplished.
"This is perhaps one of the most important developments in 2007, the
commitment of Iraq citizens at the local level to step forward and
confront Al Qaeda and push them out of their communities," Bergner
said. "That is what this Awakening and Concerned Local Citizens –
that is what this whole discussion should start with and come back
to."