Turkish newspaper beats war drums
for military intervention in Syria
An article published the 24/11/2011 by the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman, close to the ruling AKP party, dramatically “revealed” the building, in neighbouring strife-torn Syria, of a Kurdish rebel PKK base (“despite Turkey’s warnings, Syria provides camp for terrorist PKK”). Taking advantage of the emotion caused by spectacular attacks the previous month (24 Turk soldiers died in just one of them, sparkling public outrage, with tremors felt in Europe, home to many Kurd and Turk immigrants: www.ekurd.net 24/10/2011 “kurds around Europe attacked by Turkish fascist groups”; 26/10/2011 “Amsterdam: fears of violence after Turkish rioters attack Kurdish centre”), the article, very accurate, gave the location of that base (worryingly close to the Turkish border), its name (Rustam Bayram camp, named from a PKK “terrorist” precisely killed in a recent clash), and even the name of its commander. It is, of course, Fehmen Husseyin, codename Bahoz Erdal -who else?- a Syrian Kurd and high ranking PKK commander, never presented in Today’s Zaman but as a vindictive, bitter-ender extremist - the newspaper’s other favourite scarecrow being Duran Kalkan.
In early December another article, after a declaration by Turkey’s prime minister Arinc, said that a senior PKK member, left unnamed, had been captured. The Anatolia news agency immediately presented the prisoner as a Fehman Husseyin right-hand man. In the same declaration the vice prime minister said the army eliminated from the Amanos mountains, “used as a transit route to Syria by the PKK”, a sizeable group of rebels. (“Pro-PKK protesters attack civilians, Turkey captures senior PKK member”, 05/12/2011).
It is not the first time Ankara, by way of press articles, statements and else, points at a PKK threat coming from Syria.
A bit more than one year ago, the same Anatolia news agency was saying that Damascus’s troops were conducting anti-PKK operations in Syrian Kurdistan. Dozens of militants had been arrested, 11 killed in armed clashes. Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said at the time he was unaware of such military actions, a surprising statement from the head of a military dictatorship. Newaf Khalil, a Syrian Kurd journalist well introduced with the PYD, the PKK-aligned Syrian Kurd opposition party, denounced the information as a clumsy manipulation from Ankara.. “There hasn’t been any military operation”, did he say then. “It is an attempt from the AKP government to enlist Syria’s support in its general offensive against the Kurdish insurgency, and encourage president al-Assad’s al-Ba’ath regime to intensify repression against PKK cells in Syria and the PYD. It is true there are numerous Kurd revolutionaries in Syrian jails, but they are PYD -400 today- not PKK.”
For Syria became during the past years a valuable auxiliary for the Turks in their endless war against the PKK. They have a private interest in it, the emergence of the revolutionary PYD, born in 2003, presenting a direct threat to the regime’s grip on Syrian Kurdistan.
But now the Syrian uprising totally changed the perspectives. From arch-enemy of the dictatorship the PYD became an interlocutor which can not be circumvented.
One can so understand the Turkish high command’s fears, whose troops are already locked in an anti-guerrilla war in south-east Turkey, to see a second PKK front opening on its southern flank. Until its eviction in 1999, Syria has been a rearbase for the PKK - a fact Today’s Zaman never fails to repeat. It remains a fertile recruiting ground for the organisation. When reading a PKK military statement, the birthplace of a militant killed in action, named amongst a list of recent “martyrs”, sometimes happens to be well inside Syria. “The PKK has been present for years in Syrian Kurdistan”, was saying in March, shortly before turmoil to take hold of Syria, M Hesso, a member of the PYD central committee. “It was a natural thing then, for a Kurd, to join the organisation’s armed wing. And it still is: Kurds are oppressed in Syria as well as in Turkey, and the PKK’s struggle is for all Kurds, in all Kurdistans.” The PYD’s powerbase, he added, with on the wall behind him a picture of a son who died fighting in the mountains, it is the families of the Syrian members of the PKK.
The PYD nonetheless denies there is any PKK camp in Syria. They have, was explaining Zuhat Kobani, one of its representatives, other priorities. “Syrian forces are embattled with demonstrators and can not afford a second uprising in the Kurdish provinces.”, was he already saying in the summer. “On our side we need them to stay away. We need to establish structures, to establish committees, to be able to take control of the situation at the moment the al-Ba’ath administration will collapse.”
The PYD nonetheless denies there is any camp in Syria. Its representatives were already saying in the summer that they had other priorities than building PKK fortresses under the nose of the Turkish military. There is a deep distrust running between the Kurds, marginalised by age-long state discrimination -to the point some of them are not even granted actual citizenship (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2009/11/24/group-denial)- and the arab opposition. Kurdish parties, not only the PYD, fear to see emerging from the uprising a regime even more nationalistic than the present one. There was, during spring, real concerns to see the tensions degenerate in an ethnic conflict: a report from KurdWatch said that in mid-june, a delegation of Arab tribal representatives came to see Kurdish political groups to threaten of reprisals would the Kurds join the demonstrations. (“al-Qamishli: regime threatens Kurds with repression” 19/06/2011). In an interview given the 13/09/2011 to the Iraqi Kurd newspaper Rudaw, Mishaal Tamo, leader of the Syrian Kurd party Future Movement, expressed his concerns about some Arab parties: “Some believe in democracy and the rights of all nations in Syria. There are some who are influenced by the Ba’ath regime and do not accept the others.” He was assassinated in his hometown of al-Qamishli shortly after.
This distrust has been worsening, due to the Kurds’s cautiousness, avoiding confrontation with the Syrian security forces, while in the Arab provinces demonstrators are braving live fire. The controversial de facto truce between the Kurds and the dictatorship is harshly criticised, with claims, coming from some Sunni Arab factions, but also from some Kurdish parties, and relayed by Today’s Zaman, that the PYD is actually collaborating with the regime. M Saleh Muslim, chairman of the party, angrily denied the allegations. (http://kurdwatch.org/html/en/interview6.html). They come, says the PYD, from groups they accuse of being proxies, used by the AKP to implement its pan-Ottoman agenda: the claims, as well as those made about a re-emerging “PKK second front”, are made to discredit their party and justify by advance an eventual Turkish military strike.
And, in the answer M Muslim gave, it sounds the PYD’s patience is running thin. The party, he says, established defence committees among the population to oppose any kind of aggression. In Qandil mountains, the PKK stronghold, Duran Kalkan said the organisation’s army was ready to act would the Turks step in and try to use the unrest to impose a puppet government in Damascus. A declaration likely to feed Today’s Zaman’s articles: in a piece supposed to talk about a court hearing in Denmark, about the Europe-based PKK TV station Roj TV, the newspaper wrote the station would resettle in Syria, and that it was now two terrorist camps, each with a capacity of 200 recruits, which had been open in Syrian Kurdistan.(“Roj TV to broadcast from Syria if shut down in Denmark” 20/12/2011)
samedi 24 décembre 2011
jeudi 24 novembre 2011
Kurdish conflict: now in europe ?
The 19/10/2011 a major attack by the PKK, the Kurdish revolutionary organisation at war with the Turkish state since 1984, killed 24 soldiers and wounded 18 more in a series of coordinated actions in Hakkari province involving 100 assailants against 8 military posts.
The indignation in Turkey was echoed by a string of demonstrations in Europe. In several cities, protests held by Turkish immigrants turned in outright confrontations between Turks and Kurds, requiring the intervention of police. Fights erupted in Berlin, Basel and Paris, while in Hamburg, Hagen, Amsterdam and Mulhouse Turkish nationalists attacked Kurdish cultural centres, which they say harbour sympathies for the PKK (www.ekurd.net 24/10/2011 “Kurds around Europe attacked by Turkish fascist groups”; www.thelocal.fr 31/10/2011 “police fire tear gas as Turks and Kurds clash”). In Arnhem a Turkish mosque was subjected to an arson attack, attributed to PKK sympathisers (www.ekurd.net 26/10/2011 “Amsterdam: fears of violence after Turkish rioters attack Kurdish centre”). The PKK’s press agency ANF, cited by www.ekurd.net, accuses the Turkish consulates in Europe to orchestrate the troubles.
Those events may be spectacular but it is not the first time Europe becomes a secondary battlefield of the multi-faced Kurdish conflict.
At the beginning of 2010, Ankara’s AKP government’s controversial “Kurdish initiative” (a series of measures towards the Kurdish population, aiming at detaching it from the PKK and so cutting the organisation from its support base) was looking to be failing (www.thedailybeast.com 06/11/2011 “A civil war revived”, Owen Matthews). As a result, the Turkish state switched to the military option - so vindicating the PKK claims that the “Kurdish initiative” was merely a civilian complement to the Turkish army’s anti-guerrilla campaign, rather than a sincere attempt to integrate Kurds into the Turkish modern society.
A plan to asphyxiate the PKK in its bases in northern Iraq’s Kandil mountains was established with the Syrian and Iranian regimes, themselves willing to crush Kurdish dissent on their own territories. But prior to any all out offensive, Turkey gained the help of the western democracies to carry out strikes against the PKK net in Europe.
The PKK, considered as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, has built an extensive and efficient support net among the Kurdish diaspora. Its cadres raise money, recruit volunteers, and establish structures relaying the party’s action inside the Kurdish immigration, being able to mobilise crowds in huge demonstrations (www.mesop.de 11/11/2011 “PKK to raise power in Germany, report says” - from a Hurriyet article). In February and march 2010, coordinated police raids took place in Belgium, Italy, and France, dismantling clandestine indoctrination camps and fundraising operations (www.rudaw.net 17/04/2011 “Dutch intelligence gets tough with PKK”). Was targeted as well the PKK powerfull TV station Roj TV, since regularly subjected to attempts to close it down, notably in Germany and Denmark.
Since then pressure has been maintained on the PKK European net. Cultural centres affiliated to the organisation have been investigated, sometimes closed, while PKK cadres have been sent to courts, under the accusation of raising funds for a terrorist group (www.ekurd net 20/09/2011 “French police arrest several alleged PKK militants”; www.todayszaman.com 05/06/2011 “France detains three alleged PKK members”; www.mesop.de 20/07/2011 “Two alleged Kurdish PKK members arrested in Germany”; www.todayszaman.com 01/11/2011 “Paris court to conclude extortion case against PKK suspects on dec.2”).
In the meanwhile the military offensive against the PKK gerrilas developed in a movement of encirclement, taking all its amplitude when Iran launched, in march 2011, a sustained and relentless attack on the PKK-aligned PJAK. Turkey and Iran officialised their military cooperation in October (The Independent 22/10/2011 “Turkey and Iran unite to fight Kurdish rebels”), while Iran, not unlike Turkey, wages its own war against Kurdish opponents in Europe as well. It demanded to the German government the extradition of Haji Ahmadi, the PJAK chairman, who lives in exile in Germany (www.payvand.com 24/07/2011 “Germany urged to hand over PJAK chief to Iran”). Haji Ahmadi in the same time claims that the Iranian secret services wanted to assassinate him (English.rojhelat.eu 12/05/2011 “Iran pressures Iraq to crack down on Kurds”; “Iran attempts to assassinate PJAK’s leader”). Not an unreasonable concern: in 1989 Dr Ghassemlou, the PDK-I chairman, another Iranian Kurd opposition party, was killed in Vienna by Iranian agents. Three years later his successor Sarek Sharafkandi was killed in Germany by another Iranian hit squad. Years sooner, in France, it was Chapour Bakthyar, a Shah former prime minister, who was assassinated under the nose of the French police.
And with the Syrian uprising, a new dimension has been added to the conflict.
Syria has itself its own PKK-like organisation, the PYD, well established amongst Syrian Kurds: until 1999 the al-Assad regime allowed and even encouraged the PKK to run training camps and recruit on its territory - until Turkey threatened with a military intervention, and the rebels were expelled.
Syria then became a valuable ally of the Turks in their campaign against the PKK. Common “military exercices” took place along the Syrian-Turkish border ( wwww.globaliamagazine.com “Why Erdogan can’t let Assad down” 30/03/2011, Jacques Couvas), while PKK members seized in Syria were systematically deported to Turkey.
In the same time repression intensified against the PYD. A lot of its senior members, including Saleh Muslim, its present chairman, have been arrested and tortured. In January 2011 two of its militants were killed in an army ambush, igniting well organised riots in Damascus and Aleppo, reminding those taking place in Turkey in support of the PKK. Several police vehicles were set alight, and the clashes were followed by house-to-house searches by the security forces, in what looks retrospectively like a grim, small-scale rehearsal of today’s violence all across the country ( www.kurdishaspect.com “unrest in Syria after two kurds are killed by security forces” 26/01/2011).
But now confronted to a near civil war, the Syrian dictatorship keeps its army away from the Kurdish provinces. In counterpart the Kurds, anyway fearing being marginalised by an Arab opposition they often see as pawns in the hands of the Turks, do not join the general uprising. But can they stay away from the violence tearing off Syria? Furious at Ankara’s meddling in its internal troubles, the Syrian regime ominously hinted it could bring back its support to the insurgency in south-eastern Turkey. “We have religious and ethnic differences, so has Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey”, said president al-Assad.
And the Syrian Kurds from all tendencies fear to see a PKK presence, real or imagined, being used as an excuse for a Turkish military intervention, of which they would be the first victims.
The Syrian Kurds are so caught between Turkey and Syria, between the al-Baath and the opposition. And already the tremors of this new addition to the Kurdish conflict are felt in Europe. Following the assassination of Mishal Tamo, leader of the Kurdish party Future Movement, Kurd demonstrators stormed the Syrian embassy in Vienna( www.ekurd.net “Kurdish demo in Austria calls for an end of Syrian regime” 12/10/2011).
Given the intensification of the operations against Kurdish insurgent, wherever in Turkey or Iran, or the uprising in Syria, one can expect Europe to witness more demonstrations, more unrest among the expatriate communities involved in the conflict. PKK militants already launched some media operations, briefly occupying the premises of a German TV station (www.todayszaman.com 28/09/2011 “PKK sympathisers storm German TV, Westerwelle strongly condemns”), and those of the British newspaper The Guardian to protest against the lack of coverage about the Kurdish conflict. And, the 23/11/2011, the occupation by Kurdish militants of the Strasbourg offices of the Committee for Prevention of Torture turned in a confrontation with French police, resulting in arrests (www.mesop.de 24/11/2011 “Kurds attacked in Strasbourg, arrests and wounded”).
The 19/10/2011 a major attack by the PKK, the Kurdish revolutionary organisation at war with the Turkish state since 1984, killed 24 soldiers and wounded 18 more in a series of coordinated actions in Hakkari province involving 100 assailants against 8 military posts.
The indignation in Turkey was echoed by a string of demonstrations in Europe. In several cities, protests held by Turkish immigrants turned in outright confrontations between Turks and Kurds, requiring the intervention of police. Fights erupted in Berlin, Basel and Paris, while in Hamburg, Hagen, Amsterdam and Mulhouse Turkish nationalists attacked Kurdish cultural centres, which they say harbour sympathies for the PKK (www.ekurd.net 24/10/2011 “Kurds around Europe attacked by Turkish fascist groups”; www.thelocal.fr 31/10/2011 “police fire tear gas as Turks and Kurds clash”). In Arnhem a Turkish mosque was subjected to an arson attack, attributed to PKK sympathisers (www.ekurd.net 26/10/2011 “Amsterdam: fears of violence after Turkish rioters attack Kurdish centre”). The PKK’s press agency ANF, cited by www.ekurd.net, accuses the Turkish consulates in Europe to orchestrate the troubles.
Those events may be spectacular but it is not the first time Europe becomes a secondary battlefield of the multi-faced Kurdish conflict.
At the beginning of 2010, Ankara’s AKP government’s controversial “Kurdish initiative” (a series of measures towards the Kurdish population, aiming at detaching it from the PKK and so cutting the organisation from its support base) was looking to be failing (www.thedailybeast.com 06/11/2011 “A civil war revived”, Owen Matthews). As a result, the Turkish state switched to the military option - so vindicating the PKK claims that the “Kurdish initiative” was merely a civilian complement to the Turkish army’s anti-guerrilla campaign, rather than a sincere attempt to integrate Kurds into the Turkish modern society.
A plan to asphyxiate the PKK in its bases in northern Iraq’s Kandil mountains was established with the Syrian and Iranian regimes, themselves willing to crush Kurdish dissent on their own territories. But prior to any all out offensive, Turkey gained the help of the western democracies to carry out strikes against the PKK net in Europe.
The PKK, considered as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, has built an extensive and efficient support net among the Kurdish diaspora. Its cadres raise money, recruit volunteers, and establish structures relaying the party’s action inside the Kurdish immigration, being able to mobilise crowds in huge demonstrations (www.mesop.de 11/11/2011 “PKK to raise power in Germany, report says” - from a Hurriyet article). In February and march 2010, coordinated police raids took place in Belgium, Italy, and France, dismantling clandestine indoctrination camps and fundraising operations (www.rudaw.net 17/04/2011 “Dutch intelligence gets tough with PKK”). Was targeted as well the PKK powerfull TV station Roj TV, since regularly subjected to attempts to close it down, notably in Germany and Denmark.
Since then pressure has been maintained on the PKK European net. Cultural centres affiliated to the organisation have been investigated, sometimes closed, while PKK cadres have been sent to courts, under the accusation of raising funds for a terrorist group (www.ekurd net 20/09/2011 “French police arrest several alleged PKK militants”; www.todayszaman.com 05/06/2011 “France detains three alleged PKK members”; www.mesop.de 20/07/2011 “Two alleged Kurdish PKK members arrested in Germany”; www.todayszaman.com 01/11/2011 “Paris court to conclude extortion case against PKK suspects on dec.2”).
In the meanwhile the military offensive against the PKK gerrilas developed in a movement of encirclement, taking all its amplitude when Iran launched, in march 2011, a sustained and relentless attack on the PKK-aligned PJAK. Turkey and Iran officialised their military cooperation in October (The Independent 22/10/2011 “Turkey and Iran unite to fight Kurdish rebels”), while Iran, not unlike Turkey, wages its own war against Kurdish opponents in Europe as well. It demanded to the German government the extradition of Haji Ahmadi, the PJAK chairman, who lives in exile in Germany (www.payvand.com 24/07/2011 “Germany urged to hand over PJAK chief to Iran”). Haji Ahmadi in the same time claims that the Iranian secret services wanted to assassinate him (English.rojhelat.eu 12/05/2011 “Iran pressures Iraq to crack down on Kurds”; “Iran attempts to assassinate PJAK’s leader”). Not an unreasonable concern: in 1989 Dr Ghassemlou, the PDK-I chairman, another Iranian Kurd opposition party, was killed in Vienna by Iranian agents. Three years later his successor Sarek Sharafkandi was killed in Germany by another Iranian hit squad. Years sooner, in France, it was Chapour Bakthyar, a Shah former prime minister, who was assassinated under the nose of the French police.
And with the Syrian uprising, a new dimension has been added to the conflict.
Syria has itself its own PKK-like organisation, the PYD, well established amongst Syrian Kurds: until 1999 the al-Assad regime allowed and even encouraged the PKK to run training camps and recruit on its territory - until Turkey threatened with a military intervention, and the rebels were expelled.
Syria then became a valuable ally of the Turks in their campaign against the PKK. Common “military exercices” took place along the Syrian-Turkish border ( wwww.globaliamagazine.com “Why Erdogan can’t let Assad down” 30/03/2011, Jacques Couvas), while PKK members seized in Syria were systematically deported to Turkey.
In the same time repression intensified against the PYD. A lot of its senior members, including Saleh Muslim, its present chairman, have been arrested and tortured. In January 2011 two of its militants were killed in an army ambush, igniting well organised riots in Damascus and Aleppo, reminding those taking place in Turkey in support of the PKK. Several police vehicles were set alight, and the clashes were followed by house-to-house searches by the security forces, in what looks retrospectively like a grim, small-scale rehearsal of today’s violence all across the country ( www.kurdishaspect.com “unrest in Syria after two kurds are killed by security forces” 26/01/2011).
But now confronted to a near civil war, the Syrian dictatorship keeps its army away from the Kurdish provinces. In counterpart the Kurds, anyway fearing being marginalised by an Arab opposition they often see as pawns in the hands of the Turks, do not join the general uprising. But can they stay away from the violence tearing off Syria? Furious at Ankara’s meddling in its internal troubles, the Syrian regime ominously hinted it could bring back its support to the insurgency in south-eastern Turkey. “We have religious and ethnic differences, so has Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey”, said president al-Assad.
And the Syrian Kurds from all tendencies fear to see a PKK presence, real or imagined, being used as an excuse for a Turkish military intervention, of which they would be the first victims.
The Syrian Kurds are so caught between Turkey and Syria, between the al-Baath and the opposition. And already the tremors of this new addition to the Kurdish conflict are felt in Europe. Following the assassination of Mishal Tamo, leader of the Kurdish party Future Movement, Kurd demonstrators stormed the Syrian embassy in Vienna( www.ekurd.net “Kurdish demo in Austria calls for an end of Syrian regime” 12/10/2011).
Given the intensification of the operations against Kurdish insurgent, wherever in Turkey or Iran, or the uprising in Syria, one can expect Europe to witness more demonstrations, more unrest among the expatriate communities involved in the conflict. PKK militants already launched some media operations, briefly occupying the premises of a German TV station (www.todayszaman.com 28/09/2011 “PKK sympathisers storm German TV, Westerwelle strongly condemns”), and those of the British newspaper The Guardian to protest against the lack of coverage about the Kurdish conflict. And, the 23/11/2011, the occupation by Kurdish militants of the Strasbourg offices of the Committee for Prevention of Torture turned in a confrontation with French police, resulting in arrests (www.mesop.de 24/11/2011 “Kurds attacked in Strasbourg, arrests and wounded”).
mercredi 16 novembre 2011
The PYD: "Yes to democratic change, no to foreign interference!"
Will the syrian uprising ignite the Kurdish powderkeg? Syria counts a sizeable Kurdish population, marginalised by the successive military regime having ruled syria since the independence, including the present days al Ba'ath regime. It is so surprising to see that, while the rest of Syria is torn by violence, the Kurdish populated provinces are remaining conspicuously quiet.
"It's a tactical choice", are saying representatives for the PYD, a syrian kurd opposition party whose radical agenda and close links to the revolutionary PKK made it a prominent enemy of the regime. "There is a de facto truce between the kurds and the government. The security forces are overstretched over Syria's arab provinces to face demonstrators, and can not afford the oppening of a second front in Syrian Kurdistan. On our side, we need the army to stay away. Our party is busy establishing organisations, committees, able to take over from the al-Ba'ath administration at the moment the regime will collapse."
Reports say that to enforce this truce, their cells in Afrin and Kobane stopped some Kurdish activists to organise demonstrations. They claim that all their efforts are about maintaining calm to avoid a bloodbath. (about those allegations, and the PYD’s chairman Saleh Muslim answer, see the KurdWatch interview edited by www.ekurd.net “Turkey’s henchmen in Syrian Kurdistan are responsible for the unrest here” http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/11/syriakurd383.htm ) They have been, they say "advising youth to remain peaceful". "An open confrontation with the dictatorship would be disastrous. Our people would become military target, not only for the army but also for some militias made of arab settlers present in our provinces. The demonstrations would be turned in an ethnic conflict the government would use at his advantage. As well, amongst the arab opposition, some groups do not accept us Kurds as equal citizens. They want to keep Syria an Arab homeland, where minorities are kept in a state of submission. We need to build our strength to be able to deal with them on an equal basis at the fall of the regime."
Hence the truce then. But the assassination, the 07/10/2011, of Mishal Tamo, leader of the Kurdish Future Movement party, could compromise everyone's calculations. At his funerals in his hometown of Qamishli (where took place a massacre of demonstrators the 12/03/2004), 50000 mourners went to the streets, accusing the state secret police to have killed the opponent. They were fired at by police - estimates are that between 2 and 5 were killed, countless others wounded. Reports from inside the town say police deployed around hospitals to prevent people to give blood for the victims.
The murder, and its potentially disastrous consequences, have infuriated the Turks. Their decades-long war against the PKK resumed with a new intensity at the end of the winter. They have been, during the past couple of years, aiming at encircling the insurgents in the mountains in Qandil, in Northern Iraq, acting alongside Iran, itself engaged in an offensive against the PKK-aligned PJAK. They gained the support of the Western democracies, which consider the PKK as a terrorist organisation, and launched in march 2010 a series of coordinated police raids in Belgium, Italy and France to break the PKK support net in europe. They enlisted Syria in this all-out offensive, organising common "military exercises" in april 2010 (http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=1165), and enticing the Syrian government to step up its repression against the PKK sympathisers present on its territory. But the relations between the two governments soured since the start of the Syrian uprising in march 2011. With Mishal Tamo's assassination, the Turks fear to see turmoil reaching Syrian Kurdistan, and the PKK seize the opportunity to implant itself there with the help of the PYD. Until 1999, the Syrian government allowed the PKK to run training camps on its territory. It was an opportunity to wage a proxy war against Turkey, with which it had tense relations then, while sending the more combative amongst the Kurds to get themselves killed on a foreign battlefield. It was something normal for a young Kurd to join the organisation, very popular at the time. It is estimated there are today around 1500 Syrians in the PKK's army, and it is not unusual, when entering a Kurdish household in Qamishli, to find a portrait of a family membre who left to fight as a gerrila. One so understands Turkey's nervousness, thinking about the 800 km of border it shares with its southern neighbour, doted with Kurdish villages it sees as as many potential PKK outposts.
But for the PYD, changing Syrian Kurdistan in a second Qandil is not an option. "It is not in our agenda, and it would be very difficult from a practical point of view", says Zuhat Kobani, a PYD representative. "But more, a PKK presence in Syria would mean a Turkish military strike, which nobody wants. We do not avoid a confrontation with the Syrian army to get one with the Turks." These denegations do not prevent Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to wave threats at Ankara: "We have religious and ethnic difference, so has Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey", did he say ominously (quoted by S. Dermitas, co-chairman of the BDP, a party regularly accused of links with the PKK, in an interview with the Hurriyet newspaper the 13/10/2011), clearly hinting that his regime could back the insurgency inside Turkey, would Ankara continue to meddle with Syria's internal politics. The PYD says the Kurds must not become anyone's pawn in the struggle for regional supremacy. "We will not help the dictatorship in any way", continues Zuhat Kobani. "We want its fall. We do not have anything to expect from Bashar al-Assad and his generals. We Kurds come under criticism because we don't join the mass demonstrations. I already explained it was a tactical choice. But look from where are coming those critics: from groups, or coalitions, which are backed by the Turks, and which are very carefull in avoiding to address any Kurdish demand." The PYD accuses the Damascus conference, held in Turkey, to actually serve Ankara's agenda. "We want change. But it must come from the syrians, and be for the syrians. It must not come from any external power willing to reduce Syria in a satellite state. The PYD so opposes any foreign intervention in Syria."
For what will come if the present regime falls? It is a concern for all the Syrian factions, from the al-Ba'ath to the most determined reformists, passing through all the religious, ethnic and political spectrum. Syrians are aware that another dictatorship could emerge from the agonising one. Zuhat Kobani and the other PYD delegates do not want to stop their action at the collapse of the junta. "The demise of the police state is just halfway of the process. Other Kurdish parties want the establishment of a federal state. It is not enough. The PYD wants a system of self-governance, in which our communities are able to rule themselves, emancipated from a central government which, all along our history, always oppressed Kurds. It means a radical reform of the Kurdish society. For this we need to educate our population, and that's what the committes we're creating are busy at now. Our cadres schools, until then located in a neighbouring country, are now in Syria. We have opened schools in Kurdish language, something unbelievable just eight months ago." He concludes: "For the PYD, it is the moment to put our theories in application."
But, maybe more than the opening of the "second front" the Syria government fears, there is a danger to see the Kurdish provinces bordering Turkey becoming the extension of another war.
Will the syrian uprising ignite the Kurdish powderkeg? Syria counts a sizeable Kurdish population, marginalised by the successive military regime having ruled syria since the independence, including the present days al Ba'ath regime. It is so surprising to see that, while the rest of Syria is torn by violence, the Kurdish populated provinces are remaining conspicuously quiet.
"It's a tactical choice", are saying representatives for the PYD, a syrian kurd opposition party whose radical agenda and close links to the revolutionary PKK made it a prominent enemy of the regime. "There is a de facto truce between the kurds and the government. The security forces are overstretched over Syria's arab provinces to face demonstrators, and can not afford the oppening of a second front in Syrian Kurdistan. On our side, we need the army to stay away. Our party is busy establishing organisations, committees, able to take over from the al-Ba'ath administration at the moment the regime will collapse."
Reports say that to enforce this truce, their cells in Afrin and Kobane stopped some Kurdish activists to organise demonstrations. They claim that all their efforts are about maintaining calm to avoid a bloodbath. (about those allegations, and the PYD’s chairman Saleh Muslim answer, see the KurdWatch interview edited by www.ekurd.net “Turkey’s henchmen in Syrian Kurdistan are responsible for the unrest here” http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/11/syriakurd383.htm ) They have been, they say "advising youth to remain peaceful". "An open confrontation with the dictatorship would be disastrous. Our people would become military target, not only for the army but also for some militias made of arab settlers present in our provinces. The demonstrations would be turned in an ethnic conflict the government would use at his advantage. As well, amongst the arab opposition, some groups do not accept us Kurds as equal citizens. They want to keep Syria an Arab homeland, where minorities are kept in a state of submission. We need to build our strength to be able to deal with them on an equal basis at the fall of the regime."
Hence the truce then. But the assassination, the 07/10/2011, of Mishal Tamo, leader of the Kurdish Future Movement party, could compromise everyone's calculations. At his funerals in his hometown of Qamishli (where took place a massacre of demonstrators the 12/03/2004), 50000 mourners went to the streets, accusing the state secret police to have killed the opponent. They were fired at by police - estimates are that between 2 and 5 were killed, countless others wounded. Reports from inside the town say police deployed around hospitals to prevent people to give blood for the victims.
The murder, and its potentially disastrous consequences, have infuriated the Turks. Their decades-long war against the PKK resumed with a new intensity at the end of the winter. They have been, during the past couple of years, aiming at encircling the insurgents in the mountains in Qandil, in Northern Iraq, acting alongside Iran, itself engaged in an offensive against the PKK-aligned PJAK. They gained the support of the Western democracies, which consider the PKK as a terrorist organisation, and launched in march 2010 a series of coordinated police raids in Belgium, Italy and France to break the PKK support net in europe. They enlisted Syria in this all-out offensive, organising common "military exercises" in april 2010 (http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=1165), and enticing the Syrian government to step up its repression against the PKK sympathisers present on its territory. But the relations between the two governments soured since the start of the Syrian uprising in march 2011. With Mishal Tamo's assassination, the Turks fear to see turmoil reaching Syrian Kurdistan, and the PKK seize the opportunity to implant itself there with the help of the PYD. Until 1999, the Syrian government allowed the PKK to run training camps on its territory. It was an opportunity to wage a proxy war against Turkey, with which it had tense relations then, while sending the more combative amongst the Kurds to get themselves killed on a foreign battlefield. It was something normal for a young Kurd to join the organisation, very popular at the time. It is estimated there are today around 1500 Syrians in the PKK's army, and it is not unusual, when entering a Kurdish household in Qamishli, to find a portrait of a family membre who left to fight as a gerrila. One so understands Turkey's nervousness, thinking about the 800 km of border it shares with its southern neighbour, doted with Kurdish villages it sees as as many potential PKK outposts.
But for the PYD, changing Syrian Kurdistan in a second Qandil is not an option. "It is not in our agenda, and it would be very difficult from a practical point of view", says Zuhat Kobani, a PYD representative. "But more, a PKK presence in Syria would mean a Turkish military strike, which nobody wants. We do not avoid a confrontation with the Syrian army to get one with the Turks." These denegations do not prevent Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to wave threats at Ankara: "We have religious and ethnic difference, so has Turkey. If we have domestic disturbances, then so will Turkey", did he say ominously (quoted by S. Dermitas, co-chairman of the BDP, a party regularly accused of links with the PKK, in an interview with the Hurriyet newspaper the 13/10/2011), clearly hinting that his regime could back the insurgency inside Turkey, would Ankara continue to meddle with Syria's internal politics. The PYD says the Kurds must not become anyone's pawn in the struggle for regional supremacy. "We will not help the dictatorship in any way", continues Zuhat Kobani. "We want its fall. We do not have anything to expect from Bashar al-Assad and his generals. We Kurds come under criticism because we don't join the mass demonstrations. I already explained it was a tactical choice. But look from where are coming those critics: from groups, or coalitions, which are backed by the Turks, and which are very carefull in avoiding to address any Kurdish demand." The PYD accuses the Damascus conference, held in Turkey, to actually serve Ankara's agenda. "We want change. But it must come from the syrians, and be for the syrians. It must not come from any external power willing to reduce Syria in a satellite state. The PYD so opposes any foreign intervention in Syria."
For what will come if the present regime falls? It is a concern for all the Syrian factions, from the al-Ba'ath to the most determined reformists, passing through all the religious, ethnic and political spectrum. Syrians are aware that another dictatorship could emerge from the agonising one. Zuhat Kobani and the other PYD delegates do not want to stop their action at the collapse of the junta. "The demise of the police state is just halfway of the process. Other Kurdish parties want the establishment of a federal state. It is not enough. The PYD wants a system of self-governance, in which our communities are able to rule themselves, emancipated from a central government which, all along our history, always oppressed Kurds. It means a radical reform of the Kurdish society. For this we need to educate our population, and that's what the committes we're creating are busy at now. Our cadres schools, until then located in a neighbouring country, are now in Syria. We have opened schools in Kurdish language, something unbelievable just eight months ago." He concludes: "For the PYD, it is the moment to put our theories in application."
But, maybe more than the opening of the "second front" the Syria government fears, there is a danger to see the Kurdish provinces bordering Turkey becoming the extension of another war.
samedi 9 avril 2011
IRAN's SECRET WAR
An Attack on a police post in Meriwan ignited a new cycle of shellings on Autonomous Kurdistan's tense border with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The PJAK rebels claimed responsibility for the attack, and assert their determination to pursue their struggle.
The spring period, when villagers from the mountainous area between autonomous Kurdistan and Iran are going back to their fields and pastures after a winter spent indoor, coincides with the Iranian artillery resuming its shelling on the border areas. These shelling are targeting the PJAK, which recently resumed its raids on the Iranian security forces.
The PJAK has been engaged since its formation in a bitter struggle against the Iranian state. Its guerrilla army, estimated to be 3000-strong (PJAK representatives refuse to confirm this number - military secret), fights a war of squirmishes with the pasdaran units on the border provinces. Its cadres are disseminated amongst the population, relaying to activists the decisions of the party. Several of its members have been sentenced to death and are awaiting their fate in Iranian jails, as many hostages to be hanged at the slightest sign of unrest in Iranian Kurdistan.
It is precisely in retaliation for the execution of one of its members in january, Hossein Khedri, that the PJAK recently carried an attack on a police station in Meriwan. As a response, Iran bombed several Kurdish villages. Shortly before those operations to occur, the 28/03/2011, Amir Karimi, member of the PJAK coordination committee, expressed the views of his organisation about this shelling policy. "The iranians are pursuing a double objective. At first, in shelling civilians, they create a refugee problem for the local authorities. A whole village becomes homeless overnight. Its people have to be sheltered and fed, must be provided support, which puts autonomous Kurdistan's already scarce resources under strain. It so exposes the KRG vulnerability and keeps it off balance. It is as wella message: if the Iranian artillery can destroy one village,it can as well destroy 3 or 4 more" But there is, says Mr Karimi, another purpose: "The Iranian army aims to empty the border zone, to change it in a no-man's-land to be patrolled by proxy forces, like Ansar al-Islam - merely an auxilliary of the Islamic regime."
The PJAK nonetheless doesn't intend to tone down its struggle. "Our militants are thrown in jail,tortured, hanged", was saying in july 2010 Mr Soran, then spokesperson in europe for the PJAK. "The Tehran government must know there willbe a price topay." Mr Karimi agrees. "In Iran we are facing a militarisation of the society. The Islamic regime lives in a logic of permanent war, and this since the beginning. In 79 it targeted the Kurds and the leftists, after it has been the liberals, today it is the reformists. Their way to address a problem is with repression; they will never give up this mentality. As a resultthe only option left is war, for the only dialogue the Islamic regime understands is the dialogue of weapons.". PJAK people do not like the term of war. They rather use the one of 'self-defence" and insist a lot on this concept. "You must understand that we at the PJAK are not warmongers. Kurdish identity is under attack, Kurdish activists from all ways of life are considered as military targets: we need a military answer."
The border clashes pose the problem of the Iranian military presence inside Iraq. "There has been military incursion during the past two years: at Shino and Piransehir, and around Halabja this year. Each time it is the HRK, PJAK's military wing, which chased the agressors back to Iran" says Mr Karimi. He confirms the existence of Iranian army posts on Iraqi soil. He explains Iraq government's passivity about this violation of national territory by the gripIran has on the present cabinet. "The Iraqi government has been formed after months of crisis by an Iranian-engineered agreement between Nouri al-Maliki and Moqtada al-Sadr, until then sworn enemies. It allowed them to bypass their sunni and secular nationalist rivals. The government owes its very existence to Iran, and so carefully avoids to confront it on anything. Especially a couple of outposts in autonomous Kurdistan". The Iranian military presence on iraqi soil is anyway not much of an issue, was thinking Mr Soran back in july. "The Itlat (iran's secret services ministry) has thousands of agents in Iraqi Kurdistan. Whatever Iran has or not a couple of outposts there is irelevant" The Iranian secret services have a centre in autonomous Kurdistan, operating with the agreement of the KRG, claim PJAK representatives. "Basically, they are turning Sulaimaniya governorate in an Iranian protectorate. Sulaimaniya lives from the trade with Iran. Tehran, if it decides it, can asphyxiate the province in no time."
More interesting than the Iranian military outposts is the issue of the security wall Iran is building along the border, was saying Mr Soran. "It is not a new idea, it dates from the Shah. The Islamic regime reanimated it 3 years ago." "The effect of this wall, says Mr Karimi, is to cripple the trans-border economy. Frontier villagers from both sides often have no other income than transborder trade, and take great risks to avoid border guards, who do not hesitate to shot them. This wall is to enclose Kurds in their poverty. The only employment left will be to become a collaborator of the regime. There is, parallely, pressures in the factories to force Kurdish workers into the militias of the state. The wall comes in completion of these pressures." A section has been completed in Piransehir. But Amir Karimi dismisses the plan as irealistic. "How do you want this wall to be efficient? Can you imagine building a wall on such a difficult border? As well, our gerrillas , our cadres, are already present deep in Iran, amongst our population. It can not succeed." Mr Soran was more cautious. "This wall is dangerous. It is to the PJAK to prevent its completion. For if we let it being built, there will be other walls, this time around Kurdish towns. Step by step Tehran will make us prisoners inside our own cities."
PJAK thinks other opposition groups in Iran will soon arm themselves. "The reformists will have to take arms or be eliminated one by one. It will be a matter of survival.", says Mr Karimi. He then expresses his party's views on the reformist movement. "We think those demonstrations are legitimate, and represent a progress. Whatever the outcome, they are a positive step. But we note this opposition has not taken any clear position about the Kurdish issue in Iran. The problem is that persians are seeing the Kurdish issue from a nationalist angle and consider Iran as a Persian-centred entity." There is as well a problem of trust towards the reformist leaders. "Mr Moussavi and the ayatollah Khatami were part of the regime. The merely agree to adapt it, while Iran actually needs a regime change - a radical one." What the PJAK wants, he says, is a confederalist system. "Our goal is to free Kurds from the centralist state, from the colonialist influence which kept them in submission during centuries. We want self administration inside a confederacy." Then he concludes: "The PJAK is ready to assume a role in the overall Iranian opposition movement to the Islamist dictatorship, provided this movement acknowledges the Kurds as equal partners and abandons the concept of a persian central state. There is not just Mr Moussavi or the ayatollah Khatami amongst the reformists, there is a new line which is building up at the moment. They interest us. We are ready to bring them the support of our experience and of our structures."
An Attack on a police post in Meriwan ignited a new cycle of shellings on Autonomous Kurdistan's tense border with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The PJAK rebels claimed responsibility for the attack, and assert their determination to pursue their struggle.
The spring period, when villagers from the mountainous area between autonomous Kurdistan and Iran are going back to their fields and pastures after a winter spent indoor, coincides with the Iranian artillery resuming its shelling on the border areas. These shelling are targeting the PJAK, which recently resumed its raids on the Iranian security forces.
The PJAK has been engaged since its formation in a bitter struggle against the Iranian state. Its guerrilla army, estimated to be 3000-strong (PJAK representatives refuse to confirm this number - military secret), fights a war of squirmishes with the pasdaran units on the border provinces. Its cadres are disseminated amongst the population, relaying to activists the decisions of the party. Several of its members have been sentenced to death and are awaiting their fate in Iranian jails, as many hostages to be hanged at the slightest sign of unrest in Iranian Kurdistan.
It is precisely in retaliation for the execution of one of its members in january, Hossein Khedri, that the PJAK recently carried an attack on a police station in Meriwan. As a response, Iran bombed several Kurdish villages. Shortly before those operations to occur, the 28/03/2011, Amir Karimi, member of the PJAK coordination committee, expressed the views of his organisation about this shelling policy. "The iranians are pursuing a double objective. At first, in shelling civilians, they create a refugee problem for the local authorities. A whole village becomes homeless overnight. Its people have to be sheltered and fed, must be provided support, which puts autonomous Kurdistan's already scarce resources under strain. It so exposes the KRG vulnerability and keeps it off balance. It is as wella message: if the Iranian artillery can destroy one village,it can as well destroy 3 or 4 more" But there is, says Mr Karimi, another purpose: "The Iranian army aims to empty the border zone, to change it in a no-man's-land to be patrolled by proxy forces, like Ansar al-Islam - merely an auxilliary of the Islamic regime."
The PJAK nonetheless doesn't intend to tone down its struggle. "Our militants are thrown in jail,tortured, hanged", was saying in july 2010 Mr Soran, then spokesperson in europe for the PJAK. "The Tehran government must know there willbe a price topay." Mr Karimi agrees. "In Iran we are facing a militarisation of the society. The Islamic regime lives in a logic of permanent war, and this since the beginning. In 79 it targeted the Kurds and the leftists, after it has been the liberals, today it is the reformists. Their way to address a problem is with repression; they will never give up this mentality. As a resultthe only option left is war, for the only dialogue the Islamic regime understands is the dialogue of weapons.". PJAK people do not like the term of war. They rather use the one of 'self-defence" and insist a lot on this concept. "You must understand that we at the PJAK are not warmongers. Kurdish identity is under attack, Kurdish activists from all ways of life are considered as military targets: we need a military answer."
The border clashes pose the problem of the Iranian military presence inside Iraq. "There has been military incursion during the past two years: at Shino and Piransehir, and around Halabja this year. Each time it is the HRK, PJAK's military wing, which chased the agressors back to Iran" says Mr Karimi. He confirms the existence of Iranian army posts on Iraqi soil. He explains Iraq government's passivity about this violation of national territory by the gripIran has on the present cabinet. "The Iraqi government has been formed after months of crisis by an Iranian-engineered agreement between Nouri al-Maliki and Moqtada al-Sadr, until then sworn enemies. It allowed them to bypass their sunni and secular nationalist rivals. The government owes its very existence to Iran, and so carefully avoids to confront it on anything. Especially a couple of outposts in autonomous Kurdistan". The Iranian military presence on iraqi soil is anyway not much of an issue, was thinking Mr Soran back in july. "The Itlat (iran's secret services ministry) has thousands of agents in Iraqi Kurdistan. Whatever Iran has or not a couple of outposts there is irelevant" The Iranian secret services have a centre in autonomous Kurdistan, operating with the agreement of the KRG, claim PJAK representatives. "Basically, they are turning Sulaimaniya governorate in an Iranian protectorate. Sulaimaniya lives from the trade with Iran. Tehran, if it decides it, can asphyxiate the province in no time."
More interesting than the Iranian military outposts is the issue of the security wall Iran is building along the border, was saying Mr Soran. "It is not a new idea, it dates from the Shah. The Islamic regime reanimated it 3 years ago." "The effect of this wall, says Mr Karimi, is to cripple the trans-border economy. Frontier villagers from both sides often have no other income than transborder trade, and take great risks to avoid border guards, who do not hesitate to shot them. This wall is to enclose Kurds in their poverty. The only employment left will be to become a collaborator of the regime. There is, parallely, pressures in the factories to force Kurdish workers into the militias of the state. The wall comes in completion of these pressures." A section has been completed in Piransehir. But Amir Karimi dismisses the plan as irealistic. "How do you want this wall to be efficient? Can you imagine building a wall on such a difficult border? As well, our gerrillas , our cadres, are already present deep in Iran, amongst our population. It can not succeed." Mr Soran was more cautious. "This wall is dangerous. It is to the PJAK to prevent its completion. For if we let it being built, there will be other walls, this time around Kurdish towns. Step by step Tehran will make us prisoners inside our own cities."
PJAK thinks other opposition groups in Iran will soon arm themselves. "The reformists will have to take arms or be eliminated one by one. It will be a matter of survival.", says Mr Karimi. He then expresses his party's views on the reformist movement. "We think those demonstrations are legitimate, and represent a progress. Whatever the outcome, they are a positive step. But we note this opposition has not taken any clear position about the Kurdish issue in Iran. The problem is that persians are seeing the Kurdish issue from a nationalist angle and consider Iran as a Persian-centred entity." There is as well a problem of trust towards the reformist leaders. "Mr Moussavi and the ayatollah Khatami were part of the regime. The merely agree to adapt it, while Iran actually needs a regime change - a radical one." What the PJAK wants, he says, is a confederalist system. "Our goal is to free Kurds from the centralist state, from the colonialist influence which kept them in submission during centuries. We want self administration inside a confederacy." Then he concludes: "The PJAK is ready to assume a role in the overall Iranian opposition movement to the Islamist dictatorship, provided this movement acknowledges the Kurds as equal partners and abandons the concept of a persian central state. There is not just Mr Moussavi or the ayatollah Khatami amongst the reformists, there is a new line which is building up at the moment. They interest us. We are ready to bring them the support of our experience and of our structures."
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