Kurds Flee Homes as Iran Shells Iraq

[American Patriot]

Kurds Flee Homes as Iran Shells Iraq's Northern Frontier
Iran Focus ^ | 8/18/2006 | Michael Howard

Turkey and Iran have dispatched tanks, artillery and thousands of troops to their frontiers with Iraq during the past few weeks in what appears to be a coordinated effort to disrupt the activities of Kurdish rebel bases.


Scores of Kurds have fled their homes in the northern frontier region after four days of shelling by the Iranian army. Local officials said Turkey had also fired a number of shells into Iraqi territory.
Some displaced families have pitched tents in the valleys behind Qandil Mountain, which straddles Iraq's rugged borders with Turkey and Iran. They told the Guardian yesterday that at least six villages had been abandoned and one person had died following a sustained artillery barrage by Iranian forces that appeared designed to flush out guerrillas linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who have hideouts in Iraq.


Although fighting between Turkish security forces and PKK militants is nowhere near the scale of the 1980s and 90s - which accounted for the loss of more than 30,000 mostly Turkish Kurdish lives- at least 15 Turkish police officers have died in clashes. The PKK's sister party in Iran, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Pejak), has stepped up activities against security targets in Kurdish regions. Yesterday, Kurdish media said eight Iranian troops were killed.
Rostam Judi, a PKK leader, claimed yesterday that no operations against Turkey or Iran were being launched from Iraqi territory. "We have fighters across south-eastern Turkey. Our presence in Iraq is purely for political work."


Frustrated by the reluctance of the US and the government in Baghdad to crack down on the PKK bases inside Iraq, Turkish generals have hinted they are considering a large-scale military operation across the border. They are said to be sharing intelligence about Kurdish rebel movements with their Iranian counterparts.
"We would not hesitate to take every kind of measures when our security is at stake," Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister, said last week.


There has been sporadic shelling of the region since May but officials worry that concerted military action against PKK bases in Iraq could alienate Iraqi Kurds and destabilise their self-rule region, one of few post-invasion success stories. Some analysts say Ankara and Tehran may be trying to pressure Iraq's Kurds, afraid that their de facto independent region would encourage their own Kurdish population.


Khaled Salih, the spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government in Irbil, said: "We condemn the shelling and urge the Iraqi government to demand the neighbours to respect our sovereignty."


Despite its support base in Turkey's impoverished south-east, the PKK is regarded by Ankara, Washington and the EU as a terrorist organisation. Mr Judi said the PKK was seeking a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish issue in Turkey, and would welcome mediation from the US or Iraq's Kurdish leaders.
Last week, the Iraqi government said it had closed offices run by PKK sympathisers in Baghdad, and another office was shut by Kurdish authorities in Irbil.


The US is also to appoint a special envoy to find a solution to the PKK problem, but that may not be enough. Ilnur Chevik, editor of the New Anatolian newspaper in Ankara, said: "There is huge public pressure on the Turkish government to take action." But he doubted whether Turkish forces would mount a full-scale invasion."The build-up of troops is designed to say to the Americans and the Iraqis, the ball is in your court." Tehran was also taking advantage of the situation, he said, "to show Turkey that it was taking action against its shared enemy, while the US, Turkey's ally, has done nothing".


Meanwhile those displaced wonder when they can resume a normal life. "We know that the PKK are around here," said Abdul-Latif Mohammed, who fled the village of Lowan with his family. "But they live in the mountains. So these bombs just hurt us poor farmers."

[Sean Osborne]

Iran is divided into 30 provinces (ostanha, sing. ostan), each governed by an appointed governor (استاندار: ostāndār). The map does not show the southern islands of Hormozgan (#20 on the map):

Tehran Qom Markazi Qazvin Gilan Ardabil Zanjan East Azarbaijan West Azarbaijan Kurdistan Hamedan Kermanshah Ilam Lorestan Khuzestan

Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Kohkiluyeh and Buyer Ahmad Bushehr Fars Hormozgan Sistan and Baluchistan Kerman Yazd Esfahan Semnan Mazandaran Golestan North Khorasan Razavi Khorasan South Khorasan

This is directly related to my most recent post in the Arab-Israeli War 2006 thread regarding Operation Zolfaghar.

Second column should be numbered 16 through 30 as you see here in the source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran#Ad...tive_divisions

[falcon]

The Times August 26, 2006

The Kurds are being driven out again - this time by Iran By Ned Parker in the Kandil mountains, northern Iraq

A SECRET war is being waged in Iraqi Kurdistan’s isolated Kandil mountain range. Since April Iran has been bombing the area in an attempt to expel Kurdish separatists, who have turned the rugged terrain into their own mini-state. An estimated 400 families have fled the mountains to escape the Iranian attacks. No let-up appears in sight as fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) refuse to abandon their enclave.
Murat Karayilan, the PKK’s bristly, grey-haired number two commander believes the campaign is an attempt by the Islamic republic to curry favour with Turkey, the PKK’s sworn enemy.
“The Turkish and Iranian forces have made an alliance to attack us,” Mr Karayilan told The Times inside his group’s enclave. “Iran is attacking us to make friends with Turkey and to send a message to the United States.”
In turn, Mr Karayilan claims the PKK’s sister group, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJK), a grouping of Iranian Kurdish separatists, has carried out reprisals in Iran. Since May the PJK has killed 94 Iranian soldiers, the PKK claims.
“You may ask why does Iran attack us. It is because of the larger issues of the Middle East,” said Mr Karayilan.
This week the Royal Institute of Strategic Affairs, a UK think-tank, gave warning that Iran had become the most influential country in the Middle East, three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The Iranian campaign in Kandil has coincided with renewed Turkish artillery strikes against PKK camps along the Iraq-Turkey border. The attacks are seen as a way to pressure Iraqi Kurdistan and are also revealing of Turkey and Iran’s skittish nature when it comes to their own restive Kurdish populations.
Mr Karayilan believes that Turkey is using the PKK as a pretext to intimidate Iraq’s Kurdish regional government about the future of the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds want to annex despite Turkey’s adamant opposition. Kirkuk boasts large Arab and Turkmen populations.
The PKK fought Turkish security forces for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Their guerilla war in Turkey cost more than 30,000 lives, but the PKK declared a ceasefire in 1999 after the capture of Abdullah Ocalan, its leader.
They returned to armed struggle in 2004 in anger over Ankara’s failure to engage them.
Flanked by his Kalashnikov-toting women and men, Mr Karayilan is confident no one will be able to force his men out of the Kandil mountain range on the triangle border of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Mr Karayilan and his troops, clad in their olive soldier uniforms, cruise the serpentine mountain roads in Nissan Patrols. PKK soldiers man checkpoints and sentry posts from hilltop to hilltop. Their green flags adorn mountainsides. At the entrance to their enclave, concrete blocks mark the road and a giant poster of Ocalan stares down from a slope.
Iraq’s Kurdish regional government professes helplessness about the situation with the PKK and Iran.
“Kandil is a very difficult terrain. Because of the geographical terrain in Kandil, no one in the Kurdish Government, the Iraqi government . . . has been able to control this place,” said Othman Haji Mahmoud, interior minister for Sulaimaniyah.

“We hope the PKK leaves Kandil. We remind the Iranian Government to stop its shelling.”
Meanwhile, the refugee population continues to grow. Along stream beds south of the Kandil mountains, villagers have staked up tents.
On August 18 Rasul Hama Ahmed fled his village of Karosh when Iranian shells rained down from the sky. Everyone ran to hide in caves, ditches and behind trees. One shepherd was killed in their village three hours by foot from the Iranian border. Twenty-five homes were destroyed. “The shells fell like stones from the sky,” he said and hoisted up his leg to show a knick from shrapnel.
It was the second time his village had been struck since April and Ahmed said he was not taking any more chances. He estimated that 4,000 people had been uprooted since the start of the Iranian offensive.
Ahmed complained the women and children were getting sick from the stream’s water. He said the village had still not decided whether to return home.
Looking at his ramshackle makeshift camp of four tents, Ahmed added: “I want freedom, not to be a prisoner of bombing and fighting.”


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...9600_2,00.html