Kirkuk, Oil and the Kurds
April 13, 2007
By LAITH al-SAUD
Before the end of this year, the residents of the city of Kirkuk (about 250 KM north of Baghdad) will partake in a referendum to choose their fate. At issue is whether the oil rich city will be annexed as part of so-called Kurdistan. The history of Kirkuk is emblematic of the greater history of Iraq: It is a city that has always been prone to invasion, has always been seen as a strategic point of defense against rival empires, is ethnically and religiously very mixed and, of course, has been both cursed and blessed by its enormous oil supply.
In conforming to this narrative Kirkuk has once again become the focal point of strategic concerns and the current puppet regime in Iraq has agreed to "relocate" Arabs, by removing them from their homes, and "re-settle" Kurds in their place. Taking this action just before the referendum almost insures annexation and de facto Kurdish separation from the rest of Iraq.
Now, what is at issue here is not the resettlement of Iraqi Kurds in Kirkuk. It is no doubt true that during the 1980s Saddam Hussein engaged in what was known as an "Arabization" project. The Baa'th's project relocated thousands of Arabs from the south into Kirkuk and likewise relocated non-Arabs further south.
"Arabization" was largely an effort to consolidate Iraqi national identity by dissolving large concentrations of ethnic minorities in any particular area and spreading them throughout the country. Now, on a personal note I cannot possibly deny the Kurdish right of return while I wholeheartedly endorse the Palestinian right of return for example. The Kurds do, of course, have a right to return to their homes in Kirkuk, just as the Palestinians have a right to return to their homes in Palestine (but who is comparing anyway). What is at issue, rather, is not whether the Kurds have a right to return but whether Kirkuk is a "Kurdish city" and, by extension, available to the political creation that is "Kurdistan."
As I mentioned before, the Baa'th regime did indeed initiate a demographic change in Kirkuk, but this political campaign affected all the non-Arabs of Kirkuk not just the Kurds.
One of the problems with nearly everything said or done in occupied Iraq is that narratives have been simplified and their content maligned to fit particular interests. Assyrian, Turkish, Kurdish and even Armenian peoples were all affected by demographic changes in Kirkuk.
The city now known as Kirkuk was once vital to the Assyrian Empires of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. With the emergence of Christianity, the area surrounding Kirkuk was home to some of the earliest Christian communities, as well as Jewish communities tracing their roots to the Babylonian exile. Just before the emergence of Islam in the 7th century AD, the city found itself caught between the consistently shifting frontiers of the Byzantine and Persian Empires.
During the reign of the Arab caliphs in Baghdad from the 8th to the 13th centuries many ethnic Turks settled in the area and offered their military services to the Caliphate. And, indeed, Kurds coming down from the surrounding mountain ranges settled in the area in large numbers. What we have in Kirkuk is a city of splendid diversity-a diversity that is systematically being wiped out by the current regime in Baghdad.
Since the 2003 invasion of the country myth has taken precedence over history and Kurdish politicians have adopted the methods of that other myth-based nation-state in the region-Israel, to establish claims on the oil reach city. During the invasion, Kurdish peshmerga (militias) entered Kirkuk and established de facto control of the city.
Since then, as has been reported by the Center for Research on Globalization, Kurdish militias have forcibly evicted people from their homes, engaged in murder, assassination and a slow ethnic cleansing. The first victims in this regard have been the Arabs. Since the Arabs there are largely associated with Baa'th policy they have seen little support from the regime in Baghdad. Less publicized has been the targeting of Assyrians and other smaller minorities in the region.
But the largest group in the city-and the one that promises to be the most resistant to Kurdish aggression-is the Turcomen. Ethnically Turks, the Turcomen have lived in the area for over eight-hundred years and have strong ties to Turkey.
It has also been widely reported that Israeli intelligence officials have been working closely with Kurdish leader and have established a strong foothold in the area. This development raises some serious issues about so-called Kurdistan acting as a staging point for Israeli operations in the rest of the country.
When we take a look at the rhetoric surrounding Kirkuk it would seem to come right out of an Israeli playbook. Kirkuk is now being called the "Jerusalem of the Kurds." Or as one Kurdish writer put it, "Kirkuk has always been sacred to Kurds as Karbala and Najaf to Shiite Muslims and all other Shiite cities and towns. [sic]" In light of this supposed devotion tens of thousands of Kurds have been coming into Kirkuk to change the demographic reality "on the ground." This policy very much resembles Israeli activities in the West Bank, where the Jewish settlers have been encouraged to settle in the contested area, explicitly to complicate the area's status. It is no surprise that an area rich in oil has now become "sacred" to the Kurds. But is it or are the more general claims being made on Kirkuk warranted?
The truth is all modern discussions revolving around Kirkuk have been far more ambivalent in regards to the status of Kirkuk then Kurdish politicians are willing to admit. First, the negotiations of the Treaty of Sevres (August, 1920), the treaty that initially dismantled the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One, included a proposal for an independent Kurdistan to be put to a plebiscite by 1921. This proposal was made at the request of a Kurdish delegation and did not include Kirkuk within its boundaries. This historical fact is quite important considering that it was during these formative years that the Kurds were closest to establishing a Kurdistan and possessed their greatest leverage in so doing. Secondly, it underscores how pathetic claims to Kirkuk as a "holy city" are. When an official census was conducted in the area in 1957, Kurds did not constitute a majority in the city. This is in 1957, well before Saddam Hussein or his Arabization policy.
Well these facts speak to the more complex truth around Kirkuk, the aggressive activities of Kurdish militias continue under the auspices of the United States and the puppet regime in Baghdad. But what is most disturbing is that the events concerning Kirkuk are just another testament to the ideology of institutionalised racism imposed on Iraqi society.
Since the invasion, the United States encouraged ethnic chauvinism and consistently hinted at dividing the country up into ethnic or sectarian sections. Should this policy continue, Kurdistan will become a small fascist state with a lot of oil, that will be busy oppressing its large, very large, minority population and begging the US for bases to "protect" it from its neighbours, who are "different." And, of course, the US will gladly oblige, just as it does in the Gulf States because, after all, that is where the oil is.
http://www.counterpunch.org/saud04132007.html
dimanche 15 avril 2007
KURDISH ARROGANCE IN IRAQ
Kurdish Arrogance in Iraq
Nermeen Al-Mufti
12 April 2007
"If they (the Turks) interfere in Kirkuk over just thousands of Turkmens then we will take action for the 30 million Kurds in Turkey."Thus spoke Massoud Barzani in an interview with Al- Arabiya TV last Saturday. It is not the first time an Iraqi Kurdish leader states that the Iraqi Turks (the Turkmens) are thousands! Turkmens were 560,000 according to 1957 census, when the whole Iraqi population was about 6 millions. After 50 years, the Kurds who were 13% of the Iraqis according to the same census and 17% according to the 1997 census, became 30% of the total Iraqi population, while Turkmens evaporated to constitute only thousands.
So one could not be astonished when heard of Barzani saying the Kurdish population in Turkey has increased to 30 millions. However the international statistics assure that the population of the Kurds all over the world is about 35 millions.
Under the American occupation, the only "winners" in Iraq are the Kurds, as Bremer said in his book "My Year in Iraq." Days before the Barzani interview and threats to Turkey, Mohammed Ihsan, a Kurdish minister for human rights in the Barzani led regional government, threatened in a press conference those who are opposing the referendum in Kirkuk saying, "who will hinder (the referendum) will pay a high price, whoever will be."
Ihsan admitted in the same conference that the Kurds "are continuing their pressure" toward applying the article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, stating the normalization in Kirkuk and the referendum. Kurds are trying their best toward confiscating not only Turkmens' rights but the whole Iraqis'.
They are occupying many key positions in Iraq and in the Iraqi embassies, using these positions in order to achieve their illusion of a Kurdish state.
On March 26 and 27, Turkmens, aided by UNPO and European Liberal Democrats, held a conference in Brussels over the Turkmen rights and crisis in Kirkuk.The Kurdish representative in the European Parliament, Burhan Jaf, was invited. He tried to defend his leaders' allegation that Kirkuk is a "Kurdish" city and Turkmens enjoy full rights in so called Iraqi Kurdistan, saying that there are Turkmen Cabinet ministers and Parliament members in the regional government because Turkmens are the second largest ethnic group in northern Iraq after the Kurds.
There are two (Turkmen) ministers and four members in Parliament: It is all what is meant by (full) rights. Comparing these rights with the rights of the Kurds, the second largest ethnic group in Iraq, one could discover that the Kurdish leaders offer nothing to Turkmens but allegations.
The Iraqi president is a Kurd, deputy speaker is a Kurd, deputy prime minister is a Kurd, many key ministries are occupied by Kurds. But there is no Turkmen in such positions in the northern regional government.
Yet the Kurdish leaders are asking Turkmens to recognize the appointed two ministers and four parliamentarians whom they did not elect.
Along the 35 years of the former regime, there were a Kurdish vice president, many Kurdish ministers; among them was Ubaidullah Barzani, 25 members in the Iraqi National Assembly in addition to the Kurdish autonomous authorities; yet the two leading Kurdish parties PUK and KDP refused to recognize them because they were appointed by the government and not elected by them.
Kurds have the rights to oppose, demand and threaten, while Turkmens have not the same rights. Iraqi Kurds who are supported by the occupation forces are becoming more arrogant, yet the day in which logic will rule in Iraq seems to be not far.
http://www.thenewanatolian.com/opinion-25359.html
Nermeen Al-Mufti
12 April 2007
"If they (the Turks) interfere in Kirkuk over just thousands of Turkmens then we will take action for the 30 million Kurds in Turkey."Thus spoke Massoud Barzani in an interview with Al- Arabiya TV last Saturday. It is not the first time an Iraqi Kurdish leader states that the Iraqi Turks (the Turkmens) are thousands! Turkmens were 560,000 according to 1957 census, when the whole Iraqi population was about 6 millions. After 50 years, the Kurds who were 13% of the Iraqis according to the same census and 17% according to the 1997 census, became 30% of the total Iraqi population, while Turkmens evaporated to constitute only thousands.
So one could not be astonished when heard of Barzani saying the Kurdish population in Turkey has increased to 30 millions. However the international statistics assure that the population of the Kurds all over the world is about 35 millions.
Under the American occupation, the only "winners" in Iraq are the Kurds, as Bremer said in his book "My Year in Iraq." Days before the Barzani interview and threats to Turkey, Mohammed Ihsan, a Kurdish minister for human rights in the Barzani led regional government, threatened in a press conference those who are opposing the referendum in Kirkuk saying, "who will hinder (the referendum) will pay a high price, whoever will be."
Ihsan admitted in the same conference that the Kurds "are continuing their pressure" toward applying the article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, stating the normalization in Kirkuk and the referendum. Kurds are trying their best toward confiscating not only Turkmens' rights but the whole Iraqis'.
They are occupying many key positions in Iraq and in the Iraqi embassies, using these positions in order to achieve their illusion of a Kurdish state.
On March 26 and 27, Turkmens, aided by UNPO and European Liberal Democrats, held a conference in Brussels over the Turkmen rights and crisis in Kirkuk.The Kurdish representative in the European Parliament, Burhan Jaf, was invited. He tried to defend his leaders' allegation that Kirkuk is a "Kurdish" city and Turkmens enjoy full rights in so called Iraqi Kurdistan, saying that there are Turkmen Cabinet ministers and Parliament members in the regional government because Turkmens are the second largest ethnic group in northern Iraq after the Kurds.
There are two (Turkmen) ministers and four members in Parliament: It is all what is meant by (full) rights. Comparing these rights with the rights of the Kurds, the second largest ethnic group in Iraq, one could discover that the Kurdish leaders offer nothing to Turkmens but allegations.
The Iraqi president is a Kurd, deputy speaker is a Kurd, deputy prime minister is a Kurd, many key ministries are occupied by Kurds. But there is no Turkmen in such positions in the northern regional government.
Yet the Kurdish leaders are asking Turkmens to recognize the appointed two ministers and four parliamentarians whom they did not elect.
Along the 35 years of the former regime, there were a Kurdish vice president, many Kurdish ministers; among them was Ubaidullah Barzani, 25 members in the Iraqi National Assembly in addition to the Kurdish autonomous authorities; yet the two leading Kurdish parties PUK and KDP refused to recognize them because they were appointed by the government and not elected by them.
Kurds have the rights to oppose, demand and threaten, while Turkmens have not the same rights. Iraqi Kurds who are supported by the occupation forces are becoming more arrogant, yet the day in which logic will rule in Iraq seems to be not far.
http://www.thenewanatolian.com/opinion-25359.html
vendredi 13 avril 2007
LES TURKMENES TOUJOURS VICTIMES DE DISCRIMINATION ETHNIQUE EN IRAK
Dr Hassan AYDINLIReprésentant des Turkmènes irakiens en Europe
Aujourd´hui lorsque les médias parlent de l´Irak ils mentionnent les Kurdes, les Shiites et les Sunnis, laissant croire que ceux-ci représentent le peuple irakien, or cette classification est non seulement fausse mais elle est également trompeuse, il s´agit d´une invention des néo-conservateurs américains pour diviser l´Irak afin de contrôler ses richesses pétrolières.
En réalité le peuple irakien est composé d´Arabes, de Kurdes et de Turkmènes qui sont soit musulmans ou chrétiens. Ainsi en mélangeant confusément l´ethnicité kurde avec les affiliations ou les croyances religieuses des Arabes irakiens, l´administration américaine a promu et a autorisé ces groupes ethniques et sectaires avec leurs milices armées à prendre le pouvoir en Irak sous la bannière de la « démocratie ».Le monde a pu constater les conséquences désastreuses de cette politique inventée par les néo-conservateurs de l´administration américaine.
En effet, les 3 millions de Turkmènes irakiens (12% de la population irakienne) qui constituent le troisième groupe ethnique important d´Irak après les Arabes et les Kurdes sont totalement ignorés par les néo-conservateurs américains et sont inexistants d´après eux et selon leur invention (la nouvelle classification) concernant la nature et la composition du peuple irakien. Pire encore, les 3 millions de Turkmènes d´Irak, ensemble avec leurs 17 millions de compatriotes Arabes et un demi million de compatriotes Chaldéo-assyriens, représentant une majorité de 82% du peuple irakien ont été exclus et n´ont pas été mentionnés dans cette « nouvelle classification » du peuple irakien, alors que les 4.5 millions de Kurdes qui ne représentent que 18% du peuple irakien ont été promus au premier rang, avec un rôle prépondérant ainsi qu´une position dominante dans l´Irak occupé.
Les Turkmènes irakiens sont malheureusement ignorés et rarement mentionnés dans les médias occidentaux bien qu´ils aient été l´objet d´une discrimination permanente en Irak depuis 1921 et malgré le fait qu´ils sont l´objet aujourd´hui d´exactions inadmissibles de la part des Kurdes dans le nord de l´Irak. En effet, depuis la création de l´état irakien en 1921 les Turkmènes sont marginalisés, discriminés et privés de leurs droits les plus élémentaires, dans l´indifférence totale de la communauté internationale.
Leur marginalisation a été initiée par les autorités coloniales britanniques après la Première Guerre Mondiale en 1918 pour des raisons géopolitiques et économiques, afin de faciliter la séparation de la Province de Mossoul de l´Empire Ottoman (la Turquie) pour contrôler les champs pétroliers de la ville de Kirkouk qui était habitée exclusivement par des Turkmènes étant donné que cette ville est depuis des siècles leur capitale et leur grand centre culturel.
Après le renversement de la monarchie en Irak le 14 juillet 1958 et le retour du militant kurde Mullah Mustafa Barzani de son exil en Union Soviétique, la situation des Turkmènes s´est détériorée de manière dramatique à cause des ambitions hégémoniques de Mustafa Barzani et de son projet pour un état indépendant kurde dans le nord de l´Irak pour lequel l´accaparation des richesses pétrolières de Kirkouk était une nécessité. Mustafa Barzani et ses partisans alliés aux communistes irakiens ont dominé la politique en Irak sous le Général Kassem de 1958 à 1963 et c´est pendant cette période que les Kurdes ont amplifié leur migration dans la région turkmène, et particulièrement vers la ville de Kirkouk, afin de modifier la démographie de cette importante ville turkmène.
Durant cette période, les Turkmènes ont souffert de marginalisation accrue et d´une double discrimination de la part des Kurdes et du Gouvernement irakien, ils ont été victimes de déportations internes, d´exil, d´arrestations et de détentions arbitraires, de confiscations de leurs biens, de leurs terres agricoles, et le 14 juillet 1959 les responsables politiques et intellectuels Turkmènes ont été massacrés par les Kurdes.
En 1970 pour mettre fin à la rébellion kurde de Mustafa Barzani dans le nord-est du pays, le régime Baath lui a offert une région autonome kurde avec Erbil, une ville Turkmène, comme capitale, ceci en total dénigrement des intérêts légitimes des Turkmènes d´Irak et surtout des 300.000 Turkmènes d´Erbil qui ont été sacrifiés par le régime Baath et offerts comme « cadeau » à Mustafa Barzani pour qu´il mette fin à sa rébellion. Depuis lors ces Turkmènes souffrent de discrimination de la part des Kurdes, ils sont soit « Kurdifiés » ou bien considérés comme citoyens de seconde classe dans la région autonome kurde présidée par M. Massud Barzani et on n´entend plus parler d´eux. Malheureusement, Barzani n´a pas cessé sa rébellion et a continué à revendiquer Kirkouk et ses richesses pétrolières ce qui a poussé le gouvernement central irakien à adopter la politique d´arabisation de la région turkmène pour couper court aux revendications kurdes sur la province de Kirkouk.
Cette politique d´arabisation a eu pour conséquence d´enlever aux Turkmènes les quelques droits dont ils bénéficiaient encore. Il leur était interdit : de parler la langue turkmène dans les bureaux officiels, d´acheter ou de construire des maisons, de vendre leurs biens à d´autres Turkmènes, etc. Lors du recensement ils ont été forcés de s´enregistrer en tant qu´Arabe ou Kurde, ainsi leur existence en Irak en tant que communauté leur a été officiellement dénigrée.
Aujourd´hui, après près de quatre années de guerre, d´occupation et de changement de régime en Irak, et malgré la propagande de l´administration américaine qu´ils ont apporté la « démocratie » en Irak et que les irakiens ont été « libérés », la réalité est que la situation et les conditions de vie des irakiens et notamment celles des Turkmènes se sont détériorées de manière dramatique. En plus de leur part de misère et d´humiliations résultant de l´occupation étrangère de l´Irak, les Turkmènes sont victimes de l´hégémonie kurde dans le nord du pays et de l´occupation de leur région ´Turkmeneli´ par les milices kurdes qui se comportent comme des conquérants en pays conquis.
Prétextant que seuls les Kurdes ont été victimes du régime Baath, qu´eux seuls ont été déplacés de force et ont eu leurs biens confisqués à Kirkouk, les partis kurdes de MM Talabani et Barzani ont organisé le transport de quelques 600.000 Kurdes de la région autonome kurde et leur installation dans la province de Kirkouk depuis que Kirkouk est tombé aux mains de leurs milices, les peshmerga, avec la bénédiction des américains le 10 avril 2003. Ces nouveaux venus à Kirkouk ont reçu de l´aide financière pour venir s´y installer et les autorités kurdes leur ont fourni des cartes d´identités et des documents falsifiés les faisant passer comme Kurdes originaires de Kirkouk, soi-disant expulsés par le régime de Saddam Hussein.
Ceci est un mensonge, étant donné que les registres officiels montrent que durant le régime de Saddam moins de 12.000 habitants de Kirkouk ont été expulsés et parmi ceux-ci les Turkmènes représentaient plus de la moitié. Ce qui signifie que moins de 6.000 Kurdes ont été expulsés de Kirkouk par le régime Baath. Ces tromperies de la part des Kurdes, les falsifications des registres officiels, la délivrance de fausses cartes d´identité aux Kurdes ont été rendues possibles par le fait que les milices kurdes avaient pillé les bureaux de la population et d´enregistrement des biens fonciers de Kirkouk et confisqué les registres et les archives dès le premier jour de leur arrivée à Kerkuk le 10 avril 2003.
Dès lors, ce qui a changé pour les Turkmènes depuis le changement de régime en Irak est tout simplement la substitution de l´hégémonie arabe par l´hégémonie kurde, passant de la politique d´Arabisation de l´ancien régime à la politique de « Kurdification » de la région turkmène par les partis kurdes dominants de MM Talabani et Barzani. Les Turkmènes dénoncent la politique actuelle et refusent l´hégémonie kurde dans leur région et ils revendiquent leur droit d´être reconnus comme le troisième groupe ethnique d´Irak et le droit d´être reconnus comme la troisième communauté principale du pays, avec des droits égaux à ceux des communautés arabes et kurdes.
Les Turkmènes appellent la communauté internationale et l´ONU à intervenir pour éviter la crise imminente au sujet de Kirkouk, de son appartenance et de son futur statut. Depuis l´occupation de l´Irak et la collaboration des Kurdes dans l´invasion du nord de l´Irak, ceux-ci sont favorisés par l´administration américaine qui leur attribue des droits et des avantages au détriment des autre Irakiens, principalement des Turkmènes. C´est ainsi que les milices kurdes ont été autorisées à pénétrer dans la région turkmène et à y imposer l´hégémonie kurde.
Ensuite, dans la rédaction de la nouvelle constitution en 2004, les Kurdes ont été promus au niveau de deuxième communauté principale d´Irak, alors que les Turkmènes ont été de nouveau marginalisés, discriminés et descendus au niveau d´une minorité insignifiante et par conséquent de citoyens de deuxième classe. De plus, pour légaliser la domination kurde dans le nord de l´Irak, les partis kurdes avec le soutien des occupants américains sont parvenus à inscrire dans la nouvelle constitution l´ Article 140 qui prévoit la normalisation, le recensement et un référendum dans la province de Kirkouk avant le 31 décembre 2007.
Entre-temps, les Kurdes, en préparation pour ce référendum et en coordination avec les américains, ont amené, installé et enregistré, plus de 600.000 Kurdes dans la province de Kirkouk pour changer la démographie de la province et sa composition ethnique afin de l´annexer par référendum dans la région autonome kurde. Il est à noter que plus de 99% de ces nouveaux arrivés kurdes ne sont pas originaires de Kirkouk, ils n´y ont jamais vécu, travaillé ou possédé de résidences avant l´occupation. Plus grave encore, un grand nombre de ces Kurdes ne sont même pas irakiens, ce sont des Kurdes de Turquie, d´Iran et de Syrie auxquels les partis kurdes ont délivré des passeports irakiens pour les amener et les installer à Kirkouk.
La normalisation signifie le retour dans la province de Kirkouk des déplacés sous le régime Baath et la récupération de leurs biens confisqués ainsi que l´expulsion des Arabes qui ont été amenés et installés à Kirkouk dans le cadre de la politique d´Arabisation du régime Baath. A ce jour, parmi les 32.000 dossiers de réclamation des habitants de la province de Kirkouk dont les biens avaient été confisqués par le régime Baath, moins de 1.000 dossiers, tous appartenant à des Kurdes, ont été traités et finalisés. Quant au reste des dossiers, tous appartenant à des Turkmènes, ils sont toujours en attente et aucun Turkmène n´a pu récupérer ses biens ! Ceci est une preuve incontestable de discrimination contre les Turkmènes en Irak.
Quant au recensement, les Turkmènes refusent l´inscription dans les registres officiels de la population de Kirkouk de ces 600.000 Kurdes amenés à Kirkouk depuis l´occupation en avril 2003 et évidemment ils demandent l´annulation du référendum si ces 600.000 nouveaux arrivants kurdes y participent.
En conclusion, et à juste titre, les Turkmènes refusent l´annexion de la province de Kirkouk à la région autonome kurde et ils sont supportés dans leur demande par les Arabes et les Chaldéo-assyriens de la province.
Les Turkmènes demandent que la normalisation dans la province de Kirkouk soit faite sous la supervision internationale, l´ONU ou l´Union Européenne.
Les Turkmènes demandent l´organisation d´une conférence internationale pour la paix et la reconstruction de l´Irak avec l´implication de la communauté internationale ainsi que des pays voisins afin de garantir l´unité, la sécurité et la reconstruction de l´Irak. Les Turkmènes sont le seul groupe ethnique en Irak qui n´a pas de milices armées, ils sont pacifistes et rejettent la violence et l´existence des milices. Ils croient dans les vertus des valeurs démocratiques.
Les Turkmènes, comme la grande majorité des irakiens, sont contre l´occupation de l´Irak et demandent le départ immédiat et inconditionnel des forces d´occupation étrangères et ils aspirent à l´établissement d´une véritable démocratie dans un Irak libéré et uni.
En réalité le peuple irakien est composé d´Arabes, de Kurdes et de Turkmènes qui sont soit musulmans ou chrétiens. Ainsi en mélangeant confusément l´ethnicité kurde avec les affiliations ou les croyances religieuses des Arabes irakiens, l´administration américaine a promu et a autorisé ces groupes ethniques et sectaires avec leurs milices armées à prendre le pouvoir en Irak sous la bannière de la « démocratie ».Le monde a pu constater les conséquences désastreuses de cette politique inventée par les néo-conservateurs de l´administration américaine.
En effet, les 3 millions de Turkmènes irakiens (12% de la population irakienne) qui constituent le troisième groupe ethnique important d´Irak après les Arabes et les Kurdes sont totalement ignorés par les néo-conservateurs américains et sont inexistants d´après eux et selon leur invention (la nouvelle classification) concernant la nature et la composition du peuple irakien. Pire encore, les 3 millions de Turkmènes d´Irak, ensemble avec leurs 17 millions de compatriotes Arabes et un demi million de compatriotes Chaldéo-assyriens, représentant une majorité de 82% du peuple irakien ont été exclus et n´ont pas été mentionnés dans cette « nouvelle classification » du peuple irakien, alors que les 4.5 millions de Kurdes qui ne représentent que 18% du peuple irakien ont été promus au premier rang, avec un rôle prépondérant ainsi qu´une position dominante dans l´Irak occupé.
Les Turkmènes irakiens sont malheureusement ignorés et rarement mentionnés dans les médias occidentaux bien qu´ils aient été l´objet d´une discrimination permanente en Irak depuis 1921 et malgré le fait qu´ils sont l´objet aujourd´hui d´exactions inadmissibles de la part des Kurdes dans le nord de l´Irak. En effet, depuis la création de l´état irakien en 1921 les Turkmènes sont marginalisés, discriminés et privés de leurs droits les plus élémentaires, dans l´indifférence totale de la communauté internationale.
Leur marginalisation a été initiée par les autorités coloniales britanniques après la Première Guerre Mondiale en 1918 pour des raisons géopolitiques et économiques, afin de faciliter la séparation de la Province de Mossoul de l´Empire Ottoman (la Turquie) pour contrôler les champs pétroliers de la ville de Kirkouk qui était habitée exclusivement par des Turkmènes étant donné que cette ville est depuis des siècles leur capitale et leur grand centre culturel.
Après le renversement de la monarchie en Irak le 14 juillet 1958 et le retour du militant kurde Mullah Mustafa Barzani de son exil en Union Soviétique, la situation des Turkmènes s´est détériorée de manière dramatique à cause des ambitions hégémoniques de Mustafa Barzani et de son projet pour un état indépendant kurde dans le nord de l´Irak pour lequel l´accaparation des richesses pétrolières de Kirkouk était une nécessité. Mustafa Barzani et ses partisans alliés aux communistes irakiens ont dominé la politique en Irak sous le Général Kassem de 1958 à 1963 et c´est pendant cette période que les Kurdes ont amplifié leur migration dans la région turkmène, et particulièrement vers la ville de Kirkouk, afin de modifier la démographie de cette importante ville turkmène.
Durant cette période, les Turkmènes ont souffert de marginalisation accrue et d´une double discrimination de la part des Kurdes et du Gouvernement irakien, ils ont été victimes de déportations internes, d´exil, d´arrestations et de détentions arbitraires, de confiscations de leurs biens, de leurs terres agricoles, et le 14 juillet 1959 les responsables politiques et intellectuels Turkmènes ont été massacrés par les Kurdes.
En 1970 pour mettre fin à la rébellion kurde de Mustafa Barzani dans le nord-est du pays, le régime Baath lui a offert une région autonome kurde avec Erbil, une ville Turkmène, comme capitale, ceci en total dénigrement des intérêts légitimes des Turkmènes d´Irak et surtout des 300.000 Turkmènes d´Erbil qui ont été sacrifiés par le régime Baath et offerts comme « cadeau » à Mustafa Barzani pour qu´il mette fin à sa rébellion. Depuis lors ces Turkmènes souffrent de discrimination de la part des Kurdes, ils sont soit « Kurdifiés » ou bien considérés comme citoyens de seconde classe dans la région autonome kurde présidée par M. Massud Barzani et on n´entend plus parler d´eux. Malheureusement, Barzani n´a pas cessé sa rébellion et a continué à revendiquer Kirkouk et ses richesses pétrolières ce qui a poussé le gouvernement central irakien à adopter la politique d´arabisation de la région turkmène pour couper court aux revendications kurdes sur la province de Kirkouk.
Cette politique d´arabisation a eu pour conséquence d´enlever aux Turkmènes les quelques droits dont ils bénéficiaient encore. Il leur était interdit : de parler la langue turkmène dans les bureaux officiels, d´acheter ou de construire des maisons, de vendre leurs biens à d´autres Turkmènes, etc. Lors du recensement ils ont été forcés de s´enregistrer en tant qu´Arabe ou Kurde, ainsi leur existence en Irak en tant que communauté leur a été officiellement dénigrée.
Aujourd´hui, après près de quatre années de guerre, d´occupation et de changement de régime en Irak, et malgré la propagande de l´administration américaine qu´ils ont apporté la « démocratie » en Irak et que les irakiens ont été « libérés », la réalité est que la situation et les conditions de vie des irakiens et notamment celles des Turkmènes se sont détériorées de manière dramatique. En plus de leur part de misère et d´humiliations résultant de l´occupation étrangère de l´Irak, les Turkmènes sont victimes de l´hégémonie kurde dans le nord du pays et de l´occupation de leur région ´Turkmeneli´ par les milices kurdes qui se comportent comme des conquérants en pays conquis.
Prétextant que seuls les Kurdes ont été victimes du régime Baath, qu´eux seuls ont été déplacés de force et ont eu leurs biens confisqués à Kirkouk, les partis kurdes de MM Talabani et Barzani ont organisé le transport de quelques 600.000 Kurdes de la région autonome kurde et leur installation dans la province de Kirkouk depuis que Kirkouk est tombé aux mains de leurs milices, les peshmerga, avec la bénédiction des américains le 10 avril 2003. Ces nouveaux venus à Kirkouk ont reçu de l´aide financière pour venir s´y installer et les autorités kurdes leur ont fourni des cartes d´identités et des documents falsifiés les faisant passer comme Kurdes originaires de Kirkouk, soi-disant expulsés par le régime de Saddam Hussein.
Ceci est un mensonge, étant donné que les registres officiels montrent que durant le régime de Saddam moins de 12.000 habitants de Kirkouk ont été expulsés et parmi ceux-ci les Turkmènes représentaient plus de la moitié. Ce qui signifie que moins de 6.000 Kurdes ont été expulsés de Kirkouk par le régime Baath. Ces tromperies de la part des Kurdes, les falsifications des registres officiels, la délivrance de fausses cartes d´identité aux Kurdes ont été rendues possibles par le fait que les milices kurdes avaient pillé les bureaux de la population et d´enregistrement des biens fonciers de Kirkouk et confisqué les registres et les archives dès le premier jour de leur arrivée à Kerkuk le 10 avril 2003.
Dès lors, ce qui a changé pour les Turkmènes depuis le changement de régime en Irak est tout simplement la substitution de l´hégémonie arabe par l´hégémonie kurde, passant de la politique d´Arabisation de l´ancien régime à la politique de « Kurdification » de la région turkmène par les partis kurdes dominants de MM Talabani et Barzani. Les Turkmènes dénoncent la politique actuelle et refusent l´hégémonie kurde dans leur région et ils revendiquent leur droit d´être reconnus comme le troisième groupe ethnique d´Irak et le droit d´être reconnus comme la troisième communauté principale du pays, avec des droits égaux à ceux des communautés arabes et kurdes.
Les Turkmènes appellent la communauté internationale et l´ONU à intervenir pour éviter la crise imminente au sujet de Kirkouk, de son appartenance et de son futur statut. Depuis l´occupation de l´Irak et la collaboration des Kurdes dans l´invasion du nord de l´Irak, ceux-ci sont favorisés par l´administration américaine qui leur attribue des droits et des avantages au détriment des autre Irakiens, principalement des Turkmènes. C´est ainsi que les milices kurdes ont été autorisées à pénétrer dans la région turkmène et à y imposer l´hégémonie kurde.
Ensuite, dans la rédaction de la nouvelle constitution en 2004, les Kurdes ont été promus au niveau de deuxième communauté principale d´Irak, alors que les Turkmènes ont été de nouveau marginalisés, discriminés et descendus au niveau d´une minorité insignifiante et par conséquent de citoyens de deuxième classe. De plus, pour légaliser la domination kurde dans le nord de l´Irak, les partis kurdes avec le soutien des occupants américains sont parvenus à inscrire dans la nouvelle constitution l´ Article 140 qui prévoit la normalisation, le recensement et un référendum dans la province de Kirkouk avant le 31 décembre 2007.
Entre-temps, les Kurdes, en préparation pour ce référendum et en coordination avec les américains, ont amené, installé et enregistré, plus de 600.000 Kurdes dans la province de Kirkouk pour changer la démographie de la province et sa composition ethnique afin de l´annexer par référendum dans la région autonome kurde. Il est à noter que plus de 99% de ces nouveaux arrivés kurdes ne sont pas originaires de Kirkouk, ils n´y ont jamais vécu, travaillé ou possédé de résidences avant l´occupation. Plus grave encore, un grand nombre de ces Kurdes ne sont même pas irakiens, ce sont des Kurdes de Turquie, d´Iran et de Syrie auxquels les partis kurdes ont délivré des passeports irakiens pour les amener et les installer à Kirkouk.
La normalisation signifie le retour dans la province de Kirkouk des déplacés sous le régime Baath et la récupération de leurs biens confisqués ainsi que l´expulsion des Arabes qui ont été amenés et installés à Kirkouk dans le cadre de la politique d´Arabisation du régime Baath. A ce jour, parmi les 32.000 dossiers de réclamation des habitants de la province de Kirkouk dont les biens avaient été confisqués par le régime Baath, moins de 1.000 dossiers, tous appartenant à des Kurdes, ont été traités et finalisés. Quant au reste des dossiers, tous appartenant à des Turkmènes, ils sont toujours en attente et aucun Turkmène n´a pu récupérer ses biens ! Ceci est une preuve incontestable de discrimination contre les Turkmènes en Irak.
Quant au recensement, les Turkmènes refusent l´inscription dans les registres officiels de la population de Kirkouk de ces 600.000 Kurdes amenés à Kirkouk depuis l´occupation en avril 2003 et évidemment ils demandent l´annulation du référendum si ces 600.000 nouveaux arrivants kurdes y participent.
En conclusion, et à juste titre, les Turkmènes refusent l´annexion de la province de Kirkouk à la région autonome kurde et ils sont supportés dans leur demande par les Arabes et les Chaldéo-assyriens de la province.
Les Turkmènes demandent que la normalisation dans la province de Kirkouk soit faite sous la supervision internationale, l´ONU ou l´Union Européenne.
Les Turkmènes demandent l´organisation d´une conférence internationale pour la paix et la reconstruction de l´Irak avec l´implication de la communauté internationale ainsi que des pays voisins afin de garantir l´unité, la sécurité et la reconstruction de l´Irak. Les Turkmènes sont le seul groupe ethnique en Irak qui n´a pas de milices armées, ils sont pacifistes et rejettent la violence et l´existence des milices. Ils croient dans les vertus des valeurs démocratiques.
Les Turkmènes, comme la grande majorité des irakiens, sont contre l´occupation de l´Irak et demandent le départ immédiat et inconditionnel des forces d´occupation étrangères et ils aspirent à l´établissement d´une véritable démocratie dans un Irak libéré et uni.
IRAN MAY BE THE GREATEST CRISIS OF MODERN TIMES
John Pilger
04/12/07 "ICH"
Certainly, they would agree wholeheartedly with Robert H Jackson, chief of counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders at the end of the Second World War. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
04/12/07 "ICH"
In a cover piece for the New Statesman, John Pilger evokes the memory of Germans 'looking from the side' at Bergen-Belsen to describe the challenge facing us in the West as the Bush/Blair 'long war' becomes 'perhaps the greatest crisis of modern times'.
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass describes the moment her mother, Hannah, was marched from a cattle train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. "They were sick and some were dying," she says. "Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking. This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side'." It is time we in Britain and other Western countries stopped looking from the side.
We are being led towards perhaps the most serious crisis in modern history as the Bush-Cheney-Blair "long war" edges closer to Iran for no reason other than that nation's independence from rapacious America.
The safe delivery of the 15 British sailors into the hands of Rupert Murdoch and his rivals (with tales of their "ordeal" almost certainly authored by the Ministry of Defence – until it got the wind up) is both a farce and a distraction. The Bush administration, in secret connivance with Blair, has spent four years preparing for "Operation Iranian Freedom". Forty-five cruise missiles are primed to strike.
According to Russia's leading strategic thinker General Leonid Ivashov: "Nuclear facilities will be secondary targets... at least 20 such facilities need to be destroyed. Combat nuclear weapons may be used. This will result in the radioactive contamination of all the Iranian territory, and beyond." And yet there is a surreal silence, save for the noise of "news" in which our powerful broadcasters gesture cryptically at the obvious but dare not make sense of it, lest the one-way moral screen erected between us and the consequences of an imperial foreign policy collapse and the truth be revealed.
John Bolton, formerly Bush's man at the United Nations, recently spelled out the truth: that the Bush-Cheney-Blair plan for the Middle East is "an agenda to maintain division and ethnic tension". In other words, bloodshed and chaos equals control. He was referring to Iraq, but he also meant Iran.
One million Iraqis fill the streets of Najaf demanding that Bush and Blair get out of their homeland – that is the real news: not our nabbed sailor-spies, nor the political danse macabre of the pretenders to Blair's Duce delusions.
Whether it is treasurer Gordon Brown, the paymaster of the Iraq bloodbath, or John Reid, who sent British troops to pointless deaths in Afghanistan, or any of the others who sat through cabinet meetings knowing that Blair and his acolytes were lying through their teeth, only mutual distrust separates them now. They knew about Blair's plotting with Bush. They knew about the fake 45-minute "warning". They knew about the fitting up of Iran as the next "enemy".
Declared Brown to the Daily Mail: "The days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over. We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it." In Late Victorian Holocausts, the historian Mike Davis documents that as many as 21 million Indians died unnecessarily in famines criminally imposed by British colonial policies. Moreover, since the formal demise of that glorious imperium, declassified files make it clear that British governments have borne "significant responsibility" for the direct or indirect deaths of between 8.6 million and 13.5 million people throughout the world from military interventions and at the hands of regimes strongly supported by Britain.
The historian Mark Curtis calls these victims "unpeople". Rejoice! said Margaret Thatcher. Celebrate! says Brown. Spot the difference. Brown is no different from Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and the other warmongering Democrats he admires and who support an unprovoked attack on Iran and the subjugation of the Middle East to "our interests" – and Israel's, of course.
Nothing has changed since the US and Britain destroyed Iran's democratic government in 1953 and installed Reza Shah Pahlavi, whose regime had "the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture" that was "beyond belief" (Amnesty).
Look behind the one-way moral screen and you will distinguish the Blairite elite by its loathing of the humane principles that mark a real democracy. They used to be discreet about this, but no more. Two examples spring to mind.
In 2004, Blair used the secretive "royal prerogative" to overturn a high court judgment that had restored the very principle of human rights set out in Magna Carta to the people of the Chagos Islands, a British colony in the Indian Ocean. There was no debate. As ruthless as any dictator, Blair dealt his coup de grâce with the lawless expulsion of the islanders from their homeland, now a US military base, from which Bush has bombed Iraq and Afghanistan and will bomb Iran.
In the second example, only the degree of suffering is different. Last October, the Lancet published research by Johns Hopkins University in the US and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad which calculated that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a direct result of the Anglo-American invasion. Downing Street officials derided the study as "flawed". They were lying. They knew that the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Roy Anderson, had backed the survey, describing its methods as "robust" and "close to best practice", and other government officials had secretly approved the "tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".
The figure for Iraqi deaths is now estimated at close to a million – carnage equivalent to that caused by the Anglo-American economic siege of Iraq in the 1990s, which produced the deaths of half a million infants under the age of five, verified by Unicef. That, too, was dismissed contemptuously by Blair. "This Labour government, which includes Gordon Brown as much as it does Tony Blair," wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, "is party to a war crime of monstrous proportions.
Yet our political consensus prevents any judicial or civil society response. Britain is paralysed by its own indifference." Such is the scale of the crime and of our "looking from the side". According to the Observer of 8 April, the voters' "damning verdict" on the Blair regime is expressed by a majority who have "lost faith" in their government. No surprise there. Polls have long shown a widespread revulsion to Blair, demonstrated at the last general election, which produced the second lowest turnout since the franchise. No mention was made of the Observer's own contribution to this national loss of faith.
Once celebrated as a bastion of liberalism that stood against Anthony Eden's lawless attack on Egypt in 1956, the new right-wing, lifestyle Observer enthusiastically backed Blair's lawless attack on Iraq, having helped lay the ground with major articles falsely linking Iraq with the 9/11 attacks – claims now regarded even by the Pentagon as fake.
As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 11 September 2001. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts", which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oil wealth among the major Anglo-American companies.
Under a law written by US and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies. Nothing like this piracy has happened before in the modern Middle East, where Opec has ensured that oil business is conducted between states.
Across the Shatt al-Arab waterway is another prize: Iran's vast oilfields. Just as non-existent weapons of mass destruction or facile concerns for democracy had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq, so non-existent nuclear weapons have nothing to do with the coming American onslaught on Iran.
Unlike Israel and the United States, Iran has abided by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it was an original signatory, and has allowed routine inspections under its legal obligations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has never cited Iran for diverting its civilian programme to military use. For the past three years, IAEA inspectors have said they have been allowed to "go anywhere".
The recent UN Security Council sanctions against Iran are the result of Washington's bribery. Until recently, the British were unaware that their government was one of the world's most consistent abusers of human rights and backers of state terrorism.
Few Britons knew that the Muslim Brotherhood, the forerunner of al-Qaeda, was sponsored by British intelligence as a means of systematically destroying secular Arab nationalism, or that MI6 recruited young British Muslims in the 1980s as part of a $4bn Anglo-American-backed jihad against the Soviet Union known as "Operation Cyclone".
In 2001, few Britons knew that 3,000 innocent Afghan civilians were bombed to death as revenge for the attacks of 11 September. No Afghans brought down the twin towers. Thanks to Bush and Blair, awareness in Britain and all over the world has risen as never before.
When home-grown terrorists struck London in July 2005, few doubted that the attack on Iraq had provoked the atrocity and that the bombs which killed 52 Londoners were, in effect, Blair's bombs.
In my experience, most people do not indulge the absurdity and cruelty of the "rules" of rampant power. They do not contort their morality and intellect to comply with double standards and the notion of approved evil, of worthy and unworthy victims. They would, if they knew, grieve for all the lives, families, careers, hopes and dreams destroyed by Blair and Bush. The sure evidence is the British public's wholehearted response to the 2004 tsunami, shaming that of the government.
Certainly, they would agree wholeheartedly with Robert H Jackson, chief of counsel for the United States at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders at the end of the Second World War. "Crimes are crimes," he said, "whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."
As with Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, who dare not travel to certain countries for fear of being prosecuted as war criminals, Blair as a private citizen may no longer be untouchable. On 20 March, Baltasar Garzón, the tenacious Spanish judge who pursued Augusto Pinochet, called for indictments against those responsible for "one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history" – Iraq. Five days later, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, said that Blair could one day face war-crimes charges.
These are critical changes in the way the sane world thinks – again, thanks to the Reich of Blair and Bush. However, we live in the most dangerous of times. On 6 April, Blair accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of "backing, financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". He offered no evidence, and the Ministry of Defence has none. This is the same Goebbels-like refrain with which he and his coterie, Gordon Brown included, brought an epic bloodletting to Iraq. How long will the rest of us continue looking from the side?
mercredi 11 avril 2007
DIVIDE AND RULE - AMERICA'S PLAN FOR BAGHDAD
Robert Fisk: Divide and rule - America's plan for Baghdad
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2439530.ece
Published: 11 April 2007
Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.
The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.
The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.
But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.
The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course - American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers - participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.
The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial. The ID card project is based upon a system adopted in the city of Tal Afar by General Petraeus's men - and specifically by Colonel H R McMaster, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment - in early 2005, when an eight-foot "berm" was built around the town to prevent the movement of gunmen and weapons. General Petraeus regarded the campaign as a success although Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, has since fallen back into insurgent control.
So far, the Baghdad campaign has involved only the creation of a few US positions within several civilian areas of the city but the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi "support bases" in nine of the 30 districts to be "gated" off. From these bases - in fortified buildings - US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these "gated communities" and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, "visitor" registration and restrictions on movement outside the "gated communities". Civilians may find themselves inside a "controlled population" prison.
In theory, US forces can then concentrate on providing physical reconstruction in what the military like to call a "secure environment". But insurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be "gated" and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be "enclosed" with everyone else.
A former US officer in Vietnam who has a deep knowledge of General Petraeus's plans is sceptical of the possible results. "The first loyalty of any Sunni who is in the Iraqi army is to the insurgency," he said. "Any Shia's first loyalty is to the head of his political party and its militia. Any Kurd in the Iraqi army, his first loyalty is to either Barzani or Talabani. There is no independent Iraqi army. These people really have no choice. They are trying to save their families from starvation and reprisal. At one time they may have believed in a unified Iraq. At one time they may have been secular. But the violence and brutality that started with the American invasion has burnt those liberal ideas out of people ... Every American who is embedded in an Iraqi unit is in constant mortal danger."
The senior generals who constructed the new "security" plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal - but officially "restricted" - field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24.
FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. "With good intelligence," it says, "counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact." But another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the "gated" neighbourhood project.
"Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able," he told The Independent. "They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the 'gated communities' to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.
"The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being 'protected'."
The ex-officer's fears for American helicopter crews were re-emphasised yesterday when a military Apache was shot down over central Baghdad.
The American's son is an officer currently serving in Baghdad. "The only chance the American military has to withdraw with any kind of tactical authority in the future is to take substantial casualties as a token of their respect for the situation created by the invasion," he said.
"The effort to create some order out of the chaos and the willingness to take casualties to do so will leave some residual respect for the Americans as they leave."
FM 3-24: America's new masterplan for Iraq
FM 3-24 comprises 220 pages of counter-insurgency planning, combat training techniques and historical analysis. The document was drawn up by Lt-Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Baghdad, and Lt-Gen James Amos of the US Marine Corps, and was the nucleus for the new US campaign against the Iraqi insurgency. These are some of its recommendations and conclusions:
* In the eyes of some, a government that cannot protect its people forfeits the right to rule. In [parts] of Iraq and Afghanistan... militias established themselves as extragovernmental arbiters of the populace's physical security - in some cases, after first undermining that security...
* In the al-Qa'ida narrative... Osama bin Laden depicts himself as a man purified in the mountains of Afghanistan who is inspiring followers and punishing infidels. In the collective imagination of Bin Laden and his followers, they are agents of Islamic history who will reverse the decline of the umma (Muslim community) and bring about its triumph over Western imperialism.
* As the Host Nation government increases its legitimacy, the populace begins to assist it more actively. Eventually, the people marginalise insurgents to the point that [their] claim to legitimacy is destroyed. However, victory is gained not when this is achieved, but when the victory is permanently maintained by and with the people's active support...
* Any human rights abuses committed by US forces quickly become known throughout the local populace. Illegitimate actions undermine counterinsurgency efforts... Abuse of detained persons is immoral, illegal and unprofessional.
* If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents. Aggressive saturation patrolling, ambushes, and listening post operations must be conducted, risk shared with the populace and contact maintained.
* FM 3-24 quotes Lawrence of Arabia as saying: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them."
* FM 3-24 points to Napoleon's failure to control occupied Spain as the result of not providing a "stable environment" for the population. His struggle, the document says, lasted nearly six years and required four times the force of 80,000 Napoleon originally designated.
* Do not try to crack the hardest nut first. Do not go straight for the main insurgent stronghold. Instead, start from secure areas and work gradually outwards... Go with, not against, the grain of the local populace.
* Be cautious about allowing soldiers and marines to fraternise with local children. Homesick troops want to drop their guard with kids. But insurgents are watching. They notice any friendships between troops and children. They may either harm the children as punishment or use them as agents.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2439530.ece
Revealed: a new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up the city into sealed areas. The tactic failed in Vietnam. So what chance does it have in Iraq?
Published: 11 April 2007
Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.
The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.
The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.
But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.
The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course - American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers - participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.
The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial. The ID card project is based upon a system adopted in the city of Tal Afar by General Petraeus's men - and specifically by Colonel H R McMaster, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment - in early 2005, when an eight-foot "berm" was built around the town to prevent the movement of gunmen and weapons. General Petraeus regarded the campaign as a success although Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, has since fallen back into insurgent control.
So far, the Baghdad campaign has involved only the creation of a few US positions within several civilian areas of the city but the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi "support bases" in nine of the 30 districts to be "gated" off. From these bases - in fortified buildings - US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these "gated communities" and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, "visitor" registration and restrictions on movement outside the "gated communities". Civilians may find themselves inside a "controlled population" prison.
In theory, US forces can then concentrate on providing physical reconstruction in what the military like to call a "secure environment". But insurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be "gated" and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be "enclosed" with everyone else.
A former US officer in Vietnam who has a deep knowledge of General Petraeus's plans is sceptical of the possible results. "The first loyalty of any Sunni who is in the Iraqi army is to the insurgency," he said. "Any Shia's first loyalty is to the head of his political party and its militia. Any Kurd in the Iraqi army, his first loyalty is to either Barzani or Talabani. There is no independent Iraqi army. These people really have no choice. They are trying to save their families from starvation and reprisal. At one time they may have believed in a unified Iraq. At one time they may have been secular. But the violence and brutality that started with the American invasion has burnt those liberal ideas out of people ... Every American who is embedded in an Iraqi unit is in constant mortal danger."
The senior generals who constructed the new "security" plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal - but officially "restricted" - field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24.
While not specifically advocating the "gated communities" campaign, one of its principles is the unification of civilian and military activities, citing "civil operations and revolutionary development support teams" in South Vietnam, assistance to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991 and the "provincial reconstruction teams" in Afghanistan - a project widely condemned for linking military co-operation and humanitarian aid.
FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. "With good intelligence," it says, "counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact." But another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the "gated" neighbourhood project.
"Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able," he told The Independent. "They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the 'gated communities' to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.
"The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being 'protected'."
The ex-officer's fears for American helicopter crews were re-emphasised yesterday when a military Apache was shot down over central Baghdad.
The American's son is an officer currently serving in Baghdad. "The only chance the American military has to withdraw with any kind of tactical authority in the future is to take substantial casualties as a token of their respect for the situation created by the invasion," he said.
"The effort to create some order out of the chaos and the willingness to take casualties to do so will leave some residual respect for the Americans as they leave."
FM 3-24: America's new masterplan for Iraq
FM 3-24 comprises 220 pages of counter-insurgency planning, combat training techniques and historical analysis. The document was drawn up by Lt-Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Baghdad, and Lt-Gen James Amos of the US Marine Corps, and was the nucleus for the new US campaign against the Iraqi insurgency. These are some of its recommendations and conclusions:
* In the eyes of some, a government that cannot protect its people forfeits the right to rule. In [parts] of Iraq and Afghanistan... militias established themselves as extragovernmental arbiters of the populace's physical security - in some cases, after first undermining that security...
* In the al-Qa'ida narrative... Osama bin Laden depicts himself as a man purified in the mountains of Afghanistan who is inspiring followers and punishing infidels. In the collective imagination of Bin Laden and his followers, they are agents of Islamic history who will reverse the decline of the umma (Muslim community) and bring about its triumph over Western imperialism.
* As the Host Nation government increases its legitimacy, the populace begins to assist it more actively. Eventually, the people marginalise insurgents to the point that [their] claim to legitimacy is destroyed. However, victory is gained not when this is achieved, but when the victory is permanently maintained by and with the people's active support...
* Any human rights abuses committed by US forces quickly become known throughout the local populace. Illegitimate actions undermine counterinsurgency efforts... Abuse of detained persons is immoral, illegal and unprofessional.
* If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents. Aggressive saturation patrolling, ambushes, and listening post operations must be conducted, risk shared with the populace and contact maintained.
* FM 3-24 quotes Lawrence of Arabia as saying: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them."
* FM 3-24 points to Napoleon's failure to control occupied Spain as the result of not providing a "stable environment" for the population. His struggle, the document says, lasted nearly six years and required four times the force of 80,000 Napoleon originally designated.
* Do not try to crack the hardest nut first. Do not go straight for the main insurgent stronghold. Instead, start from secure areas and work gradually outwards... Go with, not against, the grain of the local populace.
* Be cautious about allowing soldiers and marines to fraternise with local children. Homesick troops want to drop their guard with kids. But insurgents are watching. They notice any friendships between troops and children. They may either harm the children as punishment or use them as agents.
mardi 10 avril 2007
WHAT KIND OF "DEMOCRACY" IS THIS?
When over two million Iraqis rally to demand the IMMEDIATE and UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF THE OCCUPIERS, Nouri al-Maliki , "acting Prime Minister" of Iraq says he sees no need to set a timetable for the departure of foreign troops from his country.
What do you call a "Head of State" who needs a foreign occupation army to remain in "power" ?
TURKEY WARNS IRAQ'S KURDS OVER THREAT
Turkey warns Iraq's Kurds over threat
By Vincent Boland in Ankara
Published: April 10 2007 03:00 Last updated: April 10 2007 03:00
Turkey warned Iraqi Kurdish leaders yesterday they would be "crushed" if they carried out a threat to stir up trouble among Turkish Kurds, as clashes with separatists in south-eastern Turkey claimed at least 20 lives.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, reacted angrily to weekend comments by Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Mr Barzani has set off a political and media storm in Ankara with his threat to "interfere" in Turkey's restive Kurdish provinces if Ankara did not stop "interfering" in his region.
Mr Erdogan said Mr Barzani would "be crushed by his own words". The Iraqi Kurdish leadership, he said, was "making very serious mistakes, and the cost will be very heavy".
The threats and counter-threats mark a fresh low point in relations between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. A few weeks ago Mr Erdogan was tentatively suggesting that official contact be established between them.
But that idea was strongly rejected by the Turkish military. The military and civilian leadership in Ankara has also become frustrated at its inability to influence events in Iraq as the prospect of an independent Kurdistan, with its capital in the oil-rich, Kurdish-dominated city of Kirkuk, moves ever closer.
Now, amid a heavy build-up of Turkish forces along the country's border with Iraq, some diplomats said the poisoned atmosphere could hasten a long-threatened "incursion" into Iraqi territory by Turkish forces to target the PKK Kurdish separatist movement.
Any such incursion would be fiercely opposed by the US and by Iraq. Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, tele- phoned Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, on Saturday to relay Turkey's concerns after Mr Barzani's remarks were broadcast on Al Arabiyah TV.
Ten Turkish soldiers and about the same number of PKK fighters have been killed in clashes in the past three days in Turkey's eastern provinces of Tunceli and Bingol. The death toll was the highest in several weeks. Turkey is home to an estimated 12m Kurds. Security forces and the PKK fought a 15-year civil war in the 1980s and 1990s that killed at least 35,000 people.
Some of Turkey's rhetoric towards the Iraqi Kurdish leadership is rooted in a febrile political atmosphere in Ankara ahead of the appointment next month of a new president, and a general election later this year.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
By Vincent Boland in Ankara
Published: April 10 2007 03:00 Last updated: April 10 2007 03:00
Turkey warned Iraqi Kurdish leaders yesterday they would be "crushed" if they carried out a threat to stir up trouble among Turkish Kurds, as clashes with separatists in south-eastern Turkey claimed at least 20 lives.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, reacted angrily to weekend comments by Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Mr Barzani has set off a political and media storm in Ankara with his threat to "interfere" in Turkey's restive Kurdish provinces if Ankara did not stop "interfering" in his region.
Mr Erdogan said Mr Barzani would "be crushed by his own words". The Iraqi Kurdish leadership, he said, was "making very serious mistakes, and the cost will be very heavy".
The threats and counter-threats mark a fresh low point in relations between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. A few weeks ago Mr Erdogan was tentatively suggesting that official contact be established between them.
But that idea was strongly rejected by the Turkish military. The military and civilian leadership in Ankara has also become frustrated at its inability to influence events in Iraq as the prospect of an independent Kurdistan, with its capital in the oil-rich, Kurdish-dominated city of Kirkuk, moves ever closer.
Now, amid a heavy build-up of Turkish forces along the country's border with Iraq, some diplomats said the poisoned atmosphere could hasten a long-threatened "incursion" into Iraqi territory by Turkish forces to target the PKK Kurdish separatist movement.
Any such incursion would be fiercely opposed by the US and by Iraq. Abdullah Gul, Turkey's foreign minister, tele- phoned Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, on Saturday to relay Turkey's concerns after Mr Barzani's remarks were broadcast on Al Arabiyah TV.
Ten Turkish soldiers and about the same number of PKK fighters have been killed in clashes in the past three days in Turkey's eastern provinces of Tunceli and Bingol. The death toll was the highest in several weeks. Turkey is home to an estimated 12m Kurds. Security forces and the PKK fought a 15-year civil war in the 1980s and 1990s that killed at least 35,000 people.
Some of Turkey's rhetoric towards the Iraqi Kurdish leadership is rooted in a febrile political atmosphere in Ankara ahead of the appointment next month of a new president, and a general election later this year.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
MANIFESTATION IMPRESSIONANTE POUR DIRE NON A L'OCCUPATION
Najaf, le 9 avril 2007
OUI A L'IRAK, OUI A LA SOUVERAINETE, NON A L'OCCUPATION!!!
Rien ne pourra arrêter le peuple irakien dans sa lutte pour recouvrer sa liberté.
A l'appel de Moqtada al-Sadr ils étaient des centaines de milliers à Najaf pour exiger le départ des troupes d'occupation étrangères et pour appeler à l'unité du peuple irakien.
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