Kurds Advancing to Reclaim Land in Northern Iraq

[nostamj]

while you were listening to the insipid chimp tell you how wonderful things were in Iraq... in fact, it's chaos. Front page news in the Sunday NY Times....

===============================

MAKHMUR, Iraq, June 17 — Thousands of ethnic Kurds are pushing into lands formerly held by Iraqi Arabs, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to ramshackle refugee camps and transforming the demographic and political map of northern Iraq. The Kurds are returning to lands from which they were expelled by the armies of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors in the Baath Party, who ordered thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed and sent waves of Iraqi Arabs north to fill the area with supporters.

In Baghdad, American officials say they are struggling to keep the displaced Kurds on the north side of the Green Line, the boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region. The Americans agree that the Kurds deserve to return to their ancestral lands, but they want an orderly migration to avoid ethnic strife and political instability.

But thousands of Kurds appear to be ignoring the American orders. New Kurdish families show up every day at the camps that mark the landscape here, settling into tents and tumble-down homes as they wait to reclaim their former lands. The Kurdish migration appears to be causing widespread misery, with Arabs complaining of expulsions and even murders at the hands of Kurdish returnees. Many of the Kurdish refugees themselves are gathered in crowded camps.

American officials say as many as 100,000 Arabs have fled their homes in north-central Iraq and are now scattered in squalid camps across the center of the country. With the anti-American insurgency raging across much of the same area, the Arab refugees appear to be receiving neither food nor shelter from the Iraqi government, relief organizations or American forces.

MUCH MORE



Thousands of Arabs, like these children living in a damaged building in Baquba, have been forced from their homes in northern Iraq by Kurds.



A tent city, next to a stadium in Kirkuk, where tens of thousands of displaced Kurds live. Since the end of the war, many Kurds have moved back to this oil-rich area, hoping that the new government would set aside some land for returnees. They are still waiting.

[MattNC]

1. seeing those UN tents

really makes me appreciate my life here in the U.S.:-(

[madrchsod]

2. that`s really going to make

turkey really happy. now they will be massing troops along the border and with iran to the south,looks like our troops are screwed. we`d better get them out before we get trapped in an all out political/ethnic/religous civil war

[nostamj]

3. it makes today's Doonesbury

all the more pointed.

"what's going on in the world?" indeed.

this topic isn't getting any play. (and will die quickly here I suspect)

[LittleApple81]

4. I cannot remember who posted this, but Turkey essentially seems

to have agreed not to attack the Kurds if they get more "independence" of self-determination from Iraq. WE ARE SCREWED, ME THINKS.

[nostamj]

5. making an 'agreement' with BushCo

is pretty much a guarantee to be screwed by BushCo.

i don't see any nation trusting the US these days.

so, yes, we are TOTALLY SCREWED or, in a state of PERPETUAL SCREWIFICATION that has lasted over three years now

[LittleApple81]

7. SCREWIFICATION!!!!! So that is what I have been feeling! You are better

than a doctor at diagnosis. Thanks!

[LittleApple81]

8. By the way, I found the thread where the Turkey "agreement" with

the Kurds appeared:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=632746

[nostamj]

9. interesting...

even the Kurds are divided amongst themselves.

Turkey "wants to have the best relations with the Kurdistan region alongside its relations with the Iraqi government," said Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two former rebel groups that run rival administrations in northern Iraq.

[robertpaulsen]

11. I didn't know until today it was Barzani all along.

And Bush is the Godfather.

[Paradise]

6. what a mess!

i know, i know, i keep repeating myself.

[DeepModem Mom]

10. kick

[mmonk]

12. Sounds as if they have had enough

and don't trust the process anymore.

[seemslikeadream]

13. Interview With Seymour - What are the Israelis doing in Iraq?

Interview With Seymour Hersh LATE EDITION

Edited on Sun Jun-20-04 04:40 PM by seemslikeadream


What are the Israelis doing in Iraq?

SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER" MAGAZINE: They're in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. They're not in Iraq central. They're in northern Iraq, and they're working with the Kurds. Their long-time friends.

And what the Israelis did, as I write about, they decided six months ago, this was a no-win for us. We were in real trouble without a major change in policy.

And one of the Israeli issues all along had been that the United States was very slow to recognize the fact that Iran was playing a peaceful but very aggressive role in helping the insurgency against us. And they tried, they batted heads against us, and we would not listen. This is the White House and the Defense Department.

So they took the option of going in there with their old allies, the Kurds, and they're beginning run operations against the people they really are frightened of, the Iranians, nuclear issue, and the Syrians. They like to pose trouble for the Syrians.

The only problem with their operation is that it puts them face to face with the Turks.

BLITZER: Well, we're going to get to that in the moment because the Israelis have a long-standing, very good relationship with Turkey, as well.

But what you're saying is that there are Israeli operatives in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan, the Kurdish part of northern Iraq, that are, what, engaged in actions against Iran?

HERSH: Intelligence-gathering. There's no gun play here. We're talking about Israeli operatives, and many of them are going in -- some Masad people go in without passports. They're not wearing uniforms. They're undercover.

How many? A few hundred probably is the best guess, maybe more even. But what they're doing -- and don't forget, there's always been, as I say, a long ties, a lot of economic ties, a lot of Kurdish Jews are very friendly with -- emigrated to Israel. There's a lot of ties.

What they're doing is they're -- Kurdistan puts them very close to some very central potential nuclear sites in Iran, and they're running operations with the Kurds into Iran setting up, you know, the kind of devices, you have the sniffers, the kind of activity you get to see what kind of nuclear goings on might be going on.

BLITZER: So it's basically an intelligence-gathering operation for the Israelis in cooperation with the Kurds, the Iraqi Kurds.


more
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/20/le.00.html