[nasional_list] [ppiindia] The Kurdish defection
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- Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 00:45:15 +0100
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**http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC25Ak01.html
Mar 25, 2006
The Kurdish defection
By Iason Athanasiadis
SOLEYMANIYEH, northern Iraq - His desk was cluttered with two Motorola
walkie-talkies, a handgun and several thousand dollars' worth of confiscated
opium and hashish.
Despite this impressive display - all 25 or so kilos of it intercepted in just
the past month as it entered the country across the Iranian border - the
high-ranking Kurdish counter-narcotics official was not happy.
"Drugs are a new phenomenon in our society," he said. "Iran is trying to funnel
the drug into Kurdistan and spread it among us. They're trying to weaken our
society in every possible way, so as to discourage us from forming our own
state."
Iran's enormous land mass forms a land bridge between the poppy fields and hash
plantations of Afghanistan and users in Kurdistan, Turkey and Europe.
Well-organized drug networks employ an array of sophisticated techniques to
move heroin, opium and hashish from the arid plains of Iran's lawless
Sistan-Balochistan province across the barren Dasht-e Kavir desert and on to
the ports of Abadan, Bushehr and Bandar Abbas. From there or across the land
routes of Iranian Kurdistan, the drugs are transferred in anonymous bags or
containers by ship, airplane or donkey over the mountains of the northern
Arabian Peninsula and through northern Iraq.
"If they spread it in our universities, our people will become weaker," the
official told Asia Times Online. "They seek to paralyze our economy, our
community, our society." Such anti-Iranian accusations are increasing in
northern Iraq, where a Kurdish majority is anxious to claim independence as
soon as possible from an ever more disintegrating federal Iraq. In Baghdad,
Kurdish leader and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has redrawn post-Saddam
Iraq's political map by ditching his Shi'ite allies and throwing his support
behind the same Sunni community that once formed the Kurd-oppressing backbone
of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The geopolitical shift has not gone unnoticed in Tehran, which - aside from
supporting Iraq's majority Shi'ite community - has also cultivated both sides
of the Kurdish leadership in the past. It is now reportedly unhappy over the
new alignment. The Kurdish defection and Iran's search for new strategic
partners may have been part of the reason Tehran decided to hold talks over
Iraq's future with US Ambassador to Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad.
In the provincial capital Soleymaniyeh, the stronghold of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) and arguably the safest city in the north, the calm was
shattered last week by riots in Halabja, a provincial town one hour's drive
away that achieved notoriety in 1988 after Saddam gassed to death an estimated
5,000 of its residents.
The disturbances occurred on the morning of the anniversary of the gas attack
that launched the town's notoriety. About 7,000 demonstrators protested that
they have been forgotten by the central government, whose officials make a
once-yearly appearance to commiserate with them about the tragedy but allegedly
forget about them the rest of the year. The security forces are reported to
have opened fire, killing a 14-year-old boy and injuring several others.
"It was terrible the way the authorities handled the protests there," said Araz
Kamal, 24, a cigarette seller sitting in a Soleymaniyeh tea house. "Until now,
the government has done nothing for them."
But PUK authorities are sticking by their accusations that Iranian elements are
hiding behind the disturbances. The town is also in the center of an area that
used to be the stronghold of an Iranian-backed Islamist organization called
Ansar al-Islam. Witnesses at the scene of the rioting recalled seeing
well-known Islamists among the crowd shouting "Allahu akbar" as the monument
burned. PUK intelligence claims that some of the demonstrators used mobile
telephones to call the 12th branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which
enjoys close relations with local Islamists and Iran, and update it on the
latest developments.
Iran's new-found unpopularity comes as its favored allies in Iraq - the
Shi'ites - seek to form a controversial government against Kurdish- and
Sunni-led opposition in Baghdad. Increased clashes between the Iranian army and
a Kurdish militia called Pezhak in Iran's Kordestan province have led to the
deaths of at least 40 Kurds in recent months and dismayed the Iraqi Kurdish
leadership. Pezhak is the Iranian militia offshoot of the separatist Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK) that has been battling the Turkish government in
southeastern Turkey.
At a time when the rest of Iraq spirals into bloodshed, Kurdistan is seen by
regional powers Iran and Turkey as an increasingly critical strategic region.
The political impetus is shifting from the clutch of mostly secular politicians
who have spent the past three months huddled in Baghdad's isolated Green Zone
fortress to the Sunni and Shi'ite clerics who are in daily contact with people
in the streets. The Kurds hope to stem this tendency, even as the ruling
clerics in Tehran watch with approval the Iraqi drift toward popular Muslim
figures.
In Arbil, the political capital of northern Iraq, Kurdish politicians are
sounding cautious notes about the prospect of independence. The Speaker of the
Kurdish parliament, Adnan al-Mufti, has been forced to erect a checkpoint
outside his pleasant house and barricade it behind suicide-bomb barriers. A
victim of attempted poisoning and the target of a bombing, he is described as
the ultimate Kurdish political insider.
"The Iranians have their own policy and it's something very complicated," he
said. "The Iraqi people cannot be used as a card in this game. We cannot be
used as pawns by the region's powers."
Iason Athanasiadis is an Iran-based correspondent.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
about sales, syndication and republishing .
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