A Kurdish Society of Soldiers

In Rugged N. Iraq, Guerrillas Forge a Unity Based on Hardship and Defiance

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 8, 2008; A01

ZAP VALLEY, Iraq -- On the day the Turkish soldiers withdrew from Iraq, 40 Kurdish guerrillas convened to bury five of their dead.

The corpses were wrapped in black plastic and camouflage tarp, lashed to stretchers fashioned from branches, and draped in the flag of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. In silence the guerrillas stacked large rocks into five piles, resting the stretchers end-to-end on the cairns. They stood in two rows with machine guns pointed above the mountains that surrounded them and waited for their leader to speak.

"The Turkish army could not capture any of our territory, could not get one of our bases, our weapons or even a scrap of nylon," Bahoz Erdal, the 39-year-old military commander of the Kurdish guerrillas, told his serried ranks. "The Turkish army didn't have any chance to rest. When they attacked, we hit them. When they made camp, we hit them. Even when they pulled back, we hit them."

The conclusion of the eight-day battle last Friday along Iraq's northern border was described by Turkey's government as the scheduled end to a successful incursion that crippled its enemies, destroying hundreds of their caves and hideouts. But ultimately the battle ended where it had begun, with the intractable guerrillas in sole control of hundreds of miles of mountainous terrain.

At the funeral, the quiet ending to their latest war, some guerrillas bowed their heads but no tears were shed.

"In the last 10 days in Zap, our fighters displayed their historic heroism," Erdal told his soldiers. "In this defense, you brought back again the fighting spirit of the PKK."

A Washington Post correspondent and staff photographer who spent five days inside rebel territory during and after the battle -- the only reporters allowed to accompany the guerrillas through this period -- observed a self-sufficient society, with its own rituals and traditions, that bears no resemblance to the rest of Iraq. Access, however, was limited to the people and places the guerrillas chose to reveal, and it was difficult to verify details of the battle because of the vast distances between locations.

What was clear was that years in these snowcapped mountains have forged the fighters into rugged ascetics. Although they have based themselves in northern Iraq, they are oriented elsewhere, choosing even to live on Turkish time, an hour behind Iraq's. They are based in the heart of the Islamic Middle East but are largely uninterested in religion or the cultures they abandoned in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. They relate their struggle to those of the American revolutionaries who fought the British crown, and the Cuban guerrillas who followed Fidel Castro down from the Sierra Maestra mountains.

"We are fighting for democracy, for freedom," said Osman Delbrine, a 32-year-old guerrilla with eight years in the mountains. "We are fighting for peace and for all Kurds in all nations."

Their tactics can be ruthless. They slip over the border to blow up Turkish soldiers and retreat back to Iraq. It is more unusual for them to be on the defensive, protecting their territory from Turkish attack. The PKK, with 4,000 to 5,000 fighters, according to the U.S. State Department, represents less of a threat than it once did to the Turkish government. But the group is benefiting from a resurgence of nationalist feeling among the 25 million Kurds dispersed throughout the region.

The PKK leaders say they are no longer fighting for an independent Kurdish state, or even to replicate or expand the semiautonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. Rather, they say, they want their people to speak Kurdish in schools, to receive national identification cards, to have equal rights for women, to avoid persecution by state security forces, and to gain respect and political influence wherever they live. To walk among the guerrillas, however, is to feel some are also fighting to prolong their communal, socialist experiment and to be left alone.

"In society, in the cities, I feel like someone is choking me," said Berivan, a 27-year-old female guerrilla. "In the mountains I feel free."

The guerrillas receive no salaries. They sew their olive-drab wool uniforms and treat their wounded. They have no homes and live in peripatetic motion, walking goat trails and dry creek beds, through mossy boulder fields and across slabs of brindled rock. The small villages that dot this territory are abandoned now, the lone paved road deserted. The guerrillas sleep on bedrolls in caves or under the stars, drink spring water and eat what they can forage or smuggle in from civilization.

"Our life is totally different than yours," one guerrilla said.

Although the PKK welcomes visitors, the Kurdistan Regional Government of northern Iraq has tried to bar outsiders, particularly journalists, from entering the area where the authorities effectively tolerate the guerrillas. After receiving an invitation to tour the area, The Post's journalists hiked for eight hours, first up a rocky path for herders to the top of a mountain overlooking Kurdish towns to the south, then down a precipitous slope a local guide said was littered with land mines. Along the way, it was necessary to shimmy across a steel bridge mangled by Turkish bombs and crouch below boulders when warplanes flew overhead. The mountains rang with the spatter of gunfire and the discharge of distant bombs. At dusk, the first guerrilla -- wearing camouflage and carrying a Kalashnikov rifle -- appeared from behind a tree in a rock-strewn ravine. Others soon emerged, and one of them held out his hand.

"Welcome to our mountain," he said in English.

'He Was My Best Friend'

The Turkish military invasion, known as Operation Sun, began Feb. 21 with an aerial bombardment, followed by a push of a reported 2,000 ground troops in various passes across the 200-mile border Turkey shares with Iraq.

The thrust of the ground battle targeted the Zap Valley, a crucial region in the western portion of the guerrillas' territory, home to their headquarters, training camps, underground storage rooms, burial plots and fighters manning their Russian-made antiaircraft Dushka machine-gun positions on the snowy peaks. Erdal, the high-strung, fast-talking guerrilla commander, abandoned his medical school studies in Damascus, Syria, two decades ago to join the PKK. Since then, he has fixated on fighting Turkey.

"It's not random that they are attacking this area," he said. "The army that they brought is enough to capture an area like Zap. But when you use a very big army, it's difficult to organize, and your movements will be slow."

In the end, Erdal said, his guerrillas drove Turkey back down from the mountains after killing more than 120 of its soldiers; Turkey claimed to have lost 24. The disparity was larger on the guerrilla side: Erdal and several others insisted that just 10 of their own were killed, while Turkey put the number at more than 230.

One of the corpses lashed to the branches on the day of the funeral belonged to Ayhan Eruh. During preparations for the funeral, the names of the dead were written on scraps of white paper tied to their chests. This was a scene Roshat Sarhat, a 30-year-old guerrilla who once was a journalist in Istanbul, had no interest in seeing. He stayed in an abandoned stone hut on a hillside far from the service. The bare single room was silent but for the crackle of his radio and the buzz of a surveillance drone high overhead.

"He was my best friend," Sarhat said. Eruh had died on the first day of the battle.

'The Mountain Teaches Us'

Throughout the fighting, the hundreds of guerrillas used the same battle-tested tactics they have relied on for years: Move quickly, hit and retreat, harass and confuse the more-powerful enemy. They carry AK-47s, sniper rifles, shoulder-fired rockets and hand grenades.

"Some of our attacks required only five guerrillas, and others used 50 or 60," Erdal said. "For example, you send five guerrillas to a huge army at night, they attack them and leave the area; then these soldiers cannot sleep until the morning. In a different situation, you use 50 or 60 guerrillas to hold a mountain."

After President Bush met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in November to discuss the PKK problem, the guerrillas rushed to make arrangements for battle. They stashed ammunition, weapons, food and water in caves and crags throughout the mountains, for quick resupply. Inside one such cave, they installed a cylindrical, metal wood-burning stove and chimney to heat a room constructed of army green cloth and plastic tarp.

"The mountain is a school for us," said Elif, a 32-year-old commander who dropped out of interior design school in Turkey 10 years ago to join the PKK. "The mountain teaches us how to walk, it taught us how to live in cold weather, how to go without eating for a long time," she said. "The Turkish soldiers have huge bodies, but they can't stay in the snow for more than a couple hours."

In the mountains they communicate using cellphone text messages or speak in code over hand-held Yaesu radios on ever-changing frequencies. If they occupy an abandoned home, they blanket the windows to hide the light and build fires at night to hide the smoke. "We are not scared," Sarhat said. "But we are always careful."

Sarhat, a somber, serious man, joined the PKK a decade ago after working as a television reporter in Turkey. He was born to Kurdish parents in the city of Van but did not learn his ancestral language because teaching it in the schools was forbidden. As he grew older and studied Kurdish history, he felt increasingly angry that his culture was suppressed.

"Anywhere the Kurds live in Turkey, you can't act like a Kurd. You can't have your own identification, you can't have your own history or culture," he said. "I realized that they took my nation's rights, our education, our identity. Then I decided to join the PKK."

In wartime the guerrillas fill various roles. There are medics with UNICEF first-aid kits, cooks and videographers, frontline fighters and logisticians. Yet they are also uniform down to the smallest details. They smoke one brand of cigarettes, Business Royales, and nearly all wear peach-colored Turkish Mekap sneakers with orange laces.

The guerrillas are not a people's army or ad hoc insurgency, but a trained paramilitary force that requires every new recruit to attend a three-month camp to study military tactics and become indoctrinated in the ideology of the imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The PKK's separatist war against Turkish authorities, which began in 1984 and lasted for a decade and a half, claimed the lives of about 35,000 people, mostly Kurds in southeastern Turkey.

In the PKK enclave in northern Iraq, Ocalan's chubby, mustachioed face is emblazoned on hillsides, flags and small pins the fighters wear on their vests. The reverence they exhibit toward Ocalan, captured in 1999 in Nairobi and now in a Turkish prison, borders on cultish. After assassination attempts against Ocalan in the 1990s, guerrillas immolated themselves and some became suicide bombers. To the governments of Turkey, Iraq and the United States, those tactics solidified the PKK's reputation as a terrorist organization.

"We don't want any mother in the world to have to receive the body of her dead son," said Hadar Afreen, a 26-year-old guerrilla who grew up outside Aleppo, Syria. "We don't want to fight; we want to be peaceful. But if they attack us, we will defend ourselves."

The PKK recruits many of its fighters when they are teenagers or college students and has been criticized for exploiting young people and effectively trapping them in the guerrilla force. But more than a dozen people interviewed last week said they came to the fight willingly. Some said they joined because their villages had been attacked or relatives slain by Turkish soldiers.

Afreen came to the mountains as an 18-year-old after she was told by Arab teachers she must join Syria's ruling Baath Party while in high school or face expulsion. She was familiar with the books of Ocalan and considered him a hero. She left a note for her parents saying she was joining the PKK, sneaked out of the house and has not spoken to them since.

"What I'm doing here is more important than my parents," she said.

After Erdal's speech at the funeral, the guerrillas, in solemn procession, marched the corpses up the mountainside, through wild grass meadows and over footbridges spanning two rushing creeks, until they reached their stone-walled cemetery surrounded by craters from Turkish bombs. With shovels and picks, they dug five spaces in the rows of cinder-block graves. They pushed the scraps of paper bearing names inside clear plastic bottles and placed them in the graves. Then they covered their dead with dirt and blank stone slabs and dispersed without ceremony back into the mountains.

Staff photographer Andrea Bruce and special correspondent Dlovan Brwari contributed to this report.

Turkey Resumes Strikes in Iraq's North

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 6, 2008; A18

BAGHDAD, March 5 -- Five days after withdrawing its troops from northern Iraq, Turkey launched another round of air and artillery strikes on Kurdish guerrilla territory there, a sign that the offensive against the rebels will continue, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

Turkish warplanes and artillery pounded the Zap area, according to the officials, the same mountainous region in Iraq in which Turkish ground troops fought guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in an eight-day offensive that ended Friday. The area, which civilians have largely evacuated, is the PKK's main base in northern Iraq.

Staff Gen. Omar Sharif of the Iraqi border forces said no casualties were reported in the latest Turkish strikes. The PKK guerrillas are skilled at moving quickly and hiding in the mountains, making it difficult to disrupt their activities.

Abdullah Ahmed, a spokesman for the Iraqi Kurdish Pesh Merga military forces in Amadiyah, a Kurdish town near the area that was bombed, said the barrage lasted about 2 1/2 hours.

After months of sporadic bombing and shelling, Turkey sent ground troops into Iraq late last month to confront the Kurdish guerrillas. Many people in the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq saw the incursion as a violation of their sovereignty. Iraqi Kurdish officials also feared that Turkey had designs beyond quelling the PKK, such as damaging the region's economy.

Turkish officials, who did not immediately confirm Wednesday's bombing, said their target was exclusively the guerrillas, who have fought the Turkish government for decades in the name of securing more rights for the millions of Kurds who live in Turkey and neighboring countries.

Also Wednesday, the U.S. military released from custody two former high-ranking Shiite government officials who had been accused of kidnapping and killing Sunnis. They were freed after Iraqi prosecutors decided Monday to drop the charges against them.

The Iraqi judicial system's handling of the cases against the two former Health Ministry officials -- Hakim al-Zamili, who was deputy minister, and Brig. Gen. Hamid Hamza Alwan Abbas al-Shamari, who led the agency's security force -- drew wide criticism from Sunnis and Americans on the grounds that it showed a sectarian bias in the government in favor of the two defendants because they are Shiites.

The men, followers of Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, were accused of helping murder Sunni doctors, using ambulances to run guns for militiamen and torturing and kidnapping Sunni hospital patients. An Iraqi prosecutor asked that the case be dropped for lack of evidence, though American legal advisers had said there was ample evidence.

Zamili was greeted at his Sadr City home by a large, joyful crowd, according to the Associated Press. Many of the people joined him for lunch in a tent erected in his honor to celebrate his release.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni political group, issued a statement Wednesday calling the men's release "a black mark and a grave setback in the history of the Iraqi judicial system" that could draw the country "into disaster."

Special correspondents Dlovan Brwari and Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.

Turkey continues raids in northern Iraq

Talks between Turkish and Iraqi officials yield nothing, as Pentagon chief Gates arrives in Ankara for talks. He says he'll urge a quick end to the operation.
By Borzou Daragahi and Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

February 28, 2008

BAGHDAD — A sixth day of fighting continued Wednesday between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels in Iraq as U.S., Turkish and Iraqi officials clashed over terms for ending the conflict.

Iraqi officials have demanded that Turkey halt the operation in the northeastern mountains of Iraq and withdraw immediately.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who arrived in Ankara, the Turkish capital, Wednesday night, told reporters he intended to advise Turkish leaders that their incursion into northern Iraq must last no more than a few weeks. He also planned to tell them that the military operation should be complemented by political efforts to resolve the grievances of the Kurdish minority in eastern Turkey.

But Turkey ruled out specifying a timetable for an end to the offensive.

"Our objective is clear, our mission is clear and there is no timetable until . . . those terrorist bases are eliminated," Turkish envoy Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters after talks in Baghdad with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

Turkish troops, artillery and fighter planes pushed into the northern Iraqi mountain stronghold of the Kurdistan Workers Party, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, which has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish government for a quarter-century.

Kurds, spread out over Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, constitute the world's largest ethnic group without a nation. They have periodically clashed with the region's Arab, Iranian and Turkish governments. And Turkey has long complained that PKK fighters have used the semiautonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks.

Gates is scheduled to meet with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, as well as the country's military leadership, today. He said he would use the meetings to caution the government that the Bush administration expected Turkish troops to return to their side of the border quickly.

"Making this operation as quick and as precisely targeted as possible and then getting out is important," Gates told a small group of reporters in New Delhi before departing Wednesday for Ankara. "I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that, not months."

The incursion has become increasingly awkward for the U.S. as the Iraqi Cabinet and the Kurdish regional government have condemned the move, calling it a violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

Both Turkey and Iraq are U.S. allies, and Washington has been providing intelligence to Ankara on operations of the PKK, which has been carrying out attacks on Turkish military and civilian targets in the border regions.

Gates declined to comment on what the United States would do about the growing tensions between Turkey and Iraq, saying he would wait for discussions with Turkish leaders before making any assessments.

The Pentagon chief said the military action by Turkey would not solve the problem of Kurdish insurgency unless it was accompanied by economic development in Kurdish territories and the political will to address the community's grievances.

"There certainly is a place for security operations, but these also need to be accompanied with economic and political initiatives that begin to deal with some of the issues that provide a favorable local environment where the PKK can operate," Gates said. "They need to address some of the issues and complaints that some of the Kurds have."

The latest Turkish offensive began after months of efforts by Turkish officials failed to convince Iraqi and U.S. security officials to crack down on the PKK.

Reports on casualty figures differed. Turkish officials said 77 Kurdish fighters were "neutralized," but did not elaborate, and five Turkish soldiers and three village guards were killed in the fighting. A PKK official said five of the group's fighters had been killed in the last round of clashes.

Witnesses said 50 families were displaced amid heavy artillery bombardment. Kurds said the Turks destroyed several bridges and planted mines around new encampments deep inside Iraqi territory.

A PKK spokesman said the group's fighters were succeeding.

"We have the Turkish forces trapped," said Ahmed Denis, a PKK spokesman reached by telephone.

Since the 1990s, Turkey has launched dozens of offensives against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq, often with the tacit or explicit permission of Iraqi Kurds. But the latest operation comes at a time of heightened Kurdish nationalism and clout in Iraq and has sparked angry protests among Kurds as well as vehement denunciations by Iraqi officials.

The Kurdistan regional government's parliament, based in Irbil, on Tuesday authorized its troops to attack Turkish forces if they expanded their offensive beyond the PKK's forbidding mountain hide-outs.

The Turkish delegation that arrived Wednesday in Baghdad was met with icy comments. The diplomats emerged for a media appearance after 2 1/2 hours of talks. Foreign Minister Zebari, a Kurd, described the latest incursion as "unprecedented" and "not acceptable."

"Our message to the Turks is to cease the military operation immediately and to withdraw the Turkish military troops as soon as possible and to negotiate with Iraq to solve this problem," he said.

For his part, Turkish diplomat Davutoglu extended an invitation to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd, to travel to Ankara on an official state visit. "The invitation is accepted," Zebari said, "provided the timing is convenient and there are no Turkish troops on Iraqi territory."

daragahi@latimes.com

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

Daragahi reported from Baghdad and Spiegel from Ankara. Special correspondents Asso Ahmed in Irbil, Yesim Comert in Istanbul, Turkey, and others in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Iraq Sounds Alarm on Clashes in North

Turkey Warned Not to Expand Offensive Against Kurdish Rebels

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; A12

BAGHDAD, Feb. 25 -- Turkish troops and Kurdish guerrillas clashed Monday for the fifth consecutive day in two areas of northern Iraq, the Turkish military said, as senior Iraqi officials warned that a widened and prolonged incursion could lead to serious repercussions for the region.

In a statement, Turkey's general staff said its forces killed 41 Kurdish guerrillas in fighting Monday, bringing the total killed to 153 since the launch of the biggest Turkish offensive into Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The military also reported two more Turkish troops killed Monday, bringing the total to 17.

"Close combat with the terrorists is continuing in two separate zones," the Turkish military said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK. "The troops in the critical zones of the operation were reinforced and some of the troops were replaced by fresh forces."

PKK leaders in northern Iraq reported casualty numbers that diverged sharply from the Turkish figures. Mizgin Ahmed, of the party's 31-member governing council, said that a total of four guerrillas had been killed and two wounded since the incursion began and that PKK forces had killed 81 Turkish soldiers.

Ahmed said Turkish forces had not been able to advance into Iraq beyond their initial push of about three miles. "We have enough numbers to be able to fight their forces," she said in an interview in PKK-controlled territory near the town of Raniyah in northern Iraq. "We have a right to defend ourselves and we will defend ourselves to the end."

The guerrillas have long used Iraq's forbidding mountains to stage attacks in Turkey, first in an attempt to carve a Kurdish state out of Turkey but now largely in the pursuit of Kurdish autonomy. Turkish forces launched the incursion last Thursday following a series of PKK attacks on Turkish soldiers and civilians. For years, Turkey's government has complained that Iraq's government was unwilling to contain the PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States.

In Baghdad, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie declared at a news conference Monday that the fighting could have "very serious consequences."

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani warned Turkey against any expansion.

"The operations are still limited operations, and the government has expressed its concern," Bolani said. "If the operation is widened, definitely Iraq will defend its sovereignty and territory."

He said the United States should do more to encourage the Turks to withdraw. U.S. troops "are the greatest force on the ground. They have certain obligations," Bolani said. "They could do more."

Contradicting statements by other Iraqi officials, he said Turkey did not consult with Iraq before launching the operation. "No Iraqi official would agree to an incursion across his borders," Bolani said.

When asked whether he was concerned that forces of the Kurdish regional government would ignore Iraq's central government and take unilateral action against the Turkish troops, Bolani replied that Iraq's constitution would not allow such a confrontation. "But if the targeting was expanded, definitely no one can keep silent," he added.

In Ankara, the Turkish capital, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek stressed that the operation was against only PKK guerrillas, not Iraqi civilians or Iraq's government.

"When this operation has hit its targets, our units will return home," he said, without elaborating.

Funerals for three Turkish soldiers drew thousands in Ankara on Monday, bringing traffic in the center of the city to a standstill. Some Turkish soldiers wore puffy white winter camouflage uniforms to show solidarity with their comrades fighting in Iraq. Meanwhile, Turkish forces in Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's eastern Kurdish region, broke up a fiery protest against the offensive in northern Iraq. It was the largest opposition protest since the incursion began.

In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed four Shiite pilgrims and injured 15, the third incident to target thousands of worshipers traveling to the southern holy city of Karbala to commemorate one of Shiite Islam's most sacred days -- the end of the 40th day of mourning after the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad who was killed in a 7th-century battle.

Meanwhile, the death toll from a suicide bombing near the southern city of Iskandariyah targeting pilgrims on Sunday rose to 56, making it one of the deadliest assaults this year.

In the town of Samarra on Monday, a man in a wheelchair detonated explosives he was carrying, killing deputy police commander Abdul Jabbar Rabei Salih al-Jubori in his office, police said. In the city of Buhriz, in Diyala province, gunmen ambushed and killed eight Iraqi soldiers, police said.

Correspondents Joshua Partlow in northern Iraq and Ellen Knickmeyer in Ankara and special correspondent Saad al-Izzi in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Iraq calls on U.S. to intervene in Turkish incursion

The fighting between its ally and a Kurdish separatist group it considers a terrorist organization puts the Bush administration in a bind. 'They could do more,' an Iraqi official says.
By Asso Ahmed and Tina Susman
Special to The Times

February 26, 2008

SHILADEZAH, IRAQ — Artillery and gunfire echoed through the mountains of northern Iraq on Monday during continued clashes between invading Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels, with Turkey saying that 153 guerrillas had been killed in four days.

Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bolani suggested that the United States should do more to stop the fighting, which has left villagers stranded by bombed-out bridges.

"They are the greatest force on the ground. They have certain obligations," Bolani said Monday of the U.S. military, which has neither intervened in nor commented on the Turkish incursion. "They could do more."

The conflict between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has put American officials in an uncomfortable position. Turkey is a NATO ally, and the U.S. government considers the PKK to be a terrorist organization. The rebels are seeking a separate Kurdish state.

The White House has confirmed that it knew in advance of Turkey's latest military operation, which began Thursday night. American officials have said Turkey has the right to defend itself against the PKK, which has bases in northern Iraq.

But the U.S. also has an allegiance to Iraq's government, which has protested the Turkish incursion.

"Iraq has requested that the Turkish troops go back to Turkey and respect Iraq's sovereignty," Bolani said at a meeting with foreign journalists.

In Washington, Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview that he could not say how long the military operation would last but promised it would be "limited in size, scope and duration."

"This is only targeted at the PKK," he said. "We have no other agenda."

Sensoy said that Turkish media reports that 10,000 troops were involved in the operation were "greatly exaggerated," but he would not say how large a force was taking part.

Turkey said 15 of its soldiers had been killed so far. However, PKK spokesman Ahmed Denis said the Turkish death toll was far higher.

There was no way to independently confirm the number of casualties on either side, but the frustration and anger of locals in the rugged region was clear.

"Why are the Turks doing this, in our land, our country?" said Aska Shazeen, who said she was unable to reach her home in the village of Rashya because the bridge she had to cross was destroyed. "Who is responsible?" she cried.

At a cafe in Shiladezah, about 20 miles south of the Turkish border in Iraq's Dahuk province, Nijrvan Khalil expressed the sentiments of many locals as he vowed to fight the Turks if the clashes caused any civilian casualties or targeted regions outside of PKK areas of operation.

"I'll be the first to take up arms against them," he said of the Turks.

Most Iraqi Kurds sympathize with the demands of Turkey's minority Kurds for their own homeland.

"They are Kurds like us," said Khalifa Qadir, another customer in the cafe, where a TV was showing news coverage of some Kurds in Turkey demonstrating for independence.

"This is a nation that won't vanish easily," said Qadir. "Their demands should be answered."

The latest fighting has raised concerns that the peshmerga, the fighting forces of Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan regional government, could become entangled in the clashes if the Turks are seen as violating their vow to hit only the PKK.

An official with the Kurdistan regional government, Mohammed Muhsin, said the local administration did not want to become part of the conflict but that there was a line over which Turkey must not cross.

"From our side, we have a red line: when our safe villages and the citizens are being attacked by the Turkish army," he said. "We will strike with all that we've got, and the people will participate with the peshmerga."

At the site of a bridge that once connected people from dozens of villages in the Amadiya district, about 15 miles from the Turkish border, the sounds of gunfire and artillery shells were clear. Jets flew over without opening fire, but a peshmerga soldier quickly ushered visiting journalists from the area.

"We must get back," he said. "It is possible the area will be bombarded."

tina.susman@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ahmed reported from Shiladezah and Times staff writer Susman from Baghdad. Staff writers Julian E. Barnes and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.

Turkey Says 127 Killed in Iraq Battles; U.S. Urges Restraint

By Ken Fireman and Mark Bentley

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Turkey said the death toll in three days of battles with Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq reached 127, as the U.S. urged a swift end to the incursion.

Turkey's armed forces have killed 112 militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, including 33 today, the military said on its Web site. Fifteen Turkish soldiers have also died in the conflict, it said.

``We will continue the operation with the same determination and heroism until planned targets are reached,'' the military said, adding that jets, artillery and helicopters had hit 63 suspected PKK targets since troops went over the border on Feb. 21.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Turkey should wrap up the military campaign, adding Turkey won't be able to solve the problem of cross-border Kurdish raids through purely military means.

``I would hope that it would be short, that it would be precise and avoid the loss of innocent life, and that they leave as quickly as they can accomplish their mission,'' Gates told reporters today in Canberra, Australia.

Turkey has fought the autonomy-seeking PKK for two decades at the cost of almost 40,000 lives, most of them Kurdish. The U.S. and the European Union brand the group as terrorists.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Canberra at kfireman1@bloomberg.net Mark Bentley in Ankara at mbentley3@bloomberg.net

Turkey Sends Soldiers Into N. Iraq

Offensive Against Kurdish Separatists Alarms Baghdad

By Joshua Partlow and Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 23, 2008; A11

DAHUK, Iraq, Feb. 22 -- After months of sporadic shelling targeting the mountain hideouts of Kurdish guerrilla fighters, Turkey sent tanks and ground troops into northern Iraq on Thursday afternoon in an incursion that escalated the tension between the neighboring countries.

The incursion marked the first time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that Turkish soldiers in large numbers have crossed onto Iraqi soil. The offensive alarmed Iraqi officials, who have condemned violence by the separatist Kurdish guerrillas in the past but do not want to see a large-scale Turkish invasion.

"This has been a serious escalation," Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said in an interview. "We hope that this will end as soon as possible for fear of escalation or any minor mistakes that would lead to a wider problem."

After hours of bombing and shelling by Turkish artillery and warplanes, Turkish soldiers crossed via the Habur mountain pass after dusk Thursday into a sparsely populated corner of northern Iraq that the separatist rebel group, known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, has used as a refuge and a base for attacks inside Turkey. The number of Turkish troops in Iraq remained unclear Friday, but U.S. and Iraqi officials estimated it at 500 to 1,000. Turkish television reported that the number was as high as 10,000.

Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said he was unaware whether Turkish soldiers had fought any battles in Iraq.

"I don't know how far they have advanced or precisely how deep they are going to go," he said. "They said they will work to avoid collateral damage against infrastructure and civilians. We all agree that they are going after a terrorist group."

But Ahmed Denize, a member of the PKK, said that small teams of guerrillas had fought the Turkish soldiers throughout the day Friday. Turkish soldiers destroyed three bridges during their movement into Iraq, he said. He also said PKK fighters had killed about 20 Turkish soldiers, but that claim could not be verified.

"We had information that they are coming, so we spread out in small groups and opened fire on them," he said. "The fight is still going on."

The Turkish military reported that 24 members of the PKK were killed, along with five Turkish soldiers, according to the semiofficial Anatolia news agency.

The soldiers of northern Iraq's Kurdish regional government were on high alert Friday, officials said. Kurdish news agencies reported that the soldiers, known as the pesh merga, were dispatched from the Kurdish capital of Irbil to the northern city of Dahuk. In mountain towns along the way such as Sarsank and Anishka, the camouflaged soldiers in maroon berets were abundant, filling fleets of white pickup trucks at gas stations, sitting in groups along the side of the road or taking photographs of themselves overlooking the vast mountain valleys.

At a pesh merga base in Skren, commanders declined to discuss the troop movements but confirmed that the soldiers in the streets were new arrivals.

The conflict between the PKK and Turkey dates back decades and has claimed thousands of lives. The Kurdish guerrillas want more rights for the large Kurdish population in Turkey and have also, at times, advocated an independent Kurdish state in the region. The smoldering tensions flared up in October when Kurdish rebels killed 12 Turkish soldiers near Turkey's border with northern Iraq. Turkish politicians threatened an invasion and have said they will do what is necessary to protect their people from rebel attacks. Throughout the fall and winter, Turkey bombed PKK positions along the border but until Thursday had stopped short of crossing into Iraqi territory.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul told reporters in Ankara, the capital, that the troops were making every effort to avoid civilian casualties. "We have always welcomed and extended a helping hand to the Iraqi people during their difficult times, and they are friends and family of Turkey," he said.

Turkey has long maintained several small military bases in northern Iraq. As Turkey was bombarding Iraqi territory Thursday, Turkish tanks rolled out of one of their bases but were blocked by the pesh merga, according to Iraqi officials. After a tense standoff, both sides retreated.

The incident reflects the fine line the Kurdistan Regional Government is walking in dealing with Turkey's efforts against the rebel group. Its public stance in recent months has been that its forces will try to isolate and weaken the PKK but that they do not have the capability to drive out the guerrillas, who live in rugged terrain with steep, rocky roads. The pesh merga has blocked journalists' access to PKK territory, and Iraqi officials say they have also made it more difficult for the guerrillas to move throughout northern Iraq.

By refusing to confront the PKK, the Kurdish regional government avoids the potentially incendiary step of starting an intra-Kurdish battle within Iraq. At the same time, the PKK has very little political clout in Iraq and has been publicly condemned by all sides.

"We have not been a threat, and we do not pose a threat to Turkey," said Falah Mustafa Bakir, head of the Kurdish government's foreign relations department. "We've done what we can in order to help the situation. We care about this. We understand that this is a problem. But this is not the right approach to solve it. It only brings more destruction and brings more problems."

The Bush administration has been an active partner in Turkey's fight against the Kurdish rebels. Turkey has grown more aggressive since President Bush called the PKK a common enemy of Turkey, Iraq and the United States recently. The U.S. military has been sharing intelligence to help target rebel positions and is kept informed of Turkey's military movements.

Gul called Bush early Thursday to tell him of the incursion, according to Turkey's military. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Turkey to keep the operation short and "keep in mind that while the terrorists need, obviously, to be stopped from doing what they're doing, that there really can't be a destabilization of the region."

"This is something that we were aware of in advance, and, as you know, the U.S. agrees with Turkey that the PKK is a terrorist organization and is an enemy of Turkey, Iraq and the United States," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters.

Kurdish officials said they have lived with the U.S.-sanctioned bombing campaign against the rebels but feel the incursion is a violation of their sovereignty; they have also said they will defend their territory, if necessary. Bakir, the Kurdish foreign relations official, said the Americans should halt the Turkish advance.

"We believe that they have a responsibility to stop this incursion, which is not in anybody's interest," he said.

Correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer in Cairo, special correspondent Dlovan Brwari in Dahuk and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.

Kurdish Soldiers in Iraq Caught Between Competing Allegiances

By Joshua Partlow and Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 24, 2008; A18

BALINDA, Iraq, Feb. 23 -- The Iraqi Kurdish soldiers stood at the edge of the collapsed steel bridge and looked down into the teal waters rushing below. The last sign of the Iraqi government, a small border checkpoint, was far behind them down in the river valley.

Ahead were snow-dusted mountains, abandoned villages and more bridges bombed by Turkish warplanes. The soldiers were at least 15 miles from Turkey's border. They could go no farther.

It is in these rugged, largely inaccessible mountains along the border, an area inside Iraq but uncontrolled by any nation, that Turkish soldiers are fighting Kurdish guerrillas. For the third day, Turkish attack helicopters and artillery bombarded guerrilla bases inside Iraq, blasting cave hideouts, arms caches and antiaircraft positions, Turkey's military said Saturday.

Although the Turkish government is describing the military incursion as a limited operation that will end as quickly as possible, it is the first major ground incursion into Iraq since Saddam Hussein's government fell in April 2003. U.S. and Iraqi officials estimate that 500 to 1,000 Turkish soldiers are involved, but Turkish news reports put the number as high as 10,000. Turkey said it has killed at least 79 guerrillas and lost seven soldiers.

For the Kurdish soldiers who control most of northern Iraq, the violence along the border has put them in an increasingly uncomfortable position. They said the recent bombing campaigns have targeted Kurdish civilians in villages that are often far from the bases of the guerrilla group, known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. The group, which uses a corner of northern Iraq as a base, seeks greater autonomy for Kurds in Turkey.

Local officials in northern Iraq said thousands of farmers, shepherds and villagers fled south during the months of bombing that preceded this week's ground incursion. The Iraqi Kurdish soldiers, known as the pesh merga, have spread out across the northern region and are on high alert, awaiting orders from their commanders, soldiers said.

"The Turkish army doesn't have the right to come into our country. What they are doing is against the law," Maj. Hussein Jafar, a pesh merga officer, said at the edge of the destroyed Avamarke bridge, a roughly 40-yard span built in 2004 that was blasted by Turkish missiles on Thursday, according to residents and local officials. It was one of five bridges in the border region destroyed in the Turkish bombardments, Kurdish soldiers said.

"They bombed the bridge because they say there are PKK in this area, but actually the PKK are very far from here. They want to destroy the economy of our country," Jafar said.

Many pesh merga soldiers risked their lives defending Kurdish territory from Hussein's forces, and they say Turkey's offensive is a violation of their sovereignty. Several said that they are upset that the U.S. and Iraqi governments have largely condoned Turkey's attacks on the PKK and that they are prepared to defend their people if Turkey continues its advance. The United States and Turkey consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

"If Turkey comes farther than they are now, then 100 percent we will stop them," said Maj. Gen. Hashim Sitae, a pesh merga commander in the northern city of Dahuk.

In a statement on its Web site, the Kurdistan Regional Government offered no support for the PKK but condemned the Turkish military operations, saying it was "imperative that Turkey immediately withdraw its military forces from the Kurdistan Region in Iraq." The statement called on the United States to help stop the offensive.

"The Turkish army came into Iraq and hit our villages and hit our civilians, and we have to be ready to protect them," said Col. Humaid Muhammed Abdullah, a pesh merga officer in Dahuk. "We are waiting for the Americans to do something to solve this situation."

Turkey's military released few details of the fighting Saturday, saying only that Turkish forces were battling Kurdish guerrillas in four areas in Iraq's Kurdish north. The military said on its Web site that the guerrillas were trying to flee south in a "panicked state."

The news dominated Turkish television, which broadcast clip after clip of Turkish soldiers in white winter camouflage rolling up mountains in open-sided trucks. Crawls across television screens provided a running tally of the military's figure for guerrillas killed. Turkish news media said the country's jets were striking as far as 10 miles into northern Iraq.

A PKK spokesman, Ahmed Denize, said small teams of PKK fighters continued to strike the Turkish military in quick ambushes from multiple locations. He said that the fighters had taken the corpses of 15 Turkish soldiers, a claim that could not be verified.

Many of the mountain bases hit by Turkey's military were probably only sparsely populated by the guerrillas, who often leave their mountain camps to spend winters in lower-lying villages. Turkey's government approved a cross-border incursion last year, and an early spring offensive such as the one launched Thursday had been widely expected, giving rebels months to prepare. The Kurdish government has effectively allowed the PKK to create a mini-state along the border where they can live unchallenged.

Sardar Kakameen, the mayor of Deralouk, a Kurdish town in northern Iraq near the border, said that the bombing campaign in recent months has been the most intense he has seen and that more than 100 villages have emptied out as residents have moved in with relatives in his city and in neighboring areas.

"Because of the bombing, there is nobody left in the area," he said. "The civilian people are the ones who have suffered the most from this bombing."

Three days ago, mortar shells began to rain down on the tree farms and apple orchards in Hish, a predominantly Christian village along the border, residents said.

"The bombing came down directly in our area, it was very strong," said Fual Hoshaba Kashool, 43, a farmer from the village. Kashool and his family, 12 people in all, fled on foot at dawn to the nearby town of Sheladeze. The next day, the Avamarke bridge was destroyed, cutting off the one road to home.

"Fortunately, all the humans were safe; we ran away, but our lands were destroyed," Kashool said. "And now our problem is we left all our belongings on the other side of the bridge and we can't bring them back."

Another villager who fled, Abdul Rahman Piro, 50, said he believed that Turkey wanted to drive out all civilians from the area. "There is no difference between us and the PKK to them," he said. "We are all Kurds."

Knickmeyer reported from Istanbul. Special correspondent Dlovan Brwari in Balinda contributed to this report.

On Iraqi mountain fortress, anti-Turkish fighters rule

Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:14AM EDT

By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

QANDIL MOUNTAIN, Iraq (Reuters) - On the way to the Qandil mountains, a potential flashpoint for yet another Middle East war, Kurdish officials give blunt assessments of the limits of their sovereignty and power to curb anti-Turkish guerrillas.

"The problem with the border region is that we have no authority over it," said police major Abu Bakr Abdul Rahman Hussein in the town of Qalat Dizah in northern Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.

"We can't go there. The mountains are full of PKK," he added, referring to guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party.

A few miles east, at a base of the Iraqi Frontier Guard, Colonel Ahmed Sabr sternly warned of the dangers lurking ahead: "From here on, you are on your own. We can't help if anything happens to you. The area is full of people with guns -- PKK, Iranians, armed shepherds."

The Qandil mountain is on the border with Iran, part of a range that stretches north to the border with Turkey, whose army has launched several major anti-guerrilla operations into Iraq since the PKK began fighting the Turkish state in 1984 in a struggle for autonomy that has killed more than 30,000 people.

During a bitterly contested campaign for July 22 parliamentary elections in Turkey, the Turkish armed forces urged the government to allow it to strike across the border to crush the estimated 4,000 PKK guerrillas who use the mountains as their base of operations.

The PKK is outlawed in Turkey and considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

Turkish officials have accused the United States of failing to pressure the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq to crack down on the PKK to defuse tension along the border of the Kurdistan region, which has been an oasis of relative peace in war-torn Iraq.

Iraqi Kurds, in general, sympathize with the PKK owing to their ethnic kinship.

The fragility of that peace was highlighted on July 18 when the Turkish army fired around 100 shells into the vicinity of the northern border town of Zakho, according to the KRG's deputy minister for security forces, Jabar Yawer. No-one was hurt but scores of residents fled the area.

"YOUR CELLPHONES PLEASE"

Driving into PKK territory -- the "border" is a cement bridge not far from Colonel Sabr's frontier fort -- explains why the Kurdish government considers the Qandil mountain a no-go zone and why the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas appear supremely confident they could withstand a Turkish invasion or a crackdown by the KRG's forces.

This is ideal guerrilla country, where fighters intimately familiar with the soaring peaks and deep valleys of the region have a natural advantage over any attacker. Even Saddam Hussein's army, waging ruthless and repeated campaigns, failed to dislodge them.

Neither did large-scale Turkish incursions in 1995 and 1997 involving an estimated 35,000 and 50,000 troops, respectively.

Climbing up towards a guerrilla encampment at the hamlet of Marado, on the flank of the mountain, the track is so rutted that a jeep negotiates it at crawling pace, wheels inches from the edge and a drop of hundreds of feet.

The first sign of PKK presence -- and a degree of nervousness about possible attacks -- comes at a guard post manned by two fighters carrying Kalashnikov rifles and serious expressions. Before allowing the visitors to travel on, they have to surrender their passports.

"And your cellphones please," said one. "Satellite phones, too. All means of communications."

This is a new regulation, according to people familiar with the area, part of ever-more elaborate security precautions and fears that visitors could communicate the coordinates of guerrilla outposts, including the PKK "guesthouse" even higher up the flank of the mountain and so well camouflaged it is difficult to see.

The area around the camp is lined with steep hillsides and dotted with trees. There is no sign of life except for the odd flock of sheep and a shepherd.

The guesthouse is in the shade of an ancient oak tree, next to a large satellite dish. At the guesthouse, three woman PKK fighters in uniform in their early 30s served tea. They did not carry weapons.

None of the PKK leaders who occasionally receive visitors here are available but in a telephone interview, Abdul Rahman Chaderchi, the official in charge of the PKK's foreign relations, said a Turkish cross-border attack now would have no better chance of success than previous incursions.

"We are well prepared, all along the mountains," he said, adding that a Turkish attack would be a "strategic mistake" that would unite Kurds on both sides of the borders and elsewhere in the Middle East.

REGIONAL STABILITY

There are Kurdish minorities in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria who make up the world's largest ethnic group without an independent state -- more than 30 million people in all. A fully independent Iraqi Kurdistan would be a threat to the stability of each of the countries where they live.

Turkey has the largest Kurdish population and the election campaign prompted a surge of nationalist feeling that has made some Kurdish politicians fear election rhetoric might be transformed into military action after Sunday's vote.

In Washington, conservatives place the onus for defusing the potentially explosive border tension on Masoud Barzani, the president of the KRG.

A few days before the Turkish vote, Michael Rubin, a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told a session of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee that Barzani "should expel PKK terrorists" from their strongholds.

Judging from a day in their natural fortress of the Qandil range, this seems much easier said than done.

General Seeks Troop Cut in Northern Iraq

By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press
Sunday, July 22, 2007; 11:03 AM

BAGHDAD -- In a move that could portend a strategy change, the commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq said Sunday he has proposed reducing his troop levels and shifting next year to missions focused less on direct combat.

Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon told The Associated Press that if current trends hold, he would like to begin this troop reduction and change in mission in Ninevah province, where he said Iraqi army forces already are operating nearly independently. He has proposed shifting the province to Iraqi government control as early as August.

Ninevah's capital is Mosul, the country's third largest city.

If put in place, Mixon's approach would not necessarily mean an overall reduction in U.S. troops early next year. It could mean shifting several thousand troops from Mixon's area to other parts of Iraq for some months.

That, however, could mark the beginning of a phased move away from the heavy combat role that U.S. troops have played, at a cost of more than 3,600 U.S. deaths, for more than four years. That, in turn, could lead to the first substantial U.S. troop reductions beginning in the spring or summer _ a far slower timetable than many in Congress are demanding.

Mixon is not the only U.S. commander contemplating a repositioning or reduction of U.S. troops in the months ahead.

Col. John Charlton, commander of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, who leads a task force of 6,000 U.S. soldiers in a section of Anbar province that includes Ramadi, said in an interview Friday that by January he might be ready to take a 25 percent troop cut if the Iraqi police, numbering about 6,000 now, are made stronger by then.

"The police are the keys to maintaining security from al-Qaida," Charlton said.

Mixon acknowledged that a U.S. shift in northern Iraq meant risking gains made over recent years. But he said it would have important political benefits in Baghdad.

"To be perfectly frank with you, it puts the Iraqi central government in a position of having to assume responsibility for the security situation," Mixon said in a telephone interview from his headquarters at Camp Speicher, near the city of Tikrit.

It is not clear whether the government will be capable of fulfilling that responsibility as early as next year.

Mixon also has proposed allowing Ninevah province to hold elections either late this year or early in 2008. This would ease the transition from U.S. control, he said.

"It certainly would make sense to tie the two fairly closely together," Mixon said, because it would provide political reinforcement for an important shift in security responsibility.

The government in Baghdad has failed thus far to pass legislation enabling provincial elections nationwide. That is one of the benchmarks the government set for itself this year and one that Congress wants to see accomplished by September.

Mixon said he thinks individual provinces should hold elections when they are ready, rather than wait for all 18 provinces to do so at once.

Mixon said Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top day-to-day U.S. commander in Iraq, has agreed with his proposal, which he called a contingency plan subject to further approval.

There are nearly 24,000 U.S. troops in Mixon's area of responsibility. It stretches north from Baghdad to the Turkish border, including the semiautonomous Kurdish region where three provinces _ Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaimaniyah _ already have returned to Iraqi government control.

Mixon said he might be able to reduce that total by one-half in the 12 months to 18 months after beginning a transition in January.

U.S. commanders in Baghdad and areas south of the capital have said in recent days that it is too early to say how long the current U.S. troop buildup should be maintained. Yet many lawmakers in Washington are pressing for a change in direction as early as September. That is the month when Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker are due to report to President Bush and Congress on how the troop buildup is working.

Mixon's plan suggests the possibility of a new direction for U.S. strategy. But it is not the first time that senior U.S. commanders have proposed troop reductions and shifts in mission, only to be stopped by an unforeseen surge in insurgent violence.

Last year, for example, the U.S. military was planning to reduce its forces from 15 brigades to 10 or 12 brigades. The idea was scrapped last summer. In January, Bush ordered a boost from 15 brigades to 20.

In the interview, Mixon said he is troubled by a political debate in Washington that appears to him to oversimplify the Iraq problem. He said the U.S. needs a strategy for protecting the gains it has made in Iraq, even as it transitions control to the Iraqi government.

"I don't want to stay here any longer than we absolutely have to," he said. "Neither does anybody else. But we understand the investment we've made in this place and how important it would be to have at least some type of stability in Iraq prior to us leaving in large numbers."

Northern Iraq is a diverse area with problems not felt elsewhere in the country. That includes the threat of a large-scale incursion by the Turkish military to drive out Kurdish separatists whom Turkey's government considers terrorists. Mixon said he does not foresee such a crisis.

"I'm not alarmed about it at all," he said. "I think that will be worked out in the long run."

The Kurdish rebel commander, in an AP interview Friday, said he believed the Turkish military will launch a long-anticipated offensive against separatist bases in northern Iraq shortly after Sunday's general elections in Turkey.

But Murat Karayilan, the leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, denied charges by Turkey's government that his group was using its bases in Iraq to launch attacks against Turkish forces.

Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has threatened to go into northern Iraq if talks with Iraq and the U.S. after the elections fail to produce effective measures against Kurdish guerrillas.

Erdogan's ruling party is likely to win a majority of seats in the parliamentary vote.

___

Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Lewzhe, Iraq, contributed to this report.

Iraq: Turkish Incursion Into Northern Iraq Could Backfire

By Sumedha Senanayake

July 11, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Ankara had a plan in place for military incursions into northern Iraq to destroy Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) bases there.

His statements were the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive comments coming out of Turkey, warning the U.S. and the Iraqi government that if they do not curb PKK activities in northern Iraq, Turkey will have no choice but to carry out unilateral military action.

Iraqi Kurdish officials have reacted to the Turkish warnings and the massing of Turkish forces along the border with increasing alarm.
A Turkish incursion based on the principle of fighting terrorism sets a dangerous precedent for Iraq's neighbors. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, who are widely believed to be involved in Iraq behind the scenes, may be emboldened to follow suit.


Iraq's Kurdish Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari issued a statement on July 9 expressing his deep concern over intelligence estimates of more than 140,000 Turkish troops currently stationed on the border. He urged restraint and called for a diplomatic solution to the tensions.

The Pentagon disputed the numbers cited by Zebari, while Turkey had no comment. Zebari may have exaggerated intentionally, to focus greater international media attention on the Turkish threats in the hope of forcing Turkey to back down. In any case, it shows that he takes the Turkish threats seriously.

Setting Dangerous Precedent

The possibility of a Turkish military operation in northern Iraq has created concerns among the Kurdish leadership that it may lead to clashes between Turkish forces and the Kurdish peshmerga militia. This could then mushroom into a wider regional conflict.

"An incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan will not be a picnic...if the incursion is into areas inside Iraqi Kurdistan -- into the cities and towns -- then there will definitely be clashes between the peshmerga forces and the Turkish Army, and this is something we do not wish for at all," Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told Al-Arabiyah satellite television on July 6.

Talabani's warning underscores the dilemma Turkey faces in a major cross-border operation into northern Iraq. If Turkish forces do enter Iraq and engage PKK fighters, it unclear how long they will remain, and it may take a significant amount of time to drive the PKK forces out of their mountain strongholds.

Consequently, the longer Turkish forces remain inside Iraq, the greater the chances that they will clash with the peshmerga, who would see any incursion as a violation of their territory. Indeed, after being oppressed for decades under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds do not take their newfound semi-autonomy for granted. Fighting in Iraqi Kurdistan would also open an additional military front that U.S. and Iraqi forces are ill-equipped to deal with at this time.

In addition, a Turkish incursion based on the principle of fighting terrorism sets a dangerous precedent for Iraq's neighbors. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, who are widely believed to be involved in Iraq behind the scenes, may be emboldened to follow suit. Once Turkey opens the proverbial Pandora's box by conducting cross-border operations into Iraq, Iraq's other neighbors may well argue that they are entitled to do the same in the name of national security.

Drawn Deeper Into Iraq

epaTurkey could be drawn further into northern Iraq's ethnic disputes (epa file photo)The opening of a new military front in the north would undoubtedly destabilize a region that has been a zone of relative peace in Iraq. Not only would Turkish forces face the danger of being sucked into Iraq's numerous and violent conflicts, it would also provide Al-Qaeda in Iraq with an opportunity to gain a stronger foothold in the region by stoking the considerable ethnic and sectarian tensions between the Kurds, Turkomans, and Arabs.

Further attacks by Al-Qaeda against the Iraqi Turkoman population, similar to the July 7 bombing in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato, may draw Turkish forces deeper into the conflict as they face pressure to protect their ethnic brethren.

Armed confrontations may result between all the parties involved, with Al-Qaeda carrying out attacks aimed at perpetuating a similar cycle of violence that engulfed Baghdad and the surrounding areas for a year and a half. Turkey could be drawn ever deeper into in Iraq's internal conflicts, and find it ever more difficult to extricate itself.

While Turkey may believe that a military incursion into northern Iraq will improve its national security, the resulting fallout may actually end up not only making Turkey less secure, but destabilizing the entire region as well.

Iraqi Warns of Grave Results if U.S. Pulls Out

By STEPHEN FARRELL

BAGHDAD, July 9 — The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, warned today that an early American withdrawal from Iraq could bring on an all-out civil war and regional conflict, pointedly telling the United States that it had responsibilities to continue lending support to the Baghdad government.

Mr. Zebari also asserted that Iraq’s neighbor Turkey had massed 140,000 troops near his country’s northern border and urged it to resolve differences with dialogue, not through force.

Mr. Zebari was speaking after a violent weekend in which more than 220 people were killed in Iraq, including 150 by a truck bomb in one of the deadliest single attacks since the American invasion in March 2003.

Asked if the Iraqi government’s was aware of the growing pressure on President Bush from Congress to impose a timetable for withdrawing American forces from Iraq, Mr. Zebari said his government was holding a “dialogue” with some congressmen.

“We explain to them the dangers of a speedy withdrawal and leaving a security vacuum, and the dangers vary from civil war to dividing the country or maybe to regional wars,” he said.

“Some people might disagree with this assessment, but in our estimation the danger is huge. Until the Iraqi forces and institutions complete their readiness, there is a responsibility on the U.S. and other countries to stand by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people to help build up their capabilities.”

Mr. Zebari’s comments came after some Sunni and Shiite leaders called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves, amid frustration that Iraqi security forces had failed to halt the deadly suicide attacks.

On Saturday around 150 people were killed by a truck bomb in the poor Shiite Turkmen village of Amerli, 100 miles north of Baghdad. This came 12 hours after 17 Shiites were killed by a explosion in Zarkush, north of Baquba.

Some Iraqis complain that suicide bombers have simply moved outside such cities as Baghdad and Baquba where American and Iraqi troops are engaged in large-scale security operations to restore order.

Mr. Zebari conceded that when insurgents were removed from one area, “they will try to move their operation and their activities to another area, just to prove that they are still in business by killing more innocent people.”

But he asserted that this movement was evidence that the bombers are “on the run, and really the net is closing on them.”

Mr. Zebari described Turkey’s reported troop movement toward the Iraqi border as a “huge buildup in our view” and said the Iraqi government was “trying to defuse the situation.”

The Turkish government has long complained that Iraq’s Kurdish regional government has failed to stop separatist Kurdish fighters belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party crossing the border and carrying out attacks in Turkey. The Kurdish party, known as the P.K.K., is a separatist group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

A spokesman for the Turkish military said today that it had no comment on the reported troop movement. The Turkish Army has increased activity along its border with Iraq since the spring, and commanders have pressed the Turkish parliament to allow a large-scale operation in northern Iraq, where they say Kurdish militants who want a separate Kurdish state in southern Turkey hide.

Turkish commanders contend that there are 2,800 to 3,100 militants in northern Iraq.

Mr. Zebari, who is a Kurd, said Iraq was ready “to address all Turkish legitimate security concerns over the P.K.K. or any terrorist activities,” but he warned that Turkey should not use force, and that the Iraqi government was “definitely opposed to any military incursion or any violations of Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

He insisted his government was not “running away from our responsibilities” in Iraqi Kurdistan, but he pleaded for patience, saying that Iraq’s security forces were already overstretched “fighting terrorism here in the streets and neighborhoods of Baghdad.” He urged the revival of a security and military commission to bring together the United States, Iraq and Turkey “to agree on practical measures” to resolve the situation.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Ankara, Turkey.

The Next Battle in Iraq?

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, July 8, 2007; B07

The relative stability and prosperity of Iraqi Kurdistan provide the only bright spots of redemption for President Bush in the bloody anarchy that Iraq has become under a mismanaged occupation. Permanently securing the Kurdish minority from Baghdad's genocidal impulses and acts would be a historic accomplishment.

But the growing likelihood of Turkish military strikes into Iraq's northern region threatens to erase that last positive legacy of the American invasion -- and to undermine prospects for a major U.S. redeployment out of Iraq's chaotic cities to bases in the north in the near future. Eagerly sought by the Kurds, such redeployment is strongly opposed by Ankara, which listens to an urgently ticking electoral clock.

Managing Turkey's legitimate grievances against its own Kurdish rebels who take sanctuary among their Iraqi kin requires both agility and firmness from Washington. Thus far, the administration has shown neither quality in dealing with a devastated Iraq and its grasping neighbors. There is no better time than a moment of political extremis to change habits.

American failure in transforming Iraq has many causes. None is more important than Bush's inability to set clear, achievable priorities and to stick to them when they collide with the vested interests of Iraq's neighbors and of significant parts of the U.S. bureaucracy.

Bush has not followed his own counsel to the American people. Despite his rhetoric, he has not treated Iraq as the defining struggle of our time, one that requires sustained sacrifice and clarity of purpose. He has hopped from goal to goal and from faction to faction in the U.S. government, in Iraq and in the region, rather than pursue the steady, determined course that was -- and still is -- needed.

Consider his deferring to Sunni Arab governments rather than putting effective pressure on them to back U.S. efforts in Iraq. Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both gone to the region and urged Saudi Arabia's rulers to work with Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister of the "national unity" Iraqi government that the administration helped bring to power last year.

"No," was the blunt answer from the Saudis, who let it be known they do not trust Maliki because they see him as an agent of Iran's Shiite ayatollahs. "Okay," perhaps accompanied by a shrug, seems to have been the considered bottom-line U.S. response.

Similarly, the administration has not conveyed a message that is clear and consistent enough to deter Turkey's politicians from issuing increasingly strident threats to invade Iraqi Kurdistan -- or to keep Turkish generals from massing forces on the border, as they have in recent weeks.

This is partly about politics: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party face a pitched battle for control of parliament in elections set for July 22. They must convincingly trounce the far-right Nationalist Movement Party to secure the commanding majority they need to enact far-reaching changes to the constitution. But NMP accusations that Erdogan is weak on Kurdish terrorism are boosting the right-wingers in the polls as time runs out.

But it is also about strategy: The generals, who compete with the politicians for influence in Turkish affairs, do not want a strong, U.S.-protected Kurdistan on their border. And they are upset over what they view as unkept promises from Washington to curb the small but murderous Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) guerrilla force that operates from Iraqi territory, thereby relieving pressure on Ankara to intervene.

Neither the Pentagon nor the CIA appears to have stepped up to the mission. This inaction feeds Turkish suspicions that hidden anti-Iranian agendas and alliances among U.S., Saudi, Jordanian and other intelligence services have more influence over American priorities than do commitments from Bush or his senior aides.

A month ago, a consensus among trained observers and diplomats held that the Turks were unlikely to intervene despite their threats. That opinion is changing as disillusionment and electoral desperation take hold in Ankara. Moreover, predictions that any intervention would be limited to airstrikes and mopping-up operations by Turkish special forces at PKK sites are giving way to fears of a much larger operation that could be aimed at forestalling Kurdish control over the disputed Kirkuk region. Rice telephoned Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul on Friday to try to head off intervention but received no firm assurance.

A Turkish invasion that turns Kurdistan's relative calm into chaos and bloodshed would be the nail in the coffin for Bush's legacy in Iraq and for U.S. public support for the American presence there. Making sure this does not happen should be Priority One for Bush and for everyone working for him in the weeks ahead.

Kurdish Iraqi Foreign Minister fears U.S. Withdrawal Will Lead to Iraq's Breakup

In an interview with Reuters on July 1, Hoshyar Zebari warned that if U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq prematurely, the country will break up. "The country would disintegrate, literally, practically. Every group would go back to its community or to its sect or ethnicity and then we would really have a divided country without a central government to keep it together," Zebari said. He also warned that without the presence of a strong and cohesive Iraqi security force, a premature withdrawal of U.S. troops would create a massive security vacuum that would be exploited by terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. "Al-Qaeda and terrorist groups would really find a safe haven, find a better base than Afghanistan in terms of the culture, the location, and proximity to other interests in the region," he added. Moreover, Zebari said the presence of U.S. forces represents a deterrent to a Turkish invasion into northern Iraq to battle Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters. "I believe had it not been for the presence of the multinational forces, the Turks could have easily moved in. The same applies to other neighbors who have territorial ambitions," Zebari said. He declined to identify those "other neighbors." SS

Turkish Forces Shelling Iraqi Kurdistan

Whether or not you believe that Turkish forces raided Iraqi Kurdistan last week to attack the PKK, Turkey has in fact attacked in Iraq.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry sent a letter the Turkish charge' d'affaires in Baghdad, complaining that Turkish forces have shelled in at least two Iraqi Kurdish provinces, disturbed Iraqi Kurds there, and set "huge fires."

Iraqi Kurds are sheltering PKK guerrillas in PKK-only zones across the border from Turkey, so the claims that locals are being disturbed by this shelling are somewhat disingenuous.

Reports of Turkish Incursions into Iraq

Today, there were several reports of Turkish military incursions into northern Iraqi Kurdistan to attack PKK guerrillas.

The reports were denied by relevant government officials in Iraq, Turkey, and the United States. Its only sources appear to have been anonymous senior Turkish military officials. However, reports were repeatedly made throughout the day, and indicated that hundreds of Turkish soldiers had raided the country in "hot pursuit" of Kurdish terrorists.

Whether true or not, tensions in Turkey over attacks by Kurdish terrorists based in Iraq have been very high, and as many as 250,000 Turkish troops have been massed just across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey has frequently threatened to act in Iraq, but not like this.

The United States has been pushing Iraqi Kurds to do something about the PKK's occupation of a slice of territory just across from Turkey. Turkey is trying very hard to insinuate, whether by raiding Iraq or by raising that possibility through the press, that a Turkish attack is likely if the PKK is not dealt with, and soon.

If Turkey was to invade Iraq and remain engaged militarily against the Kurds in northern Iraq, that would be a serious crisis in a region that has been a bright spot in an unpopular American war in Iraq. Seeing Turkish soldiers killed by Kurds, with little done by Americans -- a strong possibility in such a situation -- would harden Turkish public opinion against the United States, and harm an otherwise moderate officially secular Muslim state. In short, it would be a Middle East-wide disaster.

PKK in Iraqi North

Kim Murphy of the L.A. Times reports from inside the PKK guerrilla camps in northern Iraqi Kurdistan, where Iraqi Kurd flags don't even fly and Iraq's civil war seems a world away.

With an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan under U.S. protection becoming a reality, it doesn't look like Turkey has a realistic chance of eradicating the PKK's insurgency militarily. Social and political integration of Kurds into Turkey are really the only ways to end the fighting.

While an Iraqi haven for the PKK is unfortunate, one positive aspect of an Iraqi Kurdistan under American protection is that the U.S. can pressure Iraqi Kurds to limit PKK activity. For example, the PKK announced a ceasefire after retired U.S. General Ralston visited the region to address "the Kurdish question."

The most troubling question for me is whether the PKK is behind the creation of terrorist groups in Turkey like the "Kurdistan Freedom Falcons" so that it can continue to fight Turkey but deny it plausibly to its Iraqi Kurd hosts, who, in turn, can deny it to the United States. If Turkey sees a connection, and I'm sure they do, this is certain to create tension between the governments of Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan and the United States.