6 February 2004

1. "Kurdish Parliament Defies Baghdad", Legislators won't recognize proposed Shiite-backed family law, seen as setback for women

2. "Kurds Flex Political Muscles After Iraq Suicide Bombs", Iraqi Kurds convened the parliament of their northern self-rule zone on Thursday to condemn suicide attacks on Kurdish parties who are seeking more autonomy as Washington tries to hand back sovereignty to Iraqis.

3. "Divide and Conquer", Peacefully marching in Baghdad, Shiites demand the right to directly elect representatives to a new Iraqi government.

4. "The Kurds' Misplaced Hope", The Iraqi Governing Council is supposed to be standing on its last legs, preparing to hand over rule to a provisional government in July.

5. "Denktas yet to decide on Cyprus talks", The "TRNC" President said he would announce his decision on whether to attend the New York talks shortly.

6. "Turkey talks up its EU credentials", Turkey will be an “asset” and not a burden to the European Union, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul insisted on Thursday.

1. - Associated Press - "Kurdish Parliament Defies Baghdad":

Legislators won't recognize proposed Shiite-backed family law, seen as setback for women

IRBIL (Southern Kurdistan) / Feb 5, 2004

The Kurdish parliament decided today not to recognize a Governing Council decision to change rules on divorce and other family issues - a move that outraged some Iraqi women who saw it as a setback for women's rights here.

In December, under the rotating presidency of Shiite cleric Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the council voted to abolish the law regulating marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance, instead allowing different religious groups to apply their own traditions.

The Kurdish parliament said in a statement it was sticking to a family law passed in 1959 and the amendments that the Kurdish administrations have introduced to it.

The council's December decision raised strong opposition even among some of its own members. The decision has not been approved by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, who wields a veto.

Council member Mahmoud Othman, a Sunni Kurd, said the Governing Council decision was hasty and should have been deliberated with experts and women's organizations first. The decision passed by a slight majority instead of the necessary two-thirds, he said.

Under the secular Baath party of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi women enjoyed more rights - in education, the workplace and marital status - than those in many other Arab countries. Kurdish women, living under their own regional governments since 1991, have campaigned against the Governing Council decision.

However, some women's groups fear that the new influence of the conservative Islamic clergy since the collapse of Saddam's regime threatens the status of women in the future Iraq.

2. - Reuters - "Kurds Flex Political Muscles After Iraq Suicide Bombs":

IRBIL (Iraq) / February 5, 2004 / By Mohammad Cambaz

Iraqi Kurds convened the parliament of their northern self-rule zone on Thursday to condemn suicide attacks on Kurdish parties who are seeking more autonomy as Washington tries to hand back sovereignty to Iraqis.

The parliamentary session after Sunday's twin bombings of Kurdish party offices in northern Iraq (news - web sites) that killed 101 people -- the deadliest attacks since the war that ousted Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) -- shows the political power Kurds are determined to enhance in a transitional government that will draft a constitution.

Kurdish demands to extend autonomy beyond the northern area they have run since 1991 have alarmed Iraq's Arab majority, further complicating Washington's plan to formally end the occupation and hand power to an Iraqi government by July 1.

Calls by majority Shi'ite Muslims for direct elections, rather than committees to choose parliamentarians as Washington proposed, already threaten the deadline, which the United States hopes can be preserved by a U.N. mission due to head to Iraq.

The head of one of two main Iraqi Kurd parties, which have run northern Iraq since wresting it from Baghdad's grip after the 1991 Gulf War and were targeted in Sunday's attacks, said Kurds would not be swayed from autonomy in a federal Iraq.

"The attacks were a message from terrorists trying to keep us from demanding the rights of our people for democracy and federalism," Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) told reporters late on Wednesday at a ceremony for victims of the attack, who included senior Kurdish politicians.

"Our response to this message is that our enemies have often tried to stifle the voice of the Kurds, but they have failed."

Kurds propose extending their influence south to the ethnically split oil capital of Kirkuk and provinces north of the capital with large Kurdish populations.

Iraqi police on Thursday denied Kurdish TV reports a Yemeni had been arrested in connection with the attacks, for which a group called the Army of Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility in a posting on an Islamic web site.

JUNE DEADLINE FOR HANDOVER QUESTIONED

The claim, which could not be authenticated, condemned Kurds for cooperating with U.S. forces before and after the occupation of Iraq. This could have made the Kurdish parties a target for militants, as could their campaign against the Ansar al-Islam group that Kurds accuse of links to al Qaeda.

Underscoring the autonomy that other Iraqis warn could lead to the division of the country, the Kurdish parliament said it would not observe a decision by Iraq's U.S.-backed Governing Council applying religious law in marriage and divorce.

Deputies also called for fast unification of the northern governments run by the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a step the parties -- which fought a mid-1990s civil war -- are discussing. They are also discussing with the rest of Iraq's Governing Council what form federalism will take.

The Governing Council faces a February 28 deadline to draft a "Basic Law" to see the country through to elections and the writing of a full constitution in 2005.

But demands by the top religious authority for Shi'ite Muslims who are 60 percent of Iraq's population for earlier direct elections -- for which Washington says Iraq lacks the security, voter rolls and laws to run -- have cast the entire timeframe for transferring sovereignty into doubt.

Asked in a Congressional hearing whether the June 30 deadline might be extended, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld replied: "I would never say never on the deadline myself." With President Bush (news - web sites) up for re-election this year, the White House is keen that sovereignty is handed over.

Iraq's U.S. governor, Paul Bremer, said on Thursday that the deadline agreed in November still stood.

3. - Egypt Today - "Divide and Conquer";

Peacefully marching in Baghdad, Shiites demand the right to directly elect representatives to a new Iraqi government.

Opposing factions are pushing Iraq to the brink of civil war

by Firas Al-Atraqchi / 5 February 2004

Is it Israel's dream to divide Iraq? Most Iraqis and Arabs would agree. In 1979, Iraq was on the verge of becoming an economic powerhouse. Despite an eight-year war with neighboring Iran, Iraq emerged relatively stable and by 1990, Saddam Hussein was brandishing a microchip at the Baghdad Arab Summit, claiming he could "burn half of Israel." Arab leaders and their populations rallied to Saddam's pan-Arab liberation-of-Jerusalem drive.

Then everything went horribly wrong. Relations with Kuwait soured as Kuwaiti oil companies began diagonal drilling from Iraqi oil fields. Iraq invaded, and the fate of Iraq was all but sealed.

Ten months after the Bush administration took military action to end the Saddam regime, Iraq is on the brink of a tumultuous civil war. Although its neighbors are increasingly worried about Iraq's disintegration, Western media seems to be overlooking the warnings.

The Sunni Arabs throughout Iraq are beginning to feel disenfranchised and fear being jettisoned by the US. They are demanding a new census, believing current figures showing a 60 percent Shiite majority to be politically motivated from Washington. The Sunnis point to nearly 10,000 - mostly Sunni - Iraqis detained in squalid war camps in the desert with no hearings or investigations. Crops and fields in Sunni areas are uprooted and/or burned as collective punishment, and entire towns are sanctioned off behind barbed wire in the so-called "Sunni Triangle." Prominent Sunnis have called for a regional government of their own, a dangerous precedent that could lead to fragmentation.

Iraq's Shiites, heavily influenced by Islamic leaders who lived the better part of the last 30 years in Iran, are beginning to voice concerns of their own. Leading figures worry they are about to be shortchanged once again in July 2004, when the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) hands over control to a provisional Iraqi government - elected by provincial caucuses - which it claims will be more representative of the Iraqi people. Shiite clerics led by Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani have called for direct elections starting from a grassroots level to ensure against the provisional government becoming a US proxy. Al-Sistani has charged the CPA with failing to precipitate the democratic needs of the Iraqi people.

Complicating matters is Al-Sistani's insistence that any talk of US forces remaining in Iraq must be decided by the democratically elected provisional government and not be dictated by Washington. Al-Sistani commands such impressive influence (hundreds of thousands of Iraqis marched in Baghdad and Basra demanding elections) that CPA head Paul Bremer and leading members of the IGC high-tailed it to the UN to seek Security Council support to delay elections until late 2005.

Several IGC members have defended the CPA plan, citing the lack of a census upon which all elections must be based. In early November, the Iraqi Census Bureau submitted a plan to conduct a full national census in Iraq by fall 2004. A recent Al-Jazeera article reported that Iraqi officials submitted their plan on November 1 and were asking for a decision by November 15. IGC officials admitted never seeing the plan which eventually fell to the wayside.

But the powder keg lies further north of Baghdad, in the ostensibly multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk. In early December, a 50,000-strong demonstration of Kurdish militants in the oil-rich province demanded it become part of an independent Kurdistan. The city has witnessed early signs of ethnic cleansing as Kurds displace Arabs who were moved into the city in the 1970s.

Kurdish leaders Mustafa Al-Barazani and Jalal Al-Talabani have both called for an implementation of federalism in Iraq before the constitution is written. Why? A new Iraqi constitution may not provide the Kurdish minority with the necessary tools to secede and declare independence. Immediately following the capture of Saddam Hussein, Kurdish forces began to demand that Kirkuk become the capital of the Kurdish-controlled Tamim province, much to the ire of Iraq's Arabs, Turcoman, and Assyrian populations.

Independent reports from Iraq claimed the IGC saw much wrangling in early January as Kurdish council members threatened to forcibly declare autonomy without the consent of any Iraqi authority. Civilian Administrator Paul Bremer tried to convince the Kurds to discuss matters of autonomy after a constitution was drawn up.

They refused.

"Some council members asked that details about federalism be delayed until after elections and the writing of a constitution, but we the Kurds refused it and we said everything must be worked out now," Kurdish council member Nur Al-Din told Al-Jazeera. "When the constitution is written and elections are held, we will not agree to less than what is in the fundamental law and we may ask for more."

Around the same time Kurdish Peshmerga killed five Arabs and wounded 16 others during a 2000-strong Arab-Turcoman peaceful demonstration calling on Kirkuk to remain within Iraqi sovereignty.

Kurdish autonomy currently extends to three provinces only, but many Arabs fear three more - including Arab-dominated Mosul - will be demanded by armed Kurdish Peshmerga. In response, 200,000 Mislawi clansmen have vowed to fight to the death if Kurdish forces begin to move toward Mosul.

Iraq's neighbors - chiefly Syria, Turkey, and Iran - conducted high-level negotiations and emerged with a unified position: the Kurds will not be allowed to declare independence.

Yet the Kurdish-Arab conflict highlights only one facet of the post-Saddam pre-dicament. "This is all because of that Zionist Bush," claimed an irate Dawoud Al-Obeidi, a former judge in Mosul. "It has been the Israeli dream to divide Iraq, to break the back of the Arab people. Blood will flow in the streets."

Julius Caesar is alive and well in the Middle East - divide and conquer seems to be the policy for Iraq. If the Kurds move towards secession and Shiite political muscle is ignored, it may be likely that an Islamic revolution will sweep through Iraq creating the ultimate nightmare for US Middle East policy.

4. - Cornell Daily Sun - "The Kurds' Misplaced Hope":

By MATTHEW FREDERICK STREIB / 5 February 2004 /(Coming From Behind op-ed)

The Iraqi Governing Council is supposed to be standing on its last legs, preparing to hand over rule to a provisional government in July. Even supported by such noble goals as representation of all groups, universal health care, and protection from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, historical trend dictates that the new government will fail. The Iraqi plan relies on ideals, but the ethnic triumvirate -- one president from each major ethnic group -- will never please the vast Shi'ite majority, which demands direct elections. Such elections, however, would infuriate the Sunni, might result in a theocracy similar to that in Iran, and may return the Kurds to their oppressed status. Nevertheless, foreboding unrest may not be so bad for President George W. Bush, who only deals in the present. With an idealistic government in place in the immediate future, he looks like the savior of Iraq.

The most blatant exception to the potency of Bush's vision for peace is the protection of the Kurdish people. A group related to neither the Arabs nor the Turks, the Kurds have been repeatedly conquered and controlled by outside forces since the seventh century. In the last hundred years, the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran have brutalized and massacred this ethnic minority, a continuing holocaust that has been forgotten or, worse yet, ignored. Tragically, even after the American liberation of Iraq, history seems likely to continue in the same manner, with the international community largely disregarding glaring Turkish human rights violations and Iraqi political stability in a questionable state.

Bush cited Iraqi oppression of the Kurds as one of the major reasons to declare war in 2003, even though comparable Turkish atrocities have been much more egregious. In actuality, the Kurds are not a top American priority, because the only real answer for the liberation of the Kurds is the establishment of the independent state of Kurdistan. Bush will never agree to this because even though it is in the Kurds' best interest, it is not in America's.

This question of ethnic nationalism is similar to that of Turkey during the dissemination of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The rising leader of Turkey, Kamal Ataturk, convinced the Kurds to remain part of Turkey rather than seek independence, with the promise of their egality under the new government. Upon gaining power, Ataturk quickly abandoned his promise, however, vowing to eliminate minorities from Turkey, banning Kurdish publications, associations, and language. Government campaigns of artillery shelling, poison gassing, and aerial bombardment began in 1925 when Ataturk's new government quashed a Kurdish rebellion in the town of Dirsim. In response to that uprising, the Turkish army burned hundreds of Kurdish villages, killing at least 250,000 people. Both the bans and the military action continue today. The new Iraqi government may prove to be similarly disastrous if the power becomes unilateral.

The current borders between Middle Eastern countries are arbitrary, created not by self-determination, but rather by the whims of European imperial authorities who showed no regard for ethnic, religious, or political identity. For instance, France gave Turkey the Syrian province of al-Iskenderun, even though its inhabitants identified as Arab, because it needed Turkey's aid in World War II. Also, Britain created the separate states of Iraq and Kuwait, not because the people were discernable, but because it did not want one country to control all that oil and raise prices for Western markets. Most applicable, however, is the division of the Kurdish homeland between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. There is no reliable reason why the states should remain as they are.

Self-determination, even if it causes temporary unrest, is the only way for stable peace in the future. Bush may fear such dissemination, but peace will never be achieved in the Middle East as long as national borders separate families and ethnic minorities are unfairly placed under the jurisdiction of other ethnicities. Bush also claims that a Kurdish state might cause Turkey, Syria, or Iran to declare war. Turkey, however, is hoping desperately to become part of the European Union and cannot have an ethnic war under its belt. Syria and Iran -- both militarily weak nations high on Bush's Axis of Evil -- are unlikely to be willing to displease America out of fear of sanctions or military repercussions.

America's relations with Turkey belie Bush's claimed intentions, showing the real reason why the Kurds are not granted independence. Bush is pandering to Turkey, just as France did in granting al-Iskenderun. In order to secure right of passage on Turkish soil, the United States unjustly promised Turkish leaders that it would not give the Kurds independence as the Turkish Kurds might become rallied at the inkling of freedom. America even hinted that Turkey might be able to occupy the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq, an idea that is not only inane but ensures further conflict. If Bush's empathy for the Kurdish people were authentic, he would be chiding Turkey for its human right violations as the Kurds' greatest oppressor. He would not be granting it more power.

Bush's failures threaten Americans as well. If Bush wants to protect us against terrorism, it is in his best interest not to create new enemies. In the early 1970s, Henry Kissinger secretly channeled $16 million in military aid to the Kurds, who believed that America was finally supporting their right to self-determination. Yet in 1976, the Pike Report admitted to the United States using the Kurds only to sap Iraq's resources. During the Persian Gulf War, empathy for the Kurds resurfaced and America claimed to be their ally, but when the war was over, it permitted Saddam Hussein to brutally crush the rebellions because America preferred a unified Iraq to a divided one which would have strengthened Iran. Now, the United States may be betraying the Kurds a third time, after they aided us in last year's war. This betrayal may cause America to alienate one of its only allies in the region. Osama bin Laden was once our ally. Does America want a Kurdish leader to head the next al-Qaida?

In effect, Bush is sustaining the strife left by European colonization by upholding Iraq's unity. This war -- as with the Persian Gulf War -- has been waged for reasons purely based on American interests. We entered both the Iran-Iraq and Persian Gulf wars because of attacks on Kuwait, which threatened our oil interests. In the current rebuilding of Iraq, it is clear that American involvement is still about oil. Keeping the Kurds in Iraq perpetuates political unrest, which ensures American presence, guaranteeing American control over its oil. America has yet to wage a war because it cared about a persecuted people. Perhaps it never will.

Matthew Frederick Streib is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at mfs25@cornell.edu. Coming From Behind appears Thursdays.

5. - MSNBC - "Denktas yet to decide on Cyprus talks":

The TRNC President said he would announce his decision on whether to attend the New York talks shortly.

February 6, 2004

The President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) has yet to decide if he will accept an invitation from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to attend talks aimed at resolving the dispute on Cyprus.
President Rauf Denktas said late Thursday that he would not make a final decision on attending the UN-sponsored talks, scheduled to start in New York on Tuesday, until he returned to the TRNC on Friday.
Saying that he had no plans to meet with senior Turkish officials before his departure from Ankara, where he had attended a summit of Turkish and TRNC leaders, Denktas said that he would be in touch with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan before announcing his decision.
Earlier on Thursday, Prime Minister Erdogan said that both Turkey and the TRNC had the common objective of resolving the Cyprus dispute.
“Not only Turkey, but also the TRNC should feel at ease at the moment,” he said. “We have never had any problem like running away from negotiations. This is our national policy. It is not possible for us to leave aside this policy.”

6. - EUpolitix.com - "Turkey talks up its EU credentials":

6 February 2004

Turkey will be an “asset” and not a burden to the European Union, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul insisted on Thursday.

“Turkey with its potential in every sense would be an asset for Europe. Never a burden,” he told a meeting of the centre right European People’s Party in Brussels.

“In the past being European might have been a matter of geographical location or history. But today, it has become a way of thinking and attitude. Turkey shares these totally,” said Gul.

Ankara is waiting for a green light from Brussels to begin formal membership talks but has been kept on tenter hooks while Europe remains divided on whether the largely Muslim nation should become a full member.

The European Commission will make a recommendation to EU leaders before December this year on whether Turkey should be invited to the negotiating table.

The EU has asked Turkish leaders to push through a series of hefty economic and judicial reforms and to improve its human rights record.

In recent weeks, Turkey’s EU ambitions have been increasingly linked to the reunification of the divided island of Cyprus.

European leaders have indicated that talks with Ankara would be “politically difficult” if Cyprus is not reunited before the EU enlarges to 25 members on May 1.

Failure to do so would mean only the southern Greek half of the island would join the Union, leaving Turkey, which still has troops in the North, as technically an occupier of EU soil.

On Thursday United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan invited the Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaders to New York to resume peace talks.

Negotiations on a UN reconciliation plan collapsed last March when Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash walked out.

If the renewed talks are successful they will be continued in the divided Cypriot capital Nicosia.

“The objective of the negotiations would be to put a completed text to referenda in April 2004, in time for a reunited Cyprus to accede to the European Union on 1 May 2004,” said the UN in a statement.

“We would prefer to settle the problem before May but it depends if both sides are ready to move,”said Abdullah Gul.