23 March 2004

1. "Kurds celebrate Newroz", 21 March marks the national anniversary of Kurds all over the world. It is known as the Nawroz festival, which means "new dawn" in Kurdish.

2. "For Kurds, a day of bonfires, legends, and independence", During Newroz, a spring festival, Kurds commemorate the defeat of a tyrannical king 2,500 years ago. This year it meant victory over Hussein.

3. "Israel airs film of police firing on Kurds", Israeli television stations have broadcast film showing Syrian policemen firing from automatic rifles at unarmed people during what the broadcasters said were clashes between Syrian Kurds and police this month.

4. "The Kurds nominate Syria for regime change", it is early to pronounce, but this event seems certain to be remembered as the beginning of the end of the long-petrified Syrian status quo. The Kurdish population of Syria is not as large, in proportion, as its cousinly equivalent in Iraq.

5. "Iraqi Militias Near Accord To Disband", leaders of Iraq’s two largest militias have provisionally agreed to dissolve their forces, according to senior U.S. and Iraqi officials.

6. "Cyprus talks enter crucial week", the UN-led peace process in Cyprus has entered a crucial week, with Turkey and Greece due to join negotiations.

1. - Aljazeera - "Kurds celebrate Newroz":

21 March 2004 / by Ahmed Janabi

21 March marks the national anniversary of Kurds all over the world. It is known as the Nawroz festival, which means "new dawn" in Kurdish.

According to legend there was a tyrant king in Persia called Rustom, who used to suppress and torture his people. Kawa, a strong young Kurdish ironsmith fed up with the oppression vowed to kill Rustom.

He agreed with thousands of young Kurdish men to light a fire on the highest peak in their mountainous neighbourhood, which was there sign to storm Rustom's palace. Kawa lit the fire and succeeded in bursting into the palace and murdering the tyrant. Kurds have been lighting fires on March 21st ever since.

Joyful anniversary

Kurds, who mainly live in four Middle Eastern countries, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, celebrate the anniversary every year. In Iraq, Nawroz has been an official holiday for decades.

Some Arabs in the Middle East also celebrate the occasion with carnivals held in various Kurdish and Arab areas.

Sarwar Abd Allah, an Iraqi Kurd told Aljazeera.net, that he and his family usually celebrate Nawroz with their friends from different backgrounds.

"People here in Iraq celebrate Nawroz with us as if it is a national day" he said "All the people I know are keen to tell me and my family happy Nawroz just like they tell Muslims happy Adha and Christians merry Christmas. All of us are sad to see sectarianism and racism hit our beloved country nowadays. Iraqis have lived peacefully together throughout history."

Stable relations

Kurdish people traditionally coexisted happily with Muslim Arabs a relationship that was established when Kurds willingly entered Islam in the 17th Hijri year (Islamic calendar), and became soldiers in the Muslim army. This positive relationship between Arabs and Kurds was seen in the campaign of Saladin, who was a Kurdish military leader commanding an Arab army.

A Kurdish family has dinner at home celebrating Nawroz

Dr Harith al-Dhari, secretary-general of the Association of Muslim scholars in Iraq told Aljazeera.net that the association includes Arab and Kurdish members alike.

"I would like to seize this opportunity to tell our Kurdish brothers happy Nawroz, and also to correct a wrong conception, about the AMS" he said "People think that we are an Arab Muslim Sunni association. This is wrong."

"The AMS includes Kurdish brothers who are as active as their Arab and Turkman peers. We are a Muslim association, and Kurds are our Muslim brothers, who share with us the same land and fate."

Unrest

Nevertheless, denying Kurdish rights in certain countries triggered some factions to demand greater power. Even though the Kurdish language and culture was freely practiced in Iraq, Iraqi Kurdish militias have been fighting the central government in Baghdad for self-rule since the 1930's.

In 1970, the then Iraqi vice president Saddam Hussein concluded a peace accord with the leader of the Kurdish militias Mustafa al-Barazani, father of Masud Barazani, a member of the current US appointed Iraqi Governing Council. However, the peace accord collapsed shortly afterwards, and fighting resumed in 1975.

Iraqi Kurdish parties increased their demands from devolved power to wanting a fully independent state after the 1991 Gulf War when they enjoyed US protected self-rule in three northern Iraqi governorates.

Kurdish parties supported the US and its allies in their endeavours to topple Saddam Hussein. That goal was achieved on 9 April, 2003. Since then Kurdish parties have been enjoying a greater say.

Some 25 million Kurds live in the Middle East

In Iran and Syria, Kurdish people are not happy with what they call "repression and denial of their national rights". Kurds in Iran have been in conflict with successive Iranian governments.

After the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire in the early part of the last century Turkish Kurds regularly clashed with the Turkish government until the tension between the two parties nearly reached the point of no return. The Kurdish language and customs were banned in Turkey and the government deprived them of their identity by calling them "Mountain Turks."

Sporadic rebellions occurred, and in 1974 a university student, Abdullah Ocalan, formed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Marxist organization dedicated to an independent Kurdistan.

He led operations against government installations in eastern Turkey. PKK attacks and government retaliation led to a state of intermittent war in eastern Turkey during the 1980s and '90s. Following Ocalan's capture in 1999, PKK activities were sharply curtailed. But, Turkey is still set against any Kurdish gains in the region. It was the first to slam the Iraqi interim constitution, because it saw how it could benefit Kurdish demands.

In 2002, the European Union put pressure on Turkey to grant the minority more rights and as a result there is now Kurdish language broadcasting and education.

2. - The Christian Sience Monitor - "For Kurds, a day of bonfires, legends, and independence":

During Newroz, a spring festival, Kurds commemorate the defeat of a tyrannical king 2,500 years ago. This year it meant victory over Hussein

23 March 2004 / by Dan Murphy

Questions of how different the Kurds are from the rest of Iraq's people are laid to rest on March 21 by the women and girls in shiny sequined dresses, the bonfires that dotted the hillside the night before, and the hundreds of thousands who pour out of Sulaymaniyah into the surrounding hills for a day of picnicking and flirting.

Newroz entails singing, dancing, and feasting throughout the week, while the city's governments and businesses are shut down. Young men parade around in the Kurds' trademark baggy pants.

The rest of Iraq barely notices.

At first blush, the holiday looks similar to dozens of coming-of-spring festivals around the world. But for the Kurds, the day means far more - especially this year, the first after the fall of Saddam Hussein, with the Kurds having won a major political victory in the transitional constitution, which appears to guarantee the de facto autonomous status they've enjoyed since the US created the no-fly zone after the 1991 Gulf War.

In the 20th century, Newroz became an integral part of the Kurdish national myth. On the Kurdish calendar, the first day of spring is the first day of the year.

In the 1930s, the Kurdish poet Taufik Abdullah decided it was time for a Kurdish cultural revival, and struck on this ancient holiday as the key.

"It was a dying holiday but he revived it and remade it as a symbol of Kurdish national struggle,'' says Stran Abdullah, a Kurdish journalist. "It was to remind everyone and ourselves that we're different, a special people. The lighting of the fires became a symbol of freedom."

Iraq's Kurdish areas are the only parts of the country where uncomplicated gratitude for the ouster of Hussein can be found. Rather than the humiliation that most Iraqis see in his defeat, the Kurds revel in it, and feel that their peshmerga guerrillas played an important role.

But while the US wants the Kurds to accept broad autonomy within a federal Iraq, and the senior Kurdish political leadership say that's the best way to protect their prosperity and security, most anyone in Sulaymaniyah says that federalism is a stepping stone to eventual independence. After so many years of fighting the central government, they fear Baghdad could turn on them.

There's also fear of being sucked into Iraq's spiral of violence. Former guerrillas patrolled roads on March 21, worried that suicide attackers would seek to strike here on a symbolically important day.

Part of the reason that Kurdish national aspirations remain so strong is that Newroz came with a set of myths befitting a people who felt oppressed and robbed by history. Kurdish children are brought up on the legend of Kawa, a courageous blacksmith who lived 2,500 years ago under the tyranny of King Zuhak, a monster with two serpents growing from his shoulder who fed on the brains of small children. He was so evil that spring no longer came to Kurdistan.

One popular version of the myth has it that Kawa, asked to send his seventh and last child to Zuhak, hid his son in the mountains with other fleeing children. Over time, Kawa turned the children into an army and, on March 20, marched on the castle and smote the king dead with his hammer. Fires were lit on the hillsides to celebrate the victory, so the story goes, and spring at last returned the next day.

Over the past 30 years the Kurds came to see Hussein, particularly since the atrocities of the campaigns of the 1980s, which included the murder of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja, as a latter-day Zuhak.

"We're so happy Saddam is gone, we live in hope that our rights will be protected now,'' says Chi Bahaddin, a young wife decked out in a red-sequined dress. Still, she's not satisfied. "It would have been best for everybody if he had been killed with a hammer."

Star Arif says this is the happiest Newroz he's ever celebrated. "I can't remember when I felt this safe, this free from worries. This time last year, as the war was starting, we were hiding in the hills afraid we might be gassed by Saddam,'' he says. "But our struggle isn't over. Federalism is a stage we have to pass through for independence."

3. - Reuters - "Israel airs film of police firing on Kurds":

23 March 2004

Israeli television stations have broadcast film showing Syrian policemen firing from automatic rifles at unarmed people during what the broadcasters said were clashes between Syrian Kurds and police this month.

About 30 people were killed in clashes in northern Syria about a week ago after a brawl at a stadium in Kameshli during a soccer match between Kurdish and Arab teams. Tensions have flared since.

The Israeli television stations said the footage, shown on Sunday, was taken in the first days of the confrontations on March 12 and 13. It was not possible to check the authenticity of the film with the Kurds or with the Syrian authorities who remain formally at war with Israel.

The footage shows police opening fire with automatic rifles at unarmed people running through the streets and in fields near a town. Automatic gunfire and screams can be heard.

An apparently dead man with what looks like a gunshot wound to his chest is seen, as well as pools of blood and wounded people being carried away.

"The pictures were taken by the Kurds in Kameshli. They were broadcast out of the area before the Syrians closed down the Kurdish media outlets," Ehud Yaari, a correspondent for Israel's Channel Two television, said.

Meanwhile, Syrian Kurds mourned those "martyred" during the unrest instead of marking their spring festival on Sunday with traditional singing and celebration.

Although most Kurds stayed at home on the usually joyous day of Norooz - or "new day" - after their leaders appealed for calm, about 2000 gathered in a field outside Kameshli, near the Turkish border, in an event organised by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party.

"This is not a celebration. We are in mourning for the souls of our martyrs," said student Mohammed Jaafar.

"We didn't give them a good funeral. They shot us, so we consider this their respectful funeral," he said.

Kurds make up about two million of Syria's 17 million population. The majority are Arabs. Syria avoids referring to them as a distinct minority and stresses Syrian unity.

4. - Kurdistan Observer - "The Kurds nominate Syria for regime change":

22 March 2004 / by Christopher Hitchens

Over last weekend, I had the honor of being an invited speaker at the American Kurdish Congress, held in Arlington, Va. There was a good deal to celebrate, as against the same time last year. The three Kurdish-majority provinces of Iraq have consolidated their hard-won prosperity and autonomy, and Kurdish has been recognized as an official language of the new state. Kurdish security forces played a crucial role in isolating and capturing Saddam Hussein and in arresting the courier who was bearing the now-notorious Zarqawi manifesto, calling for Sunni-Shiite fratricide as the latest strategy of fundamentalism, across the Iranian border. There is some resentment and suspicion among Kurds at the seeming willingness of Americans to take them for granted. (Colin Powell, on his flying visit to the annual commemoration of the chemical weapons massacre at Halabja, had not seen fit to mention that the victims were Kurdish. If you want to know how to offend an Iraqi Kurd, by all means refer to him or her as one of those victimized when Saddam murdered "his own people." "His own people" they decidedly were and are not.)

Amid all the discussions and debates about the disputed role of Kurds in the new Iraqi constitution, one could feel and hear another hot topic as it rushed around the periphery of the meeting. Many of those present had relatives and friends in northern Syria and were in cell-phone contact with them hour by hour. In and around the city of Kamishli, in the past few days, several dozen Kurdish protesters have been shot down by Baathist police and militia for raising the Kurdish flag and for destroying pictures and statues of the weak-chinned hereditary ruler, Bashar al-Assad. In tussling with local party goons who shout slogans in favor of the ousted Saddam, it is clear, they are hoping for a rerun of regime change.

It is early to pronounce, but this event seems certain to be remembered as the beginning of the end of the long-petrified Syrian status quo. The Kurdish population of Syria is not as large, in proportion, as its cousinly equivalent in Iraq. But there are many features of the Syrian Baath regime that make it more vulnerable than Saddam Hussein's. Saddam based his terrifying rule on a minority of a minority—the Tikriti clan of the Sunni. Assad, like his father, is a member of the Alawite confessional minority, which in the wider Arab world is a very small group indeed. Syria has large populations of Sunni, Druze, and Armenians, and the Alawite elite has stayed in power by playing off minorities against minorities. It is in a weak position to rally the rest of society against any identifiable "enemy within," lest by doing so it call attention to its own tenuous position.

5. - The Washington Post - "Iraqi Militias Near Accord To Disband":

IRBIL / 22 March 2004 / by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Robin Wright

Leaders of Iraq’s two largest militias have provisionally agreed to dissolve their forces, according to senior U.S. and Iraqi officials. The move is a major boost to a U.S. campaign to prevent civil war by eliminating armed groups before sovereignty is handed over to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, the officials said.

Members of the two forces -- the Shiite Muslim Badr Organization and the Kurdish pesh merga -- will be offered a chance to work in Iraq’s new security services or claim substantial retirement benefits as incentives to disarm and disband. Members of smaller militias will also be allowed to apply for positions with the new security services, but those that choose not to disband will be confronted and disarmed, by force if necessary, senior U.S. officials said.

The occupation authority is still negotiating with Kurdish and Shiite leaders, who want more extensive guarantees than they have been offered. But U.S., Kurdish and Shiite officials said they had secured an agreement in principle and likely will announce a formal deal within the next few weeks.

"We believe that all militia members should be part of one national army and police force," said Hamid Bayati, a top official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite political party that controls the Badr Organization , which is estimated to have at least 10,000 members.

Jalal Talabani, one of Iraq’s two Kurdish leaders, said in an interview that Kurdish officials have "an agreement with the coalition to find an honorable solution for the pesh merga."

The demobilization effort would effectively dismantle groups that have been allied with the United States for years in the fight to topple former president Saddam Hussein. The 50,000-member pesh merga, which defended an autonomous swath of Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq from Hussein’s army for 12 years, helped U.S. troops capture several cities during last year’s war. The Badr Organization, formerly known as the Badr Brigades, conducted attacks in southern Iraq from bases in neighboring Iran for years with the tacit support of the U.S. government.

Now, however, senior American officials in Iraq say breaking up armed groups is essential to Iraq’s democratic transition and that demobilization of the Kurdish and Shiite militias is the first step toward that goal.

"There is broad agreement that there is no place in the new Iraqi democracy for militias," L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, said in an interview here after talks on the subject with top Kurdish leaders.

Iraq experts and crisis analysts warn, however, that dismantling the militias will not necessarily eliminate the dangers posed by tensions among Iraq’s many religious, ethnic and political factions. Deep-seated allegiances to ethnic or religious leaders will probably prove stronger than loyalty to the fledgling security forces of a national government that has yet to take shape, they say.

"Many militiamen will likely be absorbed into existing security organizations such as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, where their loyalties will continue to be divided between their Baghdad paymasters and local or sectarian affiliations," Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote last week in a paper on Iraq’s militias.

Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said: "There’s a real question about how many members of the new security forces will again become Sunnis or Shiites first once a crisis erupts."

Disbanding the militias will be particularly important for the next two big steps after the transfer of sovereignty on June 30: writing a constitution and holding elections.

"You can’t have a free and fair election unless parties can mobilize their following, candidates can campaign and people can vote free of intimidation and violence. We know from experience in other post-conflict situations that it is very difficult to achieve that kind of climate of freedom and security when there are substantial armed militias," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Accordingly, analysts say, substantial progress must be made while the U.S.-led occupation still has leverage in Iraq. "There has to be a strategy for demobilization that takes advantage of the international force now in place and avoids the creation of a vacuum that spoilers inevitably will fill with bombs and bloodshed," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of International Crisis Group, which recently issued a study of Iraq’s militias.

Kurdish leaders, who until recently had insisted on controlling pesh merga units even after their absorption into the Iraqi security services, have acceded to U.S. demands and now are willing to place those forces under the authority of Baghdad. "We recognize the authority of the central government," Talabani said. "That is the reality."

Under the occupation authority’s demobilization plan, Kurdish militiamen would be guaranteed one of several options: a position in the police force, the border patrol, the civil defense corps or the new army; a civilian government job; or retirement with a pension.

"There will be extensive financial inducements," said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with the plan. "They will be offered an amount of money that is significant by Iraqi standards."

The official said the occupation authority is aware of failed attempts to dismantle militias in other emerging democracies. "If you don’t provide meaningful incentives and you just say ’demobilize’ to people who are dependent on the income of being a militiaman, they won’t do it," the official said. "They need good jobs or good pensions."

Kurdish leaders also want to create a national guard in northern Iraq made up of former pesh merga. Though Talabani said the new force would fall under national -- not regional -- command, occupation authority officials say they oppose the idea of creating a new security service just for the Kurdish area.

Bayati, the Shiite leader, said the occupation authority has told the Badr Organization that, unlike the offer being extended to the Kurds -- wholesale acceptance of militia units and subsequent dispersal of members to various security forces -- the Shiite militia’s members will have to apply as individuals for jobs with the army, the police and the civil defense corps.

"We want them to be treated like the pesh merga," Bayati said. "They should be accepted as a whole. They should not be taken one by one as individual volunteers."

Despite their large numbers, the two Shiite and Kurdish militias may not pose the biggest dangers to democratization, analysts caution. Since Hussein’s ouster, several small armed groups have coalesced around emerging political leaders, often calling themselves bodyguards rather than militias.

"There’s at least as much urgency in controlling a range of groups of armed civilians that are affiliated with other political parties, tribes or gangs and -- unlike the highly disciplined pesh merga and Badr forces -- are unpredictable, with each trying to create facts on the ground that a future centralized security structure will find extremely difficult to undo," said Schneider, of the International Crisis Group.

Of particular concern to the occupation authority and the U.S. military is the Mehdi Army, a militia controlled by Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite cleric who has called for U.S. forces to leave Iraq. The Mehdi Army, estimated to have a few thousand members, has sought to assert control in several cities in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. The group is also alleged to have been responsible for an October ambush in a Baghdad slum that killed two U.S. soldiers.

"They’re just thuggish, fundamentalist fighters," the U.S. official said.

The official said the presence of the Mehdi Army has made it more difficult for the Badr Organization to demobilize because of fears Sadr will use his group to exert pressure on members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution.

"If we can crack that nut and take them out, it would be a turning point," the official said. "If they’re no longer a factor, the Badr would be more amenable to demobilization."

6. - BBC - "Cyprus talks enter crucial week":

23 March 2004

The UN-led peace process in Cyprus has entered a crucial week, with Turkey and Greece due to join negotiations.

Talks move to Switzerland on Wednesday, where the two governments will try to break the deadlock over reuniting Cyprus before it joins the EU in May.

A month of talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders in the island's capital, Nicosia, produced no results.

EU membership will in effect apply only in the Greek part of Cyprus if no deal has been struck by 1 May.

Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders have been meeting almost daily since 19 February.

Speaking after their last two-way talks on Monday, Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos admitted they had not been successful.

"At this phase of talks there has not been any significant progress, in any case, not on issues of substance," he told Reuters news agency.

Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash declared last week that he will not go to Switzerland, because "he saw no prospect of Greeks compromising by next week."

Mr Denktash says the pro-settlement prime minister, Mehmet Ali Talat, can go to the exclusive resort of Burgenstock, near Lucerne, instead of him - and sign the agreement if he wishes to.

But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reacted angrily on Sunday and urged Mr Denktash to attend the negotiations.

Greek Cypriots also raised concern that the boycott could damage the credibility of the UN process, leaving room for doubt about who had the authority to sign a peace deal if Mr Denktash stayed away.


Unresolved issues in negotiations over the UN blueprint centre on property claims and territorial concessions.
Talks in Switzerland are expected to start with low-level meetings on Wednesday.

Mr Erdogan, his Greek counterpart Costas Karamanlis and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will attend later in the week.

A UN official quoted by AFP news agency said although there was no agreement so far, they "expected real progress to be made with the help of Greece and Turkey".

Under the UN plan, if there is still no agreement by 29 March, Mr Annan will himself finalise a text to be put to separate referendums on both sides of the divided island in late April.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded the north of the island in response to a short-lived Greek coup.

The self-declared Republic of Northern Cyprus is recognised only by Turkey.