27
September 2004
2. "Letter to Iraqi Kurdistan", Dear brothers, I write to you today because of the high regard with which I hold the Kurds of Iraq and other countries. I never forget that you are the people of the great Sultan Salahuddin Al-Ayubi who led the Muslims of his day to the liberation of the holy land from the invading Crusaders.
3. "Kurds Want Arabs Out of Iraqi City", A tense confrontation is building in this refugee-swollen city, with hardline Kurdish politicians demanding the departure of some 200,000 Arabs who settled here during a 30-year government campaign of Arab migration to oil-rich parts of northern Iraq.
4. "Concerns in Denmark over speed of Turkey’s EU bid", Denmark’s Prime Minister said that Turkey’s reforms must be fully implemented before membership negotiations can begin.
5. "Poetic film on the courage of Kurdish children gets top award", The film ‘Turtles can fly’ by the Kurdish Director Bahman Gobadi won the Golden Shell; Xu Jinglei received the Silver Shell for best director; and Connie Nielsen and Ulrich Thomson got best actor awards for their work in the film ‘Brødre’.
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1. - AFP - "Turkey again warns U.S. over northern Iraq city"
ANKARA (AFP)
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Saturday he had conveyed Turkey's concerns over the future of the ethnically volatile Iraqi city of Kirkuk to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Anatolia news agency reported.
Ankara is worried that the Iraqi Kurds, a staunch U.S. ally in Iraq, are plotting to take control of the oil-rich northern city, which also has a large population of Turkmen, an ethnic minority of Turkish descent.
"Everybody should refrain from any kind of provocative action. I told him (Powell) that Kirkuk is very important in this process and that everybody should be very cautious on that," Gul told Turkish reporters in New York after talks with Powell in the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Turkey has repeatedly warned against attempts to upset the demography of Kirkuk, which the Iraqi Kurds say was overwhelmingly Kurdish in the 1950s before the government in Baghdad started a deliberate campaign of "Arabization."
Thousands of Arabs were encouraged during Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule to settle in Kirkuk and the Kurds are now trying to chase them out.
Ankara fears that Kurdish control of the area's oil resources could further strengthen the Iraqi Kurds whom it suspects of plotting to break away from the central control of Baghdad.
Such a prospect, Ankara worries, could fan separatist sentiment among its own restive Kurds in adjoining southeast Turkey.
"It is primarily in our interest that Iraq is stabilized as soon as possible," Gul said, according to Anatolia.
"The Americans will one day go, but we will continue to live in this region. That's why an Iraq which has preserved its territorial and political unity and which has begun to use its resources in peace for the benefit of its people is very much in our interest," the minister added.
Earlier this month, Turkey threatened to cease all cooperation with the U.S. over Iraq if it continued to shell the mainly Turkmen Iraqi town of Tall Afar.
Things were quickly smoothed over, however, and Gul later
said that Ankara and Washington would act together to provide assistance
to the town's population.
2. - Arab News "Letter to Iraqi Kurdistan"
Amr Mohammed Al-Faisal
Dear brothers,
I write to you today because of the high regard with which I hold the Kurds of Iraq and other countries. I never forget that you are the people of the great Sultan Salahuddin Al-Ayubi who led the Muslims of his day to the liberation of the holy land from the invading Crusaders.
It is with great distress that I receive news of your collaboration with US forces in the occupation and colonization of your country, Iraq. It is with even more distress mixed with disbelief that I learn of your alliance with Israel in its war against your Muslim brothers in Iraq and other part of the Muslim world.
Truly, the late sultan would spit on you if he was alive today.
You justify this treachery as a way to achieve the dream of some amongst you of a Kurdish independent state.
Do you not read history? Have you forgotten that the British, when they first occupied Iraq, promised you a state? When you were no longer useful to them they promptly forgot about it.
Apparently, you now believe that you will have better luck with the Americans. Truly, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The Americans on the whole are a faithless lot who respect no agreements and honor no obligations that do not fit within their own interest of the moment. They do this with no shame or even faint embarrassment.
Have you forgotten the Maung?
They are a people who fought alongside the Americans during their war on Vietnam. The Maung were renowned for their courage and fighting skills and they endured some of the heaviest attacks from the Vietcong. When the Americans decided that they had had a bellyful of Vietnam and were no longer willing to fight for “freedom” and “democracy”, they left Vietnam and abandoned the Maung to their fate without a backward glance.
They would not even allow Maungs to immigrate to the US. Today, after relations have been normalized between the US and Vietnam, the Maung still suffer and the Americans still ignore them.
In your case, dear brothers, have you forgotten when Saddam Hussein attacked you after the 1991 Gulf War, how American CIA officers ran away and abandoned you without even warning you that Saddam’s tanks were on their way? Have you forgotten how they refused to accept Kurdish refugees who escaped?
With friends like these you really don’t need enemies.
The Americans will soon be leaving Iraq, do not doubt it, and they will abandon you to the inevitable retribution of the Muslims of Iraq. Your alliance with the US against the Muslims of Iraq and even more bizarrely your alliance with Israel will bring upon you the hatred and contempt of Muslims around the world for generations.
And for what? For empty promises that no one intends to keep?
Your situation is almost hopeless. You have one last chance and that is to revolt on your leaders and align yourselves with the rest of Iraq against the Americans.
This must be done however, before the American plan for withdrawal becomes widely known. Otherwise your change of allegiance will be meaningless and will not protect you.
Do not feel sorry for your leaders; they will all be living very comfortably in the US enjoying a peaceful life. It will be you, alone, who will have to face the bitter consequences of their treachery.
3. - AP - "Kurds Want Arabs Out of Iraqi City"
Kirkuk, (Southern Kurdistan) Sep 25, 2004
A tense confrontation is building in this refugee-swollen city, with hardline Kurdish politicians demanding the departure of some 200,000 Arabs who settled here during a 30-year government campaign of Arab migration to oil-rich parts of northern Iraq.
"The Arabs must go back," Azad Jindyany, director of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's media office, said in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah this week. "This is the central policy for every Kurdish party and all Kurdish movements."
Kurdish parties appear to be trying to recreate a majority they held long ago in the contested province, traditionally a multiethnic place with Christians, Turkomen and some Arabs who trace their roots back hundreds of years.
An August report from New York-based Human Rights Watch said the hardline Kurdish position underscores a "dramatic change in power relations in northern Iraq" that has left Arab families "almost completely powerless" and Kurdish parties creating conditions for "a major confrontation."
Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, U.S. commander in the region, said the province's fast-changing demographics are the hottest long-term security threat in northern Iraq.
"We've got to work hard now so it doesn't become a civil war," Batiste said in a briefing on the U.S. Army base in Tikrit. If Kirkuk disintegrates into war, "we'll be right in the middle of it."
A Sunni Arab councilman for Kirkuk province, Mohammed Khalil Nasif, said the hardline demands for reversal of the previous government's Arabization policy sound almost as drastic as the original ethnic cleansing policy itself.
"If the Kurds do the same thing, it'll be the Kurdization program," Nasif said before a recent council session in this city of 750,000. "We don't believe in fixing a wrong with a wrong. If a refugee comes back and wants to kick someone else out, we don't approve. Kirkuk is big enough for everyone."
It is unclear how the Kurdish parties will pursue the removal of Arabs from Kirkuk if the Arabs wish to stay. Iraq's U.S.-approved national laws allow Iraqis to live where they choose.
Jindyany said the new law doesn't apply to Arabs who were given Kurdish homes and land by the deposed government of Saddam Hussein, whose moves to solidify control of the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk and nearby Khanaqin brought hundreds of thousands of Arabs to northern Iraq. A similar number of Kurds were forced from their homes in the process.
"Kirkuk must be restored" to the Kurds, Jindyany said. "After it's restored, anyone is free to move anywhere in Iraq."
Few Arabs want to return south, Nasif said. Often they were coaxed north from desert areas or poor Shiite Muslim villages. After living as long as 30 years in wealthier, more temperate Kirkuk, they have roots in the area.
"This is their home," Nasif said.
The resurgent Kurds are being closely watched by leaders of Kirkuk's Arab and Turkomen communities, as well as by the U.S. military, which still operates several bases around Kirkuk and enforces a nightly curfew here.
The government of neighboring Turkey has said Kirkuk should remain a multiethnic city, and not the capital of an enlarged Iraqi Kurdistan, the autonomous northern area. Turkey, which counts a huge Kurdish minority, has said it will block any Iraqi Kurdish steps toward independence.
Thus far, the ongoing return of some 70,000 Kurdish refugees has been marked by its lack of violence. Most Arab leaders in the region have spoken cautiously about the issue.
"We Arabs welcome the Kurdish refugees to come back to Kirkuk," Nasif said.
Batiste and other U.S. officials are trying to calm the confrontation by pleading for action from the Iraqi claims compensation committee, which is supposed to grant money or land to Arabs willing to leave. The committee might also settle with Kurds by giving them new land and housing funds, he said.
"It doesn't have to be a train wreck," Batiste said. "There are certainly some Kurds and Turkomen and Arabs who are very hardline on this. But I think there's a way of doing it."
Batiste said the basic solution hinged on the idea that each ethnicity has a place in Kirkuk, but some Arabs "need to move back to where they came from."
The general acknowledged that the government's compensation process has failed to solve any of the 6,000 claims already filed in northern Iraq, leaving Kurdish political parties to push refugees to begin homesteading in Kirkuk.
"One and a half years after deposing Saddam Hussein, the government hasn't started any process to address our claims, so the people are simply returning back," Jindyany said. "They don't want to lose their chance, or their land."
Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of people could file claims for compensation with Baghdad. The United Nations found some 800,000 displaced Kurds inside the northern autonomous area, many of whom were pushed out of Kirkuk. That figure includes refugees displaced by intra-Kurdistan fighting between militias controlled by the two chief parties.
The Kurdish parties are also after a second goal: restoring Kirkuk to its original area before Saddam lopped off outlying Kurdish lands and transferred them to four neighboring provinces as part of the Arabization campaign. The restoration would tilt the population even further toward a Kurdish majority.
"All the parts that were cut off must be restored,"
Jindyany said.
4. - "Concerns in Denmark over speed of Turkey’s
EU bid"
Denmark’s Prime Minister said that Turkey’s reforms must be
fully implemented before membership negotiations can begin.
September 24 - A number of Danish political figures have expressed concerns
that Turkey will be fast tracked into the European Union without meeting
all of the membership criteria, according to Danish media reports Friday.
They fear that a number of as yet unresolved issues will be left by the wayside in the lead up to Turkey’s admission should it be given a date for accession talks to start at this December’s summit of EU leaders, one Danish paper reported.
“We know there’s not a very broad level of public support for this,” Conservative Party Member of the European Parliament Gitte Seeberg was quoted as saying. “So it’s important not to go soft on the criteria right now. Naturally, we stand by our promises. Once Turkey meets the accession criteria, the negotiations process can begin. But a number of incidents in recent weeks have cast doubt on the human rights situation in the country.
Another to demand that Turkey met all of the accession criteria was Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
“I would like to emphasise that this is not only
a question of formal passage (of reforms) in the Turkish Parliament.
These reforms must be put into practice in Turkish society before accession
talks can begin,” Rasmussen said Thursday.
5. - KurdishMedia.com - "Poetic film on the courage of Kurdish children gets top award"
26/09/2004 Berria - By Ainhoa Oiartzabal
The film ‘Turtles can fly’ by the Kurdish Director Bahman Gobadi won the Golden Shell; Xu Jinglei received the Silver Shell for best director; and Connie Nielsen and Ulrich Thomson got best actor awards for their work in the film ‘Brødre’.
DONOSTIA (San Sebastian) - Clutching his Golden Shell that he had won for the film Turtles can fly the Kurdish director Bahman Gobadi said in Basque: “Mila esker eta beti arte” (Thank you very much and farewell). During the closing event at the Kursaal last night there was a prolonged round of applause for the winner of the best film award in this year’s Donostia-San Sebastian International Film Festival. The same scene was repeated in the afternoon. Critics and reporters clapped enthusiastically when Mario Vargas Llosa, the president of the international jury, announced the winner.
The top film tells what it was like in the aftermath of the war against Iraq through the eyes of Kurdish children. “I want to dedicate this prize to all the children in the film; to all Kurds throughout the world; and to the film production and people of Iran.” The filmmaker, who lives in Teheran, said he hoped that the Golden Shell would boost Iranian film production. There was also warm applause for Goran Paskaljevic’s Sam Zimske Noci, which got the special jury prize. The Serbian director also said that the award would help film production in his country. This was the only film the jury members gave their opinion on, pointing out that it was “for the way it evokes the tragic consequences of a civil conflict by means of the relationship between a survivor and an autistic girl”.
There was applause, but whistling as well, during yesterday afternoon’s press conference when it was announced that the Silver Shell for Best Director had been awarded to Xu Jinglei for the film Yi geng mo sheng nu ren de lai xin (letter from an unknown woman). But there was not that much. There was more whistling when the announcement came that the Jury Award for Best Photography had gone to the photography director of the film Nine Songs directed by Michael Winterbottom. In the award-giving ceremony in the evening Kieran O’Brien, the principal actor in the film, received the prize on behalf of Marcel Zyskind, the photography director.
Just like last year, two actors in the same film received the Silver Shell prizes for Best Actor: Connie Nielsen and Ulrich Thomsen, the two who played the leading roles in the film Brødre (Brothers). They both attended the prize-giving ceremony and thanked Susanne Bier, who directed the film about the consequences of war, for having been given the opportunity to act in the film. The Best Screenplay Award went to the film Omagh which many had tipped as one of the favourites for the Golden Shell. The screenplay writer Guy Hibbert received the prize on his and Paul Greengrass’s behalf. “It’s five years since the Omagh attack, but for the victims and their families it is as if it happened yesterday,” said Hibbert.
The film “Roma” by Adolfo Aristarain, regarded
as a favourite by critics and the media, failed to win any awards. So
the film is this year’s main loser.