1.  Kurds Increase Pressure for Federation (RFE/RL) 03/01
2.  Kurds Still Undecided on Coalition Partners (AFP) 02/27
3.  Arab Political Leaders Reject Kirkuk as Kurdish (KurdishMedia) 02/28
4.  While United in Baghdad, Kurdish Politics Still Unsettled (Financial Times) 03/01
5.  Nation Within a Nation Takes Shape in Kurdistan (Inter Press Service) 03/01
6.  Kurdish Parliament Opening Delayed by Disagreements (Peyamner) 02/27
7.  Talabani in Salahaddin for Talks with Barzani, Jaafari (Peyamner) 03/02
8.  KDP's Shawais: Kirkuk Status to Be Determined by Referendum (Turkish Daily News) 02/28
9.  Can Kurdish Demands Be Accommodated in Unified Iraq? (Time Magazine) 02/27
10. Kurds Vow to Retain Peshmerga Militias as Guardians of Autonomy (New York Times) 02/27
11. Battle-Ready Kurdish Militias Struggle to Define New Role (Christian Science Monitor) 03/02
12. Video Shows Insurgents Executing Kurdish "Spy" (Reuters) 03/01
13. Women in Kurdistan Fear Shia Elite Will Introduce Religious Law (IWPR) 02/25
14. Nursing Prof., WKI Establish Nursing Training Programs in Kurdistan (Emory Wheel) 03/01
15. Peter Galbraith: Turkey's "Sophisticated" Approach to Kurdistan (Bitterlemons) 02/24
16. Hiwa Osman: For Iraqi Kurds and Turks, New Rapport is Unavoidable (Bitterlemons) 02/24
17. Kamal Mirawdeli: Kurdish Consensus Emerging (KurdishMedia) 03/01
18. Party Official Claims US Forces Raided Turkmen Front Building (Turkish Daily News) 02/28
19. Turkmen Official Recounts US Raid on Mosul Office (AFP) 02/27
20. Assyrians Complain of Kurdish Efforts to Restrict Voting (Frankfurter Rundschau) 02/27
21. In Shaqlawa, Christians and Muslims United by Reverence for Shrine (IWPR) 02/25
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1) Kurds increase pressure for federation
RFE/RL
By Charles Recknagel
March 1, 2005

PRAGUE - Iraqi Kurds are feeling their strength after gaining the second largest bloc of seats in the new National Assembly. The Kurds' 75 seats make them the party to court for the two men vying to be Iraq's next prime minister. Those men are Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shi'ite Islamist, and his rival, Iyad Allawi, a secular Shi'ite who currently holds the post.

The Kurds are demanding that one of their own leaders get the influential, if largely ceremonial, role of president in the new Iraqi government.

The Kurdish candidate is Jalal Talabani, head of one of the two most important Kurdish factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They have made it clear over the past days that they not only want Talabani to be head of state as their price for supporting
Another card falls

A half-brother and former adviser to ousted president Saddam Hussein has been captured in what Iraqi government officials are playing up as an important victory in the battle against Sunni insurgents. Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan has been handed over by Syria, where he took refuge after US forces toppled Saddam in April 2003. He is suspected of supplying funds to insurgents. Hassan, number 36 in the US list of 55 most-wanted Ba'athists, served as chief of general security from 1991 to 1996, before becoming Saddam's adviser.
either of the rival candidates for prime minister, but they also will insist on a federal Iraq.

Speaking with RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq, Talabani said, "It is the right of the Kurdish people to demand that the region of Kurdistan, as it is known in terms of geography and history, become the region over which the Kurdish people would exert their federal rule. We believe that existing problems can also be solved by consensus and dialogue in a brotherly, political way. There is no problem in Iraq that would be insolvable, in our opinion."

Both the rival candidates to be head of government are negotiating for Kurdish support because neither has the two-thirds majority that is effectively needed in the 275-seat assembly to get the position.

Jaafari is closest to the mark because he is the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance, a largely Shi'ite coalition endorsed by preeminent cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The alliance has 140 seats. Those seats plus the Kurds' 75 seats would give it the support of 215 delegates, well over the two-thirds majority, which is 184 seats.

Allawi is starting with just the 40 seats he won in the elections. Still, if he could add the Kurds' 75 seats he would get a big boost and he still could pick up other votes from smaller parties in the assembly.

Allawi might also hope to lure away some of the members of Jaafari's own loose coalition, which includes secular and Islamist groups. In an opening shot last week, Allawi called Jaafari "an honorable man" but said Iraq should be liberal and not "governed by political Islamists".

So far, the Kurds have given no clear sign of who they will ultimately favor.

Abdul Jalil Faily, the head of the Baghdad bureau of the other largest Kurdish faction, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), explained the unified Kurdish position in an interview with Radio Free Iraq on February 23. "When it comes to the nomination of Jaafari for the post of prime minister we have, in fact, no negative points to mention," Faily said. "But our support or nonsupport for him depends on the extent of the support of the mentioned person to our cause, as a Kurdish cause."

The Kurds want to keep the substantial autonomy they currently enjoy in Kurdish-administered northern Iraq and institutionalize those powers through a constitution that establishes Iraq as a federation.

If Jaafari were to become prime minister he would have to decide how strong he wants the Baghdad government to be and whether to resist or encourage the decentralization of powers that the Kurds want. Those include the powers now exercised by the Kurdish leadership, which collects taxes in its region and maintains its own security forces.

Much of Kurdish-populated northern Iraq fell out of Baghdad's control under Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. However, Kurdish officials say they respect Iraq's territorial integrity and want the Kurdish region to remain in Iraq within a federal system.

Allawi has already publicly endorsed the Kurds' demands for a federal system, explaining his position after a meeting on February 10 with KDP head Masaud Barzani: "There were talks about the necessity of political consensus between different Iraqi [political] forces to cement the civilizing and positive basis for a unified, democratic, federal future of Iraq, which includes all different segments of Iraqi society."

The Kurdish leadership, which is secular, could feel ideologically closer to Allawi and his appeals for a "liberal" Iraq than to the Shi'ite religious parties that make up Jaafari's strongest base of support.

Jaafari has indicated he might push for a "more Islamist" Iraq by recently restating that the religious parties want Islamic law, or Sharia, to be a source, among others, for Iraq's legal code. He added that "we will not have any laws that oppose Islam" - that is, contradict its values.

But with the Kurds holding meetings with both rival prime minister candidates' camps, it is too early to predict how the negotiations will end or what compromises might be reached.

One particularly thorny issue for all sides is the widespread Kurdish desire to bring the oil-rich region of Kirkuk into the Kurdish-administered area. The city is populated by Kurds, who favor the move, but also Turkomans and Arabs who do not.

Any inclusion of Kirkuk into the Kurdish-administered region would be opposed by Turkey. Ankara says it fears for the rights of the Turkomans, who are linguistically and culturally related to the Turks, under a Kurdish administration. Turkey also claims that any further strengthening of the Kurdish autonomous area could lead to Iraq's Kurds declaring independence - something Ankara says might encourage its own restive Kurdish minority to try the same.

With no end to Iraq's political jockeying yet in sight, the best description of talks may belong to Kurdish politician Barham Salih. Salih, deputy prime minister in the current Iraqi interim government, told The Washington Post ahead of Kurdish talks with Jaafari's camp, "I can imagine they will be exhaustive, and exhausting, negotiations. We will be drinking gallons of tea in smoke-filled rooms."

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2) Kurds still debating who to back in next government
AFP
February 27, 2005

ARBIL - Iraq's Kurds, the second largest vote getter in last month's election, have not yet decided which party to back in forming the country's next government, a top official said Sunday.

"For the moment, we have not yet made any alliance," said Ruj Nuri Shawis, Iraq's vice president and right-hand man to Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani.

"We are trying to participate in the formation of a government uniting all Iraqi parties and we are trying to get one of the top posts," he told reporters.

The Kurds, with 77 seats in the country's new 275-seat National Assembly, are positioned to play the role of kingmaker in choosing the next government

Both the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance which won the elections with 140 seats, and caretaker prime minister Iyad Allawi are vying for the Kurdish bloc's support in forming the next government.

Shawis, a member of Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said the Kurds had formed a negotiating committee to meet with other parties.

"The negotiations are going to intensify in the days to come to prepare for the first meeting of the national assembly and we are going to resolve all problems before convening such a meeting," Shawis said.

The Kurds' key demands in forming the next government are to preserve the Kurds' virtual autonomy in the three northern provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah.

The Kurds also wish to resolve the status of the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk, which the long persecuted ethnic group wants to claim for Kurdistan.

Their political bloc, known as the Kurdish Alliance, also want to obtain the post of Iraq's president for Jalal al-Talabani, the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which governs Sulaimaniyah.

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3) Shia coalitions: Kirkuk has never been and never will be Kurdish
KurdishMedia.com
By Bryar Mariwani
February 28, 2005

London: In a telephone chat show conducted by the popular US backed radio in Iraq 'Radio Sawa', representatives of the three main winners of the landmark Iraqi elections went into hot controversial discussions.

The guests were, Nawshirwan Mustafa, the prominent PUK politician and a representative of the Kurdistani Coalition List. Dr. Ali Reza, a member of the Islamic Al-Dawa party and representative of the Iraqi cleric Al-Sistani backed Iraqi Shiia Coalition List and Abu Fahd Al-Isawi, a member of the Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi's Al-Wifaq party.

Nawshirwan Mustafa said that his list has not entered any coalitions with any other Iraqi lists because their demands have not been met but hinted that negotiations are still in progress in Baghdad.

When asked whether Kurds are ready to accept delaying the implementation of Article 58 of the temporary Iraqi constitution, an article which states that situations in Kirkuk should be normalised to the status before the Arabisation campaign era by Saddam Hussein, Nawshriwan Mustafa the representative of the Kurdistani list said "No, because Kirkuk is a central issue to the Kurdish movement. We could have agreed with the Iraqi government 40 years ago if we were ready to give up on Kirkuk".

Ayad Allawi's representative, Abdu Fahd Al-Isawi, in response to a question related to Kirkuk said, "Kirkuk has never and never will be a Kurdish city. I am very disappointed when I hear these comments [That Kirkuk is a Kurdish city] from politicians and from ordinary people. There is something historical that can't be played with. Kurdistan region is an Iraqi region and Kurds are real Iraqis and they believe in the unity of Iraq."

The Radio show host then asked the representative of Sistani backed 'Iraq Coalition List' (Shiia List) to give his opinions on the issue of Kirkuk. Dr. Reza said "I am with Al-Sabawii on the issue of Kirkuk. Kirkuk has never and will never be a Kurdish city. Kirkuk is more Arabic than Kurdish."

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4) Unease among Kurds as leaders eye Baghdad power
Financial Times
By Gareth Smyth in Suleimania
March 1 2005

Jalal Talabani, at 72 one of the great survivors of Kurdish politics, is likely to become president of Iraq after the main Kurdish parties took 75 of 275 seats in Iraq's new assembly.

But Iraq's 5m-6m Kurds are at a testing time in their troubled history.

There is little jubilation within the Kurdish heartland, where many people express scepticism at their leaders' talk of the "big prize" of constitutional autonomy that has always eluded the 25m Kurds spread across Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran.

The roots of the scepticism are a sense that Kurdish energies should not be diverted into propping up Iraq, and a frustration at the behaviour of the Kurdish leaders.

Just after the election on January 30, Mr Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party, jointly proclaimed Mr Talabani as the Kurds' choice for a top post in Baghdad.

Mr Barzani, in turn, would be "president of Kurdistan", a position yet to be defined by either the Kurdish parliament or in the new Iraqi constitution.

"Kurdistan TV reported Massoud was elected president with the votes still not yet announced," said a young man in Suleimania. "It's tribalism, not democracy, and I regret voting."

While most Kurds welcomed the parties' common list for the Iraq-wide assembly, many felt a common list for the Kurdish regional assembly left them with no choice at all.

The parties used nationalist sentiment and tribal patronage to motivate voters, but some, especially the young, wanted to pass a verdict on the way the PUK and the KDP have run separate administrations since their brutal civil war of 1994-1997.

The parties' two zones have separate armed forces and television stations. Distinct cellular networks force users to switch Sim cards as they cross from one checkpoint to another.

Mr Barzani and Mr Talabani have pledged to merge the administrations, and Nichervan Barzani, prime minister in the KDP administration and Massoud Barzani's nephew, recently said unification could be complete by May.

"It will be easier in health and education than in security and military affairs," said a senior PUK official.

But the real obstacle is vested interests, said Zirak Abdullah, a journalist with Hawlati, an independent newspaper. "Government, party and business are all mixed up."

Both parties have assets once owned by the Iraqi government including hotels and villas and are becoming entangled in a web of trade and construction projects as the region begins to develop.

"There is a lack of transparency," said Asos Hardi, Hawlati's editor. "It's hard to find out who owns what and people suspect the parties are often hiding behind the scenes."

In October leading PUK members secured a commitment from Mr Talabani that financial decisions required approval by the party's political bureau.

Officials said this resulted from concern over the business affairs of Mr Talabani's sons and brother-in-law. "We have dealt with this," said one. "The PUK, unlike the KDP, is not a family party."

The PUK's media gave wide local publicity to December's FT report that the KDP-run administration had sent abroad $500m in hard currency, transferred from the US-led administration in Baghdad.

And the Islamic Union of Kurdistan (IUK) while joining the Kurdish lists for Baghdad and the regional assembly attacked nepotism in an independent campaign for provincial councils.

"We promised to investigate any official who suddenly became rich," said Salahadin Babakr, spokesman for the IUK. "This is what people complain about."

But with violence continuing in Iraq and Kurdish self-rule insecure, the struggle for pluralism and transparency in Kurdistan remains in its infancy.

"When there is no security, there can be no other life," says Nawsherwan Mustapha, a senior PUK official. "Where security does exist, as in Suleimania [in the PUK-run zone], then people ask for other things."

When Bashiqa, a town 15km northeast of Mosul and outside the Kurdish-run zone, was left short of ballot papers in the election, Zuhair Qaisar Khalaf was very angry.

"My 22-year-old nephew was tortured and beheaded in December by Arab terrorists," he said. "I wanted to vote to be in Kurdistan, because only the Kurdish parties will protect us."

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5) Nation Within a Nation Takes Shape
Inter Press Service
Mohammed Amin Abdulqadir
March 1, 2005

ARBIL - Two years and three elections after the fall of the Saddam regime, Kurdistan is taking shape as a nation within a nation.

Kurds voted Jan. 30 for the Iraqi National Assembly, for a Kurdish parliament, and for local government through the governorate councils. That does not all add up to independence, but it does amount to an independence-like autonomy.

The two main Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) won 75 seats through a common slate in the 275-member Iraqi National Assembly. The Kurdish parties could be a part of a new Iraqi government but will have an influential voice within it in any case.

Kurds also elected a Kurdish Parliament, that has been given authority by the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) to rule on the internal affairs of Kurdistan. The Kurdish Parliament will rule on all matters except foreign policy and diplomatic representation, security and defence, and fiscal matters including currency.

The governorate councils elected through the third simultaneous election will handle all local matters.

The three taken together give Kurds jurisdiction on all domestic matters, and a strong say in defence and in foreign policy and financial matters.

The KDP and the PUK will have decisive say within the Kurdish parliament given their overwhelming majority, even though both have said they will rule by the "consensus principle" rather than through majority decisions.

The Kurdish parliament will have the power to resist any domestic policies coming from Baghdad. Central government decisions will apply to Kurdistan only if they are ratified by the Kurdistan parliament. The TAL that was passed by the now defunct Iraqi Governing Council sought to remove Kurd fears of an Arab dominated government in Baghdad.

Many Kurds see this as the beginning of their golden age.

"We have suffered a lot, let's hope everything will get better," said Nariman Assad, 41, a businessman from Sulaimaniya. "This time we have risen to get what we deserve."

Kurds have enjoyed effective autonomy since the first Gulf War in 1991. But that was after they paid a heavy price for rising against the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The United Nations Security Council passed resolution 688 in 1991 to establish a safe haven for Kurds under international protection. Kurds strongly supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq two years back.

The elections now have formalised their freedom, and new democratic rights are in the air. "Voting is a right because it has to do with the future of every single individual and your country," says university student Mahdi Hassan, 22.

Kurds had voted in May 1992 for a Kurdish parliament. That election brought the two main Kurdish parties to the fore. The new parliament is now legitimised from Baghdad, apart from giving Kurds voice within Baghdad itself.

The dominance of the Kurdish parliament by the two parties has led to some criticism that this would lead to a democratic set-up without significant opposition. But supporters of the unified list say the move will help Kurds given the instability in Iraq. It will also give Kurds more strength to face future developments, they say.

"The formation of the unified list is a positive move forward and a pragmatic preference of security over chaotic democracy," a commentator wrote in a local newspaper.

The two parties themselves have called their coming together a historic step. "We must put the strategic interests of Kurdistan people above all party interests," KDP leader Massoud Barzani had said earlier after a meeting with PUK leader Jalal Talabani. "When it comes to decisive issues and moments we will put aside all our differences and work as one team."

Population figures are disputed but by several estimated Kurds number about 3.5 million in an Iraqi population of 26 million. No one can now think of Iraq without thinking also of a Kurdistan within it - and in many ways separate from it.

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6) PDK & PUK have not yet come to a concession regarding the division of the seats in parliament.
Peyamner
February 28, 2005

According to plan, on February 27th of 2005 the second parliament of Kurdistan was to be established. However, a member of PUK announced that the first session regarding the second parliament would be postponed. According to the program of the parliament of Kurdistan, ten days after the result of the elections were announced, the second parliament was to be established (February 7, 2005 ).

However, because of the inability of PUK and PDK and other political groups in the national democratic list to come to a settlement regarding the division of seats in parliament, the session was temporarily cancelled. Adnan Mofti informed Peyamner about the reasons that parliament was not able to begin after the election results were announced. The reasons are as follows: the election results was ready later than expected and the unsettled division of 104 seats between the above-mentioned groups. Mofti stated that, Nechirwan Barzani would be given the responsibility to form the fifth cabinet of Kurdistan.

As well, a united general concession is required but does not yet exist for the development of the future government of Kurdistan said Mofti. Mofti also stated that the Kurdish political leaders are busy analyzing the different political groups to decide on which is best suitable to come to an agreement with regarding the future government of Iraq. This process is said to come to an end within ten days and the first session of the second parliament of Kurdistan will take place.

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7) Talabani due in Salahaddin for talks on Jaffari endorsement
Peyamner
March 2, 2005

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's leader Jalal Talabani, who is also the Kurdish runner for Iraq's next president, is to arrive in Salahaddin Thursday, for what appears to be the final negotiations between Kurdish factions in regard to a possible backing of Ibrahim al- Jaffari, the Shiite candidate for Iraq's PM post. Mr Talabani is due to meet Kurdistan Democratic Party's leader Massoud Barzani who held intense talks with Mr Jaffari Tuesday.

"We respect his candidacy, we have been working together in the past and this is not a new thing. We worked formerly against the former regime and now cooperate for establishing a new Iraq," KDP leader Barzani told reporters without elaborating further on a possible coalition between the Shiites and the Kurdish faction, which is playing the kingmaker in forming the post-transitional government with 77 seats at Iraq's national parliament.

Old disagreements on Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) and the status of the disputed city of Kirkuk seem to have been forgotten as negotiations between the Kurds and the Shi'ia go to a concluding stage. Kurds want written commitments to the TAL by a possible Shi'ia government with specific references to the interim constitution which gives the Kurds the veto right in forming the permanent constitution set for the end of this year. Mr Jaffari had stated previously that he wanted to abolish the veto right.

Kurds also want written guarantees on Kirkuk, which they claim to be Kurdish and want to be restored to the semi-independent Kurdish Region.

Kurdish sources say that the Shiite leadership has no problems with a Kurd becoming the next president, indicating that they would likely support PUK leader Talabani in his bid to become Iraq's next head of state.

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8) 'Referendum to determine Kirkuk's status'
Turkish Daily News
February 28, 2005

Deputy President of the Iraqi Interim Government Rowsch Nuri Shaways said that a referendum that was to be held at the end of this year would determine the status of the disputed city of Kirkuk, the Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.

 Shaways, who is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party that controls the northern part of Iraq along with another Kurdish faction, did not clarify if the referendum regarding the status of Kirkuk would be a separate one or part of the one planned for Iraq's new constitution when it is mapped out later in the year after the formation of the new Iraqi government, in line with the results of January elections.

 The status of oil-rich Kirkuk has been a matter of dispute among Iraqi Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens as all three groups claim ownership. Kurds won more than half of the vote in Kirkuk during January polls, asserting that this has proven the "Kurdish identity" of the city. The Kurds also insist on the control of the strategic city before the group will agree to any deal on the formation of a new Iraqi government.

Turkey, an important neighbor:

 Turkey, however, is worried about the rights of Turkmens in the city and says Kirkuk should not be ruled by any single ethnic group. Ankara complained of a massive Kurdish migration to the city just before the elections.

 Shaways held a news conference in Arbil, Anatolia reported, and quoted him as saying that Turkey was a crucial neighbor for Iraq and that they sought to improve ties with Ankara. "We just don't want Turkey to meddle in our internal affairs," said Shaways who also heads a local assembly in northern Iraq.

 Remarks by the deputy president of the interim Iraqi administration followed a visit by a Turkish Foreign Ministry delegation to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Meanwhile, leading U.S. newspaper The New York Times, reported yesterday that Kurdish groups that seek an autonomous status refused to disband their peshmerga militia forces.

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9) Revenge of the Kurds
Buoyed by election success, Kurds aims to expand its influence. Could it fracture the country?
Time Magazine
By ANDREW LEE BUTTERS
Feb. 27, 2005

SULAIMANIYAH - Jalal Talabani knows what it's like to be a marked man. In 1989, after Saddam Hussein's army had ravaged the Kurdish population of northern Iraq with chemical weapons, the dictator offered amnesty to all Kurdish soldiers who fought against himexcept one. Saddam ordered his minions to hunt down Talabani, a chief of the Kurdish separatist guerrillas known as the peshmerga. If Talabani was caught, Saddam vowed, he would put him to death.

It's a testament to Talabani's knack for survival that he not only managed to elude Saddam's forces but also is now poised to assume the job of his former nemesis. A coalition of Kurdish political parties, which Talabani helped lead, came in a strong second in Iraq's national elections, winning 75 of the new Assembly's 275 seats. That gave the Kurds, who make up 17% of Iraq's population, enough clout to demand top jobs in the new government. While the victorious Shi'ites last week tapped Ibrahim al-Jaafari for Iraq's most powerful position of Prime Minister, Talabani, 72, has emerged as the most likely successor to Saddam as Iraq's President. And though the post is intended to be largely symbolic, Talabani plans to use the position of titular head of state to protect Kurdish interests. "I must have the right to participate with the government in ruling the country," he told TIME in an interview at his headquarters in the northern Iraq mountain stronghold of Qala Chwala. "We want to be partners in reshaping Iraq."

The question is, How much of the country do Talabani and the Kurds want to reshape? The Kurds are holding out for at least six Cabinet posts, including head of the crucial Oil Ministry. They also say they are owed money from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. A U.N. spokesman told TIME that $3.7 billion in Kurdish money was handed to the Coalition Provisional Authority. So far the Kurds have collected about $1.4 billion of that. They also want assurances that the Kurdish-dominated north will retain the autonomy it has enjoyed since the end of the first Gulf War, when the U.S. established a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds, and that the new Iraqi constitution will not impose Islamic law, as some prominent Shi'ite clerics have demanded. But some Kurdish ambitions could trigger ethnic disputes that would reverberate beyond Iraq's borders. The Kurds' election success has emboldened those who want to expand the southern boundaries of Kurdistan to include Kirkuk, the oil-rich city that is home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans. For U.S. officials, the nightmare scenario is that the Kurds break away from Iraq altogethersplintering the nation and inciting restive Kurdish minorities in such neighboring countries as Iran, Syria and especially Turkey, which has threatened to intervene to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdish state.

In his interview with TIME, Talabani played down the possibility of Kurdish secession. "If you asked the Kurds, 'Do you want independence?' of course everyone will say yes," he said. "But if you ask, 'Do you want independence now?' the answer would be no." A U.S. official says Talabani, a former lawyer with close ties to Washington, "knows how far he can push, and he's not likely to push further than that, even if a lot of Kurds want him to."

There's little dispute that the results of the Jan. 30 election have given Kurdish nationalism fresh momentum. Although they are predominantly Muslim, the Kurds of Iraq have long favored a more secular form of government than most Shi'ites do. The Kurdistan Referendum Movement, a grass-roots organization of intellectuals and junior political officials, says that of the 2 million who took part in an informal Election Day referendum on independence, 99% voted in favor. Kurds control their peshmerga militia soldiers and their own borders and are determined to preserve their sanctuary. Officially, Kurdistan exists only north of the "green line," the area where U.S. forces halted the Iraqi army's advance when Saddam moved to crush yet another Kurdish uprising in 1991. But since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the size of Kurdish-held territory has expanded 20%, according to coalition officials in northern Iraq.

Kurdish leaders are pushing to gain control of Kirkukknown as the Jerusalem of Kurdistanthe capital of one of Iraq's most productive oil regions. Under Saddam, Kirkuk was subjected to a massive demographic reordering, as Saddam moved large numbers of Arabs into the city and tossed many Kurds out. The interim Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi agreed that Kirkuk should be normalizedmeaning displaced Kurds would be allowed to return while the so-called new Arabs would be moved out and compensated. But though some 100,000 Kurdish refugees returned to Kirkuk in time to vote in the election, the Iraqi government has yet to begin deporting the new Arabs.

For U.S. commanders in Iraq, an even more pressing concern is the status of the 80,000-strong peshmerga. In insurgent hot spots like Mosul, U.S. commanders have praised Kurdish troops for their willingness to stand and fight. But the peshmerga's continued assaults on insurgents run the risk of exacerbating tribal rivalries and sparking an anti-Kurdish backlash by Iraq's Arabs. The U.S. hopes to defuse the potential for conflict by folding the peshmerga into a new, unified Iraqi army. But the Kurds have so far refused to place their soldiers under the command of Baghdad. "The peshmerga must remain a force of the regional government," says Talabani, a former peshmerga commander. "The Kurdish people need them as protection against terrorism and to secure the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan." The Kurds may be willing to cede control of their militia in exchange for assurances that they will be given a large role in the new government and a share of oil revenues from the south. "The more they participate in the central government, the less fear they'll have that they're going to be attacked," says Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Some Iraqis hope that Talabani's ascent to the presidency will be seen as an important first step toward Kurds and Arabs living peacefully with each other. "For years, we've been told that Kurds are Iraqis and not a separate people," says Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who is Iraq's interim Foreign Minister.

"Well, this is a chance to prove thata chance to show that no position in the new Iraq, not even the presidency, is denied to a Kurd."

With reporting by Aparisim Ghosh/ Baghdad and Timothy J. Burger and Mark Thompson/ Washington

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10) Kurds Vow to Retain Militia as Guardians of Autonomy
New York Times
By EDWARD WONG
February 27, 2005

SARAI SUBHAN AGHA, Iraq, Feb. 23 - The camouflage-clad militiamen marched down from the mountains in four columns of hundreds each, stomping their boots in unison.

"Keep looking forward!" an officer yelled.

"Kurdistan or death!" the soldiers shouted at once, their words thundering over the sound of heels striking the ground.

Here at a training camp in the windswept eastern hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, there is little doubt to whom these soldiers owe their allegiance.

Many say their first loyalty lies with a major Kurdish political party. Then they offer it to Kurdistan, the rugged autonomous region in northern Iraq the size of Switzerland. There is little mention of the nation of Iraq or the Iraqi Army.

"All of the pesh merga of Kurdistan, we're fighting for Kurdistan," one of the soldiers, Fermen Ibrahim, 25, told a visitor, calling the militia by its Kurdish name, which means "those who face death."

As political jockeying rages in Baghdad to determine the shape of the new government - how Islamic it will be, whether it has strong or weak central powers - one of the most troublesome issues emerging is whether political parties, especially those of the Kurds and Shiites, can keep their private armies. Kurdish leaders say they intend to write into the new constitution a governmental system granting considerable powers to individual regions, one that will legitimize their use of the formidable pesh merga.

If the Kurds succeed, they will achieve the right of regional powers to set up their own armies, possibly leading to warlord-style fiefs across Iraq. Until their strong showing in the recent national elections, Kurdish leaders appeared to agree, at least in public, with the American goal of dismantling militias. Now they stand in open defiance of it.

The pesh merga, with recruits from two Kurdish parties, total about 100,000 soldiers. A source of ethnic pride, they tenaciously fought against Saddam Hussein and are now relied upon by American commanders to battle the Arab-led insurgency in the north. Perhaps most important in the current power vacuum, they provide Kurdish leaders with armed backing in their demands for broad autonomy.

"We want to keep our pesh merga because they are a symbol of resistance," said Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the son of Mustafa Barzani, a revered Kurdish leader who founded the pesh merga in the 1960's. "It's not a matter to be discussed or negotiated."

If the Kurds get the constitution they want, the pesh merga would nominally fall under the oversight of the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad, Kurdish officials say, but in reality would be controlled by regional commanders. The two Kurdish parties each have a ministry of pesh merga, which they say they intend to keep.

The Kurds also say the pesh merga will maintain all the trappings of a conventional army, with an officers' college, training camps and armor and artillery units all operating independently of the rest of the Iraqi security forces.

The major Shiite parties, who have the largest share of seats in the constitutional assembly, may try to block the Kurds on the militia issue to limit the autonomous powers of the Kurds. But those parties themselves have significant militias that they may seek to keep, or to at least incorporate into the Iraqi security forces as intact units. Their armies generally stay hidden on the streets of Baghdad but have been active in the Shiite heartland of the south, operating checkpoints and street patrols and, in some cases, enforcing strict Islamic law, like cracking down on alcohol vendors.

The leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party, have said repeatedly that the party's Iranian-trained armed wing, the Badr Organization, at least 15,000 strong, can help provide security in the new Iraq.

The former governing Sunni Arabs, a minority now feeling threatened by the other groups, will probably oppose any move by the Kurds and Shiites to legitimize their militias.

American commanders publicly say that all armed groups in Iraq must be state sponsored and that militarized units should not be organized by ethnicity or sect. But they privately acknowledge the extreme difficulties of breaking up the militias. Lt. Col. Eric Durr, the head of civil affairs for the 42nd Infantry Division, charged with overseeing eastern Kurdistan, said it was now up to the new Iraqi government to figure out what to do with the militias.

"It's really a political issue for the Iraqi government to work out," he said.

The Americans are heavily relying on the pesh merga to fight insurgents. Across the north, particularly in the besieged city of Mosul, American commanders have supported Iraqi officials in deploying large units of armed Kurds into the streets.

But the pesh merga also exemplify the pitfalls of private armies - in the mid-1990's, the militias of the two Kurdish parties turned their guns on each other in a civil war that left at least 3,000 dead.

"What I see happening now in Iraq is the potential drift toward warlordism," said Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, which tried but failed to disband militias before handing sovereignty to the Iraqis last June.

"If things go bad," he added, "if the center does not hold, if ethnic and regional divisions are not well and carefully managed by the country's political leaders, particularly at the center, then the existence of all these militias - both those preceding the handover of power and those that have arisen in recent months - could facilitate the descent of the country into some kind of Lebanon-style civil war."

As for the pesh merga, "they are so much stronger than any other militia that this is bound to strengthen the resolve of Kurdish political leaders not to yield on their demands for far-reaching autonomy," said Mr. Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The pesh merga are everywhere in Iraqi Kurdistan - along the highways, atop government buildings, riding in convoys. They wear a hodgepodge of uniforms, from traditional baggy outfits to desert camouflage hand-me-downs from the United States Army. There is one thing that appears to be consistent, though: they think of themselves as Kurds first and Iraqis second.

"If I work hard to protect my people and my cities, indirectly I'll serve Iraq," Col. Mehdi Dosky, 44, the commander of the training camp here, said as he sat behind his desk in a dark green Iraqi Army uniform. Two officers on a couch pored over evaluation forms of the trainees. A map on one wall showed the theoretical pan-Kurdish nation that Kurds in the Middle East hope to carve out one day - a huge swath of territory that stretches from the Mediterranean to western Iran and takes in large parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

"We don't think it's a good idea to disband our army," said Colonel Dosky, whose father served as a pesh merga from the militia's first days. "We want to keep our forces and have them protect our region. The Kurds will protect their area, and other people will use their forces to protect their own areas. There are too many ethnic and religious problems right now in Iraq."

As the colonel spoke, an old Soviet-made tank rumbled beyond a nearby rise of hills. An armored unit was training with equipment the Kurds had seized from Mr. Hussein's army during the American-led invasion. After the government fell in Baghdad in the spring of 2003, the pesh merga drove about 100 captured tanks and armored personnel carriers from below the border of Kurdistan to a dirt field here.

On a recent morning, soldiers at the main pesh merga base in Sulaimaniya, the capital of eastern Kurdistan, were briefed on how to use truck-mounted rocket launchers. American military advisers work in a small concrete building on the base, but an American soldier wearing a Special Forces uniform said at the gate that no one was permitted to talk about the military's relationship with the pesh merga.

Nearby, Kurdish soldiers stood watch in a booth spray painted with the initials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party controlling the pesh merga in the east.

One reason the Americans have not disbanded the pesh merga is because the Kurds have proved to be the country's most effective homegrown fighters against an Arab-led insurgency.

The American dependence on such proxy armies is clearest in Mosul, where Kurds make up nearly a quarter of the population. In November, when Sunni Arab insurgents overran police stations and forced thousands of police officers to quit, the Arab governor requested the aid of two Kurdish battalions of the Iraqi National Guard.

Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the head of Task Force Olympia, which until last week was charged with controlling Mosul, used Kurds to guard his headquarters during his time in Iraq.

The day before the Jan. 30 elections, the Americans and the Iraqi government trucked into Mosul hundreds of Kurdish fighters from Erbil, the capital of the western Kurdish region, to help secure the city. Asked by a reporter what he was doing in Mosul, a fighter said, "I'm here to serve the interests of Kurdistan."

Sadi Ahmed Pire, the head of the Mosul office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the two Kurdish parties each commanded about 2,000 pesh merga in the city.

But the presence of an ethnic or sect-based militia in a diverse city can quickly inflame tensions.

Such is the case in Kirkuk, the oil-rich northern city where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen uneasily live side by side. At the request of Arabs and Turkmen, the American military asked pesh merga to leave the city shortly after the fall of Mr. Hussein. Last summer, Kurdish officials said, the Americans allowed 300 pesh merga to return to the city temporarily to help battle insurgents.

"Always, it's a sensitive issue," said Suphi Sabir, a senior official in the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the most prominent Turkmen party in Kirkuk. "But we won't start a fight over it because the result would be very bad."

Warzer Jaff contributed reporting from Mosul, Iraq, for this article.

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11) Though battle-hardened, Iraq's Kurdish militia struggles for role
Key question whether pesh merga, who have defended key cities, will disband under last year's accord.
Christian Science Monitor
By Annia Ciezadlo
March 02, 2005

SULAYMANIYAH, IRAQ - As Iraq's fledgling security forces prepare to take over the country's defense, a crucial question is emerging: what will happen to Iraq's 80,000 or so pesh merga, the battle- hardened Kurdish militia?

Under an agreement hammered out last June, the pesh merga - meaning "those who face death" - and other militias are supposed to be disbanded and absorbed into Iraq's various security forces. But in turbulent northern Iraqi towns like Mosul, Kirkuk, and Tal Afar, the legendary mountain warriors have continued to fight - not as members of the Iraqi Army or national guard, but as pesh merga under the command of Kurdish political parties.

"Officially, there is no pesh merga, only the Iraqi Army," says Fareed Asasard, director of the Kurdistan Strategic Studies Center. "But still, you can see that the pesh merga remain. Maybe in some countries they have succeeded in changing militias into an army, but here, we continue to have pesh merga."

The pesh merga's role in defending key cities like Mosul, and the growing influence of Iraq's Kurdish minority, have revived the delicate question of how - and where - to use the storied guerrillas. In recent battles, they proved to be an invaluable counterinsurgency force, capturing many insurgents and defending strategic locations. But whether they remain in Kurdistan, or deploy throughout Iraq, their future promises to be a politically explosive issue that could heighten ethnic tensions.

Iraq has two main Kurdish parties: the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP. Since 1991, each party has controlled an area of northern Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region. The two parties fought a four-year civil war in the mid-1990s, during which the KDP invited Saddam Hussein's troops into the region to drive back PUK forces. The two parties have agreed to unify the Kurdish region under a single government, but each maintains its own band of armed pesh merga with separate command structures.

A key question is whether the pesh merga will have to disband, under the June agreement. If they don't, that could cause tensions with other forces like the Shiite Badr Brigade, the private army of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

But some Kurdish officials have maintained that the agreement does not apply to them. With Iraq's two main Kurdish parties gaining clout, it's increasingly likely that the Kurdish parties will want to keep some of their pesh merga intact.

The question is where. One option is to keep the pesh merga where they have always been: strictly to defend Kurdistan. But as the Kurds gain stature within Iraq, the Turkish government is cranking up its alarms against Kurdish independence. A powerful autonomous region on Turkey's borders, with its own fighting force, would be hard for Ankara to stomach.

Another option is to disperse the pesh merga commanders throughout Iraq's Army. That way, the Iraqi Army gains a trained and loyal fighting force, skilled in counterinsurgency and guerrilla tactics. Not all of Iraq's pesh merga are well-trained. But those who attended the Qala Cholan officer school, founded after the 1991 Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein, form an experienced officer corps that Iraq's beleaguered forces need.

"From the very beginning of forming the New Iraqi Army, they have had problems building these new units," says Kosrat Rasul, a pesh merga commander who is now a top PUK leader. "The Americans should bring the Iraqi leaders and put them in the forefront, put more Iraqi commanders in charge of the forces."

But putting Kurdish officers in charge, no matter how experienced, could also increase ethnic friction. "What worries me are the consequences within Iraq," says an Iraqi political analyst who is close to the Kurdish leadership. "I think it's in the interests of Iraq to integrate the pesh merga into the Iraqi Army. But the ... way it's being done, with the Kurds in the forefront, is dangerous."

In interview after interview, Kurdish leaders declare their eagerness to keep fighting - not just in Kurdistan, but throughout Iraq. "The pesh merga is not a militia, it's a legitimate fighting force," says Dana Ahmed Majid, head of security for the PUK, hammering his fist in the air for emphasis. "How can the terrorists be able to operate throughout Iraq, and we, as Iraqis, not have the right to defend all of Iraq?"

Pesh merga commanders say that they are waiting for the central Iraqi government to ask them, publicly and unequivocally, to fight outside Kurdistan. "If the Americans and the Iraqi government ask us to deploy pesh merga, we are ready to do that," says Gen. Mustapha Said Qadir, the PUK's top pesh merga commander. "We are ready to deploy them even in Baghdad."

Others caution that the militia will not be as effective outside its own turf. Mosul is not within the Kurdish region, but it is almost half Kurdish, and even Kurds who don't live there know the city well. "Don't think that because the pesh merga succeeded in Mosul, they know Anbar," says Asasard. "I don't think they would be successful in Fallujah or Ramadi. Personally, I have never seen Samarra or Ramadi or Fallujah - but I have seen Mosul."

Some leaders think the best solution would be to use pesh merga only in Baghdad, a heterogeneous city of 5 million, about 20 percent of whom are Kurdish. "We are part of the government that rules in Baghdad, and it's the focal point of the economy, so the pesh merga should take part in defending it," says Rasul. "But in other provinces, they should provide their own security."

An embarrassing incident last December underscored the difficulty of using pesh merga outside Kurdistan. Many Iraqi politicians, both Arab and Kurdish, use the fiercely loyal fighters for their personal security details. At Baghdad International Airport, a lunchtime argument turned into a full-blown melee after Arab and Kurdish guards for several top politicians started hurling ethnic slurs at each other.

The pesh merga's successes in Mosul and Tal Afar have only increased Arab resentment. "The Arabs are just recruits brought hastily - they flee because they do not believe in what they are doing," says the Arab analyst, who asked not to be named. "So the perception that the Arabs are getting - and not just Sunni Arabs - is that it's not an Iraqi Army fighting terrorists, but Kurds fighting against Arabs."

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12) Iraq militants say killed Kurdish "spy" - Web site
Reuters
March 1, 2005

DUBAI - An Iraqi militant group said it abducted and shot a member of a Kurdish political party and posted a video of the apparent killing on the Internet on Monday.

The video from the Army of Ansar al-Sunna, posted on an Islamist Web site, showed a man they said was a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan member, being blindfolded and shot in the back of the head by a masked man.

The authenticity of the tape could not be verified.

The group said in a statement dated Sunday that the man had admitted operating in the northern city of Mosul with spies "whose mission was to monitor the mujahideen (holy fighters) and gather information about them".

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna has claimed responsibility for attacks and killed several hostages in Iraq, including members of the two main Kurdish groups represented in Iraq's U.S.-backed government.

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13) KURDISH WOMEN WORRY ABOUT LOSING RIGHTS
Women in Kurdistan fear Iraq's new Shia elite will introduce religious law.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
By Talar Nadir in Sulaimaniyah
February 25, 2005

Kurdish women are worried their rights will be curtailed under an Iraqi
government led by religious Shias.

The election results from Iraq's historic election gave a slim majority in
the transitional National Assembly to the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shia-led
coalition backed by prominent cleric Ali al-Sistani. The assembly is charged
with writing Iraq's new constitution.

Some women's activists are concerned that the Shia alliance will try to
introduce elements of Islamic law, or sharia, into the constitution. Top
Shia politicians have denied that they want an Iranian-style theocracy in
Iraq, but the largely secular Kurds remain sceptical.

Kurdish women have enjoyed more freedom than their Arab counterparts since
their region fell out of Saddam Hussein's control after the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraqi Kurdistan functions as an autonomous zone within Iraq, controlled by a
Kurdish government.

Women in the Kurdish region are active in dozens of organisations and
publications that work to protect women's rights. Through these
organisations, they have pressured the Kurdish government to amend penal
codes and personal status laws in favour of women.

In 2000, the president of the Kurdish region overturned a law that commuted
the sentence of anyone convicted of so-called honour killings. In the same
year, women won a legal victory when the government declared that polygamy
would carry a three-year jail sentence and a heavy fine.

Alaa Talabani, head of the Women's Empowerment Centre in Sulaimaniyah, said
she believes those achievements are now at risk.

"We should not forget that Sistani's program for ruling Iraq states that
equality between men and women is not to be written as an outstanding point
in the constitution, because this was not mentioned in the holy Koran," she said.

A precedent for introducing religious law was set in 2003 when Iraqi's
Governing Council passed resolution 137, which called for sharia to govern
issues such as inheritance, marriage and divorce. That law was overturned a
few months later, after months of public protests. But Kurdish women fear
that the new government will try to revive parts of 137 in their upcoming term.

One moderating influence is the interim law set in place under the guidance
of the United States occupation government. It requires that the draft
constitution be put to a public referendum in October. If two-thirds of
registered voters in three provinces reject the draft, then it will go back
to the assembly for revisions.

The interim law also requires that every third member of the transitional
National Assembly be a woman. Shler Abdul-Majeed Rasheed, of the Kurdistan
Communist Party, said the future of women's rights in Iraq depends on the
strength of those female representatives.

"Women's organisations must arm their representation in the Iraqi Parliament
with new and progressive programs," she said.

Many of the women in the new assembly come from the United Iraqi Alliance
list and are linked to the Shia clerical schools in Najaf. That has raised
alarm among secular women activists.

But some Kurdish women welcome more religious influence in Iraq's affairs.
The editor of the Komal newspaper, which is run by the Kurdistan Islamic
Group, said women should not oppose any effort to make Islam the sole source
of legislation for Iraq.

"All the programmes of Islam are at the service of women, and we must adhere
to them as a commitment to our Muslim personality," said Suad Qadir Aziz.

Others point out that Iraq is a multi-religious society, home to Muslims, as
well as Christians, Yazidis and other smaller sects.

Bekhal Abu-Bakir, of the Islamic Sisters Union, said people are simply
misinterpreting what religious parties really want to achieve with their
newfound power. She said they want Islam to be one of the sources for
writing the constitution, but not the only.

"We support a civil government that can protect all the rights of all the
components of the community with their ethnic and religious specialties,"
she said.

Some Kurdish women believe that helping the Kurds achieve federalism by
writing their autonomy into the constitution is the best hope for preserving
their rights. The Kurdish Alliance holds 75 seats in the assembly, the
second largest share after the Shia alliance. By forming a coalition with
other secular-minded parties, the Kurds could block efforts to introduce
Islamic law and push through a measure guaranteeing Kurdish autonomy.

Deputy attorney general Bayan Isaa said if the women's organisations observe
any breaches of their rights in the future, they should apply pressure on
the Kurdish parliament. The interim law guarantees the authority of the
Kurdish legislature to enact laws for the autonomous region. Isaa said she
hopes that legal autonomy stays in the new constitution.

She also warned that it would be dangerous for Kurdish women to tie
themselves too closely to the fate of their Arab counterparts.

"The Kurdish community characteristics are different from those of the Arab
community," Isaa said.

Talar Nadir is an IWPR trainee in Iraq.

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14) Nurse starts training program in Iraq
Emory Wheel (Atlanta, GA)
By Hilary Winn
March 01, 2005

The scene that greeted one Emory nurse when she arrived in the Kurdish territory of northern Iraq could not have been less like a well-stocked Emory clinic.

Even basic equipment was in short supply, and there were burn victims suffering visibly in the Kurdish hospitals that she visited.

"It was heartbreaking," said Linda Spencer, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing associate professor.

The Washington Kurdish Institute, a nonprofit research and educational organization, asked Spencer to travel to Kurdish territory in northern Iraq in August 2003. She spent three weeks visiting hospitals and speaking with Kurdish nurses about developing a continuing education program.

Two years have passed since then, and Kurdish and visiting nurses are now using Spencer's program. The training she provided could help establish a viable health care system in the tumult of the fledgling and war-torn democracy.

Spencer said nursing education in Iraq is inferior to that of the United States. In Iraq, she said, few standard educational requirements exist.

"We had no idea what kind of skills they were even capable of," Spencer said.

In some cases, nurses received their entire medical training in six-month programs after the sixth grade.

Spencer observed that the nurses needed continuing-education training in basic skills such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation and preventing bed sores.

"Our students [at Emory] learn these skills in their first year of nursing school," Spencer said.

In particular, the Kurdish nurses wanted to learn how to treat burn victims because immolation is the most common form of suicide among Kurds.

"They can't even offer burn patients pain relief," Spencer said. "It affects you enormously to see that sort of thing, but I enjoy [teaching the nurses] because I feel like I'm helping."

Nurses in many parts of the world are taught treatment theories, but not actual skills, Spencer said.

"It will take a while to bring them up to the level of American nurses," she said.

Spencer found the inadequacy of medical treatment in Iraq "very depressing."

"It's very difficult to see nurses working under such hardship because in this country we have everything," she said.

In many Iraqi hospitals, patients' families are responsible for providing food and sheets for beds while nurses perform such tasks as distributing medicine and taking blood pressure, she added.

"The family has to do a lot of personal care," Spencer said.

Nurses are also scarce, with one nurse for about every 35 to 40 patients, Spencer said.

Spencer said that sophisticated treatments for cancer and other diseases are not available in Kurdish hospitals.

"Hospitals are very limited in what they can offer," Spencer said. "They can only do very simple kinds of treatments."

Many Kurds do not consider nursing a profession, partly because their nurses have lower levels of education compared to other professionals such as doctors and lawyers, Spencer said.

"Nurses don't have the social status nurses in this country do," Spencer said. "They are sort of like helpers in the hospital."

A history of conflict has prevented Kurds from adopting the medical technologies of countries such as the United States.

"They've been cut off for the last 40 years from the rest of the world," Spencer said.

Kurds were heavily discriminated against in Iraq during the rule of Saddam Hussein, and the gassing of Kurdish cities forced many Kurds to flee to the mountains for safety, Spencer said.

The gassings have caused "horrendous" amounts of contamination and birth defects in Kurdish cities as well as a "very high" infant mortality rate, Spencer said.

In the United States, seven in every 1,000 infants die in birth, while 120 per 1,000 Kurdish infants die in birth, Spencer said.

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15) Show them death and they will love the fever
BitterLemons International
By Peter Galbraith
24 February 2005

"There is no such place", the Turkish intelligence officer told my son earlier this month. He was going through our luggage at the Turkish end of the Habur bridge that separates Turkey from northern Iraq, and had found a chess set, with the place of origin, "Kurdistan" carved into it. After initially insisting we return the set to Iraq, he loaned Andrew a screwdriver to gouge out the offending word.

Fifty meters away from the Turkish intelligence post, at the other end of the bridge, is a sign that reads "welcome to Kurdistan of Iraq". The operative question is how long the "of Iraq' will be there. The Iraqi flag does not fly at the border crossing or anywhere else in Iraqi Kurdistan (a pre- 1991version of the flag does fly on a few public buildings in the part of Kurdistan controlled by the PUK). The Kurdistan flag, a green-white-red tricolor and with a bright yellow sun, is ubiquitous. The Kurdistan government--not the authorities in Baghdad--controls the Habur crossing. There are no central government offices in Kurdistan and the Kurdistan government does not allow the Iraqi army to send its forces into the region.

And, should there be any doubt about where all this is heading, the people of Kurdistan voted in an advisory referendum on Iraq's election day on whether Kurdistan should remain part of Iraq or be independent. Two million people voted (almost the same number as in the regular ballot) and 97 percent chose independence.

Andrew's defaced backgammon board was a gift from the PUK leader, Jalal Talabani, who headed the united Kurdish list in Iraq's January30 elections. With 26 percent of the seats in the Iraq National Assembly, the Kurds are an indispensable partner to Sistani's Shi'ite list, which won a narrow majority. Effectively, all important National Assembly decisions require a two-thirds majority, meaning if the Shi'ite list is going to form a government--or write a constitution--it must have Kurdish support.

The Kurds have already declared the price of their support: any constitution must codify the current level of Kurdistan independence. Kurdistan will run its own affairs (financed by a proportionate share of Iraq's federal budget), keep its own armed forces, own and manage its own oil, control its international borders, and be totally free from Baghdad interference. This includes, as KDP leader Massoud Barzani stated in a recent New York Times interview, a constitutional ban on the presence of the Iraqi National Army in Kurdistan.

And the Kurds want the oil-rich province of Kirkuk attached to Kurdistan. Their claim was substantially bolstered by the provincial elections which gave a pro-Kurdistan list (that included Turkmens, Arabs, and Christians) more than 80 percent of the vote.

The Kurds also expect to share power in Baghdad, not only to affirm their status with the Arabs as one of Iraq's two nations, but also because they believe a major role in Baghdad is key to securing and safeguarding a separate Kurdistan. As part of a deal to install a Shi'ite as prime minister, the Kurds insist that they get the presidency, and their candidate is Jalal Talabani. It will be a fitting irony that Iraq's first ever freely chosen head of state--indeed arguably the first freely chosen leader in the territory that is now Iraq since Adam was there alone--is a Kurd.

Like the military man we encountered at the border, some Turks are in denial about the new reality in Iraq. But, overall, Turkey's response to emerging Kurdistan has been sophisticated. Many Turks--both close to Erdogan's government and, more surprisingly in the military/intelligence/diplomatic establishment known as the "deep state"--see opportunity as well as peril in developments in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kurdish nationalism in Iraq is a fact, and Turkey's ability to influence the drive for statehood (whether merely de facto or recognized) is minimal. Turkey has no meaningful military option. A large scale armed intervention would confront more than100 , 000well armed peshmerga operating on their own terrain (a far more formidable force than the Turkish military faced in a 15 year war against the PKK in southeast Turkey), would shatter relations with the United States and kill Turkey's hopes of joining the European Union. An economic boycott is a double edged sword that would also destroy Turkey's lucrative trade with Iraq. Closing the border would inflict particular pain on Kurdish southeast Turkey where popular sympathy is solidly behind the Iraqi Kurds.

Separatist sentiment among Turkey's Kurds has sharply declined not only with the military defeat of the PKK but also with the prospect that all of Turkey--including the southeast--might join the European Union. Wrong steps on Iraq--particularly those that compromise EU accession or indeed the substantial advances made on Kurdish rights in Turkey as a result of that process--could reignite nationalist sentiment among Turkey's Kurds.

While the rhetoric out of Ankara is sometimes threatening, Turkey has maintained cordial relations with Kurdistan's leaders since1991 . Indeed, of all Iraq's new leaders, the Kurds are the ones Ankara knows the best. The Kurds appreciate Ankara's role in establishing and maintaining the safe haven that enabled a separate Kurdistan to survive--and later thrive--during Saddam Hussein's time. Turgut Ozal, the Turkish president who opened the door in Ankara to the Iraqi Kurds and who pushed the reluctant George H.W. Bush to establish the safe haven, is revered among Iraq's Kurdish leaders.

The Iraqi Kurds have shrewdly cultivated Turkish business and investment in their region. Turkish companies are ubiquitous--creating a bottle water plant, building an airport, and even establishing a brewery. A Turkish company, Genel Enerji, won the first production-sharing contract awarded by the Kurdistan Regional Government to develop the Taq-Taq oil field--a venture strongly supported by the Turkish government.

Enlightened commentators in Turkey note that Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan have a lot in common, and not just shared bonds of ethnicity. The Iraqi Kurds have the same western and secular orientation that defines the modern Turkish state. Instead of being seen as subversive, many Turks--including in the deep state itself--now view Iraqi Kurdistan as a potential ally, a bulwark against a militant Islamic Iraq.

One practical consequence of Kurdistan's drive for independence is Ankara's silence on the issue of federalism in Iraq, which just two years ago was proclaimed publicly to be unacceptable. As the Kurdish proverb goes: "Show them death and they will love the fever".

Peter Galbraith is on the faculty of the National War College, Washington, DC. He has served as US ambassador to Croatia and as a senior adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He documented Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s, contributing to the decision to create a safe-haven for the Kurds.

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16) For Iraqi Kurds and Turks a new rapport is unavoidable
Bitterlemons-International.org
By Hiwa Osman
February 24, 2005

Turkey will receive good news and bad news when a new government is formed in Iraq. The good news is that Jalal Talabani, a long-time friend of Turkey who understands its importance in the Middle East, will be the president. But the bad news is that as a Kurd he cannot do much about Turkish-Iraqi-Kurdish relations.

The recent statements from Ankara regarding the city of Kirkuk and their fear of Kurds oppressing Turkmen there have sent a strong message to Iraqi Kurdistan that Turkey's "Kurdophobia" has not subsided, despite repeated Kurdish reassurances that Kurds have no intention to "Kurdisize" the city of Kirkuk. For the Iraqi Kurd leadership, Kirkuk has a Kurdish character. This means it is part of a geographical region called Kurdistan, but does not mean it is exclusively Kurdish. The demographic makeup of the region of Kurdistan includes Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs and Assyrians - and so does Kirkuk.

The city of Kirkuk symbolizes for many Iraqis the old Iraq that was rife with destruction, expulsion, discrimination and racism. Looking to its future, Kirkuk has the potential of being the symbol of the new Iraq. The people of Kirkuk took the first step in this direction. On Jan. 9, they went out of their homes, despite the ambient security threats, and voted. But the process of turning Kirkuk into a success story does not stop there. It is only the start, and Turkey can play an important role.

Turkey should appease the Kurdish and Iraqi leadership by assuring them it will not interfere in Iraq's internal affairs. It should further declare its support for any efforts to democratize and create an infrastructure that would be conducive to lasting peace and stability in Iraq, especially in the areas near its border. Rather than making a fuss over the situation solely of the Turkmen of Iraq, Ankara should encourage the newly elected Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Assembly to write a regional constitution that enshrines the principles of human rights, equality and civil liberties for all those who live in the Kurdistan region.

A constitution in the Kurdish region will be a lot easier to adopt and will guarantee everyone's rights there. By doing this, Turkey will send a message to the leaders and the people of the new Iraq that Turkey is a partner that wants to see a strong, stable, free and democratic Iraq - not one that is threatened by civil war.

The naming of a Kurdish president for Iraq or the presence of a large number of Kurdish deputies in the Iraqi Parliament should not create a dilemma for Turkey. It should signal the start of a new policy on Iraq and on the Kurds. This can only be done by setting "Kurdophobia" aside and seeing the Kurds as a key ally in the new Iraq.

The Kurds and other Iraqis realize that, unlike most of the neighboring countries, Turkey has played no role in encouraging the terrorist violence in Iraq. Turkey should capitalize on this and build upon it. It is the model for an Islamic state that is democratic. It has managed to prove that Islam and democracy are not mutually exclusive. The challenge for Turkey is to prove that Turkey and the word Kurdish are not mutually exclusive either.

By the same token, tolerating the word Kurdish or setting "Kurdophobia" aside in Turkey will pave the way for solving Turkey's problems with the former Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, which cannot be solved across the border in Iraq. The PKK issue needs to be taken back into Turkey. In this regard, Iraqi Kurds seem to have enough on their plate. The last thing they want is to create new enemies. They do not see the PKK issue as one they can solve, especially violently. All they can do is prevent the group from using Iraqi Kurdish territory for launching attacks against Turkey.

The United States cannot do much to change the sides' minds or hearts regarding one another. It will eventually leave Iraq. Change has to come from within. The Kurds and Turks are stuck with each other, and need to work out a relationship either with or without Iraq.

Despite pressure from Kurdish public opinion, the elected Kurdish leadership has said over and over again it does not intend to break away and form an independent Kurdish state. It will send its heavyweights to Baghdad and be part of shaping the new Iraq. But this is conditional; if the violence does not stop in the center and south, no one in their right mind would want to be part of Iraq. If the Kurds are not helped to be a real part of the new order, they will be forced to look at other options.

Under these circumstances, Turkey could receive a visit from the Kurds asking the following: Iraq is not working; we don't want to be part of it, nor do we want to have a war with you. And we can't drop our Kurdish identity. What shall we do? Turkey will have to offer an answer.

Hiwa Osman is an editor and trainer at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, and is based in Iraq.

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17) Kurdish Consensus
KurdishMedia.com
By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
01 March 2005

It seems that there is an established strategic consensus among Kurdish parties and their leaders about what needs to be done next. In the last few days the PUK leader, who is also the Kurdish candidate for Iraqi presidency, Mr Jalal Talabani has repeated with great consistency and strong emphasis that the issue of Iraqi posts is secondary to him and the Kurds and the important thing is the political issues which are of concern for the Kurdish people. And Talbani has rightly identified four priorities which he has often stressed would be the solid Kurdish conditions for entering into alliance with any of the elected Iraqi groupings.

These priorities are : Kurdish identity of Kirkuk and its being part of Kurdistan region should be recognised, federalism as principle and practice to be enshrined in Iraqi Constitution (of course including the recognition of Kurdistan region including Kirkuk), Kurdistan's share of oil and other resources should be established and Kurdistan to continue to have its independent army (peshmarga forces).

On these priorities, starting with the issue of Kirkuk, Mr Talabani, as far as we can judge from his statements as reported by PUK media, has been so far consistent and firm. In a latest meeting in Kirkuk on 27 February2005 , Talabani reiterated that "the Kurds will support political programmes and not personalities. Any one who supports the four priorities of the people of Kurdistan will have the full support of our people." (PUKmedia.com. in Arabic,27 /02/2005)

This is an important strategic step in the right direction. The Kurdish people, thanks to their unity before, during and after the elections, have many important strengths and leverages which the political leaders need to use positively and decisively. All the positive factors, however, are embodied now and can be enacted within the consensus of the four priorities starting with the issue of Kirkuk. If we put the issue of Kurdistan's self-determination in its broader context, we see that the people of South Kurdistan now have all possible moral, historical, political and legal means to pursue the case of self-determination internationally. The fact that Kurdistan has been subjected to oppression for the last 80 years and to genocide, gives our people the right of national self determination and right of secession based on the moral and legal principle of "remedial justice." Anfal genocide of 1988 does not only entitle our people to secession but to take the Iraqi state to international court for the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity. The fact that Kurdish people have been exercising de facto independence and self-rule for the last13 years, supported by Security Council Resolutions and international protection, provides a legal base for self-determination, too.

Now the ethnic issue of who are Kurds and which areas are Kurdish has been settled through the elections. This has added a legal dimension to our already-established political cause. There are four legal bases which give the Kurds a strong political position: the number of seats obtained by the Kurds
(77seats), the Kurdish majority in Kirkuk, and the legal tools provided by Iraqi Administrative Law (TAL) that two thirds of votes are needed for the appointment of Prime Minister, President, and main posts on the one hand, and that any future Constitution can be nullified if three combined governorates reject it. The unity of the Kurdish political scene and the emerging strategic consensus also provide a strong solid political ground to allow the Kurdish people achieve their political aims. Add to this another strong political factor which is the role and achievements of Kurdistan Referendum Movement.

This movement has managed to present Kurdistan's case for self-determination to the United Nations and show the world that98 % of the Kurdish people demand total independence of Kurdistan from Iraq.

In this very positive political environment the role of traditional Kurdish leaders remains the strongest risk factor. It is encouraging that both Talabani and Barzani seem to stick to the four priorities stressed by Mr Jalal Talabani. But words are not enough. To avoid any risk and future mistake, it is time now that this consensus translated into a political action plan with strict boundaries and time scales. And it is the role of parliament to do this. The current four priorities should become a political programme adopted by Kurdistan Parliament and the Kurdish leaders must have only an executive role approved by Kurdistan Parliament to work and be accountable for the total implementation of this political programme without any compromise or occasional change of tack under the influence of dubious regional powers.

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18) Official claims US forces raided ITC building
Turkish Daily News
February 28, 2005

U.S. forces in Iraq raided an office of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITC) in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul earlier this month and briefly detained the ITC's security forces, an official from the organization was quoted as saying yesterday.

 Mehmet Tahir, head of the ITC's Mosul office, told the Anatolia news agency that a group of U.S. soldiers raided the office on Feb. 15, searching rooms and breaking windows inside the building. They later took guns and mobile phones of the ITC's security guards and locked them in a room, he went on to say.

 According to Tahir, the U.S. soldiers then put on the guards' uniforms and fired randomly from the building's rooftop. "Their purpose was to create the impression throughout the neighborhood that ITC officials were firing randomly. We were lucky because no one was injured or killed," he told Anatolia.

 Turkmens have long complained of pressure at the hands of Kurds, who were the closest ally of United States during the war that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 and who are the majority in northern Iraq.

 Tahir said the ITC has presented a petition to the U.S. forces in Mosul, letting them know about the incident but added that the organization has not yet received any positive response.

"They should apologize," he said. "I collected all the bullets fired and I still have them all," Tahir said.

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Turkmen party official accuses US troops of office raid in Iraq: report
AFP
February 27, 2008

ISTANBUL - US troops raided in mid-February the offices of the Turkmen political party in northern Iraq, breaking windows and doors and firing at random from the building, a party official told the Turkish news agency Anatolia Sunday.

"On February 15 at about five in the morning, a group of American soldiers attacked our building in Mosul," said Turkmen Front of Iraq (ITC) official Mehmet Tahir.

"They locked up the security guards in a room and took their guns and mobile telephones. They searched the rooms, broke the doors and the windows.

"Then from the roof, after having put on the uniforms of our security guards, they fired at random on the neighbourhood. Afterwards, they left," Tahir said, adding there were no injuries during the raid.

Tahir is ITC president for the city of Mosul, in northern Iraq, where there have been a number of attacks against US soldiers and Iraqi security forces.

He said he had tried in vain to talk with US officials in Mosul and believed that the aim of the operation by the soldiers had been to discredit his party.

The Turkmen people, a Turkish-speaking minority in the regions of Kirkuk and Mosul, an important oil zone in the north of Iraq, are supported by Turkey which has claimed a special status for the multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk.

Their main party, the ITC, obtained 93,480 votes and three seats in the 275-seat Iraqi parliament following the elections held on January 30.

The Turkmen people demonstrated earlier this month claiming the Kurdish ethnic group had rigged the vote in Kirkuk as part of a suspected plot to seize its oil riches and make it the capital of a future independent Kurdish state.

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20) Assyrian Christians of Iraq Wanted to Vote But Were Not Allowed
Frankfurter Rundschau Online
By Erwin Decker
February 27, 2005

Mubarak Sliva (58) sits in fornt of "Muntaka" coffe shop by an old table and drinks tea out of a little glass with his friends Michael and Jacob, He watches Shiites and the Kurds celebrating their election victory which will allow them to rule the country. Again and again Mubarak looks at this but seem like every time he feels like being stabbed in the heart. His friends feel sad also. The "Muntaka" is social center of the city of Qaraqosh located 15 kilometers distance from Mosul. All 30,000 inhabitants are Christian Assyrian who were prevented fom voting during the Iraqi elections."No one heard our voices, we were deprived of our constitutional right as in the Saddam Husseins time, nothing has changed", shouts Mubarak Sliva.

East of Mosul, there are many places where only Christians live but because they wear the typical Arab clothing they are not noticed. Out of the 200,000 Assyrians in the region 90 percent were not allowed to vote. "The large iraqi parties celebrate, and the USA wants to establish democracy in Iraq but the minorites will not be part of it", complained Mubarak Sliva: " not even once any body cared to mention in Baghdad that we were deceived. It was alleged that they did not know what happened. That is a lie . Three weeks ago the American consul from Mosul visited us."

Louis Markus Ayoob (45), the deputy mayor and representative of the electoral committee for Qaraqosh, has testified that it was Kurd's intention to keep Christians from voting. The KDP ( democratic party of Kurdistan ) has a large party office with police, secret service and soldier in Qaraqosh where no Kurds live. The Christians do not speak Kurdish language and the Kurds do not speak Arabic or Assyrian.The Christians wanted to elect their own representatives in Baghdad and not be represented by the Kurds.

In Mosul, the organizers of the elections were predominantly Kurd members of the KDP. Louis Markus Ayoob testified, that the 24 trained election helpers were planned to leave Mosul and arrive in Qaraqosh bringing with them the ballot boxes and the election documents but were sent instead to a remote neighborhood west of Mosul. The deputy mayer called the election committee in Mosul informing them that there has been a misunderstanding and the documents and helper had not arrived in Qaraqosh. Similar incidents were reported from other Christian villages. Some had received few ballots other nothing because were stolen.

In Qaraqosh, a spontaneous demonstration was organized by several hundred people on the election day which had never happened before. They chanted "We don't need Kurds in Qaraqosh . We want to democratically select our own representatives". People were disappointed and asked Louis Markus Ayoob to call the US-American consul in Mosul at 5:00 P.M. He reported what had happened and was told two Helicopters will bring the ballots to Qaraqosh and would be delivered to Ayoob personally.

The election committee planned to make an exception to allow Christians to vote late at night because a fraud had been committed to prevent them from doing so. But the vice-mayor Louis Markus was unable to get to the Helicopters when they landed. According to a report he was was stopped by Kurdish soldiers of the KDP who approached with weapons and pulled him out of the car. What subsequently happened, has left behind its marks on Louis Markus Ayoob's body and face even after the physicians mended his wounds and fixed his broken nose.

Ayoob reports that he was taken to the KDP party office and beaten brutally. The local Kurdish party chief Mohammed Amin had told him this was a punishment for the demonstration against the Kurd in the city. The bleeding election leader of Qaraqosh was held as a prisoner in the party office when the Helicopter landed. Since no one had come to the the landing field to claim the ballot boxes the helicopters waited for a couple of minutes then they returned to Mosul. Around eleven fifteen p.m. the badly injured Louis Markus Ayoob was finally allowed to leave the KDP party headquarter.

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21) SHRINE UNITES MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS
Different faiths have been celebrated in the same holy place for centuries.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
By Dilshad Razaq Kawany in Erbil
February 25, 2005

Kastro Ishaq lit a candle in the corner of a cave near the northern Iraq
town of Shaqlawa. The smoke from the candle rose over the head of Sabah
Ismail as he raised his hands in prayer to God.

Ishaq is a Christian and Ismail a Muslim. In a country divided by ethnic and
religious differences, this shrine in the Kurdish region has brought members
of the two faiths together for centuries.

Muslims call the shrine Sheikh Wsu Rahman, while to the Christians it is
Raban Buya.

"What is important for both of us is the holy place, regardless of what
names it has," said Ishaq.

The cave is located in the foothills of the Safeen Mountain in the
governorate of Erbil. Vineyards and orchards line the twisting road that
leads to the shrine. The floor of the cave is paved with stones covered in
the wax from thousands of candles.

Many stories and beliefs shared by both Muslims and Christians have grown up
around this place.

In front of the cave there is a broad, sloping stone, lying on a slight
incline. Ishaq told how the stone is used by barren women who wish to
conceive, "They rub against the stone, and another person usually has to
catch them to keep them from falling. That's how they wish for a baby from
the holy shrine."

Zabt Hanna of Baghdad credits the shrine with helping her conceive her only
son, "After I gave birth to six daughters, I visited this shrine after one
of my relatives suggested I do so. I have a strong faith, and I asked for a
boy from Raban Buya."

Mam Abdullah Boreechi, a 70-year -old resident of Shaqlawa, is firmly in the
sceptical camp, saying, "I don't regard it as a holy place, and what they
say about its ability to give children is not true."

There are conflicting accounts about the shrine's history. Some people
believe it has its origins in the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism, while
others say it dates to the fourth century when three hunters died in the
cave while seeking shelter during a snowstorm.

Others tell how a man called Sheikh Yousif worshipped there and made it famous.

Shamasha Michael Kusa, now 90, is the author of "The History of Shaqlawa".
He says the Christian name of the cave comes from Raban Baya, a
sixth-century Christian also known as Ber Sarkeez.

Kusa said Shaqlawa has long been a centre for many faiths. He recalls that
until the middle of the 20th century there were a large number of Jews who
also worshipped in the area.

"Having three different religions but common traditions made us closer," he said.

The cave is by no means the only holy place in the area - there are dozens
of other shrines around Shaqlawa where Christians and Muslims pray alongside.

Mullah Othman, the preacher at the Meeran mosque, said the cave has helped
people through times of tragedy as well as happiness.

"This shrine has been shared since the times of our ancestors," he said.
"Without drawing distinctions, each religion regarded it as its own."

The mullah recalled one incident in 1988, when 23 Muslims and Christians
were buried alive by Saddam Hussein's men. "After we found them, we buried
them in the same cemetery without separating them [by faith]," said Othman.

Dilshad Razaq Kawany is an IWPR trainee in Erbil.


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Washington Kurdish Institute

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