Category: Iraq

Iraq’s Kurds Lose Political Dominance In Kirkuk

Turkomans demonstrate in Kirkuk in 2006, demanding recognition of their ethnic group’s status in the disputed region.

March 19, 2010

By Charles Recknagel

Before the March 7 parliamentary elections in Iraq, there was no question of who dominated politics in mixed-population Kirkuk — it was the two main political factions in the neighboring Kurdish autonomous region.

But with the vote count from Kirkuk city and its surrounding Tamin Province about 80 percent complete, it is clear that the political landscape is dramatically changing.

The partial vote count shows the secular Al-Iraqiyah coalition and the Kurdistan Alliance in a virtual tie, with the balance between them shifting by only wafer-thin differences as the vote tally rises.

If the current balance holds, it means that the divided province’s Turkoman and Arab populations will have a much louder political voice than before. That in turn could complicate Kurdish hopes of one day incorporating oil-rich Kirkuk into their autonomous region.

Turkoman politicians in Kirkuk make no secret of the fact that they competed in the parliamentary contest precisely with that goal in mind.

United Against Kurdish Ambitions

Hicran Kazanci head of the foreign relations department of the Iraqi Turkoman Front, tells RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service that Turkoman candidates enlisted in a variety of coalitions for the March 7 race. But he says they all agree on one thing.

“Despite the fact the Turkomans went into the election with different coalitions, on major and essential subjects they are united,” Kazanci says. “For example, about the future status of Kirkuk, all of them are united in opposition toward annexing Kirkuk into any federation. And they are united in making Turkoman one of Iraq’s official languages.”

A map Iraq’s ethnic makeup

Turkoman and Arab politicians made up the vast bulk of Al-Iraqiyah’s candidates in the local race, coming for the first time under a single political umbrella in the divided province. That is in sharp contrast to much of Kirkuk’s recent history, where the three main population groups — Kurdish, Turkoman, and Arab — have all competed against each other.

In the years immediately following the United States’ toppling of Saddam Hussein, both Turkomans and Arabs boycotted attempts to form a provincial government. They expressed anger over what they said were Kurdish efforts to appropriate the province de facto after moving Kurdish peshmerga fighters into the area to support the U.S. invasion.

The Turkomans and Arabs only agreed to take part in the running of the province after a power-sharing deal in 2008. Under that deal, the provincial governor is a Kurd while his two deputies are an Arab and a Turkoman.

But Kirkuk’s provincial parliament is still disputed after Arabs and Turkomans largely stayed away from the first election in 2005, handing the Kurds a majority. The Iraqi government excluded Tamin Province from the January 2009 provincial elections due to fears of sparking sectarian unrest.

Given this background, the fact that this month’s elections for deputies to the national parliament went peacefully in Tamin Province is a major surprise. To ensure security, the Iraqi police fielded 56 mobile patrols in Kirkuk city on election day, while Kurdish peshmerga also spread out less obtrusively across the provincial capital.

Simira Balay, a correspondent for RFE/RL’s Radio Free Iraq, says the Kurdish coalition was caught unawares by the election results, after it “had expected to dominate the election, but it seems the Kurdish vote split among a number of Kurdish parties, including Goran.” She says Kurdish bloc “now is neck and neck with the Iraqiyah list, which got most of the Turkoman and Arab vote.”

The Kurdish coalition comprises the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Goran, a recently created Kurdish opposition party, scored well in recent elections by running on an anticorruption platform.

Resolving Kirkuk Issue

In the aftermath of the elections, Kurdish political leaders — like their Turkoman counterparts — are stressing unity in their position over Kirkuk.

The Kurds see the city as the natural and historic capital of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq. And they insist upon holding a referendum in the province to determine its future status.

“The issue of Kirkuk is [already] in the Iraqi political arena to be solved in accordance with Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution,” says Rizgar Ali, the Kurdish head of Kirkuk’s provincial council.

Major steps under Article 140 include resolving property disputes created by Hussein’s policy of “Arabizing” Kirkuk, the holding of a census and conducting a referendum to decide the province’s future status.

To date, progress on all these steps has been painfully slow. Most property disputes remain unresolved and unrest in northern Iraq has prevented a census. The referendum, originally planned for no later than the end of 2007, has slipped accordingly.

That limbo is unacceptable to the Kurds, who are sure to use their full representation in the Baghdad parliament, including deputies from the Kurdish region, to continue to press for swift implementation of Article 140.

But it is likely that both the Turkomans and Arabs will use their new voice in the federal legislature to try to subject Article 140 to further negotiation.

According to Rakan Said, the Arab deputy governor of Kirkuk, the election results “laid the ground for dialogue.” He adds that now there are “two parties to the issue of Kirkuk: one is Al-Iraqiyah and the other is the Kurdish coalition. So the platform [for dialogue] has become clear and without interference.”

New Political Landscape

Al-Iraqiyah, headed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, ran on a nonsectarian, nationalist platform. Its success on the national level as a joint front-runner with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition has appeared to realign Iraqi politics by relegating sectarian- and ethnic-based parties to the background.

With some 80 percent of the vote counted nationwide, the Shi’ite religious parties’ Iraqi National Alliance are in third place and the Kurdistan Alliance in fourth. Still, Iraqi parliamentary politics is all about making coalitions and in the past the Kurds have proved adept at playing the role of kingmakers.

Whether the Kurdish parties can continue to do so now, or are relegated to a less prominent role, will directly affect Kirkuk’s eventual status. The Kurds want it to be part of Iraqi Kurdistan. And the newly empowered Kirkuk Turkoman-Arab bloc is just as determined to play the spoiler.

Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomans all claim the province around Kirkuk based on a long historical presence in the area.

The Turkic-speaking Turkomans, who claim to be the second-largest group in northern Iraq after the Kurds, trace their presence to the time of the Seljuk Empire, when migrating Turkic tribes conquered a vast expanse of territory stretching from modern Iran to Turkey.

Muhammad Tahir of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service contributed to this report

https://www.rferl.org/a/Iraqs_Kurds_Lose_Political_Dominance_In_Kirkuk/1988609.html

March 20, 2010
Ethnic Kurd wins high court release ruling after failed deportation
• Test case reveals Iraqi government resistance to repatriations
• Home Office officials out of control, claims rights group
- Owen Bowcott
Home Office attempts to forcibly deport thousands of failed Iraqi asylum seekers suffered a setback today when it emerged that Baghdad has objected to any “increase in returns”.

The official refusal surfaced in a high court test case , which ruled that an ethnic Kurd should be released after 21 months in immigration detention because there was no likelihood of his being sent back, even in the “medium term”.

The decision by Mr Justice Langstaff may relate only to a single individual – Soran Ahmed, 22, from Kirkuk – but the judgment has exposed the Iraqi government’s reluctance to receive deportees and the difficulty UK officials have persuading counterparts in Baghdad to cooperate.

An internal Whitehall document, read out to the court, detailed how the UK Border Agency is proposing to fly Iraqi officials into Britain so that they can understand and “buy-in” to the deportation process. It also suggested arranging a UK ministerial visit to Baghdad to stress “the importance of returns to Iraq“.

Ahmed, whose case was supported by the Refugee and Migrant Justice (RMJ) civil rights group, was one of 44 failed Iraqi asylum seekers forcibly put on an abortive charter flight to Baghdad last October with private security guards; Ahmed claimed he was assaulted on board.

In Baghdad, Iraqi interior officials never appeared and the deportees interviewed by an infuriated Iraqi colonel in charge of the airport. “He was antagonistic from the outset,” Mr Justice Langstaff commented.

The colonel accepted 10 deportees and ordered the rest back to London. They did not have the correct Iraqi documentation, he claimed, or were ethnic Kurds who would be in danger in the predominantly Arab city of Baghdad.

There are regular UK deportation flights to the relative peace of the Kurdistan Regional Government area in northern Iraq. Other European countries have been sending failed asylum seekers back to central and southern Iraq. The UK is meeting stiffer resistance to this route.

The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) still opposes repatriations to the central five governorates of Iraq due to the risk of violence. An email from officials in Baghdad to Whitehall last May “disclosed a reluctance to see an increase in the return of Iraqi nationals from the UK to Iraq,” the judge said.

A Foreign Office official who flew to Iraq several times to prepare the way for the flight explained that he met resistance from Iraqi officials to EU documentation. On receipt of the full list of deportees the Iraqis said: “We will see what we can do”.

A report from the conference reviewing the failure of the October flight suggested that the UK Borders Agency should learn from more successful EU deportation programmes and the Iraqi prime minister’s office should be written to for help. The high court heard that the letter has still not been despatched.

It would be unlawful to continue to detain Ahmed, said Langstaff. He was previously imprisoned in Britain for sexual assault and using false documents. There was no prospect of UK flights returning him to Kirkuk via Baghdad this year and the Kurdish Regional Government would not accept him. The judge ordered him to be released under strict bail conditions despite the fact that he posed “some risk” to the public. Bail conditions will be determined at later hearing.

Caroline Slocock, chief executive of RMJ, welcomed the judgment. “”[The flight] should never have left the UK. Home Office staff widened their own criteria on who could safely be on board, largely to fill empty seats at the last moment.

“Not only was the destination of the flight kept secret from those being removed, but it is now clear Iraqi authorities were kept in the dark. The alarming picture emerging is of Home Office officials out of control. Officials needs to get a grip of the problem rather than egg officials on by changes of policy which make it easier for the remove people without proper judicial scrutiny.”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/19/kurd-asylum-seeker-repatriation-iraq, 19 February 2010
February 28, 2010
45-minute WMD claim ‘came from an Iraqi taxi driver’

Tory MP and defence specialist Adam Holloway says MI6 got information from a taxi driver who had heard Iraqi military commanders talking about weapons

An Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.

Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained the information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi militarycommanders talking about Saddam’s weapons.

The 45-minute claim was a key feature of the dossier about Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction that was released by Tony Blair in September 2002. Blair published the information to bolster public support for war.

After the war the dossier became hugely controversial when it became clear that some of the information it contained was not true. An inquiry headed by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war revealed that MI6 had subsequently accepted that some of its Iraqi sources were unreliable, but his report did not identify who they were.

Today, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Holloway said the key piece of information about 45 minutes came from an Iraqi officer who was using a taxi driver as his own sub-source.

“[MI6] were running a senior Iraqi army officer who had a source of his own, a cab driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border,” said Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist.

“He apparently overheard two Iraqi army officers two years before who had spoken about weapons with the range to hit targets elsewhere in the Middle East.”

Holloway made his comments to coincide with the publication of a report he has written claiming that MI6 always had reservations about some of the information in the dossier but that these reservations were brushed aside when Downing Street was preparing it for publication.

According to the Mail, Holloway says in his report: “Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, [MI6] were squeezing their agents in Iraq for anything at all.

“In the [MI6] analysts’ footnote to their report, it flagged up that part of the report describing some missiles that the Iraqi government allegedly possessed was demonstrably untrue. The missiles verifiably did not exist.

“The footnote said it in black and white. Despite this the report was treated as reliable and went on to become one of the central planks of the dodgy dossier.”

Holloway claims that MI6 was not to blame for the fact that the footnote was ignored. “It seems that someone, perhaps in Downing Street, found it rather inconvenient and ignored it lest it interfere with our reasons for going to war,” his report says.

The report is due to be published on the first defence website.

Butler concluded that, although the claims in the Iraq dossier went to the “outer limits” of what the intelligence available at the time would sustain, there was no evidence of “deliberate distortion”.

Today Sir John Scarlett, the key figure responsible for the preparation of the dossier, will give evidence to the Iraq inquiry. Scarlett was chairman of the joint intelligence committee at the time and he went on to become head of MI6.

He is expected to be asked about the dossier, although he is unlikely to provide detailed information about MI6 sources in public. The inquiry has said that, if witnesses want to discuss confidential issues relating to national security, they can do so in private.

The September dossier did not specify what weapons Iraq could deploy within 45 minutes. Intelligence officials subsequently revealed that it was meant to be a reference to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles.

But, when it was published, some British papers interpreted the dossier as meaning that British troops based in Cyprus would be vulnerable to an Iraqi attack. At the time the government did not do anything to correct this error.

Guardian

December 8, 2009
Turkey: An Ally No More

by Daniel Pipes
Jerusalem Post
October 28, 2009

the Middle East Forum, headed by Daniel Pipes

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Syria met in Aleppo in October 2009.

“There is no doubt he is our friend,” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, says of Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as he accuses Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Gaza. These outrageous assertions point to the profound change of orientation by Turkey’s government, for six decades the West’s closest Muslim ally, since Erdoğan’s AK party came to power in 2002.

Three events this past month reveal the extent of that change. The first came on October 11 with the news that the Turkish military – a long-time bastion of secularism and advocate of cooperation with Israel – abruptly asked Israeli forces not to participate in the annual “Anatolian Eagle” air force exercise.

Erdoğan cited “diplomatic sensitivities” for the cancelation and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu spoke of “sensitivity on Gaza, East Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque.” The Turks specifically rejected Israeli planes that may have attacked Hamas (an Islamist terrorist organization) during last winter’s Gaza Strip operation. While Damascus applauded the disinvitation, it prompted the U.S. and Italian governments to withdraw their forces from Anatolian Eagle, which in turn meant canceling the international exercise.

As for the Israelis, this “sudden and unexpected” shift shook to the core their military alignment with Turkey, in place since 1996. Former air force chief Eytan Ben-Eliyahu, for example, called the cancelation “a seriously worrying development.” Jerusalem immediately responded by reviewing Israel’s practice of supplying Turkey with advanced weapons, such as the recent $140 million sale to the Turkish Air Force of targeting pods. The idea also arose to stop helping the Turks defeat the Armenian genocide resolutions that regularly appear before the U.S. Congress.

Ministers of the Turkish and Syrian governments met at the border town of Öncüpınar and symbolically lifted a bar dividing their two countries on October 13.

Barry Rubin of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya not only argues that “The Israel-Turkey alliance is over” but concludes that Turkey’s armed forces no longer guard the secular republic and can no longer intervene when the government becomes too Islamist.

The second event took place two days later, on October 13, when Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem announced that Turkish and Syrian forces had just “carried out maneuvers near Ankara.” Moallem rightly called this an important development “because it refutes reports of poor relations between the military and political institutions in Turkey over strategic relations with Syria.” Translation: Turkey’s armed forces lost out to its politicians.

Thirdly, ten Turkish ministers, led by Davutoğlu, joined their Syrian counterparts on October 13 for talks under the auspices of the just-established “Turkey-Syria High Level Strategic Cooperation Council.” The ministers announced having signed almost 40 agreements to be implemented within 10 days; that “a more comprehensive, a bigger” joint land military exercise would be held than the first one in April; and that the two countries’ leaders would sign a strategic agreement in November.

The cover of Ahmet Davutoğlu’s book, “Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position.”

The council’s concluding joint statement announced the formation of “a long-term strategic partnership” between the two sides “to bolster and expand their cooperation in a wide spectrum of issues of mutual benefit and interest and strengthen the cultural bonds and solidarity among their peoples.” The council’s spirit, Davutoğlu explained, “is common destiny, history and future; we will build the future together,” while Moallem called the get-together a “festival to celebrate” the two peoples.

Bilateral relations have indeed been dramatically reversed from a decade earlier, when Ankara came perilously close to war with Syria. But improved ties with Damascus are only one part of a much larger effort by Ankara to enhance relations with regional and Muslim states, a strategy enunciated by Davutoğlu in his influential 2000 book, Stratejik derinlik: Türkiye’nin uluslararası konumu (“Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position”).

In brief, Davutoğlu envisions reduced conflict with neighbors and Turkey emerging as a regional power, a sort-of modernized Ottoman Empire. Implicit in this strategy is a distancing of Turkey from the West in general and Israel in particular. Although not presented in Islamist terms, “strategic depth” closely fits the AK party’s Islamist world view.

As Barry Rubin notes, “the Turkish government is closer politically to Iran and Syria than to the United States and Israel.” Caroline Glick, a Jerusalem Post columnist, goes further: Ankara already “left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.” But official circles in the West seem nearly oblivious to this momentous change in Turkey’s allegiance or its implications.

The cost of their error will soon become evident.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

October 29, 2009
Between the Hammer and the Anvil: An Exclusive Interview with PJAK’s Agiri Rojhilat

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 7 Issue: 31

October 23, 2009 11:46 AM Age: 3 days

Featured By: Derek Henry Flood

Agiri Rojhilat

Agiri Rojhilat is one of the top seven members of the Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane (PJAK) which is a part of the larger umbrella organization Koma Civaken Kurdistan (KCK) that includes the PKK. The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan portrays itself to be more of an armed democratization movement rather than a traditional national liberation movement for Kurdish sovereignty. PJAK says it is taking a stand in the name of all of Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities and it is much more than a Kurdish ethno-nationalist organization. Its expressed aim is to change the regime of the Iranian Ayatollahs to form an inclusive, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic participatory, federalized democracy in Tehran. Jamestown spoke to Rojhilat at the PJAK base in Qandil, northern Iraq.

JT: Can you tell our readers about PJAK’s internal political framework?

AR: Every four years we will have a congress that is made up of two-hundred delegates that from come from within our organization representing our women’s wing, youth wing and armed wing. This congress assembles itself in secret in Kurdistan. Because of the situation for Kurds in Iran, the elections for our congress cannot be held in the open. From the 200 assembled delegates, a thirty-person parliament is elected. Of those thirty elected, seven are chosen to form the coordination board of PJAK.

JT: How precisely are these elections conducted? Since your organization is not a legal party in Iran, they must be done clandestinely, no?

AR: The elections are done secretly. I want to let you know that we have over a million supporters inside Iran today. There is a lot of support for PJAK. But these elections cannot be perfectly [democratic] but of the secrecy in which they must be conducted.

JT: It has been reported that PJAK is very concerned about women’s issues and gender equality. What can you tell us about this aspect of your organization?

AR: I want to emphasize that women’s issues and women’s rights are paramount to our organization and we have a quota for female PJAK membership. Women are active at all levels of our organization. From the delegates to the parliament to the coordination board, we require a forty percent quota for females in PJAK. From top to bottom, we stress female participation in PJAK.

JT: Even participating in guerrilla attacks?

AR: Even fighting, yes.

JT: Do the PKK and PJAK conduct joint military operations or are their kinetic activities totally isolated from one another?

AR: What the PKK and PJAK have in common is that we both follow the ideology and philosophy of [imprisoned PKK leader] Abdullah Ocalan and we are both Kurdish parties. Let me explain this; there are four parts of Kurdistan since it was divided. Within both the PKK and the PJAK, there are Kurds from the different parts of Kurdistan. So within the PKK, there are Iranian Kurds and there are Germans and within PJAK there are Kurds from other parts of Kurdistan, but the PKK and PJAK are different groups with different political objectives.

JT: You are referring to diaspora Kurds from Germany or European Germans?

AR: Both. Let me explain; there are Kurds from all four parts of Kurdistan participating in the PKK, diaspora Kurds as well as some Germans. All of these types of Kurds are also participating in PJAK as well but I want to stress that the PKK and PJAK are two different organizations with different aims and objectives.

I want to add something else. If the regime in Syria attacks Syrian Kurds, PJAK is obligated to have a reaction to such behavior. Despite the fact that PJAK operates primarily in Iranian Kurdistan, we feel we have a responsibility to protect Kurds from the other sectors of Kurdistan as well. There are not different kinds of Kurds. There is one Kurdistan and one Kurdish people.

JT: Is PJAK a purely Kurdish liberation movement or is its appeal more broad based within Iran?

AR: In our movement, there are several nationalities. We have Azeris, Baluchis as well as ethnic Persians fighting.

JT: What is the geographical scope of the insurgency you are mounting?

AR: We have guerrillas in place from Maku all the way to Kermanshah. Throughout Iranian Kurdistan we have over one million sympathizers.

JT: What is the size of PJAK’s current military force?

AR: Until now, we do not like to give out precise figures for this but we have over one thousand active guerrillas. Eighty percent of which are inside Iranian territory.

JT: How are the values and teachings of Abdullah Ocalan carried out by PJAK?

AR: Of course it is a matter of evaluating the philosophy of Abdullah Ocalan according to our specific needs. The PKK and PJAK are two different organizations and the situation in Turkish Kurdistan is different than in Iranian Kurdistan. We implement his teachings according to the needs of Kurds in Iran. Do we put everything exactly as Ocalan says into practice? Not necessarily. You cannot say exactly that whatever Ocalan says we put into practice…

JT: What can you tell us about how PJAK was founded?

AR: For about five or six years before 2004 when our organization was officially announced, we were having some meetings to decide about how to organize ourselves politically and improve the situation for Kurds in Iran.

JT: Can you answer the allegations that PJAK has received support in any form from the Central Intelligence Agency? Journalist Seymour Hersh and former CIA officer Robert Baer have stated the United States government is very likely aiding PJAK in its proxy struggle with the Iranian regime. Is there any truth to these assertions?

AR: It is not right that the CIA is helping PJAK. That is not the reality or right at all. Once we had a meeting with Americans in Kirkuk to discuss possible cooperation. Our friend Akif Zagros [a former member of PJAK’s seven person leadership council who the author was informed was killed in a flash flood] talked with them but the Americans said PJAK should abandon the ideology of Abdullah Ocalan and our brotherhood with the PKK if we want help from them. Akif Zagros told the Americans PJAK would not abandon the teachings of Ocalan or our friendly relations with the PKK. Because of the way the Americans approached the issue, shaheed Zagros left the meeting. Since the meeting in 2004, no other such meetings occurred.

JT: If the United States were to approach you again asking to work with your organization against the Iranian regime, but this time without such preconditions, what would be the reaction of PJAK’s leadership?

AR: We have nothing against the United States of America. We are not closing our doors to anyone. We are open to dialogue with everyone. We are open to America, Europe and still Iran for talks. We decide what is best for our people based on our own will. We decide democratically when, where and with whom we will engage in such dialogue. We do not want to be simply used against others…

JT: So PJAK does not want to be used in a proxy war even if its interests temporarily converge with an outside power?

AR: Until now, both the U.S. and the European Union approach Iran for their own benefit. Within these dialogues, the Kurds are always used and then thrown aside after we have served their purposes. Because of these failed policies, we do not accept these kinds of approaches.

JT: Why do you believe that the Americans put PJAK on the Treasury Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations?

AR: Last year, there was a small bit of rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran and the nuclear issue and then suddenly PJAK gets put on this terrorist-financing list. We know there are some political parties [in Iran] that get some support from the U.S. but we are a totally different kind of party. We have our own will and objectives.

JT: Out here in Qandil, I do not see any visible economy with which your organization can sustain itself. How is PJAK funded? Do you benefit from the Afghan opium trade? Do you receive donations from sponsors?

AR: Our economy is based purely on the Kurdish people living in Iran. We collect voluntary donations from the Kurdish people according to how much they are able to give within their relative means. To explain to you the level of support that we receive, the Kurdish people even bring their children to us to join our organization.

JT: Children of what age?

AR: Normally eighteen. You must understand that Kurdish society is very different than the West. Because there are so many operations to suppress us, Kurdish society has turned inward. This stress from the outside strengthens our communities. We have some recruits that are under eighteen, maybe sixteen, but they are not participating in our military operations. Where we are from in Iran, there is a very large youth population and our party sees a lot of potential in them as we consider ourselves a young party. The Islamic Republic of Iran has three elements it uses in the destruction of our youth. Firstly it encourages and facilitates drug use among them. Secondly, it employs the Basij [militia] system and tries to brainwash our young people to be against the U.S. and Europe, saying, “We [Iran] stand for Islam and therefore the U.S. and E.U. are our enemy.” Thirdly, the regime systematically imprisons and tortures them in order to annihilate us and discourage them from joining PJAK or supporting the Kurdish freedom movement.

JT: Can you be more specific about how the guerrilla movement is financed?

AR: For example, certain Kurdish people that have relations with PJAK come and visit us. They pledge to sponsor maybe fifty or one hundred guerrillas from top to bottom for an entire year. They buy everything for them and it is their way of supporting their own freedom struggle. All of this is done through voluntary sponsorship.

About the drug question you brought up, Iran has very special policies in regard to this matter. They encourage Kurdish youth in Iranian Kurdistan to use drugs and the percentage of addiction among our youth has been increasing. The Iranian state wants our young people to remain outside the political framework of the country. Let me give you an example of how this policy affects our people. Recently, a mother came here from Iran asking us to help her deal with her son who was badly addicted to drugs and she felt powerless to do anything about it. She said she could not turn to the Iranian state for help and came to us because she felt that by joining PJAK, [her son] could shake his addiction. We told her “bring your son to us. We can help him.”

JT: PJAK does not profit from the transit of Afghan narcotics through its territory?

AR: There have been clashes with police in Iran with Sunni groups who are fighting the Islamic regime in Baluchistan and Khorosan. Sometimes these police die. From time to time, we also have clashes between our armed wing and regime elements. When some pasdaran [Revolutionary Guards] die, the regime says it is because of bandits involved in the drugs trade. They describe clashes with PJAK as banditry and try to link us to the drugs. Iranian authorities do not like to mention the name PJAK after some pasdarans die, just referring to us as bandits. These Iranians are not dying because of the drugs trade. They are being killed because they are oppressing Sunnis and Sunnis in these provinces are fighting the regime. If you come back to me on another visit, I can provide you with names of those in the regime that are involved in the drugs trade.

When the Iranian regime prepares its annual budget, it does not have enough money to sustain itself and so it supplements governmental coffers with money from the transshipment of Afghan narcotics. The drugs are shipped across Iranian territory under the supervision of Ettela’at (Iranian Intelligence: Vezarat-e Ettela’at Jomhuri-e Eslami – VEVAK) to Orumieh (provincial capital of West Azarbaijan Province). From Orumieh they are sent to Hakkari Province in Turkey where they are shipped under the supervision of the MIT (Milli Istihbarat Teskilati – Turkish intelligence) and from Turkey these drugs reach Europe. Both Iran and Turkey may employ some Kurds as part of their trafficking apparatus but the trafficking is state organized by both countries’ intelligence services.

Can you imagine this high volume of drugs coming into Turkey from Iran without the Turks’ knowledge? It would be impossible. Turkey has many checkpoints. How could they not know about all of these drugs passing through their territory?

JT: Is PJAK a 100% independent organization that exists without the support of international actors?

AR: Yes that is completely right. I will stress that we have not so far [received] any international aid or weapons from anyone. We are an independent organization.

JT: There has been a lot of speculation [surrounding] your leader Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi’s visit to Washington in the summer 0f 2007. Can you comment on it?

AR: As you can see Haji Ahmadi is not here for comment. Whatever I say is on the record as a PJAK official. As the president of PJAK, he is available to have dialogue with anyone. He can visit different countries and meet with different people. Yes, he did visit Washington, as it was within his power to do so. He has the power to do such things. But I want to reiterate that until now we have not received support from any outside powers…

JT: What is PJAK’s attitude toward the Turkish-Iranian military alliance?

AR: Iran and Turkey have an alliance against us and [have worked] on joint military operations together for the past few years. Despite their differences, they are unified on the Kurdish issue. The alliance between Iran and Turkey is not purely a military one though, it is also now political…

Turkey is taking intelligence that it is receiving from the U.S. in regard to PKK positions here in Iraq and passing it on to Iran so they can attack PJAK. So Iran is now acquiring U.S. intelligence meant for Ankara in this Turkish-Iranian bilateral military strategy against the Kurds. Through this cooperation, we are attacked here in Iraq by Turkish warplanes while Iran fires Katyushas from the other side of these mountain ridges. We believe there are even Turks training members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps to fight Kurds inside Iran.

Additionally, I want to let you know that besides Iran’s increased alliance with Turkey, it is also greatly expanding its bases along the Iran-Iraq border. It says it is doing this to defend the Islamic Republic against a possible invasion by the United States. But what this effort is really meant to do in our view is to separate the Kurds and stop the flow of our movement across the border. From our observations, some of these expanded military bases look to be modeled on Israeli bases.

JT: What can you tell of your organization’s military strategy against Iranian forces?

AR: Iran and Turkey insist that the PKK and the PJAK are the same and this works very well for their own propaganda efforts. We are being shelled here. If you look beyond you, you can see the entire mountainside is burned from Katuysha fire. Our strategy is one of pure self-defense. We do not make offensive operations against the Revolutionary Guards. We defend Iranian Kurds and ourselves. We have a right to retaliate against the Iranian state as part of our self-defense policy. If Iran attacks our people, we will respond. Iran uses the death penalty and likes to hang people. If they will hang more of our friends, we have plans to retaliate directly… Our main work is political but we have to have an armed wing because Iran is not a truly democratic state and it does not allow people to organize themselves politically.

JT: What can you tell our readers about PJAK’s philosophy and ideological outlook?

AR: Our aim is a free Kurdistan and a democratic Iran.

JT: Are you speaking of creating an independent Kurdish state?

AR: What we are talking about now is not the changing of borders or the replacing of flags but creating an all-inclusive Iran.

JT: Does PJAK seek to overthrow the religious government of Iran?

AR: We do not oppose religion and we are in no way against the Islamic religion, nor do we have any animosity toward any other ethnic groups living in Iran today. Our goals are not limited to the freedom of Kurds. We wish for all the ethnic groups living in Iran to have their democratic rights.

JT: Do you seek a structure of parallel government for Kurds in Iran comparable to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq that has its own parliament and issues its own visas?

AR: Not at all. We would prefer to have much more participation in a democratized central government. To achieve this, we are trying to permeate Iranian Kurdistan with democratic values so that our people can improve themselves and organize themselves politically. We never want to impose cultural hegemony on others and would like to see Baluchis and Azeris organize themselves similarly as well.

JT: Do you believe that Iran is a Shia chauvinist regime that uses Khomenism and evangelical Mahdism similar to the way Turkey uses the notion of Turkism at the expense of its minorities?

AR: Yes, that’s right. Iran gives Kurds a degree of recognition but with other groups like Azeris, they practice a forced assimilation policy. Iran also practices a divide and rule policy to pit different groups against one another. There is discrimination against Sunnis as well…

JT: Does PJAK have a relationship with the Jundullah insurgency in Sistan-Baluchistan Province?

AR: For us, yes, we have some relations with Baluchi people. However, we do not have a specific relationship with Jundullah. Baluchis have a special meaning for us because of their oppression by the Islamic Republic. Iran’s policy has been to make the Baluchis depend on the income from the transit of Afghan narcotics as well as depend on the Iranian state.

JT: Do you have any connections with Ahwazi Arabs in Khuzestan Province? There has been some unexplained political violence there.

AR: We do not have guerrillas there but we do have some indirect political relations.

JT: In closing, can you tell our readers what core principles drive PJAK’s internal dynamics?

AR: Our movement operates under three core principles: democracy, women’s rights, and ecology. We believe these three principles must be integrated into our everyday activities. Did you know that every year, it is required that every member of PJAK must plant two trees? PJAK strongly believes that understanding ecology improves people’s lives in the region where we are active. We have programs to help surrounding villages to acquire fresh water and PJAK also believes in helping to educate the people in our surroundings.

https://jamestown.org/program/between-the-hammer-and-the-anvil-an-exclusive-interview-with-pjaks-agiri-rojhilat/

October 26, 2009
Iraq Oil Scandal Threatens Former U.S. Diplomat Galbraith

Peter Galbraith says his business activities took place only when he was working in the private sector.

October 15, 2009

By Charles Recknagel

There is little love lost between the top UN envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and Peter Galbraith, his recently dismissed deputy.

Galbraith was dismissed from the UN mission earlier this month after accusing the senior Norwegian diplomat of concealing information about the extent of fraud in the contested Afghan presidential election.

Eide later responded with an angry defense of his reputation as an honest broker. He acknowledged there had been “significant” fraud but said that Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador, had no way to substantiate claims that as much as 30 percent of the vote count was influenced by fraud.

Now, in an ironic twist to the story, Galbraith, too, has suddenly found himself at the center of alleged scandal that could damage his own reputation.

That scandal is taking place in Norway, where Galbraith, the son of famed Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, lives in Bergen with his Norwegian wife.

Norway’s largest financial newspaper, the “Dagens Naeringsliv,” reported last week that Galbraith acquired a 5 percent share in an oil field in the Iraqi Kurdish region at a time when he was a leading voice in the U.S. debate over the structure of post-Saddam Iraq.

At the time, the former diplomat urged in meetings with U.S. officials and in articles in the “New York Review of Books” that the Kurds should be given maximum autonomy.

And he helped draft Iraq’s 2005 constitution by advising Kurdish leaders on legal language they should seek to insert into it — including keeping future oil development in their region under their own control.

The U.S. daily “The Boston Globe,” which picked up the story on October 15, reports that in the lead-up to the Iraq war, Galbraith worked as an adviser to then-U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Galbraith then left government service and in late 2003 and early 2004 worked as a paid consultant to Kurdish politicians. Later, in 2005, he advised them again on an unpaid basis.

Conflict Of Interest?

Galbraith’s dual role in Iraq appears to have broken no laws. But it does raise ethical questions, according to some analysts.

“The dual role is problematic particularly in terms of the American policy debate that unfolded from around 2005 to 2007, in which Galbraith was the leading voice in shaping the so-called alternative to the Bush administration policy,” says Reider Visser, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo and the editor of the Iraq-focused website historiae.org.

“At the core of that alternative was the idea of some sort of radical decentralization for Iraq,” Visser says. “But when it now emerges that additionally he had an ownership interest, or a business interest, in an oil field whose political and economic status was directly governed by his policy recommendations, then I think we can speak of a conflict of interest.”

Galbraith says in “The Boston Globe” that he sees no conflict of interest because he was working as a private citizen at the time.

“The business interest, including my investment into Kurdistan, was consistent with my political views,” he told the paper. “These were all things that I was promoting, and in fact, have brought considerable benefit to the people of Kurdistan, the Kurdistan oil industry, and also to shareholders.”

Rumors of Galbraith having financial dealings in Iraq have swirled around for years. But the Norwegian newspaper’s detailed account stems not from an investigation into Galbraith but into a Norwegian oil company, DNO.

The investigation, as often happens in such cases, advanced in unanticipated ways, with one discovery leading surprisingly to another.

The newspaper began by looking into a large, unexplained fine leveled on DNO by the Oslo Stock Exchange on June 18. DNO is the only Norwegian oil company active in northern Iraq and one of the first foreign companies to receive a drilling license from the Kurdistan regional government (KRG).

The minutes of the stock exchange meeting showed only that the fine was to punish DNO for selling 5 percent of its shares to a publicly undisclosed buyer. “Dagens Naeringsliv” filed a Freedom of Information request with the stock exchange and learned that the undisclosed buyer of the shares was the KRG itself.

When “Dagens Naeringsliv” published that news, the KRG reacted vehemently to being publicly named. It threatened to suspend DNO’s activities in Kurdistan and evict the company without compensation. It also set some conditions for continued cooperation with DNO, including one that was completely unexpected: for the company to clear up all conflicts with “third-party interests.”

Again the newspaper’s interest was piqued. This time, the challenge was to find out the identity of the “third party,” which apparently had previously been part of an agreement with DNO and the KGR but which now was in a conflict so important it needed to be solved immediately.

Unexpected Connections

In the search, the paper learned of an arbitration case in London which started sometime after March of last year and pits DNO against two companies: one called Porcupine, the other belonging to a Yemeni businessman. Tracking down Porcupine led to Delaware, where it turned out the company’s incorporation document was signed by Peter Galbraith.

The financial news editor of “Dagens Naeringsliv,” Terje Erikstad, says the discovery of Galbraith’s name was completely unanticipated.

“We started out the investigation looking at the fine levied against a mid-sized Norwegian oil company, DNO,” Erikstad says. “It is often in the news because it was a pioneer in northern Iraq and its shares on the Oslo stock exchange go up and down with developments there. We were not looking for Galbraith’s name at all, so finding it on [Porcupine’s] founding documents in Delaware was quite a surprise for us.”

Porcupine was established in Delaware on June 30, 2004 — one day after DNO signed a contract with KRG to begin drilling for oil in northern Iraq.

Later, the relations between the partners — KRG, DNO, and the third party –soured for as yet unknown reasons. The contract between DNO and the KRG was renegotiated last year and the third party was dropped out of the agreement. That, in turn, appears to have sparked the arbitration case in which the third party — Porcupine and the Yemeni businessman — is asking compensation.

The Norwegian newspaper reports that the compensation sought is equivalent to 10 percent of the total reserves and output of the Tawke field, where the DNO operates. The paper published a document from 2006 that lists the partners in the Tawke field and shows Porcupine as having a 5 percent interest in it.

The paper estimates that the total amount of compensation being sought jointly by Porcupine and the Yemeni businessman is some $525 million. A ruling is expected in the first half of next year.

DNO has the capacity currently to export roughly 43,000 barrels per day from Iraqi Kurdistan, worth approximately $30 million annually. However, exports are currently blocked as the KRG and Baghdad continue to dispute the same kind of issues Galbraith once tried to resolve.

The current dispute is whether Baghdad, which handles the sale of all exported oil, should pay any of DNO’s operating costs when DNO is working under a contract awarded by the KRG but not recognized by the Baghdad government.

Baghdad insists instead that the KRG pay the company out of the 17 percent of Iraqi oil revenues that the Kurdish region receives under Iraq’s current revenue-sharing agreement.

A final Iraqi oil law to resolve such conflicts between Baghdad and the KRG has been under discussion ever since the signing of Iraq’s 2005 constitution, with no conclusion in sight.

https://www.rferl.org/a/Iraq_Oil_Scandal_Threatens_Former_US_Diplomat_Galbraith/1852916.html

October 17, 2009