Tag: Erbil

  • A massacre against the Türkmen by this terrorist organization ISIL in Emirli is imminent

    A massacre against the Türkmen by this terrorist organization ISIL in Emirli is imminent

    A massacre against the Türkmen by this terrorist organization ISIL in Emirli is imminent   

    taha

    Sadly the Kurdish policy/regime toward the Türkmen people is no different from that of the Arabisation policy that was carried out against the Türkmen during Saddam Hussein’s reign.

    Following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003 and the control of Northern Iraq by the Kurdish Regional Government, the Iraqi Türkmen’s situation has deteriorated dramatically. At that time the Türkmen expected to see justice, equality and human rights but tragically the reverse has been happening. The lands of the Türkmen people have been confiscated and at times destroyed; many Türkmen have been kidnapped, arrested and assassinated. The Türkmen people have been subjected to tremendous pressure from the Kurdish party militias, to disregard their Türkmen identity and they are been forced to blend Kurdish society.

    The current disregard of the Türkmen people’s situation is unacceptable in Türkmeneli. The Türkmen people are again been subjected to a most brutal campaign by a terrorist Islamic State in Iraq, the Levant (ISIL) militants, thousands of Türkmen were forced to flee the Türkmen District of Telafer, when jihadists overran the area.

    The Türkmen people in the sub-district of Taze Khormatu, Tuz Khormatu and specifically the sub_district of Emirli has been under siege by the terrorist organization ISIL for the last two months. Their water, electricity, medical and food supply has been cut off and they have been living in horrific conditions. A massacre against the Türkmen by this terrorist organization ISIL in Emirli is imminent and tragically avoidable.

    When thousands of the Yazidis religious minority were forced to flee Sinjar as the jihadists overran their area, this prompted an international aid operation and helped to trigger the US air strikes.

    Türkmens are questioning why Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and the Czech Republic do not show this same solidarity/urgency towards the Iraqi Türkmen people.  As over 100,000 Türkmen people have sought refuge as thousands of Türkmen are executed by the terrorist Islamic State (IS) militants.

    Türkmen are also questioning why Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Italy, Canada, and Britain are not showing the same solidarity toward the Iraqi Türkmen in Emirli, who have been under siege for the past two months? Türkmens believe that the humanitarian aid should be distributed equally and fairly to all the Iraqi people who are fleeing Islamic militants in Northern Iraq.

    The Türkmen and Christian people are left defenceless, after the occupation of the city of Mosul by the terrorist Islamic State militants and the retreat of the Iraqi army from Mosul and Kerkuk. The Kurdish armed forces, instead of fighting and stopping the State militants from occupying Türkmen villages around the city of Kerkuk, have used the sectarian chaos in Iraq to expand their autonomous territory to include Kerkuk.

    Kerkuk sits on vast oil deposits, that could make the Kurdish region an independent state that many dream of in Iraq’s mountainous north and beyond, more viable. Türkmen question why Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Italy, Canada, and Britain did not stop the Kurdish Peshmerga from occupying the Türkmen city of Kerkuk without question their objective?

    While the Islamic State militants have swept across northern Iraq, pushing back Kurdish regional forces, threatening the Kurdish regional Capital of Erbil and driving tens of thousands of Christians and members of the Yazidis religious minority from their homes, Germany, France, Czechs Republic and Britain have shown great empathy towards the Kurdish people.

    Funnelling arms to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces by Britain, the United States and some European countries can start to change the dynamics in the region. The U.S. and EU’s provision of arms support for the Kurds is a good and positive step against the terrorist organization ISIL. However, this help should not only be given to the Kurdish people, the Türkmen people should also be given arms support. If the support is only limited to the Kurds, it could be an indication that there are other plans/incentives behind the decision of establishing a Kurdish state.

    The U.S. and EU’s stance on supporting the Kurds could be motivated by plans to divide Iraq into three parts that consist of a Shiite region in the south, a strengthened Kurdish region in the north and a Sunni region in the central Iraq.  This action would be totally rejected by the Türkmen people and civil war will be imminent if this plan is implemented by the U.S. and EU’s countries. In the view of many Türkmen, an independent Kurdish state would further destabilize the region and create new tensions, possibly also within the states neighbouring Iraq.

    In the view of many Türkmen, ignoring the plight of the Türkmen could be seen to be part of a plan for creating a special region for Christians and Yazidis on the Nineveh plane. The Türkmen would be the biggest losers from the implementation of such a plan. The Türkmen have suffered a lot during and after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime. Iraqi Türkmen, the third largest ethnic group affected by the violence in Iraq, should also be equally armed by Britain to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

    The Türkmen people totally disapprove of sending weapons only to the Kurdish Peshmerga as these weapons could later be used by the Kurdish Peshmerga, to suppress the other ethnic groups in Northern Iraq. The Türkmen, Christian and Yazidis were betrayed by the Kurdish Peshmerga when they retreated from the Türkmen district of Telafer and sub- district of Beshir, Kusteppa, Biravchi, Makhmur and Sinjar.

    The Kurdish Peshmerga left the Türkmen, Christian and Yazidis under the mercy of the terrorist organization ISIL. The Kurdish Peshmerga is fighting to protect their own state, not for the Iraqi people as is believed. The Türkmen are worried about the formation of an independent Kurdish state, as this would risk further destabilizing the region.

    The Türkmen people of Iraq are extremely anxious to see the US and the West take action against the terrorist organization ISIL. However, the US, England, France, Italy, Canada, and Germany should show the same equality and empathy towards the Türkmen people. Iraqi Türkmen people are asking for arms/help/support from the West, asking for equal treatment to fight the terrorist organization ISIL.

    Mofak Salman Kerkuklu

    Türkmen Liberation Front

  • A decade after US-led invasion, Kurds look to Turkey, the West, mull future without Iraq

    A decade after US-led invasion, Kurds look to Turkey, the West, mull future without Iraq

    IRBIL, Iraq –  At an elite private school in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, children learn Turkish and English before Arabic. University students dream of jobs in Europe, not Baghdad. And a local entrepreneur says he doesn’t like doing business elsewhere because the rest of the country is too unstable.

    In the decade since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, Kurds have trained their sights toward Turkey and the West, at the expense of ties with the still largely dysfunctional rest of the country.

    Aided by an oil-fueled economic boom, Kurds have consolidated their autonomy, increased their leverage against the central government in Baghdad and are pursuing an independent foreign policy often at odds with that of Iraq.

    Kurdish leaders say they want to remain part of Iraq for now, but increasingly acrimonious disputes with Baghdad over oil and territory might just push them toward separation.

    “This is not a holy marriage that has to remain together,” Falah Bakir, the top foreign policy official in the Kurdistan Regional Government, said of the Kurdish region’s link to Iraq.

    A direct oil export pipeline to Turkey, which officials here say could be built by next year, would lay the economic base for independence. For now, the Kurds can’t survive without Baghdad; their region is eligible for 17 percent of the national budget of more than $100 billion, overwhelmingly funded by oil exports controlled by the central government.

    Since the war, the Kurds mostly benefited from being part of Iraq. At U.S. prodding, majority Shiites made major concessions in the 2005 constitution, recognizing Kurdish autonomy and allowing the Kurds to keep their own security force when other militias were dismantled. Shiites also accepted a Kurd as president of predominantly Arab Iraq.

    Still, for younger Kurds, who never experienced direct rule by Baghdad, cutting ties cannot come soon enough.

    More than half the region’s 5.3 million people were born after 1991 when a Western-enforced no-fly zone made Kurdish self-rule possible for the first time by shielding the region against Saddam Hussein. In the preceding years, Saddam’s forces had destroyed most Kurdish villages, killing tens of thousands and displacing many more.

    Students at Irbil’s private Cihan University say they feel Kurdish, not Iraqi, and that Iraq’s widespread corruption, sectarian violence and political deadlock are holding their region back.

    “I want to see an independent Kurdistan, and I don’t want to be part of Iraq,” said Bilend Azad, 20, an architectural engineering student walking with a group of friends along the landscaped campus. “Kurdistan is better than other parts of Iraq. If we stay with them, we will be bad like them and we won’t be free.”

    Kurds are among the main beneficiaries of the March 20, 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam, and sympathy for America still runs strong here.

    Rebaz Zedbagi, a partner in the Senk Group, a road construction and real estate investment company with an annual turnover of $100 million, said his own success would have been unthinkable without the war.

    The 28-year-old said he won’t do business in the rest of Iraq, citing bureaucracy and frequent attacks by insurgents, but said opportunities in the relatively stable Kurdish region are boundless.

    “I believe Kurdistan is like a baby tiger,” said Zedbagi, sipping a latte in a Western-style espresso bar in the Family Mall, Irbil’s largest shopping center. “I believe it will be very powerful in the Middle East.”

    The Kurdish region has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past decade.

    Its capital, Irbil, once had the ambiance of a large village. It has grown into a city of 1.3 million people, with the beginnings of a skyline, several five-star hotels and construction cranes dotting the horizon.

    The SUV-driving elites have moved into townhouses in new gated communities with grand names like “The English Village.” Irbil’s shiny glass-and-steel airport puts Baghdad’s to shame.

    The number of cars registered in the province of Irbil — one of three in the Kurdish region — jumped from 4,000 in 2003 to half a million today and the number of hotels from a handful to 234, said provincial governor Nawzad Mawlood.

    Planning Minister Ali Sindi took pride in a sharp drop in illiteracy, poverty and unemployment in recent years.

    But the Kurds have a lot more work cut out for them. The region needs to spend more than $30 billion on highways, schools and other basic infrastructure in the next decade, Sindi said. A housing shortage and a high annual population growth rate of almost 4 percent have created demand for 70,000 new apartments a year.

    There’s also a strong undercurrent of discontent, amid concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of a few. Opposition activists complain of official corruption, and the international group Human Rights Watch said security forces arbitrarily detained 50 journalists, activists and opposition figures in 2012.

    The region’s parliament “is weak and cannot effectively question the (Kurdish) government,” said Abdullah Mala-Nouri of the opposition Gorran party.

    Iraq’s central government strongly opposes the Kurds’ quest for full-blown independence.

    Iraqi leaders bristle at Kurdish efforts to forge an independent foreign policy, and the two sides disagree over control of disputed areas along their shared internal border. In November, Kurdish fighters and the Iraqi army were engaged in a military standoff, and tensions remain high.

    Oil is at the root of those disputes.

    Iraq sits atop the world’s fourth largest reserves of conventional crude, or about 143 billion barrels, and oil revenues make up 95 percent of the state budget. Kurdish officials claim their region holds 45 billion barrels, though that figure cannot be confirmed independently.

    The central government claims sole decision-making rights over oil and demands that all exports go through state-run pipelines. The Kurds say they have the right to develop their own energy policy and accuse the government of stalling on negotiating a new deal on sharing oil revenues.

    The Kurds have also passed their own energy law and signed more than 50 deals with foreign oil companies, offering more generous terms than Baghdad.

    An oil company doing business in the region, Genel Energy, began shipping Kurdish oil by truck to Turkey in January.

    The planned direct export pipeline is of strategic importance, said Ali Balo, a senior Kurdish oil official. “Why are we building it? Because we always have problems with Baghdad.”

    The project also highlights Turkey’s growing involvement in the region, a marked change from just a few years ago when ties were strained over Ankara’s battle against Kurdish insurgents seeking self-rule in Turkey.

    Mutual need forged the new relationship.

    Turkey, part of the region’s Sunni Muslim camp, needs more oil to fuel its expanding economy. It prefers to buy from the Kurds rather than the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, seen as a member of the region’s rival Iranian-influenced axis. The Kurds, also predominantly Sunni, need Turkey not just as a gateway for oil exports but also as a business partner.

    Almost half of nearly 1,900 foreign companies operating here are Turkish, government officials say. Seventy percent of Turkey’s annual $15 billion Iraq trade is with the Kurdish region.

    In a sign of the times, Turkish and English are the languages of instruction at a top private school in Irbil. During music class at the Bilkent school, third-graders sitting cross-legged on a large carpet sang “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” in Turkish, followed by “London Bridge” in English.

    The 351 students start studying Kurdish, the native language of most, in third grade. Arabic is introduced last, in fourth grade.

    The curriculum reflects the priorities of the school’s founder, a member of Iraq’s ethnic Turkmen minority. But it also suits Kurdish parents who believe their children’s future is tied to Turkey.

    Oddly, Turkish-Kurdish ties are flourishing at a time of continued cross-border violence.

    Turkish warplanes routinely strike bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Turkish rebel group operating from the Qandil mountains of Iraq’s Kurdish region. The PKK launches raids into Turkey from its mountain hideouts.

    Both sides are simply keeping the two issues separate.

    Turkey has stopped linking improved ties with Irbil to resolving Turkey’s conflict with the PKK, a fight which has claimed thousands of lives since 1984. The Kurds keep quiet about Turkish airstrikes on their territory.

    As problems with Baghdad fester, Kurdish officials say their region’s departure from Iraq is inevitable. Many here dream of an independent Kurdistan, made up of parts of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, home to more than 25 million Kurds.

    “As a people, we deserve that,” said Bakir, the foreign policy official. “We want to see that in our lifetime.”

    But with key allies such as the U.S. and Turkey opposed to splitting up Iraq, the Kurds say they won’t act with haste or force.

    Asked if the Kurdish region would declare independence once it can export oil directly, Bakir said: “We will cross that bridge when we get there. At this time, we are still committed to a democratic, federal, pluralistic Iraq.”

    Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/03/10/decade-after-us-led-invasion-kurds-look-to-turkey-west-mull-future-without-iraq/#ixzz2NDU9esgq

  • Arabs, Turkey Want to Control Serekaniye for Strategic Advantage, Kurdish Leader Says

    Arabs, Turkey Want to Control Serekaniye for Strategic Advantage, Kurdish Leader Says

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    Fighters of the Farouq brigade in Serekaniye. Photo: PYD.

    ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The close proximity of the Syrian city of Serekaniye (Ras al-Ain) to the Turkish border is the reason behind ongoing violent clashes there between the Arab and Kurdish opposition to the Damascus regime, says Salih Muslim, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

    The Kurdish opposition in Syria and the predominantly Arab Free Syrian Army (FSA), the main force fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, has been on the same side in its quest to topple the regime. But recently, fighting erupted in Serekaniye between the FSA and PYD-affiliated Popular Protection Committee (YPG), with the Kurds accusing Turkey of fueling an Arab-Kurdish war.

    “Serekaniye is the Arab fighters’ door to Turkey and logistical support,” says Muslim. “If they control Serekaniye they will easily control Derik. As matter fact if they control Serekaniye they can control as far as Hassaka,” Muslim says.

    He explains that Serekaniye has a strategic location, and controlling it would give the Arabs more leverage over the Kurds, because the Arabs can separate Kobani and Afreen from Jazeera. Muslim claims that Arab control over this region will impede traffic and communications between Kurds in the two geographically separate regions.

    “There is no communication, there is fighting in this area. When the fight is over, the communications and relations will restore to their ordinary situation,” Muslim says. ”The Arab fighters are trying to eliminate communications and relations completely, and place Jazeera under their control,” he claims.

    Muslim adds that upon discovering that they could not implement their plan through the FSA Turkish forces joined up with tribal leader Nawaf Basheer, who was appointed head of the Jazeera and Furat Liberation Front.

    “They (Turkish forces) have allocated $200 million for this force,” Muslim says.

    According to Muslim, “Basheer is after money. His tribe does not support him. Those who fight for him, they fight for money.”

    In the past, Arab fighters have publicly claimed that the PYD receives orders from Turkey, saying that if it and the YPG comply with Turkish demands to stay away from the border from Serekaniye to Derik, then both would have to withdraw from these towns.

    “Their plan is to disarm the Kurds, “Muslim says. “This is something different from the Syrian revolution, it does not serve the Syrian revolution. This is a Turkish demand to eliminate the Kurds.”

    But Muslim believes that the fight in Serekaniye has brought the Kurdish factions closer together.

    “It’s no longer a revolution for freedom and democracy. What’s happening today is a fight for power and distribution of power,” he told Rudaw.

    Thus far, Muslim claims, eight members of the YPG have been killed, while the death toll within forces loyal to Turkey is estimated in the hundreds.

    via Rudaw.net – English – Arabs, Turkey Want to Control Serekaniye for Strategic Advantage, Kurdish Leader Says.

  • Turkey increases energy presence in Kurdish regions of Iraq

    Turkey increases energy presence in Kurdish regions of Iraq

    ERBIL, Iraq, Nov. 21 (UPI) — Turkey, its eyes on becoming the pivotal energy hub between East and West, is set to increase its presence in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish enclave by taking a majority stake with a British partner in a block containing an estimated 10.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

    That’s likely to have considerable political ramifications that are certain to strain already awkward relations between Ankara and Baghdad, and intensify the deterioration of relations between Iraq’s central government and the independence-minded Kurds.

    The Middle East Economic Digest reports that Genel Energy, a British-Turkish joint venture, will acquire the majority stake in Kurdistan’s Miran block from the London-listed Heritage Oil which is selling off its 49 percent holding in a production-sharing deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government.

    Once the sale is approved by the KRG and Heritage’s shareholders, Genel will have complete ownership of the block and be its only operator.

    The joint venture also has nine exploration blocks across Kurdistan, one of 40-plus companies which have signed production-sharing deals with the KRG in the Kurdish capital, Erbil, since 2007.

    The Turkish involvement will be particularly galling to Baghdad because Ankara has in recent months made a high-profile move into the KRG’s energy sector in defiance of Baghdad’s insistence such deals are illegal as constitutionally only Baghdad can sanction such agreements.

    Ankara recently offered land-locked Kurdistan, which borders southern Turkey, to build oil and gas pipelines from the enclave, which spans three provinces in northern Iraq, to Turkey’s Mediterranean export terminals.

    At present, the Kurds have to pump the oil they produce through the state pipeline network controlled by Baghdad.

    That export route would free the Kurds from reliance on the Baghdad government, and undoubtedly heighten their aspirations to establish an independent state in northern Iraq.

    They’ve already risked Baghdad’s wrath by signing exploration deals with major international companies such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron of the United States and Total of France.

    All these companies had secured production-sharing contracts from Baghdad to develop major fields and their defection to the Kurds and the more lucrative contracts they are offering was a major political humiliation for the trouble-plagued government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

    Baghdad needs the companies to make massive investments in southern fields to boost production from the current 3 million barrels per day to 10 million-12 million bpd to challenge Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading producer.

    Baghdad’s stiff contract conditions, low financial returns, governmental ineptitude and delays in building the required infrastructure have alienated Big Oil.

    But Iraq’s entire reconstruction and economic plans depend on the large-scale — many say overly ambitious — expansion of oil production.

    Kurdistan sits on 45 billion barrels of oil. That’s a fraction of Iraq’s known reserves but it’s enough to establish a firm economic base for an independent state.

    The KRG’s current crude output is 240,000 barrels per day but it is aiming for 1 million bpd in a couple of years. Some 90 percent of Kurdish oil sales flow from the Tawke and Taq Taq fields where Genel has major interests.

    So there’s a lot riding on all this for both Baghdad and the KRG and the Kurds seem to be making all the running.

    Maliki cannot afford to let them get away with that and thumb their noses at his government’s authority. So he’ll have to take some unequivocal action on this soon, if only to stamp on the Kurds’ long-held dream of independence and to convince other regions, including the south, that have been talking of gaining more autonomy to back off.

    He may have already started.

    Earlier this month, Baghdad, in a reprisal against Ankara, booted out Turkey’s state-owned TPAO oil company from a Kuwaiti-led consortium which was about to sign a 20-year, production-sharing agreement with the Oil Ministry for Block 9 in southern Iraq. TPAO had a 30 percent interest in that contract.

    Some two-thirds of Iraq’s proven oil reserves of 143.1 billion barrels lie in the south.

    “TPAO also has stakes in the developments of another four fields in Iraq: the Badra and Missan oil fields, and the Mansouriya and Siba gas fields,” MEED reported.

    “There has been no indication whether TPAO will be removed from these.”

    via Turkey increases energy presence in Kurdish regions of Iraq – UPI.com.

  • A visit to Iraq for fun, curiosity and business

    A visit to Iraq for fun, curiosity and business

    Erbil, the capital of Kurdish Iraq, effectively an independent country for twenty years, safe to visit, democratic sort of, in the midst of an economic boom and dreaming of being another Dubai in a decade.

    Clean lines of a brand new airport. The mildly Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan officially opened it the week after we arrived. Tony is not waiting for us but then I remember this is because we need a 2 km bus ride to the area where he is allowed to be. There he is, stocky and shortish and energetic, waving.

    The countryside is usually, Tony says, parched and brown, but in March a down of an almost unnaturally bright green covers the ground for a moment.

    Lidl, our driver, speaks some English. Just enough. He is not a Kurd, he says, but a Christian. Even though he is that rare thing in Iraq: an atheist. Tony tells me there are two kinds of Christians, Assyrians and Chaldeans, speaking different languages. This is the British Museum made flesh.

     

    Off to the mountains, stopping in a place called Shaklawa which Tony describes as the Kurdish Sinaia, but seems a place of little interest. We try to find a hermitage and glimpse a chapel in a cemetery. A Christian church, modern, bare interior like a church hall rather than a church. Heart-warming to see Christians in a part of the world I think of as Muslim. A ramshackle town built of breeze blocks is a bazaar straggling along the main road. Here we buy Turkish delight and halva and then we turn back just as the scenery becomes interesting. A very slow crawl through many military road blocks in to Ankawa. This is not usual at all, says Tony, even though Friday is the Muslim Sunday and Saturday is Monday. The jam is caused by Nowruz, the festival of the spring equinox, a pre-Islamic festival which has become a symbol of Kurdish national identity since the 1950s. It was banned in Turkey and under Saddam. Every Kurd leaves town for the day and picnics. Plus the road we were on leads to the Kurdish President’s home town and is guarded jealously. And of course we are here at a time of political unrest in Kurdistan and upheaval across the region. There were bonfires at the side of the road, Kurds were dancing in the evening light and flags were waved.

     

    Marina, a large gloomy restaurant where we can only get a table in the gallery. Noemi is one of only two women in the place. The rest are men with Saddam moustaches drinking beer, not looking joyous. Good Lebanese food, good Lebanese wine, a group of musicians with Saddam moustaches strike up Kurdish music and I think they could be a lithograph from a mid 19th century travel book. Everything in this sub fusc place seems to be in sepia.

     

    Tony’s house in Ankawa, which is penetratingly cold, as he had warned. The kind of cold that comes from never having been anything else than cold.

     

    I have a stamped Iraqi visa in my passport, therefore I am. One travels to prove one objectively exists. Does one ever quite succeed?

     

    Iraq has British three-prong plugs which I suppose are iconic. Proud-making.

     

    Saturday

     

    Lidl’s morose cousin, a devout Christian unlike Lidl, knows a way to the Mar Matei monastery which does not leave the Kurdish Regional Army’s remit where all is safe. We do it in only 90 minutes. Mar Matei (St Matthew, named after its founder, a monk who sought refuge from the persecution of Julian the Apostate) is a fourth century monastery mostly rebuilt in 1845. It is very close to the border between the safe Kurdish region and the unsafe Iraq held by the federal army. I had found it with some searching in Google images and only one person I spoke to in Iraq had heard of the place. It stands in the mountains commanding a ravine. No sign posts and, once there, no explanations. This is tourism, to use Roland Barthes’ pretentious Marxist jargon uncooked. This I like. Like all tourists I am chasing authenticity which by definition cannot be chased. Two coaches made my heart sink but they had brought a party of pilgrims from Erbil who were on a three-day pilgrimage. No signs explaining the history of the place, but it is always best to be told history not to read it. I found a monk who spoke English who explained the story of the place. They are Assyrians. Many Christians had taken refuge in Kurdistan from the Arab South, he said. He agreed sadly that things had been better for the Christians under Saddam.

     

    The monastery is large and I later found on the net (where there is not much to find) that the lower parts of the church are old but the monastery was left in ruins after the Mongols sacked it, was rebuilt in the 18th century and then in 1845.

     

    Women wander around in jeans and it is good, said Tony, to be with one’s own people. Benign monks. Christianity is very beautiful and the ancient churches of the East so much more so than the recent Protestant heresies. I suppose the Church of England is a teddy bear with its stuffing falling out. Here as among the Catholics and the Orthodox is the real thing.

     

    The Christian Middle East. The Middle East is not only Muslim and Christianity is Middle Eastern, not European, despite Belloc’s ‘Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe’.

     

    Lalish. Our devout Christian driver got terribly lost looking for Lalish though he asked people repeatedly. He finally insisted that a brand new building standing empty in a field was the temple and we had to call Lidl to get him to keep looking. The total lack of curiosity of people about anywhere outside the town they grew up in. It is we who are the odd ones with our love of travelling around.

     

    An extraordinary and very moving place. There is something very spiritual (over-used word) about the temple and its setting.

     

    The boys who live beside the temple are the temple servants, we were told. The snake emblem by the main door (the Muslims and others accuse the Yazidis of devil worship). Fire inside a little shrine. Fire worship? The dark interior. The hanging cloths which we are told it is lucky to tie, make a wish, then untie. This seems a religion of superstitions rather than St Thomas Aquninas. The underground cave which is forbidden to us. The sound of water. I thought: where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to the sunless sea.

     

    The temple is surrounded by ruined and semi-ruined buildings, a sense of decay and untidiness, but the hills that surround the place have a moving and strange quality. They really do feel very spiritual. This place has a very moving and eerie but attractive atmosphere. And all unexplained. Even the net has little.

     

    An arch decorated with a symbol of the sun leading seemingly to nowhere. Strange and touching. I wanted to evacuate my bladder a mile away but Tony wisely told me we were on sacred ground.

     

    A birthday party for a handsome Lebanese Christian businesswoman at Speed Centre, a go-karting place with pizza restaurant attached where foreigners go and women are normal. This is one of two expat places. Gloomy, depressing. Lots of nice intelligent Lebanese here to make money but very bored in the evenings. Missing Beirut. So would I.

     

    We rather drag Tony to it and the crowd in their late 20s are, he says, too young for him. I hadn’t noticed they were younger than me and I am seven years his senior. I tell him this. I suppose I am immature, I say. No, eccentric, he replied.

     

    Everyone bar us is Lebanese and only one is Muslim and he, I am told, is ‘modernized’ but the man sitting next to me, when I ask him if he is a Christian or a Muslim, says I don’t mind this question but it could be considered racist.

     

    A man shows me his Phalange membership card and says no-one at this table knows I have this. He tells me his father told him Muslims cannot live in a country where they are not the government.

     

    Sunday

     

    A third day driving. Tony has to work.

    A reservoir built by Saddam, very beautiful, as is all the road. A tiny ancient church which looks as if it were built by a child from clay this year, but has been carefully preserved. Lidl does not know how old it is and the bodyguard does not either. But both know that it is very old.

    Sulamaniya, the second city of Kurdish Iraq. Lidl takes us to his favorite restaurant where we eat Kurdish food. Much like Arab food but with soups and pickled vegetables – Kurds are a mountain race. The lamb soup was heavenly and I drink Noemi’s too. Beside us a table of women in peasant costume seem very like Romanian gypsies but are I am told villagers. They do, I think, have gypsies here and I should love to meet some.

    Sulamaniya – the prison where political prisoners were kept is closed. They open it for us but it has bad karma. The archaeological museum is closed because today is a holiday. The streets are impassable because of the unofficial anti-government Nowruz festival/protest. This is the centre of the opposition, a tribe which is excluded from the coalition that rules the Kurds.

     

    We pass through Koya which is clearly old, and I tell Lidl to stop when I see a castle. It looks almost like a fort in a Western. The castle is locked up but I hear a noise and an old man who looks after the place opens it for me and lets us in. The old man was wearing what looked like a dressing gown. A wide grass square described by thin white battlements. From one corner I look over the town and bonfires lit for Nowruz. The old man who speaks little English says this is 700 years old.

     

    Monday

    A morning to relax, two business meetings in the afternoon and a couple of hours in the drizzle in the old center of Erbil which, like Jericho Damascus and Aleppo, vies for the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world. When Rome was seven hills covered in forest, Erbil was a sizeable place. The old city is a hill on which towers the citadel, a vast building. Two years ago the inhabitants, the poorest of the poor, were moved out, except for one family who remain so that the citadel remains inhabited. When the UNESCO-approved works are completed the citadel will be inhabited again, but not by the people who did live there. It will become a place for prosperous people to live and Tony, who is a bourgeois, relishes the idea that it will contain restaurants. As it is the citadel is, save for the central street, closed to visitors, only by ribbon, but this being Iraq and a time of turbulence in Nowruz, I decided to take Tony’s advice not to hop under the striped ribbon and explore. This is not uncooked. The museums of course are shut for the holidays. The ancient minaret is visible some way off. The town beneath the citadel walls is charmingly decrepit. The bazaar for which Tony apologizes is a good, unpretentious bazaar. Tony prefers the one in Istanbul.

     

    Nowruz to be honest a little bit of a bore – not even the tribal uprising I had perhaps irresponsibly hoped for. Still got taken by the crowd and involved in dancing and flag waving. I put down my umbrella but was wearing my good suit. I secretly hoped they might ask me to be their king but I was not to be a second Auberon Herbert.

     

     

    The houses of prosperous Ankawa Christians are built in a fantastic style which as Noemi says looks good here but would not elsewhere. They merit a coffee table book but I did not take pictures (I never seem to get round to using cameras). The nearest thing I ever saw to it is the palaces of Romanian gypsies in villages like Buzescu. Near Tony’s house are a number of mutually schismatic new built churches, magnificent in the Arab-Kurdish modern vernacular style. In every case the interior is not quite as bare as a low church place.

     

    Dinner with Tufan at the dark cavernous Hotel Chakra is a success. There is something of 90s Romania about the gloomy heaviness of the hotels and restaurants. The Chakra is built in a strange, rather funny Kurdish taste like Lord Leighton’s idea of the East or the Turkish Bath in Jermyn Street. I dreamed I dwelled in marble halls. Tufan is a man. And badly injured because of a moment of inattention on his motorbike in Elbesan Albania. He is a Communist and admirer of Kemal. Saddam he says gave the people land. Noemi is enchanted by him platonically. I like him very much too. He has a velvet voice and thinks.

     

    Tuesday

     

    With Noemi towards the Iranian border, we having otherwise rather exhausted Kurdish Iraq’s tourist potential. Idyllic scenery. Waterfalls. Mountains. Noemi thinks they resemble the Carpathians in Transylvania but I think they are very different and very beautiful. A stop for a strange Kurdish lunch beside the road. Chicken kebab and bread cooked in a tomato broth as I gazed at stunningly beautiful mountain scenery through the window. And then further on the Hamilton Road built by a New Zealander in the 1920s and one of the great road journeys. But the time comes when, without reaching the Iranian border, it is later than we thought and we turn round.

     

    Thursday

     

    Business meeting at the mall. The future of the world is already here and it is one mall from Vladivostok to Patagonia.

     

    Friday

     

    I get Lidl to take me to the one old church in Ankawa. I guessed there must be one and there was but the only words about it on the net were a little hard to understand.

     

    Other historical evidence confirming the historical depth of Ankawa “Alhjeran” which is found in 1995 in the church of Mar Gourgis sculpted by the writings in Syriac. Here are some information on these stones: The first stone: yellow stone was introduced by 40 cm and 80 cm length. Text carved on the stone says that the church of Mar Gourgis was re-built in the 816. Stone II: the text is also engraved in Syriac and it has the date of death of the priest in 917 m of Hormuz.

     

    A mustached Christian refugee from Baghdad with a rifle guards it. The church, renovated a few years ago, looks modern and unlovely from the outside. The inside is bare with pews, stations of the cross and almost nothing else but Lidl points out above the entrance to the chancel a small wall painting of St George  slaying the dragon which he said dated from 935. Near the church everything has been rebuilt but Lidl shows me one brick wall of venerable antiquity which was, he says, what the whole little place was like when he was a boy. He is only 28 now, I remind myself (he looks 38 – one’s twenties in Iraq are not the prolonged adolescence they are in England). Across the road from the church are the foundations of a building which Lidl says is very old indeed and I wonder, looking at the grass swards covered in rubbish, what it could have been.

     

    A simple Kurdish lunch with Tony, soup and then kebab with rice and zacusca and beans.

     

    Istanbul. Kitchenette, a restaurant in the Hotel Marmora in Taksim Sq seems a wonderful antidote to Iraq. I like imperial cities. Paulius takes us first to a restaurant. The food was normal but the view across the Bosporus was quite stunningly beautiful. Then an expensive fashionable place high up with another great view and then fortunately we were flagging and came home. Lina quoted me saying many clever things the next day which I did not recall and do not recall now.

     

    Saturday

     

    Wonderful breakfast of cheese and ham and rye bread brought from Vilnius and of course Paulius’s incomparable view of the Bosporus. For the first time I find myself liking Istanbul, modern and comfortable and Western though it is. Perhaps one has to come from Kurdish Iraq, not Romania. Both because Istanbul is exciting, buzzy and full of beauty (Erbil is none of these things) but also because Kurdish Iraq reminds one that Istanbul, Western though it is, is still the Orient.

     

    On Paulius’s and Lina’s advice I go to Cora, a church with wonderful mosaics made into a museum.

    Lunch. We find a place to eat Turkish food in the sun. I like these two foodies. I intend to take food seriously and wine too. Paulius, whose favorite country is Germany, thinks a Chinese-dominated world will be a good thing. Turkey is now looking Eastward, will resume its Ottoman role and lead the region to democracy.

     

     

    I found this on the net by Bernard Lewis in a debate with the insufferable bore Edward Said: the Roman Empire and the medieval Islamic Empire were not conquered by more civilized peoples, they were conquered by less civilized but more vigorous peoples. But in both cases what made the conquest, with the Barbarians in Rome and the Mongols in Iraq, what made it possible was things were going badly wrong within the society so that it was no longer able to offer effective resistance.

     

    Paul Wood is the director of executive search firm Apple Search.

  • Turkey and Iran Vie for Control of Iraq

    Turkey and Iran Vie for Control of Iraq

    By WLADIMIR van WILGENBURG

    Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Receb Tayyib Erdogan. Photo AFP.
    Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Turkish Prime Minister Receb Tayyib Erdogan. Photo AFP.

    ERBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan — A recent report by the United States Institute of Peace suggests that Washington should be less concerned about increased cooperation between Turkey and Iran because the two countries have different visions for the Middle East, suggesting that the “renewal of the historical Ottoman-Persian rivalry in Mesopotamia is likely as the dominant American presence fades.”

    The US is scheduled to withdraw all of its forces in Iraq in December 2011. Some observers believe that this will open the door for neighboring countries to influence Iraqi politics.

    “[Iran and Turkey are] rapidly becoming the most influential external actors inside the country as the U.S. troop withdrawal proceeds,” United States Institute of Peace (USIP) Iraq program officer Sean Kane wrote in his report “The Coming Turkish-Iranian Competition in Iraq.”

    “From the sixteenth century until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Iraqi history was largely determined by the ebb and flow of conflict between Ottoman Turks and the Safavid Persians,” Kane wrote.

    The US withdrawal could result in the resumption of the competition between Iran and Turkey, the heirs of the Ottoman and Persian empires.

    Iraqi Kurdish officials share this view and are anxious about the historical rivalry between Iran and Turkey. In 2010, Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, identified Iran and Turkey as “the biggest players and rivals in Iraq”.

    “When in August 2010, Iran opened a trade center in the Kurdish city of Sulaimani, its first such outpost, Iran’s deputy minister of commerce, complained that Turkey, which he described as ‘Iran’s rival in that country,’ had already opened twelve such centers,” Kane wrote.

    Furthermore, Iran has been concerned with the high-profile visit of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Erbil in April. Erbil’s Governor Nawzad Hadi told Rudaw that Iran was not very happy when the Turkish prime minister visited Kurdistan.

    “Turkey and Iran compete in Kurdistan,” he said.

    Joost Hiltermann, Middle East and North Africa Deputy Program Director for the International Crisis Group told Reuters that opening the Turkish consulate in Basra in October 2009 was meant to curb Iranian influence in Iraq through investments and trade.

    Kane suggests that Turkey should use its “successful” outreach such as Erdogan’s visit and Turkey’s economic relations with the Kurdistan region to improve its relations with Shiite parties in Iraq.

    “A similar strategic outreach to Shiite parties based on economic integration and Ankara’s and Baghdad’s common interest in a stable and strong Iraq could have similar mutual benefits,” Kane wrote.

    While Turkey supported the secular Iraqiya list, an alliance of Arab nationalists and Turkmen in the March 2010 Iraqi elections, Iran supported a Shiite-dominated coalition to prevent Sunnis from taking power.

    “Iran and Turkey therefore tend to work at cross purposes in Iraqi politics, as seen in the protracted power struggle surrounding Iraq’s 2010 election cycle,” Kane wrote.

    The US is concerned about the continuing Iranian influence in Iraq. On June 15, American soldiers were killed by suspected Iran-backed groups in Iraq, which marked the highest casualties for the American troops in two years.

    Major General Jeffrey Buchanan, chief spokesman for the US military in Iraq, told the Washington Post that the biggest threat to US troops comes from some Iran-backed Shiite groups in Iraq.

    And as the deadline for the US troop withdrawal approaches, Iran is increasingly pushing the Iraqi authorities not to extend the presence of US forces.

    “It is now pushing strongly, most notably through the Sadrist (Movement) and its leader Muqtada al Sadr… to prevent any request by the Iraqi government for a continued U.S. troop presence after 2011,” Kane wrote.

    Kane concluded that the Turkish “blend of Islam, democracy, and soft power is a far more attractive regional template than the Iranian narrative of Islamic theocracy and hard power resistance.”

    “The United States should therefore continue to welcome increased Turkish-Iraqi economic, trade, and energy ties and where possible support their development as a key part of its post-2011 strategy for Iraq and the region,” Kane writes.

    via Rudaw in English….The Happening: Latest News and Multimedia about Kurdistan, Iraq and the World – Turkey and Iran Vie for Control of Iraq.