Exode (des Kurdes d'Irak) - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE-PRESS REVIEW-,ßERHEVOKA ÇAPÊ-RIVISTA STAMPA.DENTRO DE LA PRENSA~BASlN ÖZETÎ
Preparing tobury
STEVEN RUBIN-JB PICTURES
a Kurdish infant's corpse at one of the border encampments
to the White House warned that as many as
500,000 Kurds could die in the mountains if
Bush did not take over the relief effort and
bringthem to camps on flatter ground.
"Hunger, malnutrition, disease and exposure
are taking theirgrim toll," the president
said as he announced his program. "No
one can see the pictures or hear the accounts
of this human suffering-men,
women and, most painfully of all, innocent
children-and not be deeply moved;"
'Going home': The withdrawal of U.S.
forces from the gulfregion passed thehalfway
mark last week; the oV8fall commander,
Gen.H. NormàhSchwarzkopf, was due
home in Flqrida on Sunday. The relief effort
was under different management: the
U.S. European Command, which set up a
forward supply base near the Turkish border
town ofSilopi. The initial rescue operation
focused on a narrow wedge of Iraqi
territory around the small city of Zakhu.
Perhaps 40,000 of the refugees in the
mountains came from Zakhu, according to
U.S. officials in the field. "These people are
going home," said Dick Swenson, a relief
worker from the U.S. Agency for International
Development. "It's just that some of
those homes may have been destroyed or
occupied by somebody else." Kurds who
live elsewhere in northern Iraq will use the
camp at Zakhu as a way station. The
French blueprint for the relief campaign
stresses that refugees must not settle down
In the camps. "In no case is a permanent
shelter to be provided," says the working
paper, describing the camps as "simple
transit centers."
Other way stations will be set up later,
each one protected by U.S. or allied troops.
Washington is negotiating for the use of an
overland supply route through Syria that
could significantly increase the flow of relief
supplies to the region. Eventually, relief
workers hope that as many as 75 percent
of the refugees will be coaxed back to
their homes. But until there is a guarantee
that the Kurds will not suffer reprisals
from Saddam's Army, many: will be too
afraid to go home.
Iraq denounced the allied relief plan as
foreign meddling. "We refuse this," said
Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. "They
have no right to send troops to our territory."
Baghdad cut a deal of its own with
the United Nations to set up "humanitarian
centers" för the Kurds in the north and
for rebellious Shiite refûgees in the south.
White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater
'said the'arrangement "appears toprovide a .
basis for the U.N. to take over the operation
we will establish." But so far there was no
commitment from the United Nations to
take over the camps-or from Iraq's Army
to honor their security needs.
No promises: The Iraqis have about 30,000
troops in the area. "They should not
respond militarily," Bush said of the
Iraqis. "They've underestimated the United
States once before on that, and they
shouldn't do it again-and I don't think
they will." Lt. Gen. John Shalikashvili, the
Polish-born deputy commander ofthe U.S.
Army in Europe, met with Iraqi. officers,
bluntly advising them to keep their troops
in barracks or pull them out of the area ....
entirely. The Iraqis made no promises, buf
Pentagon officials said Baghdad had halted
all militaryoperations in the region.
A clash with Iraqi forces is only one ofthe
potential pitfalls. Noting that a few Kurds
support Saddam's regime (one of them is.'
the Army chief of staffJ, Pentagon analysts
worry that Baghdad might inspire pro-Saddam
elements to launch terrorist attacks'
on U.S. troops. Americans could be caught
in another kind of crossfire if anti-Saddam
Kurds use the camps as bases for their
sporadic attacks on the regime. "Whether
or not we can control that is a big question,"
says a Pentagon official. And what if the
refugees refuse to go home? The camps
might become the nucleus of an independent
Kurdistan, which would disturb Bush's
Turkish allies, who have restless Kurds of
their own.
Despite the allied plan to keep the
Kurds moving toward home, the new
camps could turn into something like permanent
settlements. That's what has happened
at refugee centers elsewhere in the
region for millions of displaced Palestinians
and Afghans. "These camps will give
them three squares and medical care,"
says a sympathetic Bush aide. "Why
should we think they will want to walk 60
miles back to a life of no medical care and
perhaps one meal a day?" Once established,
the allied camps could become a
magnet for refugees from farther south in
Iraq or from overburdened camps in Iran,
where 1 million Kurds have fled.
Food and medicine wouldn't be the only
lures. Few Kurds will want to leave the
protection. of the camps until Saddam is'
defanged. "You can only get people to
return home when they are confident that
they are safe," says an administration offi- .
cial. "That's going to take some larger
changes in Iraq." Until those changes occur,
American troops may be stuck with
the job of protecting camps full of Kurds
who refuse to go home.
RUSSELL WATSON with JOHN BARRY,
DOUGLAS WALLER and THOMAS M. DEFRANK
in Washington, CHRISTOPHER DIÇKEY
in Zakhu and bureau reports
. NEWSWEEK/ APRIL 29,1991'
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