Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn ()zeti
In North Iraq, Saddam's Victims Turn on Each Other
Mon August 25, 2003 09:06 AM ET .
REUTERS.
By Joseph Logan
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TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq (Reuters) - It should be impossible to get lost in a town with so few streets, but in the
dusty little hamlet of Tuz Khurmatu hopes of peaceful coexistence between Iraq's minorities have gone badly
astray .
Fighting among Kurds and Turkmen -- Turkish speakers who are a vestige of Ottoman rule -- over the sacking
of a shrine in Tuz Khurmatu killed at least nine people in the town last week and unrest spread to the key oil
city of Kirkuk.
The violence shows there is no common bond in having suffered under Saddam Hussein. Kurds and Turkmen
recall years of persecution under Saddam, who was set on Arabising the region, site of Iraq's richest oil
reserves. But in Tuz Khurmatu the two groups have the knives out for one another.
"I was imprisoned in 1994 for criticizing Saddam Hussein, and to me this regime frankly is worse, more
impure," says Midhar Qasim, a Turkmen and the father of one of those killed in clashes last Friday in the
town, governed by a Kurd.
"What the Palestinians are getting from the Zionists is what we're getting here. We survived Arabization, and
now it's time to see if we're going to survive Kurdification."
The Kurds endured a campaign of chemical weapons attacks and destruction of their villages that killed as
manyas 100,000 people during the mid-1980s at the hands of a Baghdad government intent on crushing their
separatist ambitions. .
Since Saddam's fall, they have extended their influence from the northern zone they wrested from Baghdad
after the 1991 Gulf War to Kirkuk and its surroundings, playing a leading role in local governments working
with the U.S. military.
,TURFWAR
Turkmen accuse returning Kurds of theft and intimidation. The Kurds say they are willing to live alongside
Arabs and Turkmen -- but insist the region belongs to them.
"We look at this as a city of Kurdistan...one in which non- Kurds also live," says Ruzgar Ali, the Kirkuk head
of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of two main Kurdish political factions, and which Turkmen have
singled out for accusations of thuggery.
"The greatest oppression, the greatest burden, was on the Kurds under Saddam Hussein, not that it wasn't
bad also for Turkmen, and Arab Shi'ites," Ali said.
He said the problems were the work of extremists manipulated by outsiders resentful of the Kurds'
relationship with U.S. forces. Tuz Khurmatu's Kurdish mayor said the same, blaming "elements that want to
divide Kurds and Turkmen."
The reference is left broad enough to include Turkey, which fears Kurdish control in oil-rich Kirkuk and
elsewhere could rekindle separatism among its own 12 million Kurds.
Many Turkmen, however, blame the Kurds.
"There are no unseenhands, and this is not the first time the PUK attacked us since Saddam fell. They don't
recognize any minorities," said one man at a funeral in Tuz Khurmatu for Turkmen killed in last week's
violence.
"The're is such hate."
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There is little sign of compromise either in Kirkuk, where Turkmen join Kurds in scrawling graffiti that stake
claims to ethnic turf .
"Kirkuk is Turkmen, and will stay that way till the end," reads one spray-painted slogan. "Kirkuk is the capital
of the Turkmen," says another.
Only a few residents say ethnic badges are unimportant.
"It doesn't matter, if you're really from Kirkuk," says Idris, who like many residents of the city moves through
the languages of the Kirkuk -- Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish -- in the course of a conversation. "Everyone here
knows everyone else too well to believe the lies."
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