Kurds regain Kirkuk
Undoubtedly Turkey's refusal to fall in with the US scheme for a northern front gave the Kurds a chance to regain Kirkuk which they would not otherwise have had. If the Turkish army had been fully participating in the occupation, Turkey might have had a chance to go into Kirkuk with the Americans.
But as things turned out, although Kirkuk and Mosul underwent heavy bombardment to destroy Iraqi occupation forces, there were no Turkish troops on the ground and only a handful of Americans special forces. This was not enough to prevent the Kurds going in to Kirkuk when they wanted.
As soon as the PUK peshmergas were in control, ordinary families who had been displaced over the last 30 years started returning and turning out Arab families who had been settled there. Obviously they did not like the idea that a mixed Kurdish / American / Turkish committee would oversee and minimise the return. Maybe they did not trust the Kurdish leadership either.
So they opted for direct action, as the only chance to get back their homes and farmland. The process apparently took place with relatively little violence, but many thousands of Arabs will need to be rehoused, and the story is not yet over. Counter attack
A recent report on Kurd.media.com says Arab tribes have launched a counter attack, killing dozens of Kurdish civilians on the road outside Kirkuk. KDP leader, Masoud Barzani, has angrily accused US forces of driving Kurds out of villages outside Kirkuk and of bringing back the Arabs who had been turned out.
He said that the US intends to make permanent some of the results of Saddam Hussein's Arabisation. This, he argued could cost the US the "friendship of the Kurds" as the question of Kirkuk is very sensitive. Further reports along the same lines are coming in as we go to press.
The Turkish military was thwarted in its plan to occupy South Kurdistan by mass opposition to the war and the vote of the Parliament which stopped the US sending large numbers of troops into Turkey.
But Turkey, Iran and Syria remain anxious at various aspects of the post-war situation, including the strengthening of the Kurdish entity through the return of Kirkuk. This means the position of the Kurds remains precarious with regard to these three states - which still occupy most of the territory of Kurdistan.
Tension is also reported to be high between the KDP and the PUK - no doubt because they are jockeying for position in the post-war situation.
In Turkey the courts have begun moves to ban the main legal pro-Kurdish rights party, DEHAP (the replacement for recently banned HADEP) which stood in a coalition with one of the more important Turkish socialist organisations at the last general election.
In a typically Kafkaesque move, a state prosecutor is now seeking to prosecute the publisher of a book about Kurdistan written by Turkey's supposed ally Masoud Barzani. It would seem that no written material about Kurdish history can be tolerated within the boundaries of the Turkish state.
The disturbances in the Kurdish Bingol region during May were very revealing. Tanks were brought on to the streets of the town and live ammunition was used when, after the tragic earthquake where a badly built school collapsed, the inhabitants' anger erupted.
The governor's office was stoned in Groups that control will risk repression. Rumsfeld has an Islamic type of government would not be tolerated protest at the slowness of rescue operations and the almost total lack of help in outlying areas.
Corruption notoriously undermines building safety regulations in Turkey. Successful builders tend to be well connected to top politicians and are often supporters of the fascist MHP or National Action Party
Nothing like this occurred in the aftermath of the much bigger earthquake a few years ago when over 60,000 people were killed. Anger at the catastrophe, frustration at the lack of progress for Kurdish rights in Turkey since the war wound down, the desperate economic situation, and an injection of confidence because of developments in South Kurdistan, presumably combined to produce the show of defiance.
Neither the occupiers or the local leaders who collaborate with them are likely to allow much freedom of political association. Those with dissident ideas and those who want to organise to improve living conditions are likely to have problems.
Groups that threaten US control will risk announced that an Islamic type of government would not be tolerated, a barelyveiled threat both to Iran and the Shia pop
US Secretary of State for Defense Paul Wolfowitz has also recently threatened military attacks to wipe out KADEK (formerly PKK), the Kurdish nationalist guerrilla group ••••••••••• currently based in the mountains of South Kurdistan, since their withdrawal from Turkey. Any such attack would risk provoking great anger amongst all but hardline KDP and PUK supporters and could spiral out of control. Oil-for-food and agriculture
The British media gives only selective coverage of the reality of living conditions. The UN administered oil-for-food-programme, on which about 60% of the population are dependent for basic food supplies, has been renewed by the latest UN resolution, but there is still a big question mark about how, in practice, the population is going to be fed - given the largely callous and bungling approach so far.
The person appointed recently to oversee the "rebuilding" of Iraq's agricultural infrastructure is a former senior executive of Cargill, the biggest grain exporter (from America of course) in the world
No prizes for guessing whether or not the agricultural sector in Iraq and Kurdistan will be rebuilt for the benefit of local small farmers and the population, or whether it will be opened up to competition with the "free" market.
As for oil, the PUK leadership allowed US troops to take control of the facilities at the large Kirkuk oilfield. So the US and British forces control all significant oil installations within South Kurdistan and Iraq, and of course took prompt control of the oil minIt was recently announced that all the oil will be run for "at least a year by a US and
So while the Kurds are glad to be rid of the threat of Saddam Hussein and will now have more cultural freedom in some ways than before, they will face similar problems
The lack of control of their own food and mineral resources and the prospect of attempts by the Americans to privatise everything in sight - oil, food, water supply, Socialist demands
While continuing to support the Kurds' right to self-determination, socialists should also support struggles by the inhabitants to control the resources and infrastructure of Iraq themselves and to make the occupiers pay for clearing up the devastation caused by the war.
In future, ordinary people in Iraq, whether Kurd, Arab or Turkoman, Sunni, Shia or Christian, may well have many common interests in the face of the attempts of the occupiers to plunder the resources of Kurdistan and Iraq. The more these common interests are fought for, the harder it will be to turn the ethnic and confessional groups against each other.
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