The invasion of Iraq opened a whole Pandora’s box of destabilizing forces–among them, a surge of nationalism among the estimated 36 million Kurds who hail from the land that stretches from Turkey and Syria in the west, to Iraq and Armenia in the east. The PKK, which fought Turkey in a vicious war that cost 37,000 lives from 1987 to 1999, abandoned its truce two years ago, after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The rebels still see themselves as standing up against centuries of often brutal repression. This year the Kurdish group has staged more than 250 attacks on Turkish security forces, in one bloody week killing 14 Turkish soldiers, a toll unmatched since the worst of the fighting in the ’90s. In recent weeks the violence has escalated, as everyone tries to inflict as much damage as possible before winter snows interrupt the war. Last week Turkey shelled three Iraqi villages near the border town of Zaho, according to the government of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran’s artillery was busy as well, killing a villager near the town of Hakurk. For its part, the PKK and its allies have been blamed for at least eight bombings across Turkey and for the kidnapping of a local official’s son.
U.S. and Iraqi officials worry that the fighting will spin out of control. Ankara threatens to launch cross-border raids to get rid of the rebels, and the guerrillas themselves say Iranian jets and ground forces have crossed the border more than once this year. Even as U.S. forces struggle to contain the chaos and violence everywhere else in Iraq, the danger now is that the fires could spread to the Kurdish north and beyond. No one was very impressed by the PKK’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire over the weekend. At least four previous ceasefires have failed, and last week Turkey issued a pre-emptive dismissal of any PKK peace offer. “The PKK usually hibernate over the winter,” says one Turkish diplomat. “When spring comes, they are up to their usual business again.” Everyone knows the hunger for Kurdish rights is not going away.
The PKK is the only authority in its corner of Iraqi Kurdistan. To get there you climb a winding road where even the shepherds carry AK-47s, into the Qandil Mountains, a stretch of high peaks straddling the borderlands of Iraq, Turkey and Iran. The last Iraqi government checkpoint is at the foot of the mountains, guarded by soldiers from Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government. It flies the flag of Iraqi Kurdistan, a yellow sunburst on a field of green, white and red. The flag at the next checkpoint, almost two miles above sea level, belongs to the PKK: a red star on yellow sun outlined in green. Armed guerrillas make sure no one goes farther without official permission from their central command. Around the bend, an immense portrait has been painted on the rocky hillside–the face of the PKK’s founder, Abdullah Ocalan.
Ocalan–Apo, his followers call him–launched the PKK in 1978 as a Marxist organization opposing Turkish rule. By the 1980s, the group’s fighters were hanging out with Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization and making pilgrimages to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, then a hive of anti-U.S. terrorism. Back home in Turkey they applied their newly acquired terrorist skills, attacking schools and government offices until 1999, when Turkish commandos captured Ocalan. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and his group declared a unilateral ceasefire.
Ocalan’s successor as chief of daily operations, Karayilan, has nothing but praise for American ideals. He spoke glowingly to NEWSWEEK about democracy and human rights and “Mr. Bush’s new Middle East project.” He says his 7,000 armed fighters could be a valuable ally for the United States against Islamic fundamentalism. The Kurdish people in general tend to be enthusiastically pro-American, unlike most Turks. In a recent Turkish opinion survey, only 22 percent of the respondents said they support the United States, versus 43 percent who favored Iran.
There’s an even stronger reason many Americans might be tempted to back the PKK: “We’re in a war situation with Iran,” says Essat Farasan, a senior PKK officer. The group’s two-year-old Iranian sibling, the Free Life Party (PJAK, pronounced “peshak”), claims some 1,500 guerrillas along the Iranian border from Azerbaijan to Iraq, armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s. Persecution of Kurds in Iran has intensified since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took power a year ago, says one of the group’s commanders, Zinair Mustafa, 34, in an interview at a base camp in the Qandil Mountains. Zinair says the Americans just wink at PJAK’s operations. U.S. forces visited the area a year ago, he says; they reached the first PJAK checkpoint and promptly turned back. But that’s the limit of U.S. assistance, the Kurds say. “We have the same enemy as the U.S., but they do not extend help to us,” PJAK’s leader, Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi, told NEWSWEEK in a phone interview from his exile home in Germany.
Still, local support for PJAK is rising. At a border crossing near the Iraqi town of Pejwin, Kurdish smugglers gather around an open fire, eating bread and tomatoes grilled on the embers. They say they began hearing about the PJAK earlier this year. “I started to like them when I heard they killed eight of those Iranian sons of bitches,” says a 40-year-old Iranian Kurd who gives his name only as Faris. He and his friends say they haven’t done anything to help the PJAK–but they wouldn’t betray them, either.
For now, America is walking a careful line between two crucial allies: the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurds. To make matters even more difficult, the PKK has spawned a splinter group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons. Over the course of the summer at least 28 people died, including four tourists, in Falcons bomb attacks on Turkish resort towns. The PKK condemned the targeting of civilians, and Karayilan says his group has “no control” over the Falcons. Nevertheless, PKK leaders predict more such attacks unless Kurdish demands are met–and both Turkish and American security officials blame the PKK for the bombings. Under pressure from Ankara, Washington has named retired Gen. Jos-eph Ralston as “anti-PKK coordinator,” to work on a plan for disarming the group.
In August the Iraqi government announced that all PKK offices would be shut down. The Baghdad branch soon reopened. The one in Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Suleimaniya, never closed. A serious Iraqi crackdown on the PKK would almost surely set off a revolt among Iraq’s Kurds, who fiercely believe in the vision of a greater Kurdistan. PKKleaders say they aren’t afraid, either. “If the Turkish Army comes to Iraq, they will lose the battle,” says the Blacksnake. “They have lost 100 times already.” But the Turks aren’t giving up, either. The chances of the violence escalating are as great as ever.
