Irbil
Suicide Bombings Aggravate Tensions In Northern Iraq
By James Conachy
World Socialist
Website
05 February 2004
Two
coordinated suicide bombings in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil last
Sunday against gatherings of both main Kurdish parties supporting the
US occupation of the country have inflicted a severe toll. It is now
confirmed that at least 101 people are dead and hundreds more wounded,
including a number of regional leaders and officials of the Kurdish
Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The
death toll may reach as high as 140 as more bodies are recovered and
people succumb to their wounds.
The attacks indicate
careful planning. Both the KDP and PUK had opened up their Irbil offices
for a celebration to mark the beginning of the Islamic Edi al-Adha festival.
With hundreds of people crowding into the buildings, the bombers, reportedly
dressed as clerics and with large quantities of explosives strapped
to their bodies, were able to get within metres of the Kurdish political
dignitaries. At around 10.45 a.m., they detonated the bombs, virtually
simultaneously. Apparently, security had been geared toward preventing
car bombers.
A PUK militiaman
told Britains Guardian newspaper: I have fought in many
battles but I never saw anything like that. Everything was ruined. There
were fingers, legs, bits of face, everywhere. Peter Galbraith,
a former US diplomat currently in Irbil, told Reuters: The bodies
are in pieces, they are trying to collect them. The significance of
this is devastating to the leadership of the Kurdish Democratic Party,
one of the USs biggest allies in the war.
Among those killed
were Sami Abdul Rahman, the deputy prime minister of the KDP-run Kurdish
government in Irbil province, at least two other ministers of the regional
government, and the KDPs governor, deputy governor and police
chief in Irbil. The commander of the PUKs peshmerga militia died
in the other blast, as did at least five other prominent PUK leaders.
The Kurdish organisations
and the US have blamed Osama bin Ladens Al Qaeda and the Kurdish
Islamic fundamentalist group Ansar al-Islam for the bombings. Members
of Ansar al-Islam certainly have a motive to carry out the attack. During
the invasion last March, the US conducted cruise missile and aircraft
strikes against Ansar al-Islam bases on the Iraq-Iran border, while
the PUK peshmerga carried out a bloody offensive to drive the organisation
out of 15 villages.
Whoever carried
out the bombings, it is a reflection of the deep opposition in Iraq
to the US invasion, including in the areas controlled by the KDP and
PUK. There are escalating attacks across the country on the political
parties and individuals participating in the American-installed Iraqi
Governing Council or supporting the occupation. Only last month, a meeting
of the Iraqi Communist Partywhich is part of the puppet regimewas
bombed in Baghdad.
The KDP and PUK
have a long history of close collaboration with the US. Throughout the
1990s, they exploited the US-imposed no-fly zone over northern
Iraq to establish control of the countrys three predominantly
Kurdish-populated provinces. The area became a hotbed of intrigue as
the two parties fought each other to establish overall domination and
to control the lucrative trade in oil and goods that flourished as a
result of the UN economic sanctions on Iraq.
The KDP and PUK
were both nominated to receive US funding and training following the
passage of the Iraq Liberation Act in the US Congress in 1998. Sensing
new opportunities, the two parties put aside their differences in the
lead up to the US attack on Iraq. During the invasion last March and
April, the KDP and PUK militias fought alongside US special forces and
paratroopers in the north and accompanied American troops into Baghdad.
Both parties were immediately included in the handpicked US provisional
government and there has been no attempt by the US military to disarm
their peshmerga militiamen.
With the fall of
Husseins Baathist regime, the Kurdish parties are pushing for
control in the north as their reward. The Kurdish parties are demanding
that the new Iraqi constitution designate the country as a federation,
with the provinces they hold defined as an autonomous Kurdish region.
They want control over taxation, the right to control entry in the Kurdish
areas and the right to exclude the future Iraqi armed forces from the
region. Most controversially, they are demanding that the ethnically-mixed
city of Kirkuk, along with Iraqs main northern oil fields, be
included in the Kurdish zone.
In the aftermath
of the Irbil bombings, the leaders of the KDP and PUK have declared
that the attack makes its necessary for them to work more closely together
in the demand for Kurdish autonomy. The Kurdish parties intend to push
ahead with plans to create a single regional government in the north
and hold elections next yearregardless of what happens in the
southern provinces.
Rallies, prayers
and funerals for those killed in Irbil have witnessed passionate calls
for not only Kurdish autonomy, but full independence from Iraq and even
a Greater Kurdistan taking in the Kurdish populations of
neighbouring states. One Kurd told the Guardian: Now we must be
insistent for our rights. We want federalism but of course our aim is
more than that. We should be united with Kurds from other countries,
just as Arabs talk of their Arab homeland.
The demands of the
Kurds confront the Bush administration with a dilemma. If it does not
meet them, it risks opening up an entirely new front in the resistance
to the US presence in Iraq. If it attempts to meet them, it will intensify
the opposition to the US occupation in the rest of the country and antagonise
other governments in the region.
The Arab and Turkomen
communities in Kirkuk fear that Kurdish control of the city will be
followed by ethnic cleansing to drive them out. On January 27, Arabic
tribal leaders marched through Kirkuk against the Kurdish demands for
the city. A sheikh of one tribe told the press: You cannot chase
Arabs out of Kirkuk because it is a town for everyone and we denounce
statements made by Kurdish parties who want to split Iraq. Another
declared: We believe that federalism will spark civil war in Kirkuk.
Significant elements
of the Sunni and Shiite elite in the Arab provinces of Iraq view the
Kurdish demands as the first step toward a Yugoslavia-style break-up
of Iraq along ethnic lines. They do not want to see the revenues from
the northern oilfields40 percent of Iraqs total oilflowing
into the coffers of an autonomous Kurdish government, at the expense
of a central government in Baghdad, which they expect to dominate. The
main Shiite cleric, Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, included opposition
to federalism in his denunciation of the proposed interim Iraqi government
being planned by the US and may call on Shiites to reject any constitution
that includes it. No major non-Kurdish organisation supports Kurdish
control of Kirkuk.
The governments
of Iraqs neighbours, Turkey, Syria and Iran, see the granting
of autonomy to Iraqs Kurds as likely to fuel sentiment for a Greater
Kurdistan among their own substantial Kurdish minorities, and
view it as a long-term threat to their territorial integrity. The Turkish
regime is particularly alarmed. It has conducted a brutal decades-long
campaign to crush the armed struggle led by the Workers Party of Kurdistan
(PKK) for a separate Kurdish state.
Up to 5,000 PKK
fighters are believed to be hiding out along the Turkish-Iraqi border.
Until now, the US has lent upon Turkey not to send forces into Iraq
to attack the PKK, out of fears the Iraqi Kurdish militias would be
drawn into clashes with the Turkish military. At the same time, however,
the US military, preoccupied with the resistance to the occupation further
south, has not undertaken its own operations against the PKK.
Every indication
so far is that the US is seeking to impose various compromise solutions
that will only disappoint the various factions and interests, aggravate
the underlying tensions and focus discontent on the American occupation
force.
On January 28, the
day before the bomb blast, Paul Bremer, head of the Iraq occupation
authority, announced that the US would begin stopping the PKK using
Iraq as a terrorist haven. An American official did not
rule out US troops being used to hunt down the PKK. The Turkish government
has welcomed the declaration.
The move against
the PKK appears to be aimed at mollifying Turkish opposition to the
granting of limited autonomy in northern Iraq. There were immediate
signs though that it had created animosity among sections of the Iraqi
Kurdish population, who view it as a betrayal of Kurdish interests.
A Kurdish politician, Mahmoud Othman, told the Financial Times: The
US took this step only to satisfy Turkey.
A far greater sense
of betrayal is being triggered among militant Kurdish nationalists by
the early signs that the KDP and PUK are being bullied by the US to
agree to a new constitution that gives limited autonomy but does not
include Kurdish control of Kirkuk. The issue of Kirkuks future
was left out of the opening constitutional discussions in Baghdad last
Saturday. The Washington Post reported February 1 that the Kurdish
authorities, while reportedly agreeing to the compromise on territory,
are still debating the division of Iraqs oil revenue.
In the aftermath
of the Irbil bombings, the KDP and PUK will be under immense pressure
to make no compromises. After witnessing the carnage, Peter Galbraith,
who is a former US ambassador to Croatia, warned in a New York Times
op-ed piece: It [the bombing] will probably harden their diplomatic
positions as the Kurdish public comes increasingly to feel it must rely
on its own institutionsthe peshmerga, the local police and security
servicesto protect it against a danger that most see as coming
from the south.
In its reckless
attempt to reorganise the Middle East in its own interests, US imperialism
has opened up a Pandoras box of conflicting forces.