Kurds — stateless people under attack from all sides

Kurds — stateless people under attack from all sides
Police in Ankara arrest members of the Peoples’ Democratic Party during a protest against the Turkish strikes in the northern regions of Iraq and Syria. (AFP)
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Updated 23 November 2022
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Kurds — stateless people under attack from all sides

Kurds — stateless people under attack from all sides

PARIS: The Kurds are a non-Arab ethnic group of between 25 and 35 million people whose dreams of an independent homeland were brutally quashed throughout the 20th century.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Kurdish militants for a deadly bombing in Istanbul earlier this month, an accusation they have strongly rejected.

In retaliation, Turkiye has hit nearly 500 Kurdish targets across Iraq and Syria as part of a campaign of air strikes in recent days, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in Iran, Kurdish-dominated western regions have been at the forefront of a popular uprising over the death of young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the morality police two months ago.

Iranian security forces have responded with a crackdown on Kurdish areas and cross-border strikes on Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq.

The Kurds inhabit largely mountainous regions across southeastern Turkiye through northern Syria and Iraq to central Iran.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I opened the way for the creation of a Kurdish state in the post-war Treaty of Sevres. However Turkish nationalists, led by army general Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, opposed the harsh terms of the treaty and launched a new war.

It resulted in a new accord, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which established the boundaries of modern Turkiye and effectively drew a line under international support for an independent Kurdistan. In 1984, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party took up arms for the creation of an independent state in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkiye but it later scaled back its demands to greater Kurdish autonomy.

The conflict between the outlawed PKK and the Turkish state has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The PKK’s founder Abdullah Ocalan has been behind bars since 1999. In Syria, the Kurds were oppressed by successive governments for decades.

After the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, they took advantage of the chaos to set up an autonomous Kurdish region, Rojava, in northern Syria, on Turkiye’s border. Turkiye has since carried out three cross-border offensives targeting Kurdish forces in Syria — in 2016, 2018 and 2019.

In Iran, where a Kurdish uprising was harshly repressed in 1979, the authorities have accused Kurdish groups of instigating “riots,” their term for the mass protests sparked by Amini’s death in September.

Amini was from the predominantly Kurdish town of Saqqez in northwestern Iran, near the Iraqi border.

Several Kurdish-majority towns, including Mahabad, Javanroud and Piranshahr, have seen large protests over her death and the killings of demonstrators. Dozens of people have died in the crackdown. Tehran has also launched repeated cross-border missile and drone strikes against exiled Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq.

In Iraq, Kurds were persecuted under the Sunni Arab-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein and rose up after Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. They established de facto autonomy in the north, which was formalized by Iraq’s 2005 constitution.

In 2017 Iraq’s Kurds overwhelmingly voted for independence in a non-binding referendum.

Baghdad was furious and, in retaliation, seized a swathe of Kurdish-held territory, including oilfields that were the mainstay of the autonomous region’s finances.


Iraq wants to overcome dispute with Kuwait over maritime waterway, PM says

Iraq wants to overcome dispute with Kuwait over maritime waterway, PM says
Updated 4 min 14 sec ago
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Iraq wants to overcome dispute with Kuwait over maritime waterway, PM says

Iraq wants to overcome dispute with Kuwait over maritime waterway, PM says
  • Kuwait’s prime minister has described the Iraqi court ruling on the waterway as containing “historical fallacies,” calling on Iraq to take “concrete, decisive and urgent measures” to address it

Iraq is keen to overcome a dispute with Kuwait on maritime navigation in the Khor Abdullah waterway between the two countries, Iraq’s prime minister said on Tuesday.
In comments carried by Iraq’s state news agency, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said the country wants a solution that does not conflict with its constitution or with international law.
Iraq respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait and is committed to all its bilateral agreements with countries and to the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, a statement from the prime minister’s media office said on Tuesday after Al-Sudani’s meeting with the state’s administration coalition.
“Such crises are resolved through understanding and reliance on rationality, away from the language of emotion and convulsive populist statements that only produce more crises and tension,” Al-Sudani was quoted as telling his cabinet.
Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled this month that a bilateral agreement regulating navigation in the waterway was unconstitutional. The court said the law ratifying the accord should have been approved by two-thirds of parliament.
The countries’ shared land border was demarcated by the United Nations in 1993 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but it did not cover the length of their maritime boundaries. This was left for the two oil producers to resolve.
A maritime border agreement between the two nations was reached in 2012 and ratified by each of their legislative bodies in 2013.
Kuwait’s prime minister has described the Iraqi court ruling on the waterway as containing “historical fallacies,” calling on Iraq to take “concrete, decisive and urgent measures” to address it.


At least 100 killed in fire at Iraq wedding celebration

At least 100 killed in fire at Iraq wedding celebration
Updated 12 sec ago
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At least 100 killed in fire at Iraq wedding celebration

At least 100 killed in fire at Iraq wedding celebration

At least 100 people were killed and 150 people were injured in a fire at a wedding celebration in the district of Hamdaniya in Iraq’s Nineveh province, Iraqi state media said early on Wednesday.

-More to follow.


Morocco calls for resumption of Western Sahara talks

Morocco calls for resumption of Western Sahara talks
Updated 27 September 2023
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Morocco calls for resumption of Western Sahara talks

Morocco calls for resumption of Western Sahara talks
  • Permanent representative to UN calls for solution to ‘fabricated regional conflict’
  • ‘Climate change continues to represent the biggest challenge to humanity in the globe’

NEW YORK: Morocco’s permanent representative to the UN on Tuesday called for a resumption of negotiations over the situation in Western Sahara.

Speaking on the final day of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly, Omar Hilale said Morocco is resolute in finding a solution to the “fabricated regional conflict” as an aid to promoting peace and stability in the region and Africa more widely. 

“Morocco continues to support the efforts of the UN to relaunch roundtables with the same format and the same participants, especially Algeria, the main party to this conflict, in line with its Security Council resolution 2654,” he added.

“We reaffirm, the solution can only be politically realistic and practical, based on consensus. The initiative for autonomy as part of the toolkit of Morocco’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty remains the solution to this regional conflict. There’s no alternative.”

The Western Sahara conflict dates back to 1975, after the withdrawal of colonial occupier Spain, sparking a 15-year war between the Algeria-backed Polisario Front and Morocco for control over the territory.

A 1991 ceasefire deal brought fighting to an end, with Morocco in control of 80 percent of the resource-rich desert region and the Polisario Front clinging to hopes of a UN-supervised referendum on independence provided for in the deal.

Alongside calling for further work on bringing an end to the near half-century conflict, Hilale provided an update on efforts being undertaken by Moroccan authorities to respond to the devastating earthquake that struck at the start of the month.

“We’ve faced the repercussions of this earthquake, which led to the death of 3,000 people and injured 5,700 others, alongside grave material losses, but we face these repercussions with determination, seriousness and solidarity,” he said.

“We established an inter-ministerial committee to develop an urgent program for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of affected areas, and located about $12 billion for this program from our budget for the next five years.

“This shows climate change continues to represent the biggest challenge to humanity in the globe. This is why today, more than ever, there’s a need to promote prevention, resilience, and international cooperation as part of the international community’s priorities.”


25 dead in fierce new fighting in Deir Ezzor

25 dead in fierce new fighting in Deir Ezzor
Updated 27 September 2023
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25 dead in fierce new fighting in Deir Ezzor

25 dead in fierce new fighting in Deir Ezzor
  • Forces loyal to Assad regime clash with Kurdish-led troops in eastern Syria

JEDDAH: At least 25 people have died in two days of fierce clashes between fighters loyal to the Assad regime and Kurdish-led forces in the Dheiban area of Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they had “driven out the regime gunmen who had infiltrated the area” after gun battles erupted on Monday.
At least 90 people were killed in the same area this month in 10 days of fighting between the SDF and armed Arab tribesmen.
Britain-based monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the latest clashes erupted when pro-regime fighters crossed the Euphrates river, which separates their positions in southwestern Deir Ezzor from the SDF in the northeast. It said 21 of the dead were regime loyalists and three were SDF fighters. A woman was also killed.
The SDF said the loyalist fighters had crossed the Euphrates “under cover of an indiscriminate bombardment”of its positions. The SDF responded by bombarding the right bank of the river, which is controlled by regimetroops with support from Iran-backed militias.
The Kurds form a majority in the core areas of SDF control in northeastern and northern Syria. But in several areas that they captured in their campaign against Daesh, Arabs form the majority.
According to the Observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria, some of the Arab fighters who fled to government-held territory after the previous clashes took part in this week’s assault.
The SDF was Washington’s main Syrian ally in its fightback against Daesh, which culminated in the militants’defeat in their last Syrian foothold on the left bank of the Euphrates in 2019.


Sudan’s displaced millions struggle to survive as economy seizes up

Sudan’s displaced millions struggle to survive as economy seizes up
Updated 26 September 2023
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Sudan’s displaced millions struggle to survive as economy seizes up

Sudan’s displaced millions struggle to survive as economy seizes up
  • More than 5.25 million of Sudan’s 49 million people have been uprooted since the fighting erupted

PORT SUDAN: About two months after heavy clashes around his home in Sudan’s capital drove Sherif Abdelmoneim to flee, soaring rent and food costs forced the 36-year-old and his family of six to return to a city where fighting still rages.

Most of those who fled Khartoum after war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces broke out in mid-April have not returned. They face malnutrition, floods and scorpions as they depend for survival on handouts and meager aid relief, the generosity of host communities stretched increasingly thin.

More than 5.25 million of Sudan’s 49 million people have been uprooted since the fighting erupted, according to UN figures. Over 1 million of those have crossed into neighboring countries, but more than 4.1 million have stayed in Sudan, where they have come under increasing financial pressure.

“The states (outside Khartoum) are safe but the prices are expensive and rents are high, and we cannot continue with that,” Abdelmoneim said by phone from Omdurman, a city adjoining Khartoum where he has rented a house in an area where he can still hear artillery fire but is no longer in the midst of clashes.

The conflict has brought Sudan’s stagnant economy to its knees, blocking much trade and transport, hampering farming, halting many salary payments, and causing vast damage to infrastructure.

The country now has to draw on what meager resources are left to support an internally displaced population which, when those made homeless by previous conflict are included, reaches nearly 7.1 million, more than any other in the world.

Aid workers expect that more of those who had paid rent or lodged for free when they fled the capital will end up in collective shelters as their funds dry up.

“We are hospitable but people are handling more than they can,” said Omar Othman, a government official in Kassala, where he said rents had risen sharply. “If the war continues, these people came with small savings so they will need shelter.”

Host communities in areas little affected by fighting have been reeling from the knock-on effects of the war.

In Rabak, about 275km (170 miles) south of Khartoum, many young people had been trying to make a living in factories or as day laborers in the capital before the war broke out.

“For the locals the labor market is paralyzed. Khartoum is the engine for the rest of the country,” said resident Fadeel Omer.

Displaced people in the city unable to afford rent were lodged in shelters with crumbling walls and scorpions, and several malnourished children had been dying daily in the city hospital, he said. Large groups had headed back to Khartoum.

In Merowe, 340km north of Khartoum, salaried workers and farmers have seen their income dry up, and local volunteers are struggling to provide basic meals to the displaced, some of whom were sleeping on sofas or tables, said lawyer and local volunteer Izdihar Jumaa.

Damage to infrastructure in the three regions worst affected by the war – Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan – could be $60 billion, or 10 percent of its total value, said Ibrahim Al-Badawi, Sudan’s former finance minister and an economics researcher. He estimated that the gross domestic product could plunge 20 percent this year.

“If the war stops, Sudan would need emergency economic support of $5-10 billion to revive the economy,” he told Reuters in an interview in Dubai.

“The continuation of the war will lead to the destruction of the Sudanese economy and the state.”

Since the start of the war, prices for many products soared. The currency has fallen as low as 900 Sudanese pounds to the dollar on the black market in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, a hub for government officials and aid workers, from about 560 pounds in April.

A continuing lifeline for many is remittances sent by Sudanese living abroad, said Omar Khalil, who fled to Port Sudan from Omdurman in June with his wife and three children.

“They are the ones bearing this burden on their shoulders,” he said. “This cannot last forever.” Khalil and his wife, both former art teachers, now make ice cream at home to sell to supermarkets.

International aid efforts for Sudan are severely underfunded, with less than 25 percent of the $2.6 billion required for this year received by mid-August, according to the United Nations. Aid workers say relief operations have also been hindered by government red tape and the breakdown of services and logistics based in the capital.

Authorities are nervous about relief operations by local volunteers and want the displaced to be housed in camps, but there are no funds to run them on the scale that would be needed, said Will Carter of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Across Sudan, some displaced people who had been renting were being evicted, though most were still lodging with extended families or strangers, he said. “We’re going to have an impasse – people squatting will be destitute within these cities,” he added.