NORTHERN IRAQ – TOWARDS A FREE, PEACEFUL KURDISTAN

"From the moment you cross the frontier you are our guest", Dilsad Barzani, the representative in Germany of the Kurdish Regional Government of Northern Iraq, assured Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker International (GfbV)'s seven person delegation. "You stood by us as the Kurdish people endured the most terrible catastrophes and tragedies, in the face of genocide, poison gas attacks and expulsion, defending our right to survival and self-determination", Masud Barzani, the President of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP), said to me later. "We will never forget that."

We enjoyed this hospitality for two whole weeks, in the Kurdish mountains, in the Barzan valley, in the towns of Zaxo, Arbil, Salhaddin and Sulaimaniya - not to mention in restaurants old and new, in the homes of our Kurdish friends and also in Kurdish universities and government ministeries. We met up again with many old friends, former students in East and West Germany and Austria who had often spent many years campaigning on Kurdish issues.

First of all, however, before entering Iraqi Kurdistan we passed through the Kurdish part of Turkey. It was only later that the stark contrast between the two regions made itself apparent. It is impossible, wherever you go in Turkish Kurdistan, to overlook the poverty and oppression suffered by 15 million Kurds. There is not a single line of Kurdish to be seen in public signs or on advertising billboards. The reforms relating to language rights exist only on paper. Minimal improvements such as a short Kurdish television programme and the establishment of a Kurdish Institute in far-off Istanbul have had little impact in bringing about change. In Diyarbakir, Kurdish Turkey's "secret" capital, the urban environment is dominated by the presence of large numbers of refugees, who account for two thirds of the city's population. They are almost all jobless and with no prospects for the future, farming families evicted from demolished villages who are not permitted to return home.

Our visit to Vehap Ku"sen, mayor of the ancient town of Hasankeyf, offered a ray of hope. In 2000 GfbV held a press conference in Berlin and arranged meetings with the German Federal Government for this representative of a 3000-year-old town that the Turkish government of the day was proposing to drown under the waters of a reservoir. Since Turkey's reforming prime minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan's announcement this summer in Batman that Hasankeyf had been reprieved, the worst of the danger now seems to be over.

Another place where there is a mood of optimism is the most beautiful of Turkey's Syrian Orthodox Christian monasteries, Mar Gabriel, in Tur Abdin, an area on the borders with Syria and Iraq that has been home for a thousand years to the Aramaic-speaking Assyrian community. Here Erdogan's policy of reform is starting to bear its first fruits - the use of the New Aramaic language in education is no longer forbidden. The first of the villages that had been ethnically cleansed have now been returned to the Assyrians and their neighbours and fellow expulsees, the Yezidi. After spending years living in exile as refugees in Central Europe the new-old inhabitants are now making a start on the work of reconstruction.

The sheer arrogance, arbitrariness and oppressive character of 80 years of Turkish rule over the subjugated Kurdish people was demonstrated to us at the frontier post of Habur in remote Anatolia, with its concrete forecourts and concrete and battered metal huts staffed by two officials who seemed to act as the fancy took them as they purportedly waited for "instructions from higher up", taking an interminable time to clear tanker drivers, most of them Turkish Kurds, through the frontier. As a result enormous queues build up, almost at will as it were, frequently stretching as far as 35 km. The officials are unbending in the harsh way they deal with the crowds pressing to cross over into Kurdish Iraq.

Despite being forced to wait for days on end in temperatures of 35-40 degrees even in late October every trip is worthwhile for the impoverished Kurds. Because oil is cheap in Iraq. Nevertheless the Turkish military continue without any justification to inflict further damage on the already depressed regional economy of Southern Anatolia. The motive is purely and simply to place massive obstruc- tions in the path of their neighbour, the emergent Kurdish part-state that lies on the other side of the river that is the frontier between them.

Almost as soon as we cross the bridge over the River Zaxo into Iraqi Kurdistan, the picture changes completely. We are greeted by the sight of beds of flowers in bloom in front of a newly-built hotel and several restaurants as fountains play in a newly-laid out park. Under a giant portrait of the legendary Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani we are dealt with speedily and efficiently by courteous border officials.

The free and peaceful Kurdistan that now unfolds itself before us, officially a part-state of Iraq, rein- forces the positive impression received at the border. Economic recovery is under way. Everywhere new buildings are springing up and new communities are being developed to house the many widows of the war-dead and murdered. A massive reafforestation programme began seven years ago. New roads criss-cross the country. Kurdish hotels offer a haven of tranquility to many prosperous Arabs from war-torn Southern and Central Iraq.

Iraqi Kurdistan today covers an area of 36 000 square kilometres, almost as big as Switzerland and as secure as Western Europe. We met the Chancellors of the two major universities of Arbil and Sulaima- niya. The architecture of Salahaddin University in the capital city of Arbil is captivating. Its hyper- modern buildings manage at the same time to communicate an air of harmony and tradition. 54 % of the 25 000 Kurdish students are women. The teaching is in Kurdish, English and Arabish. 800 000 school pupils are also being taught in Kurdish. We talked with mayors and representatives of the small Assyrian-Chaldaean and Turkmen communities. They too have their own educational system and media using the New Aramaic and Turkish languages.

We visited Lalish, the ancient shrine of the Yezidi, and met the Yezidi leader Mir Tahsin Beg, who in the past was forced to live in Baghdad. He calls for the Sinjar area, where 500 000 of his Kurdish- speaking co-religionists live, to be included in the Kurdish part-republic. In the past they were oppres- sed by Saddam Hussein and forcibly resettled in concrete block houses in newly-built centralised villages. This ancient non-Christian, non-Muslim Kurdish-speaking faith community is now starting to take control of its own affairs. For the first time in Iraq's history there are Yezidi ministers in the regional government and in Baghdad. This major step forward for the minority group has been implemented by the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Sinjar, like the major oil-producing city of Kirkuk and the area around Khanakin down as far as Mandali, belongs to the third of Northern Iraq that was occupied and ethnically cleansed of its non-Arab inhabitants by Saddam. The area was formerly occupied mainly by Kurds but also by Turkmen and Christian Assyrian-Chaldaeans. During the period after 1991 when the Ba'ath Party was excluded from the protected zone of Kurdistan, the local people were subjected to intolerable oppression under Saddam's rule, with wave after wave of expulsions. Hundreds of thousands have now returned. While calm prevails in some areas, in others such as Kirkuk some of the incoming Arab settlers have shown themselves unwilling to accept the return of the former Kurdish inhabitants. Assaults and bomb attacks are commonplace.

Nevertheless the position is optimistic, according to the Kurdish Vice-Governor of Kirkuk Hasib Rojbebayi and the KDP's influential city councillor Kemal Kerkuki, and what they say is confirmed by the Assyrians and numerous Turkmen we spoke to in Kirkuk. There are no problems with the old-established Arab population. What returnees fear above all is intervention by Turkey, which has used some of the Turkmen population to stir up unrest. In the past Kurds accounted for half and Turkmen a quarter of the city's population, with approximately six per cent Assyrians. Even so the misery endured by returnees to the city and province of Kirkuk goes unnoticed by the international community. In their tens of thousands they lead an unproductive existence living in ruins and tents.

Our Assyrian-Chaldaean friends the General Secretary of the Bet-Nahrain Democratic Party Romeo Hakari, the Deputy Chairperson of the Assyrian Democratic Movement Salem Kako and the mayor of the small exclusively Assyrian-Chaldaean town of Ankawa are appalled by the persecution of Christi- ans in Southern and Central Iraq. To date 14 Christian places of worship have been destroyed by bomb attacks. At least 200 Christians have been killed by terrorists, some of them by decapitation and with CDs of their executions offered for sale in the open marketplace. An attempt is being made to drive approximately 700 000 Christians out of the country. Most of the Christians have left the city of Basra. All the 4000 Assyrian-Chaldaean families are reported to have fled. A total of between 40 000 and 70 000 Christians, according to different estimates, have been forced to leave Iraq. They have gone to Syria, Jordan and Kurdistan. The Kurdish administration is beginning to integrate refugees into the community. The PUK is making land and materials available for them to build homes while the KDP is providing Christian families with basic social support. Since the delegation returned home GfbV has been writing to all the Western governments and the EU urging them to provide help for resettlement work in Northern Iraq.

We were very impressed by our conversations with young Kurds - both men and women - belonging to the newly established citizens' initiative action groups. They are keen to work with us. GfbV's newly founded Northern Iraq Section hopes to include them in its network of non-governmental organi- sations. The visit that we paid to the widows of the Barzan Valley was a sad one. Between 1991 and 1993 GfbV began the reconstruction of 30 destroyed villages. Fadila Memisevic, Director of GfbV- Bosnia, knew immediately what to say to these women who lost 8000 of their sons and husbands in one of Saddam's massacres in 1983. Fadila, who has been working in Srebrenica on behalf of the surviving families of at least 7800 local men and youths murdered there, told them about the work she is doing every day with the widows in Bosnia. Her words were greeted with enthusiasm. These two groups face the same problems. The children of the victims of the Barzan Valley massacres are now young adults. We inspected the display they had put together containing more than 2000 individual histories of those who were executed - including the menfolk of a Christian village in the Barzan Valley - and we agreed to work closely together.

In the main settlement of the anfal-offensive, the village of Barzan (Barzan Valley), we were received visitors by Abdullah Barzani, cousin of the legendary leader of the Kurds Mustafa Barzani. The village was already reconstructed and we were welcomed by the overwhelming hospitality of the Kurdish people. Our host gave account of the suffering and the deprivation of the Kurds during the past decades, of the victims among them as well as of the population's determination to resist. Abdullah Barzani proved himself to be an intelligent and competent personality. During our brief stay we agreed upon a meeting in spring 2005.

The "Anfal" Centre and the Organisation of "Anfal" Victims will also be working with GfbV's new Section in Northern Iraq. 180 000 civilians were killed during Saddam's "Anfal" offensive, which was launched with poison gas attacks. The use of chemical weapons was made possible by the "deve- lopment assistance" provided by German and other European companies. GfbV-Northern Iraq /Iraqi Kurdistan will support the organisation representing the relatives of the 500 000 victims of genocide. Over the course of 35 years the Ba'ath regime was responsible for the murder of that many Kurds and Northern Iraqi Yezidi and Assyrian-Chaldaeans. GfbV will continue to campaign for the rights of minority peoples and returnees and will also investigate the position of threatened ethnic groups in the Near East.

We - Maria Sido, a German Kurd from Bonn active in GfbV since 1972, Fadila Memisevic from Sarajevo, Su"leyman Yildirim from Go"ttingen, the television journalists Kamal Saydo and Daniel Bo"gge from Warendorf, the German Assyrian-Chaldaean Khalid Hannah Shabo from Wiesbaden and the author of this article - received a warm welcome wherever we went. After the years of exile and genocide experienced by a region now returning to normality and enjoying the fruits of peace, what we were also receiving was thanks for over 30 years of GfbV's human rights work for Kurdistan and above all for the commitment of the many thousands of members, donors and supporters who made this work possible.

Everyone we met - Prime Minister Neshirvan Barzani, the KDP's leader in Parliament Dr. Nasih Gafoor Ramadan, the Speaker of Parliament Kemal Fuad, KDP General Secretary Fadil Mirani, the three Ministers for the Interior, Human Rights and Humanitarian Coordination from the regional government in the capital Arbil and the Iraqi Minister for Human Rights Bahtiar Amini, formerly a human rights activist in Berlin with whom we organised a joint press conference in 2002 - assured us of their support for GfbV's new section. "We need the local presence of your human rights organisation, an organisation that has shown deep concern for the suffering of people in this region over a long period, to provide us with critical support in our work," Bahtiar Amini declared.

It is with sorrow that we also call to mind the many thousands of victims of terror in Central and Southern Iraq and hope that they may achieve the same security and the same peace that the inhabitants of Iraqi Kurdistan, their fellow countryfolk in the North, are now able to enjoy.

Finally we should like to note that our visit received comprehensive coverage by Kurdish television with daily reports on our discussions and visits to organisations and institutions. In Arbil the author was invited to give a talk to ta centre of Kurdish Intellectuals. The suggested subject was "Genocide Worldwide and in the Near East - Combatting the Crime and Punishing the Guilty".

Tilman Zülch, President of GfbV-International