View From Above
by Nyier Abdou
From a remote camp in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan, prominent KADEK leader Osman Öcalan talks to Nyier Abdou about Kurdish resistance, the post-war era and the end of the nationalist fight.
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Late afternoon light is caressing the jagged mountain backdrop in shades of purple and auburn as we stroll up to base camp. A small watercourse, diverted from one of the nearby mountain streams, gurgles quietly alongside the encampment, the water cold and clear.
Our arrival is unexpected, due to miscommunication among messengers, but the handful of fighters posted to the camp are accommodating and hospitable. The mood is a bit laid back, but a spirit of efficacy lingers. Drinks, snacks, sweet apricots and plums are produced in short order. Once subjected to kidnapping and considered fare game for attacks, journalists are now on more cordial terms with the guerrillas that make this expanse of uncharted territory deep in northern Iraq's Qandil mountain range their home.
The setting is idyllic, but the governing purpose that has brought this group of hardened fighters to this mountain hideaway is singularly severe. Scattered in camps throughout the mountainous stretch along Iraq's borders with Turkey and Iran, some 9,000 Kurdish guerrilla forces maintain the centre of operations for the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK). The direct successor of the dissolved Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which fought a bloody 15-year guerrilla war against the Turkish government in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey, KADEK is a curious beast. No longer espousing the PKK's raison d'être of Kurdish nationalism, KADEK's continued commitment to armed struggle leaves the organisation in an awkward position in post-war Iraq.
With the onset of the US-led war in Iraq, attention turned to militant groups based in northern Iraq. Among the most prominent campaigns undertaken jointly between US forces and Kurdish pesh merga fighters early in the war was the eradication of Ansar Al-Islam, the radical Islamist group that had commandeered a swathe of Kurdish-controlled territory near the Iranian border and which both the US and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) maintain are linked to Al-Qa'eda. The US also strong-armed the Iraq-based Iranian resistance organisation, the Mujahidin Khalq - classified by the US State Department and the European Union as a terrorist group - into a cease-fire in late April after targeted bombing of the group's positions in northern Iraq.
Until now, KADEK, which was formed in the wake of the 1999 unilateral cease-fire issued by PKK founder and ideological leader Abdullah Öcalan, has been left untouched by the US-led hunt to root out terrorism. But like the Mujahidin Khalq, the PKK is named by the US State Department and the EU as a terrorist organisation. The refashioning as KADEK, which now focusses on achieving Kurdish rights through political means, has not served to alter this status.
UP UP AND AWAY
We've come here to meet with Osman Öcalan, the brother of Abdullah Öcalan - currently serving a solitary life sentence in an Istanbul prison - who took over the general command of the PKK after Abdullah's capture in 1999, but now contents himself with the humbler title of KADEK presidential council member. Because we were expected the following day, Öcalan is otherwise engaged, and a message is dispatched to request an earlier interview.
As evening settles on the camp, we dine on an unexpectedly impressive spread of fried chicken, salad and chips. It's been a long day navigating the numerous legs of the journey from Suleimaniya, north to the small town of Rania, on to the even smaller village that is our last stop before locals from a hamlet inside KADEK territory ferry us, along with several sacks of food supplies, to the base camp in a squeaky Land Cruiser. I'm getting drowsy and looking forward to curling up in a corner somewhere for some shut-eye, but the conversation, not to mention the mosquito offensive, remains lively.
It's just shy of midnight when the word comes abruptly that we've been cleared to meet Öcalan. The messengers are all business, and there's little time for sleepy grumbling or goodbyes and thankyous. The moon is peeping over a mountaintop as we set out along the valley, while the towering chain of mountains looming before us no longer look picturesque and tranquil, but instead rather ominous and daunting.
Our guides are nimble and tireless as we wind our way up the mountain range. We lag behind, the course feeling impossibly steep and merciless for the tired and unfit. Precipitous cliffs fall carelessly away beside our feet, but the mountaintops remain elusive as we soldier on, up, up, up. It's going on 2.30am when we stagger into the camp, our t-shirts drenched in sweat, silently cursing our snickering guides and praying that a vigorous Öcalan is not waiting to meet without delay.
Our prayers are answered and a rendez-vous with Öcalan, who will pass through the camp the next morning, is set. We are quartered for the night with the camp's residents. I am met by two women - almost half of KADEK's ranks are female guerrillas - and Peshwaz, a fellow journalist based in Suleimaniya, retires with our two guides.
A REVOLUTION OF THE MIND
The small, drab cabin where we meet Öcalan feels more like an interrogation room than military quarters. Aside from the bookshelf on one wall, which houses a large television and a handful of books in Turkish and English - I spied a copy of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, along with numerous well-thumbed copies of Abdullah Öcalan's treatise on human rights and resistance - the only thing in the room is a large table positioned under a harsh fluorescent light.
Osman Öcalan is stout, with hard eyes, but with a slightly bemused air. Dressed in combat fatigues, his appearance is nonetheless immaculate - his shirt pressed, his fingernails clean, his full moustache neatly trimmed. He is a man who likes the sound of his own voice, and he leans back with magisterial gravity as he launches into an encapsulated history of the PKK.
Formed by Abdullah Öcalan in 1978 as a communist revolutionary force, the PKK gelled from the numerous leftist Kurdish groups that had sprung up in Turkish universities in the late 1960s, which came together under the overarching goal of Kurdish independence. In 1984, the group formed its military wing, the Kurdistan Popular Liberation Army (ARGK), and launched a guerrilla war in Turkey's southeast. More than 30,000 people are said to have died in the ensuing conflict.
In the 1980s, the group trained with Palestinian militant groups in Lebanon, and after 1990, the group expanded its area of activity, deploying in Kurdish areas outside of Turkey, namely in Syria and Iran. From the time of Abdullah Öcalan's capture in 1999, however, the group began to regroup and rethink its strategy. Today, KADEK maintains that it is a defence force, reacting only to provocation and in "legitimate defence" of Kurdish rights. "Democracy" is the catchword, and Öcalan uses it liberally.
"It was a time of democratic change," recalls Öcalan. "We decided that the PKK has finished its historical job and formed the Freedom and Democracy Congress of Kurdistan [KADEK]". Öcalan stresses that KADEK, officially formed on 4 April 2002, is fundamentally different from the PKK both in ideology and strategy. While the PKK was a socialist organisation, KADEK's primary goal is to promote democracy. And while the main aim of the PKK was to "rescue Kurds" from oppression, KADEK seeks to democratise the states in which Kurds live.
"KADEK inherited the historical duty of the PKK," remarks Öcalan. "We are still advancing the work of the PKK". But, he adds, significantly, "The struggle of the PKK was waged by the gun. The principal way of struggle for KADEK is by political means".
A CHANGE OF HEART
He didn't say it, but the most obvious difference between the PKK and KADEK is that the call for an independent Kurdish state - the inspiring standard under which legions of Kurds, both idealistic and disgruntled, joined the ranks of the PKK - has been abandoned in the name of an unabashedly Western-friendly call for democracy.
The concept of the nation-state has become outdated, argues Öcalan. "Today, the forces of democracy are more powerful. The advances in technology and science have made us realise that the goal of a nation-state is not an appropriate aim".
The link between the technological revolution and the dismantling of the nationalist cause is a nebulous one, but Öcalan confidently places them beside each other as evidently interconnected. "We are in the century of communication," he declared. "The world is more connected on all levels - economic, social, cultural. States are past the point of isolation. Day by day, national borders come to have less meaning. For this reason, we think that being part of a democratic state has more meaning than establishing a nation-state. That is something of the past.
"In the 20th century, nation-states were still being born," notes Öcalan. "But in the 21st century, the nation-state is simply an obstacle". The emphasis on ethnic identity in a nation-state is by nature oppressive, he suggests. "Even if there are other people living there, they have to obey the rules of the governing majority. Democracy provides for a different kind of system. Different people can live together and have equal rights".
The US-led attack on Iraq - the same attack in the context of which Öcalan had vociferously threatened to defend KADEK's positions if targeted by the coalition - has provided the opportunity for new democratic forces to emerge in Iraq, he says. "It is our view that in two, three years' time, democracy will develop in the region and this will affect the Kurdish question positively".
Öcalan offers no pretence that the US acts for any reason other than its own interest, but he is pragmatic enough to say that a savvy political movement can hitch its cause on the back of those aims. He even goes so far as to suggest that a US-led onslaught in the region could be just the thing to open the doors to a regional democratic revolution.
"We saw what lies under Iraq: oil and people's bodies. We can see how barbaric this regime was. There's nothing to give to the people under regimes like this. Nationalist states, Islamic states, these are things of the past. The US led this attack for its own reasons, but the result was a goal we all shared," said Öcalan.
Asked if he was promoting further US military intervention in region, a flicker of revolutionary pride re-emerges. "Of course, our wish is that regime change will come by peaceful means, but if there is resistance, we must resort to military action.
"The US is concentrating its pressure on Iran and Syria," he adds with guarded approval. "It has criticised the regimes in Syria and Turkey".
Öcalan insists that a more viable strategy is to unify the region and engineer change through democratic principles. Rather than focussing on Kurdish nationhood, KADEK has turned its efforts to democratising the countries in which Kurds live. With democracy, Öcalan reasons, comes democratic rights and freedoms. "After that, we can see a democratic union between these four countries - like the European Union. This is our basic strategy".
Turkey is unconvinced, however, and dismisses both the cease- fire and the shift to democratic principles as ruses in an unabashed drive for statehood. The international community seems equally dubious, still using the names PKK and KADEK interchangeably. In the end, KADEK has pleased no one, not its archrival Turkey, nor its would-be ally, the US, and not even the Kurdish people, many of whom either find the group a dangerous aggressor or a sell-out for giving up on the nationalist fight.
A PATTERN OF DENIAL
Making it to KADEK's training camps was something of a holy grail for me, as I had endeavoured to enter northern Iraq from southeastern Turkey during the war, only to be rebuffed, along with hundreds of other journalists, by the Turkish military force amassed on the border. Trap a gaggle of journalists in a small town that was once the centre of a long and ugly civil war and only one thing is going to happen - they will start to sniff out stories.
But here we continually bumped up against a hypersensitive military. The commanders were always courteous as they turned us away from the ever-increasing number of checkpoints in the region - there was always tea and a smug smile. "It's for your safety," I was told, while trying to reach areas where numerous Kurdish villages had been burned during the war, allegedly by Turkish soldiers. We were made to understand that dangerous remnants of the PKK were lurking everywhere, waiting for the chance to re-launch their terrorist campaign in quest of a Kurdish state. "So the PKK is still active in the region?" I asked. "Oh no, no, no," the commander replied, without a hint of irony. "We defeated the PKK".
The view from Turkey, where fear of a Kurdish rebellion remains potent and prescribed Ankara's confused handling of the war in Iraq, is that the Kurdish question remains unfinished business so long as thousands of KADEK guerrillas - "You call them KADEK, we call them the PKK," one Turkish analyst remarked dryly - remain holed up in northern Iraq.
In Suleimaniya, I sat with PUK official Faraydoun Abdul- Khader, a former pesh merga fighter and now the interior minister for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). I asked him if KADEK still had a stronghold in northern Iraq. "No, no, no," he said, with a hint of a satisfied smile. "They are not here". Pushing the point, I remarked that Turkey has long decried the threat from KADEK in northern Iraq, but Abdul-Khader coolly replied, "These are just claims by Turkey; they want to exaggerate the threat".
The PKK fought a string of rough territorial wars with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the PUK between 1993 and 1998 to mark out its current stronghold, but the good favour the KDP and PUK now enjoy with the US suggests that the status quo is unlikely to hold and KADEK's ludicrously disputed existence will have to be definitively addressed.
Asked if the US had not approached KADEK about disarming, Öcalan steadfastly claimed that there have been no such negotiations. "The US has said nothing to us until now," he said. But he peppered his denial with the all-important qualifier "official". "Until today, we have no official or serious relations with the US. The US is very careful about us. Our friends have non-official relations, but until now there is no official cooperation with the US". Still, sources in Mosul indicated that KADEK representatives were meeting with the US military that same week.
"We made a decision," Öcalan declares. "If there is a democratic solution, then we will disarm". Because there is a possibility for democracy in Iraq, he explained, guerrillas fighting there have been disarmed. "We educate them, take their guns and send them to become a part of our political movement".
Öcalan adamantly insists that he sees no reason why the US would stir up trouble by targeting KADEK. Pressed on why then he felt the need to issue a stern warning early on in the war that KADEK would fight the US if threatened, Öcalan replies, "At the time, the situation wasn't clear. We saw some risks. We have our imperfections". But he added: "If at that time we had been attacked, of course we would have defended ourselves".
I noted that it is unlikely the US would simply leave KADEK to continue training guerrillas in what is now a state occupied by a US-led coalition. There is enormous pressure from Turkey - a member of NATO and still a close US ally despite strained relations over the war - to eradicate KADEK, and long-time rivals the PUK and KDP would not be sorry to see them go. At the very least, a request to disarm seems inevitable. "They haven't said anything like that to us," insists Öcalan. "If they do, though, we will not disarm.
"We think the US will find our democratic line more amenable than that of the PUK or KDP," says Öcalan. "It is possible for us to seek cooperation with the US. KADEK is a modern force".
SALAHEDDIN LITE
The bulk of the world's 20 to 25 million Kurds are spread out over the mountainous Kurdish region split between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Often cited as the world's largest population without a state, the struggle for Kurdish independence is a tale of broken promises, from the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne - which unceremoniously rescinded the pledge of a Kurdish state enshrined in the never-ratified post-World War I Treaty of Sèvres - to the cold shoulder offered by the world's powers in the face of subsequent attempts at Kurdish revolution.
Though both the KDP and its more radical offshoot and one-time rival, the PUK, retain large forces of pesh merga fighters, the two groups have contended for some time that they no longer seek Kurdish independence and would be content with significant autonomy within a "federal" Iraq. The PKK was the last major outpost of Kurdish armed struggle, but, despite the scoffing in Ankara, even this group has changed its tune in the name of pragmatism.
Today KADEK is steered by an 11-member presidential council, three of which are women, and a 55-person "general assembly", one-third of which must be women (currently, there are 21). KADEK functions as an umbrella organisation for numerous political sub-structures, including political parties, cultural institutions and a number of women's parties. Because the leadership structure remains "flexible", Öcalan notes that there is "no static model" for KADEK.
Because of his incarceration, Abdullah Öcalan has no opportunity to communicate with the group, but his lengthy written defence statements used in cases brought before various international courts on his behalf are interpreted and copiously quoted by KADEK visionaries. "We are past only focussing on the Kurdish conflict," says Osman Öcalan. "We are larger than that now".
I suggested that there are many people who feel Abdullah Öcalan's abrupt decision to renounce the nationalist revolution in Turkey was the ultimate betrayal. Some go so far as to suggest he tried to sell his cause to bargain himself out of the death penalty, but among KADEK's ranks, Abdullah Öcalan's word is beyond question.
Any fighter will pontificate at length on the manifest need for democracy and peace, stating resolutely that there is no need for an independent state. But these are the same fighters who pledged their loyalty to Kurdistan - "to stay, to fight, to struggle until the last drop of blood in the name of the liberty of the Kurdish people and the progress of the nation" - and whose comrades died for that cause. If there is any sense of discordance about this fact, it was nowhere to be seen in the dozens of fighters I spoke with.
"A nation-state is too small for us," Öcalan pronounces grandly. "We want to expand. Our hope is to democratise the Middle East - to see the Kurds at the centre of that democratic change".
Citing the (somewhat favourably distorted) history of Salaheddin - the Kurd perhaps best remembered by history both for his impressive military prowess and unifying leadership - Öcalan remarks, "Salaheddin established an Islamic state with Kurds at its centre. Now we want to see a democratic state, with Kurds still at the centre. Our leader is a democratic Salaheddin".
But Salaheddin was a warrior par excellence, so I asked Öcalan if he had plans to re-start the war. Otherwise, it would seem fitting to forsake KADEK's contentious insistence on training guerrilla forces in mountainous isolation to simply disarm and become a political organisation. "It's clear to us the way of the gun is not the strategic way," he replied thoughtfully. "But if conditions change, that is always on the table".
WHERE HAVE ALL THE NATIONALISTS GONE?
In Turkey's Kurdish heartland, I spoke to numerous locals displaced by the PKK's war of liberation who now scratch a living in refugee camps-cum-villages. The legacy of the PKK, and the years of martial law that was only officially lifted late last year, is conspicuous. Abdullah Öcalan remains an undisputed hero - the Nelson Mandela of the Kurds - but some people are willing to express anger over his sudden change of course.
Still, whether in southeast Turkey (referred to among the guerrillas as "northern Kurdistan") or in northern Iraq ("southern Kurdistan"), one is hard-pressed to find a Kurd willing to say he still dreams of an independent Kurdistan. Turkish Kurds are banking on Turkey's desperate bid for EU membership, hoping that this will ensure greater freedoms and an improvement in standard of living.
In northern Iraq, Kurds are hopeful that the US-led administration will lead Iraq towards a functioning democracy and maintain they would be content with equal freedoms in a "federal, democratic Iraq". Even the man on the street, from Kirkuk to Halabje, from Erbil to Suleimaniya, sounds like the KDP's Massoud Barzani or the PUK's Jalal Talabani.
In KADEK's camps, fighters were eager to hear my opinion on the Kurdish question. To push the issue, I remarked, "Well, I think that the Kurds deserve a state". But most guerrillas replied that they are tired of war, that they just want to see Kurds living freely and in peace. "That's enough. We don't need a state".
In the quarters of every camp and flapping in the wind at every KADEK checkpoint, flies the flag of the PKK, alongside a large, silk-screened image of "Apo", as Abdullah Öcalan is known. Over the last few decades Kurds have immolated themselves on the streets in zealous protest. PKK leaders have seen brutal torture and starved themselves to death in Turkish prisons. It's difficult to reconcile the religious fervour with which so many Kurds once fought and died with this gentle age of pragmatism, albeit reasonable and, if Öcalan is to be believed, admirably less violent.
As we lunched with Öcalan, he flipped on Turkish CNN - electricity is piped into camps via a dammed mountain river - and dug into his roasted chicken, which was painstakingly prepared by young guerrillas that morning. I asked him, in a last attempt to force the issue, what he would do if the Americans came to him directly and said they wanted to back a Kurdish state. Öcalan smiled, indicating he didn't mind the challenge. "Our goal is not a state," he said. "What we want is a democratic union. Even if we had the conditions for a state, we would not choose it".
There is something intangibly sad about the death of a movement; something almost wrong about abandoning the elusive state of Kurdistan. As we trudged over the mountains back towards the valley, the afternoon heat raining relentlessly down on us, I turned to Peshwaz, who was equally pensive. Sardonically, I asked him, "Are we the only Kurdish nationalists left?"
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– Nyier H Abdou
Nyier H Abdou
Al-Ahram Weekly
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E-mail: Nyier H Abdou
This article was first run on Al-Ahram Weekly
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