"SUPPORT GIVEN TO A KURDISH STATE AND PKK-KADEK TERRORISM WILL ESCALATE THE CRISIS IN IRAQ..!"

Along with the ongoing debates on the reconstruction of Iraq, permission that could be given to the establishment of a "Kurdish state" in northern Iraq or elsewhere, and providing further shelter to terrorists in Iraq will destroy stability and peace in the Middle East, will give rise to clashes between Kurds and Arabs in the region and will also weaken NATO.

Michael Radu, Co-Chair of the Center on Terrorism and Counter-terrorism at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, USA, in his article that appeared in the "FrontPage Magazine" on April 16, 2003, emphasized, within the context of the reconstruction of Iraq, the importance of the international struggle against PKK-KADEK terrorism and the facts and suggestions on the initiatives to establish a "Kurdish state".

Here is an excerpt from the Co-Chair of the Center on Terrorism Michael Radu's article:

"Now that the Baathist regime in Baghdad is gone...

To permit the growth of any sentiment for a Kurdish state, in northern Iraq or elsewhere, would ruin any chance of stability in the Middle East, and further weaken NATO as well.

Turks, Arabs and Iranians are opposed to any form of Kurdish state whatsoever and anywhere. Their shared antipathy to a Kurdish state has recently led to high-level military and political meetings among Damascus, Ankara and Tehran...

On the other hand, many in Western Europe and elsewhere have a strong affinity for the Kurdish cause, being emotionally susceptible to the Kurds' claims that they are the largest stateless ethnic group in the world, who were shortchanged when then Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill failed to establish a Kurdish state in the aftermath of World War I notwithstanding purported promises of same from US president Woodrow Wilson.

It is a romantic view of the Kurds shared by many Europeans (most Americans have no idea who the Kurds are or what to do about them), including Churchill's own Tory grandson today. Such indulgence of Kurdish grievances, encouraged by a well-educated and non-representative Kurdish intellectual class, made the Western European Left easily manipulable and willing to support one of the most violent terrorist organizations in recent times, the Kurdish Workers' Party-PKK (new name KADEK), a Stalinist group seeking to establish a "true" communist state in southeastern Turkey as a first step toward a regional bastion of "socialism".

The PKK campaign against Turkey left some 30.000 Turkish citizens dead, mostly Kurdish civilians (unfriendly clan and tribal leaders, teachers, policemen, clerics, bureaucrats and civil servants were PKK's favorite targets).

Is it "undemocratic" and "unfair" to deny Kurds statehood?

After all, one might reason, both Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are now allies of the coalition forces in northern Iraq, with their irregulars, accepting US command in operations there. Might they not reasonably expect a Kurdish state for their trouble?

Not necessarily. This will not be logical at all. Kurdish "national sentiments" are largely a creation of the tiny intellectual elites now active in Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the United States. The Kurds are divided along so many lines as to make any serious talk about a present or future "Kurdistan" meaningless.

While Kurdish languages are indeed separate and fundamentally distinct from Turkish or Arabic (they are basically related to Iranian Farsi), these are different languages-and not mutually understandable at that. Furthermore, the fundamental loyalty of a Kurd, whether in Iran, Turkey or elsewhere, is not to a "Kurdish nation" proclaimed by French or English speaking Kurdish émigrés in Paris or London. A Kurd's loyalty is to his family, clan, and tribe, in that order.

That explains why our present "staunch" allies against Saddam (one should remember that over the past decade Barzani has been in bed with Saddam and Talabani with the Tehran ayatollahs) fought each other. That also explains why, despite more than a decade of de facto autonomy and economic progress in northern Iraq, protected by US and UK airplanes enforcing a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, there are still two Kurdish governments in the region, under KDP and PUK control, respectively.

More disturbing to neighboring Turkey, both the PUK and the KDP tolerate, at least occasionally, the presence of some 7.000 PKK, which reestablished in northern Iraq after their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured and they were finally defeated in 1999. The PKK remnants are rich (mostly from their Western European criminal and racketeering operations) and increasingly well armed-a fact that can only be explained by Iraqi Kurds' tolerance of arms smuggling into PKK strongholds. If Turkey is often paranoid about the Kurds in general and the PKK in particular, it is not without reason.

The official US position is that Iraq's territorial integrity should be maintained. US officials assure their counterparts in Turkey, Iran, Syria and elsewhere that there will be no independent or autonomous state of Kurdistan in Iraq. And, listening to (English-speaking) Kurdish politicians in Suleymaniya and Irbil, one hears the same liturgy that "We just want a federal Iraq".

So far, so good, but "federal" means something different in Ankara (or for that matter in Damascus or Tehran or Baghdad). "Federal" in the Middle East does not connote as it does to us Hawaiians, Tennesseans and Mexican-Americans in California being different but equally loyal Americans, swearing allegiance to the same flag. Federalism would be a way-station toward a Kurdish state threatening all the nations' territorial integrity.

It should be clear that any US support for an independent Kurdistan, implicit or otherwise, whether an autonomous one or some "federal" Iraq giving Kurds control over northern Iraq (including the oil fields of Kirkuk) would sooner or later unite Turks, Persians and Arabs, militarily.

As to the issue of PKK strongholds in northern Iraq, that organization, leaderless as it is since Ocalan's capture, has been listed as terrorist by the US State Department since the 1980s, and belatedly so by the EU after 9/11, and simply has to be permanently eliminated. The US forces in northern Iraq simply cannot do it alone. But either Turkey or the Iraqi Kurds must do so soon.

Indeed, Kurdish elements are already reversing Saddam's ethnic cleansing of their people from Mosul and Kirkuk, by removing the Arab settlers, while the significant Turcoman minority feels unprotected-a situation Turkey is unlikely to accept for long.

All this considered, and taking into account the susceptibility of neighboring countries towards PKK terrorism and Kurds' claims of independence, the coalition forces should let the Iraqi Kurds live freer in a country called Iraq, rather than risk havoc throughout the region.