[Peace] iraq

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

US Promises Iraq’s Turkomans Autonomy
Excerpts from last DEBKA-Net-Weekly, 9 July, 2002

US war planners have decided that their most useful strategic asset for the 
coming offensive against Saddam Hussein is the 2.5 million Turkomans of north 
and central Iraq - even more than the Kurds.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly ’s military and intelligence sources explain their reasoning:
1. The Turkomans control a vital strip separating Baghdad and central Iraq 
from its oil regions in the north. After the war is over, US strategic 
planners plan the establishment of Turkoman and Kurdish autonomous states in 
the north and a Shiite territory in the south to keep the federal regime in 
Baghdad chronically weak and ineffective. The oilfields will be left with the 
Turkomans and the Shiites. The Turkic-speaking Turkoman Strip is of 
exceptional geo-strategic importance, running as it does from the 
Turkish-Syrian borders in the northwest to the Iranian border southeast of 
Baghdad. It includes the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, as well as Arbil – 
or Irbil, Diala, Salah-e-din and Altunkopru. The last is an island-town on 
the Little Zab River. There is also a large community in Baghdad. 
2.  At the end of May, Turkey came around to joining the US offensive against 
Iraq for compelling strategic reasons of its own. One, the eventual 
disseverance of Iraq will enfeeble Iraq and its military ally, Syria, both 
neighbors. Two,Ankara will gain control over the perennial Kurdish problem by 
holding Turkish military forces in the autonomous Turkoman region and so 
clamping the Kurdish regions between Turkey in the north and the Turkoman 
Strip in the south. Three,the Turks will gain a direct route to Baghdad for 
the first time since the Ottomans were thrown out in 1924.
Turkey now has special military units and military intelligence agents 
positioned in Turkoman towns, corresponding to the US presence in the Kurdish 
regions. They are training small Turkomen units in the arts of guerrilla 
warfare. The Turks and Turkomans will be able to cut the supply lines from 
Baghdad to the Iraqi forces positioned on the Turkish and Syria borders. 
Turkish agents have also been planted in the Turkoman community in Baghdad. 
They are assigned to helping the American effort to undermine and subvert the 
Saddam regime from within, so reducing the need for large-scale military 
action. 
The new name to watch for is Sapr Oketene, the US-Turkish choice of Turkoman 
national leader.
The forcible relocation of the Turkomen communities and their replacement by 
Arabs began in 1925 when the British first set up the Iraqi oil company in 
Kirkuk and Mosul. This policy of changing the demography of the oil rich 
sectors of Kirkuk by deporting ethnic Kurds and Turkomans is still going on, 
including seizure of their lands. 
The “safe havens” created by the UN in 1991 after the Gulf War divided the 
Turkomans into two separate communities, part living above the 36th parallel 
which is dominated by the Kurds and part living below and dominated by the 
Iraqi regime.  Since then, the largely Sunni Muslim ethno-linguistic 
Turkomans who ruled Baghdad from 833 to 1924 complains of ethnic cleansing by 
the dominant Kurds. 
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