North Iraq Road Trip: Leaving Kurdistan

Turkish tanks in northern Iraq

On a road trip last week to the mountains of northern Iraq along the Turkish border, it was easier to find Turkish soldiers than Kurdish rebels. The Turkish army maintains at least four bases inside northern Iraq as a result of an agreement worked out with Saddam Hussein, who needed help after the American no-flight zone created a power vacuum in the region during the 1990's. In the town of Barmani, the Turks have a base with 35 tanks, and are repairing a disused air strip and building up troop levels, according to Iraqi Kurdish intelligence officers located there. The Turks man these stations simply by sending uniformed soldiers through the Ibrahim Khalil border on buses.

In contrast to the Turks – who once a week drive their tanks through Barmani in broad daylight -- the PKK guerillas are a more elusive quarry. While the Turkish army claims that the PKK is using northern Iraq as a base for staging attacks inside Turkey, the PKK's main bases are in the Qandil mountains, which are near the border with Iran and beyond the easy reach of a large Turkish force. The few PKK bases near the Turkish border are difficult to reach as well, far down single-track dirt roads high in classic insurgency country. One camp that's home to some 300 fighters in a ravine carved by the cold blue waters of the lower Khabour river looked like a beautiful place for an invading army to die.

The PKK fighters hidden in this ravine sent us to find their commanders, but we were stopped by Kurdish border police

The Iraqi Kurdish ruling parties are now at least making the appearance of doing something about the PKK, shutting offices of a political party with ties to the PKK, and preventing journalists from traveling into PKK areas for interviews. And though solving the PKK problem isn't something the Kurds can do on their own, they're also trying to mollify Turkey from another angle.

On Saturday night, my last in Kurdistan, I felt like I'd stumbled into a Graham Greene novel without knowing the plot. First clue was the Iranian intelligence agents that showed up in my hotel's lobby. Next, came a steady stream of top Kurdish officials, and then an American State Department-type with a security entourage, and later over dinner at a fancier hotel, we spotted a American general, and members of a Kurdish political party from Turkey. Since my flight was at 5 am, I only found out what was happening the next day after I'd landed home in Beirut. Iraqi Kurdish officials had helped secure the release of the 8 Turkish soldiers captured by the PKK last month. They'd returned to Turkey at dawn that morning, crossing the bridge at Ibrahim Khalil.

So its becoming less and less likely that Turkish army will stage a major invasion this year and risk being caught in the mountains with winter fast approaching. But already Turkish threats have had an effect on the region. The last stable part of Iraq no longer feels quite the safe haven it had become for thousands of refugees from the civil war in the rest of the country. And Kurdish leaders have been reminded of how dependent they still are upon their patrons in Washington, who are working to diffuse the crisis, and the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which leapt to the defense of the Kurdish region. And since Kurdish independence – rather than the PKK – is the real enemy, the Turks have already won this skirmish in the battle of northern Iraq.

A Kurdish farmer from an Iraqi village abandoned after it was shelled by the Turks returned to tend to his orchards, where ripe apples are dropping from the trees.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut