( LatWp ) - It is a land of resistance, the mountain peaks and winding valleys where Iraq's own Kurds battled Saddam Hussein for decades. Now another generation of guerrillas are bunkered down there waving the flag of Kurdish nationalism in the Qandil mountains, this time in a fight against Turkey.
Iraqi Kurds and members of the Turkish separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, live together in this vast mountain range that straddles Iraq, Turkey and Iran. The safe haven provided to the Turkish Kurd rebels here infuriates Ankara, which has been locked in an intense conflict with the Kurdish separatist movement that has cost thousands of lives since the 1980s.
With as many as 100,000 Turkish troops poised to march across the Iraqi border to attack PKK camps, a military response to a rebel ambush in southern Turkey last week that killed 12 soldiers, Iraqi Kurds may now pay a steep price for ignoring the problems caused by the PKK presence in the north.
"Iraqi Kurds generally sympathize with PKK fighters. It is a force that has been demanding and fighting for the rights of Kurds in Turkey for tens of years now, and the Turks have been very harsh to their Kurdish community by forbidding them from rights, " said Asso Hardi, editor-in-chief of Awena, an independent newspaper in Sulaymaniya, a city in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan region. "On the other hand, many Iraqi Kurds view the PKK as an entity ... which has caused many problems to the relatively stable Kurdistan area of Iraq, especially with neighboring countries."
Up winding switchbacks lies Mardu village, northeast of Sulaymaniya. Kurdish farmers tend livestock and harvest peaches, apples and grapes. A few houses dotted by oak trees serve as an impromptu headquarters for the PKK. Male and female fighters, dressed in billowing traditional shalwar pants and olive combat tops, walk freely. Local Iraqis openly support them, and some Iraqi Kurds have left their families and city life to become soldiers with the Turkish Kurd rebels and their Iranian sister movement, Party for Free Life In Kurdistan, or PEJAK.
The villagers toast the Turkish guerrillas as champions of Kurdish rights. They claim that they are willing to endure sacrifices as the price of their association with a movement that is fighting to establish Kurdish self-rule in Turkey and Iran, where they believe their minority's basic privileges are denied.
"Three times I lost my house, but I never scorned the Kurdish movement. The PKK and PEJAK have been in our village for years," said 64-year-old farmer Mohammed Wasso, whose property was destroyed during the Iraqi Kurds own hard-fought war with Saddam.
Some describe the PKK as a vital trading partner and protector in a lawless area. Hussein Rashid, 45, regularly hauls gasoline and kerosene from Iran to sell to the guerrillas. He warned, "If the PKK is not here, then this will be a place for terrorism and Iran will send Ansar Al-Islam," a Sunni extremist group with links to al-Qaida.
Shereen Sulaiman, 39, the mother of three children, worried about what Turkey might do to the PKK. "They respect the people and serve the area. They even supply the area with electricity. I don't want them to be hurt," Sulaiman said, wearing a red dress and her hair covered by a black veil said. "They are Kurds like us."
Kurds speak a distinct language and have a separate culture from that of Turks, Iranians and Arabs. They are believed to be the world's largest ethnic group without a state, with a total population estimated at 25 million to 40 million.
During the 20th century, Kurds were embroiled in bloody conflicts against governments in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, countries that at times have destroyed Kurdish villages and executed Kurdish political activists for treason. Saddam slaughtered tens of thousands of Kurds to quell a rebellion in the 1980s.
In the Qandil mountains Thursday, PKK fighters from Syria, Turkey and Iran stood in their green combat fatigues by a well, busy washing their clothes. Others cleaned rifles with rags and brushes. They had hiked from across the mountains to the spot for two or three days of classes on the party's ideology and worldview.
Diyar Swrani, a blue-eyed, pale and thin 25-year-old, was one of the fighters. He had opted for the Spartan life in the mountains to liberate southeastern Turkey for the Kurds instead of staying at home with his family in the thriving city of Sulaymaniya."When I see Kurdistan at the mercy of the enemy's weapon, we must move if we love Kurdistan and call it a country of the Kurds," Swrani said, holding some flowers he had picked in the mountains. He had left his home in Iraq three years ago.
He was casting about after graduating secondary school when he started reading Kurdish nationalist literature and the PKK's founder Abdullah Ocalan seized his imagination. His uncle had friends who had fought for the PKK and he approached them, asked how he could go meet PKK fighters.
They told him to drive to the Qandil mountains, past the last of the Kurdish government checkpoints into the remote terrain that no government controls. His parents argued he should go to university, but he ignored them and left without saying goodbye.
He drove up the switchbacks on hillsides to the guerrilla checkpoints marking the vast territory under nominal PKK control. At first the fighters questioned him, to determine if he was a spy for the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties, which control Sulaymaniya, Irbil and Dahuk. The PKK had fought bitterly with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Democratic Kurdistan Party over the course of the l990s, but since 2000 they had been left alone.
When Swirani answered their questions satisfactorily, the PKK let him stay, and he entered a rigorous six-month training period, which included political and social studies in a mix of Kurdish history and leftist ideology. Their war training would start at the crack of dawn. Their commanders would have them run the Qandil's valleys and mountainsides. They would be drilled through evening on how to handle a gun and respond under enemy fire. Eventually, Swirani wrote to his parents to let them know he was well and invite them to visit.
His main fighting experience came one year ago. He joined a 10-man PKK squad crossing through the mountains into Turkey to launch ambushes on Turkish military convoys. They were camped in the Judi mountain ranger waiting for Turkish army vehicles on the highway at night 100 feet below them. They traded fire for an hour. Outnumbered, they dashed for cover in the hills and made their way back to Iraq. Asked about Turkey's threat to crush PKK camps in Iraq, Swirani said: "We are ready to defend the mountains. ... It must be protected against the Turkish-Arab Nationalists."
Swirani's squad leader stood near by. Sheera Kurdistani, from Iraqi Kurdistan's Zakho mountains, joined the PKK when she was 19, mesmerized by the stories of PKK fighters who sought refuge in her village. At 33, she is a hardened veteran in dusty fatigues, slinging a rifle, with a leathery face and her hair pinned tightly in a bun. She supervises a roadside checkpoint. She expresses no regret over her sacrifices to the PKK. "We have given up our personal lives until we become martyrs or we have reached our aims."