Word: kurd
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...fact, what flared up last week was two rather separate wars, connected by the thuggish intentions of Saddam Hussein. War A, let's call it, is a nasty struggle for autonomy, power, money and influence among the fractious Kurds in northern Iraq and the sometime-friend, sometime-foe regional powers of Iraq, Iran and Turkey. An alphabet soup of rival Kurds locked in a cynical game of cooperation and betrayal want independence but fight each other more ferociously than anyone else. As the overseer of the Kurd safe haven established after the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. is only tangentially...
Some 40,000 of Saddam Hussein's best-trained and most loyal soldiers took up positions late last week 12 miles south of the city of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and the center of a conflict between rival Kurd factions. And then, despite warnings from Washington, Saddam's forces rolled north toward Erbil. After heavy artillery pounded the city, the Iraqis quickly took control on Saturday. The Iraqi offensive was Saddam's boldest move since the end of the Gulf War five years ago, and set the stage for a new test of wills between Washington and Baghdad...
Under the umbrella of Western protection, two rival Kurd factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, began fighting two years ago over who would control the area. Last year the U.S. brokered a cease-fire between the groups, but that collapsed in late July...
...forces launched missiles into Iraq in retaliation for attacks on Kurd cities, the Kurds remain just as far from realizing their fleeting dream of statehood and continue to be used as pawns in the larger political maneuverings of the region. An estimated 20 million Kurds live in the mountainous regions where the borders of Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq meet. The 2,000-year Kurd history has been plagued by feuds and infighting that have left Kurds, the world's largest ethnic group that has been unable to achieve statehood, vulnerable to outside meddling. Throughout this century, the Kurds have...
...that Washington has succeeded in keeping the sanctions in place for the time being, hard-liners in Saddam's inner circle are urging him to strike against the weakened Kurds. Even the Kurdish people are becoming frustrated with their leaders. "This is the worst time in our history, because it is Kurd killing Kurd," says Shazad Saib, a Talabani representative in Ankara. "We are destroying our newly found homeland." A Kurdish poem laments: "Red roses are the blood of brother slain by brother. When will the mountain rose no longer smell of my brother's blood?" Perhaps never...