KURDISH MOTHER'S DAY

"When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by women in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings."
~ Julia Ward Howe.

After seeing the reports on Roj TV today of Kurdish mother's out in full strength demonstrating against the violence of the Ankara regime, particularly the persistence of the Saturday Mothers in Istanbul, I'm reminded of the true origin of Mother's Day in the US . . . and it wasn't meant to be the retail event that The System would have you believe today:

"Arise then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

"Say firmly: 'We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says "Disarm! Disarm!" The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.'

"As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.

"In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."

As this weekend's demonstrations prove, it is Kurdish women in general, and Kurdish mothers in particular, who hold the torch for the true meaning of Mother's Day. And you won't see that unity of purpose or strength of numbers among any other group of women anywhere else in the world.

Anneler gününüz kutlu olsun!

FAMILY CONVICTED IN HONOR MURDER

"If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled."
~ Elizabeth Blackwell.

WOW! I am stupefied. A Turkish court finally did something right:

Full family jailed for honor killing act

DİYARBAKIR - A court has sentenced five members of the same family to life imprisonment for the honor killing of Naile Erdaş, 16, who fell pregnant as a result of rape, activists said Monday.

In its verdict Friday, a court in the eastern city of Van sentenced the murder victim's brother to life in jail for the 2006 murder said to have been committed to cleanse the family honor, the Van Women's Association said.

The girl's father, mother and two uncles were also given life sentences for instigating the murder, while a third uncle was jailed for 16 years and eight months for failing to report the murder in one of the heaviest sentences handed down in Turkey for such a killing.

"We can say this verdict is a first in terms of the harshness of the sentences and the fact that the entire family was convicted," Mazlum Bağlı, a researcher into honor killings at Dicle University in Diyarbakır, told AFP.

Zelal Özgökçe of the Van Women's Association welcomed the sentence as an appropriate deterrent. "It is very good that the entire family was punished for the crime," she said. "It will serve as a deterrent. People will become aware that they will face the consequences of an honor killing."

Erdaş fell pregnant as a result of rape but concealed her condition until she was hospitalized for a severe headache during which time doctors discovered she was pregnant.

When the family made threats and offered bribes to get the girl back, doctors decided to keep her in the hospital and informed police and the prosecutor's office. One week after Erdaş gave birth, the prosecutor agreed to send her home after the girl's father promised she would not be harmed. But she was shot dead by her brother a few hours after returning home.

In honor killings, generally prevalent among Turkey's Kurdish community, a so-called family council names a member to murder a female relative who is considered to have sullied the family’s honor. In most cases this is because of an extra-marital affair. In recent years, the government has stepped up efforts to stamp out honor killings.

I have never heard of such a severe sentence before and it comes non too soon. I agree with spokesperson for the Wan Women's Association, Zelal Özgökçe, and hope, too, that this punishment will serve as a deterrent to honor murder.

Now if they'd find a way to go after those who order "honor" suicides:

Among the hundreds of honor killings in Turkey, it is impossible to quantify the forced suicides. A special U.N. rapporteur, Yakin Erturk, was dispatched to the country’s south last year to investigate a rash of suicides. She concluded that some probably had been “instigated” and cited a host of contributing factors: forced and early marriages, denial of reproductive rights, poverty, migration and displacement, among others.

Victims say they’ve been ordered by relatives to kill themselves, locked in rooms with a gun or rope, watched over while they were expected to slit their wrists. The infraction can be as slight as a desire to work or the wearing of jeans, the sentence often decided in a family council.

Handan Coskun, a former journalist, started a women’s center in Diyarbakir in response to suicides she began investigating several years ago, when the rate in southeastern Turkey was two to three times the national rate. There were dozens of cases, many not related to honor issues. One consistency was that far more females committed or attempted suicide than males, which is the opposite of the worldwide pattern.

Those families who do save their daughters from conditions that would be considered "dishonorable" are often ostracized by their own communities, as in this case:

When a Turkish man rescued his daughter after she was abducted by a gang that forced her into prostitution, he was hailed a hero by many in the country. But people in his own home region of south-eastern Anatolia turned against him, because he refused to do what traditional laws of family honour say must be done in a case like this: kill the girl.

“My daughter did not go voluntarily,” the man, who did not want to be identified in order to protect his 18-year-old daughter, told Turkish newspapers last month. “Why should I kill her?”

The idea that a girl or a woman has to pay with her life if she sullies her family’s honour by her conduct is still powerful in some areas of Turkey, especially in the poor Kurdish region in the south-east. In some cases, it is enough if a woman talks to a stranger to seal her fate. Underage boys of the family are often selected to commit so-called honour killings because they can expect lighter prison sentences if convicted.

Almost 300 women have been murdered by family members in Turkey since 2001, according to a new study based on court cases that was published this month.

Osman Celbis, a researcher from the Inonu University in the eastern city of Malatya, told the Anatolian news agency that 288 women and 56 men were killed. Male victims of honour crimes are often killed after cases of rape.

“It is a problem of mentality,” said Remziye Tanrikulu, a lawyer in Diyarbakir, the main city of Turkey’s Kurdish area, and an expert on honour killings.

Yeah, it's a problem of mentality, a mentality that must change. I hope that the court system will continue to crack down on this disgraceful mentality so that change is forced. And if the force necessary to make change happen is harsh, so be it.

ANOTHER WARNING

"The potential of women, who make up half of the society, in the service of the revolution and their hidden and suppressed talents and intelligence in creating an entire society based on equality is the most humane and the most radical characteristic of our revolution."
~ PKK 5th Congress Resolution Concerning the Women's Army and the Free Women's Movement.

Earlier I had posted something about the likely effects of permanent military bases in South Kurdistan, part of which had to do with the possible effects on Kurdish women. It's likely that the effects would seriously impact the work of women's rights activists in a region where repression of women is still all too common.

In 2005, Amnesty International issued a report on the situation of women in Iraq and significant examples of abuse in South Kurdistan are included. The examples provide a snapshot of Kurdish women's situation in the recent past, including the sale of Kurdish young women and girls by the Saddam regime, incidents of honor murders, impunity of honor murders as a result of not vigorously applying the law against such murders, and mutilation as a punishment for "honor" crimes.

The report also mentions abuses of US forces against women detainees in Iraqi Arab prisons. These abuses include sexual torture, a fact which finally came out as a result of General Anthony Taguba's investigation of Abu Ghraib.

Now it appears that an American feminist is conducting research into military prostitution around US bases. According to the information she's pulled together already, the Green Zone is one huge kerxane:

Within the Green Zone, a few brothels have been opened (disguised as a women's shelter, hairdresser, or Chinese restaurant) but are usually closed by authorities after reports about their existence reach the media. The U.S. military claims that it officially forbids its troops to be involved in prostitution. But private contractors brag on sex websites that they have sometimes been able to find Iraqi or foreign women in Baghdad or around U.S. military bases. These highly paid security contractors have much disposable income, and are not held accountable to anyone but their companies.

One contractor employee living in the Green Zone reported in February 2007 that "it took me 4 months to get my connections. We have a PSD [Personal Security Detail] contact who brings us these Iraqi cuties." Western contractors' e-mails also suggest that some Chinese, Filipina, Iranian and Eastern European women may also be prostituted to Americans and other Westerners within Iraq. (Other reports indicate that Chinese women might also be prostituted in Afghanistan, Qatar, and other Muslim countries where it may be difficult for rings to find local women.)

I had previously questioned what impact these vermin called mercenaries would have on the situation. It's well known that these American mercenaries have been involved in sex trafficking in other places where they've operated, such as in Bosnia. In her piece, Debra McNutt clearly indicates that they are engaging in the same kind of trafficking in Iraq.

What's worse for Kurds, however, is that the US military and their dirty mercenaries, intend to turn South Kurdistan into a kerxane:

On leave from Iraq in 2005, Army Reservist Patrick Lackatt said that "For one dollar you can get a prostitute for one hour." But as the war has escalated in Baghdad and the other Arab regions of Iraq, it has become too dangerous for Westerners to move around outside of the military bases and the Green Zone. Contractors are now advising each other to do their "R & R" in the safer northern Kurdish region, or in the bars and hotels of Dubai, the UAE emirate that has become the most open center of prostitution in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, any prostitution rings in Iraq have to go deeper underground to hide from Iraqi militias.

With that, we come to the crucial question: What is the Kurdistan Regional Government prepared to do to immediately thwart the intentions of these barbarians? Or will it, for the right price, be content to play the role of Uncle Tom when it comes to the warmongering whoremongers of the US military?

If so, I hope YJA-STAR will deploy for operations in South Kurdistan as the only means to maintain the honor of Kurdistan. After all, they don't fight only for themselves.

THE WOMEN OF THE PKK, 2

"Any part of society will enjoy freedom and equality to the same degree that women achieve freedom and equality. Women's participation in society will be decisive in establishing a permanent democracy."
~ Abdullah Öcalan, Prison Writings.

Misto left a little calling card in the comments of a recent post, which led to this post, so thanks to Heval Misto for that.

What follows are a series of videos that comprise an entire film, and it's a bit of a multilingual affair. The film is about the women of the PKK, who properly belong to the women's gerîla organization, YJA-STAR (Yekîtiyên Jinên Azad STAR). However, at the time of the making of the film, the women's organization was called PJA (Partiya Jina Azad).

It is generally taken for granted that once one leaves for the mountains there is no return, and while this is true for the male gerîlas of HPG, it is doubly so for the women of the PKK. They are not able to return to their homes and families in the same sense as the males, because they are regarded as "terrorists" by the "civilized" world. In the case of the women gerîlas, they have been liberated by the mountains and by virtue of the fact that they carry weapons for the sake of the Kurdish people. For them to return to a regular Kurdish woman's life in villages, towns, and even cities where they would be considered as less than second-class citizens would be an unthinkable act for them.

For the free women of Kurdistan, returning to an intensely patriarchal, restrictive society would be like trying to force the genie back into the bottle, or recapturing everything Pandora let loose from her box.

Such would be the case even if these free women returned to homes and family in Diaspora--in the Western, "civilized" world, for even there, there is little real freedom for women.

Having breathed free in the mountains of Kurdistan, anything less would be suffocation.

Now--thanks to Heval Misto--more on the women of the PKK:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

SHADOW ARMY

"We're never going to war without the private security industry again in a non-draft environment."
~ former Marine Colonel Jack Holly.

There's a fascinating article at Asia Times on the American shadow army in Iraq--the military contractors, like Blackwater,and how the Democrats are playing along with the Bush administration on the matter. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, and the Asia Times article is just another piece of evidence to back up my assertion.

Here are some snippets:

The 145,000 active-duty US forces are nearly matched by occupation personnel who currently come from such companies as Blackwater USA and the former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which enjoy close personal and political ties with the Bush administration. Until Congress reins in these massive corporate forces and the whopping federal funding that goes into their coffers, partially withdrawing US troops may only set the stage for the increased use of private military companies (and their rent-a-guns) which stand to profit from any kind of privatized future "surge" in Iraq.

[ . . . ]

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Henry Waxman estimates that $4 billion in taxpayers' money has so far been spent in Iraq on armed "security" companies such as Blackwater - with tens of billions more going to other war companies such as KBR and Fluor for "logistical" support. Jan Schakowsky of the House Intelligence Committee believes that up to 40 cents of every dollar spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors.

With such massive government payouts, there is little incentive for these companies to minimize their footprint in the region and every incentive to look for more opportunities to profit - especially if, sooner or later, the "official" US presence shrinks, giving the public a sense of withdrawal, of a winding down of the war.

Even if Bush were to sign the legislation the Democrats have passed, their plan "allows the president the leeway to escalate the use of military security contractors directly on the battlefield", Erik Leaver of the Institute for Policy Studies pointed out. It would "allow the president to continue the war using a mercenary army".

[ . . . ]

More significant, there is absolutely no effective system of oversight or accountability governing contractors and their operations, nor is there any effective law - military or civilian - being applied to their activities.

They have not been subjected to military courts-martial (despite a recent congressional attempt to place them under the Uniform Code of Military Justice), nor have they been prosecuted in US civilian courts - and, no matter what their acts in Iraq, they cannot be prosecuted in Iraqi courts.

[ . . . ]

Despite the tens of thousands of contractors passing through Iraq and several well-documented incidents involving alleged contractor abuses, only two individuals have been ever indicted for crimes there. One was charged with stabbing a fellow contractor, while the other pleaded guilty to the possession of child-pornography images on his computer at Abu Ghraib prison. While dozens of American soldiers have been court-martialed - 64 on murder-related charges - not a single armed contractor has been prosecuted for a crime against an Iraqi. In some cases, where contractors were alleged to have been involved in crimes or deadly incidents, their companies whisked them out of Iraq to safety.

[ . . . ]

Consider the case of Blackwater USA. A decade ago, the company barely existed; and yet its "diplomatic security" contracts since mid-2004, with the State Department alone, total more than $750 million.

Today, Blackwater has become nothing short of the Bush administration's well-paid Praetorian Guard. It protects the US ambassador and other senior officials in Iraq as well as visiting congressional delegations; it trains Afghan security forces and was deployed in the oil-rich Caspian Sea region, setting up a "command and control" center just kilometers from the Iranian border.

[ . . . ]

The man behind this empire is Erik Prince, a secretive, conservative Christian, ex-navy special-force multimillionaire who bankrolls Bush and his allies with major campaign contributions. Among Blackwater's senior executives are Cofer Black, former head of counter-terrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency; Robert Richer, former deputy director of operations at the CIA; Joseph Schmitz, former Pentagon inspector general; and an impressive array of other retired military and intelligence officials. Company executives recently announced the creation of a new private intelligence company, "Total Intelligence", to be headed by Black and Richer.

For the rest, including Democratic collusion, see the Asia Times. More on Blackwater. Blackwater in New Orleans. More on Blackwater, Dyncorp, and others from Mother Jones.



More on Blackwater from Youtube:

Imagine if the Turks set up a company like that.

In other news, from IWPR, self-immolation as suicide among women leads to a boom in plastic surgery in South Kurdistan.

I'm disgusted.

THE MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY

"What encourages me is the Internet. Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself."
~ Bill Moyers.

There's a fabulous, must-read interview with the American journalist, Bill Moyers, with The Christian Century, carried on Truthout, on the media and democracy.

Here's a teaser, on Moyers' assessment of the state of the media in the US today:

Unfortunately, a few huge corporations now dominate the media landscape. And the news business is at war with journalism. Virtually everything the average person sees or hears outside of her own personal communications is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the company's share price. One of the best newspaper groups, Knight Ridder - whose reporters were on to the truth about Iraq early on - was recently sold and broken up because a tiny handful of investors wanted more per share than they were getting.

Almost all the networks carried by most cable systems are owned by one of the major media conglomerates. Two-thirds of today's newspaper markets are monopolies, and they're dumbing down. As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace. And those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content.

Just the other day the major morning broadcast devoted long segments to analyzing why Britney Spears shaved her head, and the death of Anna Nicole Smith got more attention than the Americans or Iraqis killed in Baghdad that week. The next time you're at a newsstand, look at the celebrities staring back at you. In-depth coverage on anything, let alone the bleak facts of power and powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive.

At the same time we have seen the rise of an ideological partisan press that is contemptuous of reality, serves up right-wing propaganda as fact, and attempts to demonize anyone who says otherwise. Its embodiment is Rush Limbaugh. Millions heard him take journalists to task for their reporting on the torture at Abu Ghraib, which he attempted to dismiss as a little necessary sport for soldiers under stress. He said: "This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation. . . . You ever heard of people [who] need to blow some steam off?"

So we can't make the case today that the dominant institutions of the press are guardians of democracy. They actually work to keep reality from us, whether it's the truth of money in politics, the social costs of "free trade," growing inequality, the resegregation of our public schools, or the devastating onward march of environmental deregulation. It's as if we are living on a huge plantation in a story told by the boss man.

What encourages me is the Internet. Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself. The greatest challenge to the conglomeration of the media giants and the malevolent mentality of the partisan press is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution. I'm also buoyed by the beginnings of a movement across the country of people who are fighting to keep mammoth corporations from controlling access to the Internet as they managed to control radio, then television, then cable. To find out more about this, go to Freepress.net or Savetheinternet.com.

Exactly. Brilliant. Sayonara, goat-smelling, egg-sucking mainstream media; you're history.

Read the rest.

For those of you who are concerned about the situation of Kurdish women in Kurdistan, check out the article from the hevals at KurdishInfo on the recent stoning of a teenaged Êzidî girl in Mûsil. Video of this atrocity is available at Jebar.info, while another video is on Youtube.

That's just one more reason to hope for the spread of the women's activist work that PKK is engaged in.

MORE FROM HOUZAN ON KURDISH WOMEN AND SECULARISM

"Throughout December the verbal attacks continued from the mosques throughout Halabja, Erbil and Kirkuk. Then three of Kurdistan's Islamic parties, the United Islamic Party, the Islamic Kurdish League and the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan, joined the debate. By which I mean they bellowed for him [Mariwan Halabjayi] to be punished."
~ Mark Thomas.

Toward the end of March I provided a link to a petition against Shari'a as a major source of law for South Kurdistan, and mentione Houzan Mahmoud as one of the driving forces behind the petition. On Friday, an article written by Houzan appeared in the Guardian's Comment Is Free:

It is clear to the world that in those countries where sharia law is practised - or simply where groups of Islamic militias operate - freedom of expression, speech and association is under threat, if not totally absent. The rights of non-Islamic religious minorities are invariably violated and women suffer disproportionately.

Mmm . . . sounds like that great and secular Model of Democracy, Turkey, doesn't it?

The implementation of sharia law in Kurdistan would be the start of new bloody chapter in the Islamists' history of inhuman violence against the people, of oppression sanctioned by religious law.

In truth, sharia law contains explicit legal prescriptions that justify the violation of women's rights, specifically when it comes to family matters such as inheritance, marriage, divorce and custody of children.

Violent acts against women are already practised in Kurdistan. For decades, Kurdish women have been denied rights and have been oppressed due to patriarchal and religious cultures. Women in Kurdistan are still caught between the "values" of Islamic teaching and the desire for liberation. Thousands of women have been murdered in so-called honour killings, and the slaughter goes on to this day.

Women "self-burning", being forced into marriage and being denied the right to choose a partner are widespread. According to the Kurdistan human rights ministry, more than 533 women are reported to have committed suicide over the past year alone.

Well, if it isn't a damned shame to know that "more than 533 women" have committed suicide within the span of a year in South Kurdistan alone, then I don't know what a damned shame is. To think that patriarchal society places such restrictive, unjust pressure on the Middle East's most courageous, intelligent, and beautiful women is a filthy, stinking shame and a scandal of the worst proportions. Those Kurdish men--and Kurdish women--who continue to support a patriarchal system that brutally represses half of the Kurdish people, should be taken out and publicly horse-whipped within an inch of their lives as an example to everyone else.

I travelled back to Kurdistan in order to meet with two other members of our campaign, Sozan Shehab, member of the Kurdistan parliament, and Stivan Shamzinani, a journalist, to present our petition calling for removal of article seven to the Kurdistan parliament.

We met the committee responsible for the writing of the constitution and we held a press conference in the parliament buildings. Our campaign and our unequivocal demand for secularism became big news in Kurdistan and we were featured in the national papers and on TV channels, radio and websites.

Bijî Houzan, and her comrades, for making the situation of Kurdish women and the question of secularization into the public forum. Certainly there needs to be much public scrutiny of this subject.

The media attention given to our campaign panicked the Islamists, and just few days after our visit to parliament they launched a counter-campaign. They have announced their intention to "campaign to retain the Islamic identity of the Kurdish people". They have started to propagate the nonsense claim, via their various media outlets, that we want to impose secularism and forcibly deny people any right to express their identity as Muslims. Of course, this is simply another cowardly lie from a group of reactionaries who have been put on the back foot by our campaign's successes.

Well, if you want to impose the Turkish flavor of secularism, then of course people will be forcibly denied the right to express any religious identity (as well as any distinct ethnic identity), but the Turkish model is severely flawed anyway. This may be a place where Diaspora Kurds can jump into the battle and explain how secularism in the West has guaranteed the freedom to practice one's religious identity, at least before the jackasses on the fascist Western right purposely began to fuse their ideas about "Islamofascism" (what I prefer to call "totalitarian political Islam") with Islam as a whole.

The same goes, naturally, for the question of ethnic identity. Go to the link to read all of the things Houzan has to say about the campaign for secularism in South Kurdistan.

Deutsche Welle has a little something on the recent verbal sparring between Hewlêr and Ankara. Apparently the EU is urging "restraint." Yeah, I guess they'd have egg on their faces if South Kurdistan turned into another Northern Cyprus-type project for the paşas. I mean, how bad for image would it be to allow Turkey to join the economic club if that happened? They'd have to put off EU accession for at least six months.

I want to point out the third picture in the DW article, particularly the caption. That photo is from the Amed Serhildan last year, and it shows Turkish security forces massacring Kurds in Amed. But the caption gives the impression that those magnificent defenders of Turkish democracy are battling "rebels," meaning HPG. If DW can't or won't put a proper caption on the photos, then don't use the damned photos.

Asia Times has an article on the battle between Hewlêr and Ankara, too. Written by a former Indian ambassador to Turkey, it seems to stress the fact that Ankara already has economic control over South Kurdistan. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, to allow free economic reign to Turkey in South Kurdistan is to simply create a very strong reason for Turkish invasion. Business interests are national and security interests--just look at the US example. Any threat to US business interests is considered a threat to national and security interests, and since Turkey is always looking around with that monkey-see-monkey-do attitude, it's going to use this as another excuse for invasion on top of the Kerkuk issue.

But that's old news. What was interesting about the Asia Times article was something on page 2:

There is an extraordinary passage in the recent book The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End by Peter Galbraith, adviser to the Kurdish regional government. Galbraith reveals how Kurdish leaders themselves are modest in their expectations of Kurdish autonomy but external actors significantly influence them.

Galbraith said, "I realized that the Kurdish leaders had a conceptual problem in planning for a federal Iraq. They were thinking [circa 2003] in terms of devolution of power - meaning that Baghdad grants them rights. I urged that the equation be reversed. In a memo I sent [Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister] Barham [Salih] and [Prime Minister of the KRG] Nechirvan [Barzani] in August, I drew a distinction between the previous autonomy proposals and federalism: 'Federalism is a bottom-up system. The basic organizing unit of the country is the province or state' ...

"In a federal system, residual power lies with the federal unit (that is, state or province); under an autonomy system it rests with the central government. The central government has no ability to revoke a federal status or power: it can revoke an autonomy arrangement ...

"The constitution should state that the constitution of Kurdistan, and laws made pursuant to the constitution, is the supreme law of Kurdistan. Any conflict between laws of Kurdistan and the laws of the constitution of Iraq shall be decided in favor of the former. These ideas eventually became the basis of Kurdistan's proposals for an Iraq constitution."

In short, Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq sought Galbraith's help in 2003 for structuring Iraq's federal system of government, but instead he convinced them about a confederal system of government! Turkey ought to worry now that Galbraith might proceed to convince a hopelessly distracted Bush administration, too, that the Iraqi state was an aberration of history.

Now, I have never read specifically where Peter Galbraith has said that "the Iraqi state was an aberration of history," but I would not be surprised if he actually does believe the statement to be true, which it is. It was constructed with no regard whatsoever for the various ethnicities carved up, shoved together, and ruled by centralized strongmen for most, if not all, of its existence. This was done purely to control energy resources and that's the same reason the US has refused to consider a confederal system of government or to try to negotiate such a an arrangement.

Americans still largely have no clue about the ethnicities of the region. Example, this headline: "Turkey Attacks Iraqi Kurds", the body of which post goes on to describe the ongoing Turkish Terrorist Forces' operations in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, not in South Kurdistan. Turkey did send over a few artillery rounds last Sunday, as always blasting a civilian Başûrî village near Zaxo, but that fact was not addressed in the post.

Those fun-loving fascists at PajamasMedia have posted a little chat one of them had with Ankara's ambassador to the US and if you're so inclined, you can head over there to read Nabi Sensoy's lies. Man, there's nothing I'd rather do than sit and chat over coffee with a genocider and genocide-denier . . . except maybe develop rectal cancer.

On the other hand, Rock the Truth gets an "A" for effort, for recognizing that the Ankara regime has "massacre(d) their Kurds," and for noting that the majority of the almost-proverbial "37,000 people" murdered during the current Kurdish freedom struggle have been Kurds.

Very well done. Maybe there's hope, however dim.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, CIZÎR

"Kurds are one of the “domestic enemies” that this system, controlled by the military, needs to create in order to sustain its domination."
~ Eren Keskin.

A Kurdish woman displays a portrait of the jailed PKK Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan during an international women's day demonstration in Istanbul March 4, 2007. Protesters, mostly Kurdish women, marched in Istanbul on Sunday to celebrate the world women's day which falls on March 8. REUTERS/Osman Orsal.

A 77-year-old Kurdish separatist grandmother was arrested in Cizîr for protesting the poisoning of Ocalan, from Reuters:

Turkish authorities brought charges on Thursday against 31 women for demonstrating in support of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The women, four of them under 18 years old and one as old as 77, had chanted pro-separatist slogans during an unauthorised demonstration on Wednesday in Sirnak province near the Syrian border in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, officials said.

It was not immediately clear how long they might have to spend in jail if convicted.

More from Hurriyet:

The women were arrested in the town of Cizre outside of the southeastern city of Sirnak, a largely Kurdish area. Shouting slogans in support of Ocalan, the women had gathered March 6 in Cizre to protest what they claim is the poisoning efforts against the man nicknamed "Apo." Entering the local Democratic Society Party building in Cizre, the women were then arrested by Anti-Terrorism teams of security forces, and charged with "shouting slogans and carrying posters and banners in a protest that did not have authority to take place."

For allegedly taking part in an "unauthorized" protest (Note: No protests are "authorized" in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan), no one has any idea how long the women will be imprisoned. The big, brave, "anti-terrorist" security forces historically enjoy state protection for torture and rape of women prisoners, so we have a pretty good idea of what is happening to them right now in detention.

The pro-torture Bush Administration released the State Department's current human rights report on Turkey. Let's see what it says about torture and impunity of security forces:

Courts investigated many allegations of abuse and torture by security forces during the year; however, they rarely convicted or punished offenders (see section 1.e.). When courts did convict offenders, punishment generally was minimal and sentences were often suspended. Authorities typically allowed officers accused of abuse to remain on duty and, in occasional cases, promoted them during their trials, which often took years.

[ . . . ]

According to the September AI report, defendants in cases that were transferred from state security courts, abolished in June 2004, to heavy penal courts often faced the same judges and prosecutors who presided over their cases when they were before the state security courts. The report also found that these judges frequently failed to investigate or take into account allegations that confessions were brought about by torture, and allegations of long periods of "unofficial" detention with no access to legal counsel. The report noted that defendants in these cases were being sentenced on the basis of evidence extracted under torture or other ill-treatment.

The TNP and Jandarma received specialized training in a number of areas, including human rights and counterterrorism. According to the government, the armed forces emphasized human rights in training for officers and noncommissioned officers.

During the first nine months of the year, 715 administrative or judicial cases were opened against security personnel and other public officials on torture, maltreatment, or excessive use of force charges. The decision of "acquittal" or "no need to punish" was reached in all 85 maltreatment or torture cases. Out of 630 "excessive use of force" cases, 10 resulted in prison sentences, one resulted in a temporary suspension, 598 resulted in acquittal or no need to punish, and 21 remained ongoing.

Funny, that part about "human rights training" for national police, jandarma, and TSK. I guess that's why they fired up all those protestors and arrested all those kids during the Amed Serhildan last March. But they were only following Erdogan's orders.

Since the 1990's and PKK's approach to women's rights and politicization of the Kurdish people, Kurdish women have been at the forefront of the women's rights movement in Turkey, something even admitted by TDN:

Comparing the numbers in any political demonstration in Turkey, women with Kurdish background immediately are noticed with their great numbers. This helps the visibility of the rallies, protests and demonstrations, as well as the demands. “Kurdish women have always been sensitive on issues of peace and every kind of violence,” said Fitnat Durmuşoğlu, from the Amargi association, a prominent women organization in the country. “They have always shown their sensitivity. They provided acceleration for the movement.”

More proof of PKK's influence on the politicization of Kurds, and Kurdish women in particular, are the number of women DTP mayors and politicians:

To find women in high ranks is pretty hard in Turkey. But the regions where they are mostly concentrated are the east and the Southeast. “They play a major role in the liberation movement of the women all around Turkey, not only in the region,” says [Pinar} Selek. “They have witnessed every hardship as a woman, but they have also suffered more because of their origin.”

Naturally, TDN fails to mention that many of those same DTP mayors have been arrested in recent days. Here's the BBC report on that:

According to one tally, more than 50 DTP members of the pro-Kurdish DTP have been arrested and at least seven senior officials charged in less than a fortnight, our correspondent says.

Party officials argue they are victims of a sustained campaign of harassment, saying the authorities are trying to close the party down before a general election later this year.

There is one bright spot on this International Women's Day, from Çemçemal in South Kurdistan. An adult education program has been set up for area women, as IWPR reports:

Until three months ago, Miryam Majeed’s early morning routine involved feeding her two children and starting on the day’s chores. But now there is a new task that gets her out of bed and fills her with enthusiasm – she has gone back to school.

Now 29, Majeed from Chamchamal, 60 kilometres south of Sulaimaniah in Iraq’s Kurdish region, never received an education as a child. "My father didn’t let me go to school", she explained.

Now she carries her books to classes four days a week, and spends several hours studying at home.

Majeed counts herself lucky that her husband has backed her in her desire to get an education.

"Illiteracy is like being blind," she said, "I always had to ask other people to read me things."

For Kurdistan, Miryam Majeed has one thing necessary to receive an education: a good husband who supports her thirst for education. Kurdish men are critical to the freedom of Kurdish women.

Kurdistan can no longer afford to keep women from education and the mentality that has forced women to remain illiterate must go. Neither is is acceptable to keep women from education by using the excuse that the education is affiliated with one party or another--and in this case, it's not. Such an excuse is just a cover for continued promotion of patriarchal attitudes. If men fear educated women, then they need to examine themselves to find and eradicate the roots of their problem.

If Kurdish men continue to repress Kurdish women, then don't let them come crying about their own repression, lack of freedom, or yearning for independence. They will not have earned it, and I don't care how many years they have spent in the mountains.