ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A potentially explosive three-way standoff is brewing on a picturesque hill range in the Kurdistan Region, between two Peshmerga brigades – one led by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), another belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group fighting for greater cultural and political rights of Kurds in neighbouring Turkey.
Clashes between these three forces in the 1990s claimed the lives of scores, including civilians, and are recalled with regret by officials of all parties concerned. Nearly three decades on, the same forces have set up bases on a 500 metre-long stretch of land in Zini Warte, in the Rawanduz district of Erbil province.
Tensions were initiated on March 16, when a joint Peshmerga brigade made up primarily of KDP troops – but containing a contingent of PUK fighters – was deployed to Zini Warte on the grounds of preventing illegal traffic as part of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) measures to curb the spread of COVID-19.
But both the PUK and PKK have accused the KDP-led joint force of using defense against the global novel coronavirus pandemic for ulterior motives.
Zini Warte lies at a highly strategic crossroads, near a historic KDP-PUK demarcation, and close to the Qandil mountains, where the PKK have been headquartered for decades.
Tensions have so far only manifested in the darting of statements and social media-based accusations between the three, but no side has yet shown willingness to back down. Each force demands the withdrawal of another.
Motives veiled by the virus
The joint KDP-led force’s deployment was made with the stated aim of preventing illegal traffic as part of KRG-ordered movement restrictions to tackle the spread of COVID-19.
However, the PUK sent its own Peshmerga forces to the area on April 2, saying that the KDP-led joint force's real intention is not to curb the spread of the virus, but to stake control of the area the PUK claims for itself.
The PKK set up base in the area on April 8 in response to the deployments. Just one week later, the base was subject to Turkish airstrikes, killing at least three PKK fighters.
In a statement released on the day of the attack, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) – the political umbrella under which the PKK falls – claiming that the KRG-affiliated joint force was not there to protect against the spread of coronavirus, but to create "a new threat to human life" by increasing “the risk of armed conflict between the Kurdish parties."
‘Insidious’ KDP-Turkey collaboration
In the same April 15 statement, the KCK called on both the KDP–led and PUK forces to withdraw from Zini Warte, claiming the area is PKK territory and imperative in their self-defense against Ankara.
Turkey frequently conducts airstrikes on Kurdistan Region sites it says it suspects of housing the PKK, a group Ankara has listed as a terrorist organization. The group is currently headquartered in the Qandil mountains, on the Turkey-Kurdistan Region-Iran border.
The KCK indirectly blamed the KDP for coordinating with Ankara to "eliminate" the PKK in the attack.
"With its insidious plans, our enemy [Turkey] wants to eliminate a force that is waging a liberation struggle and tries to protect the people from occupation," the statement read.
"In order to achieve this, it wants to secure the help of other Kurdish forces and integrate them into its dirty plan. No Kurdish political movement should get involved in these machinations", it added.
Senior PKK commander Duran Kalkan told pro-PKK media outlet Medya Haber on Sunday that the stationing of what he described as a KDP force in Zini Warte as “unacceptable”, and a “situation of war.”
Unlike the KCK statement, Kalkan explicitly named the KDP as complicit in Turkey’s anti-PKK operations in the Kurdistan Region. Kalkan named the US, which also lists the PKK as a terrorist organization, as a bedfellow in Turkish operations.
"At the request of the US and the Turkish state,” the KDP is “acting as an instrument of the planned annihilation attack against the PKK,” ANF reported Kalkan as saying.
"The current development is meant to provoke a Kurdish civil war...The PKK will not accept this, will fight against it and will risk anything. That should be clear," he added.
PKK ‘not a legitimate force’
The KDP denied the "baseless" claims made by the KCK on April 17, saying that the PKK issue involves Turkey alone.
The PKK should seek resolution with Turkey, “rather than sell fighting and create a headache...to the people of the Kurdistan [Region]," read the statement.
President Nechirvan Barzani told reporters in Erbil on Monday that the PKK cannot call on Peshmerga forces to withdraw, as the presence of the former in the area is not legitimate.
"The PKK is not a legitimate force to talk about the presence of this [Peshmerga] force," he said, calling for the PKK to leave the Zini Warte area.
"What Turkey did in Zini Warte was caused by the deployment of a PKK force there and its establishment of a base,” he said. “We informed the PKK they should leave, as we would not be able to protect them."
KDP cooperation would be unnecessary for Turkey, Barzani said, as Ankara’s sophisticated military technology more than suffices in tracking down PKK targets.
A return to the dark days?
The deployment of both KDP-led and PUK forces to Zini Warte has renewed the war of words between the two parties, stoking fear that their relationship could deteriorate to the extent that the Kurdistan Region reverts to the two-administration rule it saw in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the PUK controlled Sulaimani and the KDP held Duhok and Erbil.
President Barzani ruled out the possibility of a split of Kurdistan Region administration into two; instead, a void of government would ensue, he said.
If the two parties were to have an irreconcilable split, “there will not be two administrations, but zero administration," Barzani said on Monday.
Barzani downplayed the extent of the standoff with the PUK.
"It is not a big, unsolvable problem and we are approaching the resolution of the issue," he said, especially while simultaneously grappling with continued prevention of the COVID-19 outbreak, the economic fallout of the virus, and a dramatic drop in the price of oil - the Kurdistan Region’s main source of income.
The party leadership of both thr KDP and PUK have held to discuss events in Zini Warte.
Barzani, who is also deputy leader of the KDP, said the party seeks dialogue with the PUK to broach the disagreement.
A meeting between the two parties will take place soon, Barzani said, though its time and place are as yet undetermined.
How long will the standoff last?
President Barzani said the KDP-led force presence in Zini Warte will only be “temporary,” ending once COVID-19 pandemic movement restrictions are repealed.
“They will surely be withdrawn once they are not needed," Barzani said.
Hazhar Kanabi, commander of the PUK force in Zini Warte, told Rudaw on Saturday that his forces are there for the long haul. Zini Warte has been under PUK control for years, he said; their physical absence from the area only came to be because the PUK fighters that were once stationed there left in 2014, to be deployed to the front line in the fight against Islamic State (ISIS).
"This place has nothing, including oil, but it was previously held by the PUK,” Kanabi said, hinting that their presence in the area is in fact a return to the norm.
How long Zini Warte’s residents will tolerate the surge in military presence is unclear, with ANF reporting that a group of locals protested the presence of both the KDP and PUK in the area.
"We as the people [of the area] have come here to demand the Kurdistan Regional Government [force] to leave the area - both of you," local representative Mohammed Haji told the KDP-led force commander, referring to both the KDP-led and PUK forces.
"A great number of our people have already died due to civil wars," ANF reported Haji as saying.
