Kurds Iraq

As the U.S. military mission to protect Kurds in northern Iraq nears an end, Kurdish leaders claimed Tuesday that the withdrawal may force them to sign a one-sided agreement with Saddam Hussein that will help extend his control throughout Iraq and entrench his dictatorship.

The U.S.-led task force to save Kurdish refugees on the Turkey-Iraq border ended the first part of its mission Tuesday, and allied spokesmen said that in just eight weeks most of the nearly half-million refugees have been persuaded to head back to their homes in Iraq. Task Force Alfa, the allied military group set up to help relieve the suffering in Turkish border camps as Kurds fled Iraq after their abortive rebellion in March, has been disbanded, said U.S. Navy Cmdr.

The human disaster in the mountains of Kurdistan has forced President Bush to take a step he resisted for more than a month: accepting an essentially open-ended commitment to defend hundreds of thousands of Kurds well inside the territory of a hostile Iraq. For weeks, Administration officials had insisted that the U.S. military could not take major steps to protect the Kurds because to do so would lead inexorably to "a quagmire" of involvement in Iraq's bloody internal strife.

Setting Turkey firmly on a new course in its Middle East policy, new Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel has launched a two-pronged initiative in an attempt to resolve one of his most important problems, the region's 20 million Kurds. In Turkey's Kurdish southeast, Demirel has promised a new era of respect for human rights and cultural freedoms for a 12-million-strong minority whose existence the Turkish republic refused to acknowledge for more than 65 years.

Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan's futile search for a new base and his return to Turkey mark a new chapter in the Kurdish conflict. Some key facts about the Kurdish problem: Q: Who are the Kurds and how many are there? A: There are 20 million to 25 million Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia and Iraq. About 12 million live in Turkey, most in the poor southeastern region. Kurds share a common language, related to Iranian, and are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims.

Iran has asked for international assistance to cope with the influx of more than 1 million Kurdish refugees--many suffering from illness, exposure and hunger--massed in the last three days on its border with Iraq, the official Iranian news agency reported Thursday. Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati has called for help from the Office of the U.N.

The U.N. Security Council, declaring a threat to international peace, demanded Friday that Saddam Hussein stop repressing the Kurds within Iraq and allow immediate access by humanitarian organizations to offer emergency assistance. The resolution was an unusual U.N. comment on another nation's internal affairs, and some delegates argued against it on those grounds.

The political position of the Kurds, the roughly 3.5 million non-Arab people who inhabit most of northern Iraq, has improved markedly in the months since many Kurds fled from Iraqi troops and won the sympathy of the world through their ordeal in the mountains. For almost four months, Kurdish leaders have been in negotiation with Saddam Hussein for an agreement that would formally give them local government powers.

Questions and answers on the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War: Question: What are the goals of the two separate groups of rebels fighting against the Iraqi government? Answer: In northern Iraq, the rebellion was mounted by Kurds, the dominant ethnic group in that region. In the south, the revolt was begun by Shiite Muslims, by far the largest religious group in that area.

President Saddam Hussein's regime has expelled hundreds of ethnic Kurds and other non-Arab minorities to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq in recent months despite repeated warnings from the U.N., officials say. Tens of thousands were forced to leave oil-rich areas under the Iraqi leader's control after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, but the expulsions then slowed. The daily deportations have increased again in the past six months.