A14 FOLIO OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2019
“But it didn’t happen that way.
We’ve been set back two genera-
tions.”
Her husband, from his office
inside the KRG headquarters in
Erbil, is just trying to manage the
shifting realities.
The government is facing polit-
ical pressure – including from ac-
tivists such as Ms. Gilly Khailany –
to do more to support the Kurds
of Rojava. But Mr. Khailany is well
aware that Turkey could quickly
crush the economy of northern
Iraq if Mr. Erdogan wanted to.
“I think more people will come
to the realization that we have to
be realistic. We are in a region
where we have to go through
these people – who some consid-
er to be our enemies – in order to
survive. If we had a border with
any European country, or even an
Asian country, it would have been
different,” Mr. Khailany said. “If
you can’t rely on the United
States of America, who can you
rely on?”
Divisions among the Kurds them-
selves have long been a weak
point. Even in northern Iraq, the
eastern third of the mini-state is
governed by the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK), a long-time
rival of Mr. Barzani’s Kurdish
Democratic Party. The two fac-
tions fought a civil war in the
1990s, and deep animosity lingers
today. Drive east from Erbil and
road quality deteriorates as soon
as you enter PUK-controlled ar-
eas. The money and investment
apparent in Erbil isn’t shared with
Mr. Barzani’s political rivals.
There are also geopolitics at play:
To the extent that Erbil is under
Turkish influence, the PUK is eco-
nomically and politically reliant
on Iran.
Many see a similar dynamic at
play in Erbil’s reluctance to fully
back the YPG in this moment.
While Iraq’s Kurds instinctively
sympathize with their Syrian
cousins – there were calls in the
regional parliament for Iraqi Kur-
dish forces to be sent to fight the
Turkish army alongside the YPG –
the ruling Barzani clan see the
YPG as a rival and a nuisance.
In fact, Erbil has often been ac-
cused of taking Turkey’s side.
Three times during Rojava’s brief
flirtation with U.S.-protected au-
tonomy, Erbil closed its lone bor-
der with Syria in what critics said
was an attempt to score political
points with Mr. Erdogan.
“We used to think a [united
Kurdistan] was possible. In 2014,
2015, 2016, we heard it was a polit-
ical project of the U.S. to unite
these two [Iraqi and Syrian]
parts,” said Abdulselam Mo-
hammed, a 42-year-old Syrian
Kurd and YPG supporter I met in
a teahouse beneath Erbil’s histor-
ic citadel. “Now, I am not optimis-
tic about this, because [Iraqi]
Kurdistan is under the occupa-
tion of Turkey – economically
and sometimes politically.”
Mr. Mohammed was an En-
glish teacher before the outbreak
of Syria’s civil war, then helped
translate documents for the local
administration after Rojava
gained de facto autonomy. He
was forced to move to Erbil in Ja-
nuary because his 17-year-old
daughter developed leukemia
and needed medical treatment
she couldn’t receive in Syria.
He said that if he had a choice,
he would have remained in Roja-
va to face the Turkish invasion.
Instead, he’s watching from afar,
fuming at how quiet the Kurds of
Iraq and Turkey remain while
their Syrian cousins are driven
from their homes.
“Maybe this is our fate, to al-
ways be divided, not to be like
other nations, who have a home,”
Mr. Mohammed said, staring into
an almost-empty glass of tea. “It
makes us weak and easy to be oc-
cupied by our enemies.”BARDARASH REFUGEE CAMP, IRAQThe reunions in the refugee camp
keep happening. Shortly after we
watch the Salam sisters embrace,
another convoy of 19 buses ar-
rives, each carrying between 20
and 30 more refugees from Syria.
Two women dressed in long, col-
ourful chadors shuffle alongside
the convoy as it enters Bardarash,
scanning the buses for their own
long-lost family members.
A young boy and girl lean out
the window of the second-to-last
bus, and the two women – aunts
the children haven’t seen in six
years – reach up and pinch their
cheeks in a moment of pure re-
lief.
A few tents away from the one
Hamdiyah has been assigned
(while she waits for permission to
join her relatives in the Domizcamp), 19-year-old Jihan Mah-
moud was settling into her third
new home in as many months.
Ms. Mahmoud and her family
first fled from their Syrian home-
town of Kobane in 2013, just
ahead of the arrival of the IS. They
lived for six years as refugees in
Turkey before deciding this sum-
mer that it was finally safe to go
home. Now they’re on the run
again, this time fleeing the coun-
try that had until recently given
them refuge.
“I don’t really understand why
this is happening,” Ms. Mahmoud
said, clutching a backpack con-
taining everything she still owns.IBRAHIM KHALIL CROSSING,
IRAQ-TURKEY BORDERCorruption has done as much toundermine the Iraqi Kurdistan
project as any of its neighbours.
We drive west from Bardarash to
the city of Dohuk, then onward to
Iraq’s border with Syria. There,
we discover that the YPG – hop-
ing to prevent a mass exodus of
Kurds from the region – has
sealed its side of the border, forc-
ing refugees to pay smugglers
hundreds of dollars a person to
escape. When we visit the Faysh
Khabur border between Iraq and
Syria on Oct. 24, apeshmergabor-
der guard tells us that not a single
refugee has crossed that day, even
though 1,700 Syrian Kurds would
arrive in Bardarash camp by
nightfall after taking a longer and
more dangerous journey to cross
into Iraq via another route.
Smuggling of a different kind
rules the Iraq-Turkey border.
When we arrive the next day at
the Ibrahim Khalil crossing, An-
drea and I are besieged by taxi
drivers desperate to be the ones
who take us. Driving a Western
traveller across the frontier, I’d
learned the last time, is excellent
cover for a smuggler who doesn’t
want the contents of their car to
be scrutinized too closely.
Determined not to be part of
the racket, Andrea and I found
anotherpeshmergaand told him
we didn’t want to cross with ban-
dits. He nodded his head and
summoned a minibus forward.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “This driv-
er is my friend.”
There were packages of smug-
gled cigarettes crammed into ev-
ery conceivable space in the vehi-
cle.AKCAKALE, TURKEYIn Turkey, the chaos of Iraqi Kur-
distan disappears, replaced by
the grim seriousness of NATO’s
second-largest army. The border
with Iraq is guarded by green
watchtowers. Further in, there are
regular military checkpoints
where cars are forced to drive
through a gauntlet of armoured
personnel carriers and soldiers
clutching M-16 assault rifles as
they stare into passing vehicles.
Rojava is visible out the left
window of our car for most of our
long drive to the border town of
Akcakale, which plays host to the
temporary news media centre
that the Turkish military has set
up for the duration of its cross-
border operation.
The frontier with Syria is lined
with a three-metre-high concrete
wall, topped with razor wire. Pill-
boxes on dirt mounds allow Turk-
ish soldiers to peer over at what is- when we pass – a Russian-led
operation to persuade the YPG to
withdraw.
The effort is part of an agree-
ment reached between Mr. Erdo-
gan and Mr. Putin (whose status
as the region’s main power bro-
ker was confirmed by the precipi-
tous U.S. withdrawal). By
Wednesday, the Russian Ministry
of Defence had announced that
the YPG had withdrawn from the
30-kilometre “safe zone” sought
by Mr. Erdogan. Joint Russian-
Turkish patrols in the area were
due to begin on Friday.
Syrian Kurds fleeing the Turkish incursion in northeastern Syria embrace at the Badarash refugee camp in northern Iraq.
Kurds: Asregionfacesstrain,corruptionexacerbates
FROM ATurkish Kurds pick cotton in the agricultural lands just outside Sanliurfa, a city where animosity is rising
between Turks, Arabs and Kurds.A tourist takes a photo of the reconstruction of Sur, a neighbourhood in Diyarbakir, Turkey, that was levelled
after heavy fighting between Turkish-state and Kurdistan Workers’ Party supporters in 2015.