SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — In the wake of the death of yet another group of Kurdish civilians in a Jan. 23 attack by Turkish jets and the unprecedented violence that engulfed the occupying Turkish soldiers based in the area, anger is simmering among many Iraqi Kurds living in these highlands toward both the Turkish government and the militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi state for failing to protect them.
These local Kurds, caught between various competing forces, feel abandoned by their government as they go about their lives in their region. “There is not a single family in our region who hasn’t lost a member to the Turkish airstrikes,” rights activist Ahmad Shamki in Shiladeza told Al-Monitor via telephone. “In 1996 my 17-year-old brother Ali was killed in a Turkish airstrike and we could not collect his body for 13 days from our village on the border with Turkey, the same year my wife also lost three relatives in an airstrike and their bodies were never recovered.”
The area in Dahuk province where the strikes take place would have been a popular tourist destination had it not been for the looming threat of violence from the PKK militants and Turkish drones and jets.
In the scorching heat of last summer, I decided to visit the Valley of Balinda near Shiladeza in Dahuk province, the area where the four men were killed recently. The area is stunningly scenic, with lush forest, high peaks and the Ava Sin River, ideal for camping and swimming. Iraqi Arabs and Kurds from all over the country flock to the area in the summer to escape high temperatures. On the road from Dahuk to Shiladeza, we passed at least three Turkish army bases including one in the town of Shiladeza itself. These bases were built and gradually expanded after August 1996 during the Kurdish civil war when the Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein and the Turkish army allied with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) faced off against the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) backed by Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
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