Kurdish, Iraqi parliamentary delegation investigating villager displacement in Duhok province: MP

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Members of the Kurdistan Region and Iraqi parliaments visited Duhok province on Tuesday to speak with villagers displaced from border areas where Turkey is conducting an operation against alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions, a Kurdish MP has told Rudaw.

“A parliamentary delegation of the Kurdistan Region’s parliament, with some members of the Iraqi council of representatives … is investigating the tension at the border areas in Duhok province, in addition to losses created by this tension between both Turkey and the PKK forces, as well as the PKK and Peshmerga forces,” Shno Shahid Ashqi, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) MP said on Tuesday.

“We are sitting with some of the village chiefs, we are listening to their complaints. They are the ones who have evacuated their villages,” he added.

Ashqi, who is also a member of the Health, Environment and Consumer Rights committee in the Kurdistan Region parliament, said the villagers have said suffered great losses in a number of areas.

Not only “have their trees been cut but all of their lands has been burned and destroyed. They have suffered great losses, more than what is talked about in the media and on social media. Their houses are looted, their electricity destroyed, their livestock is being stolen.”

The delegation will stay in Duhok for two days and will write up a report to be sent to both Erbil and Baghdad. The group is made up of MPs from various committees, including agriculture, health and environment and defense and security.

The visit comes amid multiple incidents in Duhok province, including the ongoing Turkish military operations and reports of Turkish deforestation to make way for military bases. 

Turkish armed forces launched Operations Claw-Lightning and Claw-Thunderbolt in April, targeting alleged PKK positions in northern Duhok province. A goal of the operation is to establish a military base to block PKK movements between the Kurdistan Region and Turkey and Syria.

The PKK is an armed group struggling for the increased rights of Kurds in Turkey. Ankara considers it a terrorist organization and frequently bombards areas in the Kurdistan Region and northern Iraq’s disputed territories on the grounds of targeting PKK positions.

They have been blamed for two separate attacks on Peshmerga forces that resulted in the death of six Peshmerga, allegations the PKK have denied.

News that Turkey has been deforesting areas near the border where it is setting up military outposts has also sparked recent outrage in the Kurdistan Region.

According to Balambo Kokoy, a PUK MP in the parliamentary delegation and the vice-chair of the Interior, Security and Local Councils committee, 17 villages “are completely destroyed” in the Zakho sub-district of Darkar, and the rest of the villages are unsafe for return.

In Zakho’s Batifa sub-district, 13 villages have been destroyed and 60 are in a “very insecure” situation, he added.

Villages have been emptied due to Turkish bombings, with more than 500 villages emptied due to the Turkey-PKK conflict since 1992, according to a Kurdistan Region parliamentary report published last year.

Kakoy says Iraq needs to take a stronger stance on Turkish incursions into the region, which was also discussed by the Iraqi parliament’s foreign relations committee on Tuesday.

”The first step is that we need to be united, and the next step is that we need to tell the Iraqi government that 'if you consider Kurdistan as Iraq for revenue purposes, you need to consider its sovereignty as Iraqi as well.' Arab countries shouldn’t cover their eyes and ears and they shouldn’t accept this violation from the Turkish state,” Kokoy said.

A number of civilians have been injured in the recent Turkish-PKK conflict in the Kurdistan Region.  In the latest incident, one man was injured while working in his vineyard, in addition to two brothers who were injured by bombing while they slept at home.  Another was injured in the village of Deshish in the north of the province.