Nearly 50,000 acres of Kurdistan Region land torched by Turkey’s bombs this summer: report

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Turkish and Iranian bombs are likely responsible for setting alight nearly 50,000 acres of land in the Kurdistan Region this summer, according to a new report analyzing satellite imagery, making this one of the worst years for wildfires and sparking concerns for the future of the Region’s biodiversity. 

The Netherlands-based NGO PAX compared reports of Turkish and Iranian artillery fire and airstrikes with satellite imagery showing areas where fires had swept through vegetation between June 1 and October 1. “We found 32 out of 81 reported incident locations were overlapped with burned areas recognized from satellite imagery, with a total of 49,568 acres of burned land that are likely to be linked with the military campaign based on those numbers,” read the report published on Friday.

Turkey and Iran both violate the Kurdistan Region’s borders on a regular basis in pursuit of armed Kurdish groups based in the Zagros Mountains. This summer, the Turkish military carried out an intensive air and ground war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK). The PKK is an armed group fighting for greater cultural and political rights for Kurds in Turkey and PJAK is its Kurdish-Iranian affiliate. 

“With increased droughts and rising temperatures, the risks of rapidly spreading wildfires in Iraqi Kurdistan as a result of military operations have been increasing over the last couple of years. Our quick analysis of the Turkish operations against the PKK shows how they've led to large areas of burned lands as the intense shelling in these dry areas directly causes fires,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, an author of the PAX report. 

“With limited firefighting means in remote areas, these fires could also drive civilians from their homes, destroy their livelihoods and pose risks to firefighters as these areas are littered with unexploded ordnance,” he added. 

In many cases, villagers extinguished raging fires themselves, beating the flames out with branches. “Almost everything is gone,” Omer Abd Ham, the chief of Lere village in Erbil province’s Barzan area, told Rudaw in July about a fire that had been burning for five days, destroying farmlands and forests and killing wild animals.

Likewise, villagers living near Zakho in northern Duhok province put out fires that burned through their abandoned homes and orchards in September . The residents had already fled, driven out by fear of clashes between Turkey and the PKK.

Environmental officials in Duhok and Sulaimani confirmed that 2020 was a bad year for fires. 

It was “one of the worst years for wildfires,” according to Dilshad Mohammed, head of the Duhok office of the Environment Board. “We have summer wildfires almost every year. However, this year we had more wildfires because of Turkey’s military operation.”

The chief of Duhok’s environmental police, Brig. Gen. Kamil Harki, estimated that in recent years, the number of wildfires has increased by as much as 70 percent, because of the Turkey-PKK conflict. “Bombardments are still ongoing, most recently two days ago,” he said. 

The military activity is putting added stress onto an already strained ecosystem that includes grasslands, shrublands, and forests. The Kurdistan Region is a biodiversity hotspot because of its diverse topography and location at a meeting point between climates. It is home to the majority of Iraq’s woodlands. Just 1.4 percent of Iraq is forested and 93 percent of that is located in the Kurdistan Region, but it is disappearing at an alarming rate. 

Between 1999 and 2018, the Kurdistan Region lost 2.2 million acres to fires and deforestation, according to government figures. This summer, PAX detected another 298,750 acres of vegetation that were burned. The NGO estimates 20 percent of the Region’s vegetation has been lost to fires and logging since 2014 and 47 percent since 1999.

All of the wildfires are caused by human activity, according to Mohammed. In addition to those started by bombing campaigns, some are accidental, sparked by farmers doing prescribed burns of their fields after the harvest or careless picnickers with barbeques and shisha pipes. Others are deliberate, set by people who want to clear or repurpose land. And in the summer, when no rain falls for three or four months, the landscape is tinder-dry and fires can quickly flare out of control. 

Forests are also being lost because of the economic crisis brought on by low oil prices, the coronavirus pandemic, and a budget dispute with the federal government. “People are cutting and burning trees because they can’t afford oil,” said Harki. 

Recovering these damaged sites will take a long time and require an investment the cash-strapped government cannot afford to make. Officials have been complaining for years of a lack of budget to protect and maintain the forests. “While it is very easy to burn these forests, it takes just seconds or minutes, planting a tree takes up to ten years,” said Hemin Kamar Khan, spokesperson for Sulaimani’s forestry police. 

PAX’s Zwijnenburg warned that with the climate crisis, the situation is going to get a lot worse. “As the climate crisis pushes up heat and drought, military operations by all warring parties can result in more humanitarian suffering and environmental degradation that impacts lives, livelihoods and the future of the people of Kurdistan."

Additional reporting by Dilan S. Hussein 

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