Kurds in Germany Ambivalent about War, Fear for Families

Nineteen-year-old Aran Taha is glued to the television set in his parent’s living room in Berlin's Spandau neighborhood. The images show a country in turmoil: bombs raining down on the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, coalition troops riding in convoys, casualties on both sides and dazed Iraqis scrutinizing the damage caused by missiles and bombs.

"Ten days ago we welcomed the war," Taha told DW-RADIO. "The entire Iraqi population, not just the Kurds or the Shiites, is waiting for its freedom. We all agreed that it was a good thing for the Americans to try to overthrow the regime. But since Turkey has gotten involved, nobody wants it -- we don’t even want the war," he said.

The Taha family spends up to 18 hours a day in front of the television, absorbing the barrage of information. But despite being up-to-date, the predominant feeling for the Taha family is one of helplessness and pain caused by the uncertain fate of their family in northern Iraq and Baghdad.

The telephones lines are still working, but their relatives in Iraq can’t talk openly about the situation. The Tahas know what oppression is. They still have bad memories of the last Gulf War and their flight from Iraq, which ultimately led them to Berlin in 1994.

"I was down to 45 kilograms (99 pounds). And we all had diarrhea," said Nasdar Taha, Aran's mother, recalling conditions in the refugee camp where the family stayed.

"All the 500,000 people in the refugee camp had it too. We had nothing else to wear, it was cold and wet. At the end it was so bad that my uncle in the tent simply couldn’t get up. He had no strength left, nothing. He just died," Aran recalls.

It wasn't the first time the family had to flee its home. The family also had to make a swift exit when Saddam Hussein's regime killed 5,000 Kurds in a poison gas attack on the city of Halabja in 1988.

A refugee crisis

Whether in Turkey or Iraq, the Kurds have had major altercations with both governments. After the Gulf War in 1991, the Kurdish militia broke away from Baghdad’s control and formed its own autonomous region in northern Iraq. When Saddam exacted postwar revenge on the country's Kurdish population, at least 450,000 fled across the border into southern Turkey, exacerbating problems between the country's ethnic Turks and Kurds.

During the 1980s and 1990s, more than 30,000 were killed in Turkey in fighting between Kurds and Turks -- largely under the provocation of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a separatist movement. Though military battles between the two groups have ceased, the region remains highly vulnerable, with both sides skeptical of the other's intentions.

Ankara fears Kurdish fighters now working with U.S. forces in Iraq to open a probable "northern front" in the ongoing war could move to establish an independent Kurdish state.

More importantly, the Turkish government fears that such a move might rekindle the armed Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey’s southeast. Ankara has already made it clear that any attempt by the Kurds to use the war to entrench their autonomy in northern Iraq could be met with force.

Aran Taha believes that if Turkish forces enter northern Iraq it would spell the end for the democratic order in place in the region. He points to the fact that Iraqi Kurds have enjoyed more freedom during the past six years than many Muslim countries.

"It isn’t a perfect democracy. There is still a lot of clan dependency, but freedom of opinion and freedom of the press, we have all that," he said. Aran's father, Badhirkan, dressed in a black training suit and pink flip-flops concurs: "It's better than Turkey, better than Iran, better than Kuwait, better than Egypt."

Caught between the past and present

But despite the fear and uncertainty, Aran refuses to go along with his parents if they decide to go back to Iraq to support his grandparents.

The young, jean-clad youth with a goatee said he has just applied for German citizenship. "I can’t start all over again and learn Kurdish -- that’s your life," he tells his parents. "I can’t do that. Okay, I would go back straight away if they had a German school, a German high school. But not just like that, I can’t start all over again, I can’t."

The one thing the Kurdish family does agree on, however, is that Saddam Hussein’s rule must come to a quick end.

"When Saddam is gone, it will be better. Saddam has destroyed the people’s solidarity and their trust. At the moment everybody is afraid of everybody else. When Saddam goes, things will return to normal," said Nasdar Taha.