From Baghdad to Erbil (II)

BERLIN/GOETTINGEN/ERBIL (Own report) - Under leadership of the "Society for Threatened Peoples" (GfbV), ethnic chauvinist organizations in Germany are supporting secessionist forces in the Kurdish provinces of Northern Iraq. Already for some time, the GfbV has been demanding that the resource rich Mosul and Kirkuk regions be "integrated" into the "Autonomous Region of Kurdistan". The German Foreign Ministry and the German Green Party are supportive of this demand. For many years, the Green Party has had relations with the Barzani-Clan, which is ruling "Iraqi Kurdistan" and, periodically and openly, been seeking the region's secession from Iraq. Particularly regarding the oil rich Kirkuk Province, the FDP affiliated Friedrich-Naumann Foundation is demanding "power sharing" along ethnic and religious lines, using the catchword "federalism".

Iraqi Kurdistan

According to the "Society for Threatened Peoples" (GfbV, headquartered in Gottingen, Lower Saxony), members of the committee of its Kurdistan/Iraq section have had a meeting with Green Party chairperson, Claudia Roth, at the end of March. The meeting took place at the German Consulate in Erbil (also spelled Irbil), the "capital of the autonomous federal province of Iraqi Kurdistan" - as the GfbV refers to it. At the meeting, with German diplomats in attendance, the demand was also raised to incorporate "the autonomous region of the Turkmen areas lying outside Iraqi Kurdistan."[1] The GfbV includes the Northern Iraqi town Kirkuk into this region. One of the largest oil reserves in the world with an estimated ten to twelve billion barrels is situated near Kirkuk.

Integration

For years, separatist forces in the Northern Iraqi Kurdish provinces have been supported by the GfbV. Already back in 2007, the organization's president, Tilman Zülch, had described the "Autonomous Region of Kurdistan" as a "political entity", having not only a parliament and government, but also a military at its disposal. At the time, Zülch identified several "ethnic minorities", which - in his opinion - were demanding "integration into the federal state Kurdistan," explicitly naming the resource rich regions around Mosul and Kirkuk.[2]

Ethnic-Political Basis

The FDP affiliated Friedrich-Naumann Foundation (FNSt) - a long time GfbV cooperation partner - is also interested in the Kirkuk region. Following several conferences on the subject and in accord with the German Foreign Ministry and the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) [3], the foundation presented a "Berlin Treaty". According to the FNSt, this treaty was signed "behind closed doors and in the absence of representatives of the media" in Mai 2009 "by leading political policy makers of all the important political tendencies and movements in Kirkuk." The foundation also explains that the treaty regulates "power sharing" in the oil-rich Iraqi "crisis-ridden province" of Kirkuk on an ethnic-political basis, particularly including the "distribution of leadership positions" - "from governor to the administrative bodies."[4]

Blood Borders

Iraq's parceling along ethnic lines, favored by the GfbV, corresponds also to earlier US military plans. To insure the control over the resource rich country, the US military proposed, already years ago, partitioning Iraq along the "blood borders" separating Sunnites, Shiites and Kurds.[5] The European Academy Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) organized in the fall of 2006 a seminar for high ranking members of the Iraqi administration, which had the break-up of Iraq into "ethnic minority"-zones on the agenda. The "European Academy", located in Northern Italy's Bolzano is financed by the South Tyrol provincial government and has close ties to the "Federal Union of European Nationalities" (FUEV), which was founded by Nazi-collaborators. And the GfbV is one of the FUEV's most important cooperation partners in the field of the ethnically based "minority policy".[6]

Green Connections

GfbV is not only receiving support from organizations that have an explicit ethnic chauvinist orientation, but also from the German Green Party, whose Chairperson Claudia Roth visited "Iraqi Kurdistan" last March. That had not been her first visit: together with Winfried Nachtwei, the Green Party's armament expert, she met with representatives of the Kurdish provincial government in the summer of 2007 and called for a substantial increase of German "development aid" to the region. The head of the Green Party also called for an increase in German business activities in "Iraqi Kurdistan."[7] Siegfried Martsch, another Green politician, has quasi family ties to the clan of Masud Barzani, the provincial president of the "Autonomous Region of Kurdistan". The former North Rhine-Westphalian parliamentarian, who may refer to himself as "Siggi Barzani", obtained, in 2005, a contract valued at millions for the Voessing engineering office in Düsseldorf - for the planning of a sewage system in Erbil.[8]

Complete Support

In the meantime Voessing has firmly established itself in the "Autonomous Region of Kurdistan". Its most recent project was the planning of Erbil's "German School", which recently opened. The German Foreign Ministry's "cultural work" as manifested in the "German School" is also benefiting from the GfbV's activities: In August 2009, the German Consul General in Erbil, Dr. Oliver Schnakenberg, assured the GfbV of his "full support".[9]

[1] Multiethnischer Vorstand der GfbV-Kurdistan/Irak trifft Claudia Roth im deutschen Konsulat in Arbil; www.gfbv.de 30.03.2010
[2] Tilman Zülch: Kurdische Vielfalt, Vielfalt Kurdistan. In: bedrohte völker_pogrom 242, 3/2007
[3] see also The Modern Image of Germany
[4] Fortschritt für Kirkuk: "Berliner Abkommen" verabschiedet; www.freiheit.org 13.05.2009
[5] see also A Dirty Little Secret
[6] see also Multi-Partisan Directorate
[7] see also Deutsche Brückenbauer
[8] see also Feudale Sonderbeziehungen
[9] Deutscher Generalkonsul besuchte GfbV-Sektion Kurdistan/Irak; www.gfbv.de 17.08.2009


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