Senator LIGHTFOOT (7:45 PM) —I thank the opposition for their assistance in this matter. My contribution tonight in my 10-minute statement begins with the quotation of a couple of paragraphs by the authors of Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography, Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi:

It is not only the Kurds who have suffered, although it is upon this ethnic group that I intend to focus my attention tonight. In 1933, the Iraqi army committed atrocities against 3,000 members of an ethnic minority community in northern Iraq in retaliation for their demands for ethnic and religious recognition. Following this mass murder, celebrations were held throughout the country, the perpetrators were lauded by the masses and their acts were treated as heroic. The victims in this instance happened to be Assyrian but they may well have been any one of the other minorities that have been the targets of a succession of genocidal dictators. It is against this environment of ethnic cleansing that minorities in Iraq have been struggling for decades and from which our forces of the coalition of the willing hope to free them.

Who are the Kurds? Kurds represent the largest minority group in the Middle East. Despite this, they are without their own homeland. Disenfranchised due to their ethnicity, the traditionally demarcated lines of their country, Kurdistan, have been violated and the people left homeless. Even in their countries of residence they have been disenfranchised due to their being different. The Kurds are the descendents of Indo-European tribes who settled amongst the aboriginal inhabitants of the Zagros mountains around 2000 BC. The earliest reference to `Kurds' occurred in the sixth century at the time of the Arab conquests; it was used to denote nomadic people and at that time was thought to denote socioeconomic status rather than race. Tribes became Kurdish by culture and language, and their ethnic identity does not imply a singular racial origin.

I turn to the Kurdish population. The question of the Kurdish population is a controversial issue that is virtually impossible to answer accurately due to regional government practices with regard to Kurds. In Iraq, however, Kurds account for more than 20 per cent of the population of 23.5 million, of which 97 per cent are Muslim. The greatest concentration of Kurds live where they have always traditionally lived: in the mountainous regions where Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria meet, an area that has been called Kurdistan since the 13th century. Kurdistan borders cannot be drawn without contention, excepting a demographic map that reflects where the greatest concentrations of Kurds are distributed. It is an area that covers approximately 230,000 square kilometres, or a quarter of the size of Western Australia. The area where Kurds predominate in northern Iraq is a region of about 83,000 square kilometres, roughly the same size as Austria. The significance of Kurdistan has always been mainly strategic; powers have sought to co-opt tribal chiefs to secure three things: troops for the Muslim armies; relatively secure trade routes across Kurdistan, notably the silk road from Central Asia; and the repulsion of any external challengers to the then government's nominal sovereignty. The Kurds of today have a good command of Arabic, with some of the local population being more fluent in Arabic than in their own Kurdish dialect. Many are multilingual.

I turn to the Kurdish religion. Although Kurds embraced Islam following the Arab conquests in the seventh century AD, religious belief plays no part in Kurdish distinctiveness. The current leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, His Excellency Jalal Talabani—a man whom I have met and admire greatly—has done much for the minority Christian community and the Christians in northern Iraq. As a result, they enjoy freedom of religion and worship.

I turn to the peace settlement of 1918 and after. The demise of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 saw foreign armies in its former territories, the British occupying almost all of present-day Iraq and foreign powers involved in the drafting of plans for that region. The then United States President, Woodrow Wilson, in point 12 of his 14- point programme for world peace, stated his idealistic principle that non-Turkish minorities of the Ottoman Empire should be `assured of an absolute unmolested opportunity for autonomous development'. The Treaty of Sevres was signed on 20 August 1920 and it promised the Kurds a state of their own, conditional however on their presenting themselves to the League of Nations, within one year from the date of signing, as unified in desiring independence from Turkey. Unfortunately, the authors of the treaty failed to recognise that Kurds were ill placed to take advantage of an opportunity couched in that way, due to their social structure, which was rural, highly decentralised and largely tribal, making cohesive leadership virtually impossible. Kurdish society was split between secessionists, autonomists and those content with assimilation into Turkish society. Lacking at that time a cogent nationalistic policy, they were unable to make use of the provisions of that treaty. The offer was then rescinded under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

I turn to human rights atrocities against the Kurds, the Kurds in Turkey and the regime of Kemal Ataturk. At the peace conference in Lausanne in 1923, Musal Kemal managed to re-establish complete and undivided sovereignty over what is now modern-day Turkey and won the support of the Kurds by appealing to Muslim unity. It later became clear that he was to dismantle the Muslim state and create a Turkish state under European and authoritarian lines, alienating the Kurds by dissolving all public vestiges of Kurdish identity. A short-lived revolt, led by Naqshbandi Sheikh Said and mainly confined to the Sunni tribes, broke out in February of 1925 and was a catalyst for the beginning of a tradition of human rights atrocities against the Kurds by the Turks. Kemal Ataturk aimed to suppress any opposition to his ideology of a one-party state and he combined this with a view that the Kurds were dispensable. The revolt opened the way for a wholesale suppression of Kurdistan. Thousands were killed and hundreds of villages razed with the `pacification' process itself provoking other tribes into rebellion until 1927. Laws were introduced to give security forces a free hand to commit massacres and other atrocities throughout the second half of 1930 without fear of persecution.

Numerous acts of human rights abuse have been committed in Turkey since the 1920s and I believe that there is serious cause for concern with Turkey being a member of the Council of Europe. Turkey has signed and ratified the European Convention on Human Rights, which has been incorporated into its domestic law and should, in theory, be applicable in Turkish courts of law. Still, Turkey continues to deny freedom of expression, a free press and freedom of assembly. Turkey denies its widespread use of extrajudicial killings by security forces, its methods and practice of village evacuation, and the coercion of people into its village militia force. All these denials are violations of the convention to which they are a willing signatory.

I now turn to human rights atrocities against Kurds in Iraq. The conflict with the Kurds in Iraq stems largely from the strategic position that its people occupy in mountainous areas where Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey converge. This is particularly so today. The Kurds are well established in the northern regions of Iraq—the oil and resource rich northern regions of that country. In 1968 when the Ba'ath Party seized power it saw that there was little use in fighting the Kurds unless it had the power to defeat them. That regime preferred to deal with the Kurdish Party rather than Mulla Mustafa of the Kurdish Democratic Party—the KDP. Since the KDP's ideologies were more closely aligned, Saddam Hussein chose to deal with Mulla Mustafa. Each stage of failed negotiations with the Kurdish leaders resulted in fresh attacks and atrocities on the Kurdish people.

I would now like to speak about human rights atrocities committed against Kurds in Iraq. By 1987 the Kurds, with the support of Iran, controlled most of Iraqi Kurdistan. Saddam Hussein appointed his cousin General Ali Hasan al-Majid to take charge of northern Iraq, with full authority and powers to eliminate the Kurdish rebellion. Destruction of villages, pollution of water supplies, detonations and mass murders using chemical weapons were some of the methods that General Hasan al-Majid used to put down the rebellion. It was due to his barbarous methods of annihilation that Saddam's notorious cousin became better known to us as Chemical Ali. A committed terrorist, he was captured by US forces last August.

Chemical Ali oversaw, on behalf of his cousin, two of the worst episodes in Saddam Hussein's already unforgettably vicious dictatorship. They were codenamed Anfal and Halabja. The broad purpose of the Anfal campaign was to eliminate resistance by the Kurds by any means necessary—and many that were not necessary. Its specific aim was to cleanse the region of `saboteurs', who included all males between the ages of 15 and 70. Mass executions were carried out in the targeted villages and surrounding plains. (Time expired)

Senator LIGHTFOOT —I seek leave to incorporate the balance of my speech.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Halabja

Chronology of Kurds in Iraq

1918

President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points Woodrow Wilson was committed to the ideal of self-determination for all peoples. The Twelfth Point stated that non-Turkish nationalities living under Ottoman control “should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.”

1920 Treaty of Sevres

At the end of World War I, the Allied Powers met to determine the political future of lands and peoples in the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Treaty provided for independence from Turkey in those parts of Anatolia where Kurds were in the majority and set forth a political mechanism for the establishment of a Kurdish state that was to have encompassed the vilayet of Mosul. The Treaty of Sevres was signed but never ratified

1923The Treaty of Lausanne

The Treaty of Lausanne superseded the Treaty of Sevres. The Kurds were not given autonomy and the areas where they lived were distributed between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria and the Soviet Union. The League of Nations delegation to Mosul in 1923 to determine the wishes of the Kurds there reported they wanted an independent state.

1924The British View

The British High Commission issued a statement on Dec 24, 1924, “Recognising the right of the Kurds living within the frontiers of Iraq to establish a Kurdish government inside these frontiers.”

1932Iraqi Independence

In 1932, Iraq was granted full independence by the British and the Kurdish problem was left unresolved.

1946Republic of Mahabad

In Iran, Kurds established the short-lived Republic of Mahabad, which survived from January 1946 until December 1946.

1946Creation of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iraq

This party changed its name to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq in 1953 to emphasize the inclusion of the non-Kurdish communities of Iraqi Kurdistan.

1958Iraq under Abd al Karim Qasim

After the monarchy was overthrown, Qasim encouraged the participation of Kurds in the new government until his new power was consolidated. In 1959, the new government began to clamp down on all dissident groups including the Kurds. In 1961, a Kurdish rebellion broke out which continues intermittently for the next fourteen years.

1963Phase 1 of the Ethnic Cleansing and Arabisation Campaign

The ethnic cleansing and Arabisation campaign began when the Ba'ath `Party first came to power in 1963 and lasted until the temporary removal of the Ba'ath leadership in February 1964. During this time, the Iraqi regime began destroying most of the Shorgha, Azadi, and Akhur Hussein neighbourhoods inside the city of Kirkuk. Hundreds of houses were flattened using bulldozers. The inhabitants of some forty villages in the Kirkuk governate were forcibly evicted and Arabs from the south and centre of Iraq resettled there.

1970Autonomy Agreement between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Government of Iraq

On March 11, 1970, an autonomy agreement was worked out between the KDP and the central government which acknowledged the existence of Kurds and granted certain rights, but included only three of five Kurdish provinces. It excluded provinces like Kirkuk which contain oil.

1974Creation of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)

It was established in June 1975 in Damascus, Syria, after the collapse of the Kurdish rebellion that same year.

1980The Iran-Iraq War

While many Kurds fought against the Iranians during this war, others continued the rebellion against the central government, often with Iranian support. This diverted Iraqi troops from the battlefront to the Kurdish areas.

1984Phase III of the Arabisation Campaign

After another failed attempt at negotiation in 1984, the regime began systematic destruction of villages, homes, churches and mosques in the Kurdish areas. Its operation reached a final stage in the Anfal campaign of 1988. Some 1,200 villages were destroyed during this one year alone. It is estimated that 182,000 people died as a result of the Anfal Campaign. The number of persons unaccounted for or killed during the three phases of the ethnic cleansing and Arabisation campaign is estimated at 300,000. The total number of villages destroyed during all phases is estimated to be more than 4,000

1988 Halabja

In March 1988, Iraq attacked the town of Halabja over three days using a mix of chemicals that resulted in the deaths of around 5,000 civilians immediately and many more over the next few years.

1990 Sanctions

Under UN SCR-661 passed in August 1990, sanctions were imposed on Iraq with the intention of forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

1991The Gulf War

Kurds were encouraged by the United States to rise up against the government and overthrow Saddam Hussein. The uprising began in March 1991, but coalition forces did not help the Kurds. At first, the Kurds were successful in driving out the Iraqi army from their territory but the Iraqi Army regrouped and crushed the rebellion. In the north, almost two million people fled Saddam's forces, seeking refuge in Iran and Turkey. International outrage forced the coalition and the UN to take action. The Kurdistan National Front was formed to organise an administration of public services in the area.

1992 Elections

In May 1992, elections were held in the newly established Kurdish safe haven with international observers in attendance. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was formed and 105 members of the Kurdistan national Assembly (Parliament) were elected.

2002 Reconvening of the Kurdistan National Assembly. For the first time since 1994, the full Kurdistan National Assembly convened in Erbil on October 4th 2002.

TODAY IN IRAQ

The Iraqi Governing Council. This 25 member council is the principal body of the interim administration of Iraq called for in UN Security Council Resolution 1483. The Council will exercise specific powers in addition to representing the interests of the Iraqi people to the Coalition Provisional Authority and to the international community.

The Council has two Kurdish Leaders. One is Massoud Barzani, current leader and son of the founder of the Kurdistan Diplomatic Party whose 3 brothers disappeared during a massacre by the Baghdad regime.

The other is Jalal Talabani.

I spoke earlier of Mr Jalal Talabani who visited Australia last August as, the then, President of the Iraqi Governing Council—the interim Iraqi Government.

An advocate for his Kurdish people for more than 50 years, at only 13 years of age he formed a secret Kurdish student association. At 14 he became a member of the Kurdish Democratic Party and at 18 he was elected to their central committee. Denied admission to medical school by the Hashemite monarchy due to his political activities he entered law school in 1953 but went into hiding three years later to escape arrest. He was unable to return to his studies until the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in 1958. Graduating one year later and served his military duty in the Iraqi army in artillery and armour and tank units.

When the Kurdish people revolted against the Bagdad government in 1961, Mr Talabani took charge of the Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya battle fronts, organised and led the resistance in the northern regions. In 1962 he led a coordinated offensive that brought about the liberation of the district of Sharbazher from Iraqi government forces. When he was not engaged in the physical defence of his people, Talabani undertook diplomatic missions, representing Kurds in Europe and the Middle East.

In 1975, following a disastrous attempted revolt by the Kurds, Jalal Talabani, with a group of Kurdish intellectuals and activists, founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan or PUK. Since then he had taken an active part in the Kurds struggle to free themselves from the brutal reign of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

During his visit last August, Mr Talabani explained his proximity to the terrorist activities in Iraq; the activities of Iraq's fundamentalist Muslims, how they are against the new democratic climate and environment which is growing in the wake of the collapse of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.

He said “we are in need to rebuild Iraq and to reshape it on democratic principle. We are determined to have a democratic parliamentarian, federative and independent Iraq with full sovereignty. For that of course, one day we want to see the coalition forces going back home”.

“But when?” he asked.

“We think now if they leave there will be chaos and even civil war and the possibility for our neighbours interfering.”

“When the democratic Iraq has been established, when we have our government freely elected and our parliament and when we rebuild our security forces—then I think there will be the day that we ask coalition forces to go home”

Those words from Jalal Talabani, the man known to many as “The Leader of the Kurds”