IRAQ: ETHNIC CLEANSING

WSW: State Department cable details ethnic cleansing by US-backed forces in Iraq

US-backed Kurdish police and security units have kidnapped hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmen in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, according to a confidential State Department cable leaked to the Washington Post.

Quoting from the cable, the Post on Wednesday reported that the kidnappings, accompanied in some cases by torture and ransom demands, were part of a “concerted and widespread initiative” by the two leading Kurdish parties “to exercise authority in Kirkuk in an increasingly provocative manner.”

The Kurdish parties are playing a role analogous to that of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the US and NATO military assault on Serbia in 1999. The Clinton administration intervened in the former Yugoslavia using the abuses of the Milosevic government in Serbia as a pretext.

Wahington Post: Kurdish Officials Sanction Abductions in Kirkuk

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Police and security units, forces led by Kurdish political parties and backed by the U.S. military, have abducted hundreds of minority Arabs and Turkmens in this intensely volatile city and spirited them to prisons in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, government documents and families of the victims.

Seized off the streets of Kirkuk or in joint U.S.-Iraqi raids, the men have been transferred secretly and in violation of Iraqi law to prisons in the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, sometimes with the knowledge of U.S. forces. The detainees, including merchants, members of tribal families and soldiers, have often remained missing for months; some have been tortured, according to released prisoners and the Kirkuk police chief.