No reports on human rights abuses committed by members of the PUK in the area of Sargaloo between 1985 and 1987 could be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate.

For an in-depth description of human rights abuses committed by the PUK, please consult the 1995 Amnesty International report entitled Iraq: Human rights abuses in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991. The report's introductory remarks are the following:

Wide-ranging and serious human rights abuses have been committed by the Kurdish administration and political parties in those regions of Iraqi Kurdistan which have been under their control since 1991. These abuses include the detention of suspected political opponents, among them possible prisoners of conscience; torture and ill-treatment of political and common law detainees and the failure to investigate such abuses adequately; the use of the death penalty and the enactment of legislation increasing the number of offences punishable by death; executions after summary "trials"; and unlawful and deliberate killings of unarmed prisoners and assassinations of political activists and others.

Additional reports of human rights abuses committed by the PUK included the kidnapping of foreigners in northern Iraq and the mistreatment of Assyrian Christians. For example, according to the Assyrian News Agency (AINA),

In another incident, a Kurdish assailant using a shotgun shot Mr. Rimon Emmanuel in the back as he returned home from work in Bebad, Iraq. Mr. Emmanuel sustained several buckshot to his back and head but survived with severe injuries.

Local Kurdish authorities dismissed the case against the assailant after "influential" Kurds in the area intimidated Mr. Emmanuel into dropping charges. The attack against Mr. Emmanuel underscores the refusal of Kurdish authorities to prosecute any attacks against Assyrians.

This most recent series of violent attacks against Assyrians using concealed explosive devices is an escalation in the terror scheme designed to intimidate and subsequently drive out the Assyrians of northern Iraq. In the past, assassinations of Assyrian leaders and civilians, kidnappings, land expropriations, Assyrian educational restrictions, and generalized harassment has been linked to the main Kurdish groups with military capabilities. The overt goal of intimidating the Assyrian community is believed to further ethnically cleanse northern Iraq of Assyrians and to force the remaining Assyrians to acquiesce to Kurdish political objectives.

Amnesty International's February, 1995 report on northern Iraq concluded that "The security apparatus of the KDP, Rekkhistine Taybeti, and that of the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), Dezgay Zanyari, are said to have units akin to assassination squads, whose members receive orders from senior party officials. There is also widespread conviction that such unlawful and deliberate killings could not have been perpetrated without the knowledge, consent or acquiescence of the leaders of these two parties, to whom the security and intelligence apparatuses are ultimately responsible. The names of individuals alleged to be members of assassination squads within the KDP and PUK have been submitted to Amnesty International, including by officials of both parties who supplied information about the other's security and intelligence activities." Amnesty International also disclosed "details of extensive surveillance operations of named individuals, as well as references to killings and attempted killings by the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMIK)."

Assyrians visiting from Iraq have reported that bombings of such technical sophistication must be engineered by these same major Kurdish organizations or the Iraqi regime. Since the Kurdish groups are in control of the area, have remained silent, and have refused to mount any investigation into the attacks, it is generally believed that these Kurdish groups are responsible for the attacks (17 Jan. 1999).

According to the Hellenic Resources Network, a Human Rights Internet project, the U.S. Department of State Patterns of Global Terrorism of April 1997 stated that the

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) militants kidnapped four French workers for Pharmaciens Sans Frontières (Pharmacists Without Borders), a Canadian UNHCR official, and two Iraqis.

In their 1992 book No Friends But the Mountain, John Bullock and Harvey Morris indicated that the PUK

was engaged in a struggle with the smaller left-wing parties in order to establish its supremacy within its area of control. This involved violent attacks by PUK peshmerga against guerilla bases of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party of Kurdistan, with which the KDP had been allied since 1980 under the umbrella of the Democratic National Front. In May 1983 the PUK attacked Communist and PSK headquarters, killing many senior members of both parties and in subsequent intermittent clashes hundreds more died. In these battles the left-wingers lost most of their territory to the PUK" (155-156).

The May 1983 incident is corroborated David McDowall in A Modern History of the Kurds (1996, 347).

According to the book The Kurds: State and Minority in Turkey, Iraq and Iran by James Ciment, during the competition between the KDP and the PUK "over a greater portion of the safe haven in order to control the voting in their sphere of influence. The PUK realized that what it could not win with money, it would have to win with the gun" (1996, 152). Ciment described the behaviour of both KDP and PUK members during the Kurdish civil war of 1994-1995:

In the spring of 1994, the two sides were busily arming themselves for an expected showdown when, in late April, a minor land dispute between Massoud Barzani's KDP and Jala Talabani's PUK. As in all civil wars, the fighting -from May of 1994 to April of 1995, when a cease-fire went into effect-has been fierce, vicious and costly in lives and resources. It has also severely damaged the credibility of Kurds' capacity to govern themselves. According to one American Kurd who visited the region in 1994, both parties, like the gangs of American inner cities, have appropriated colours for themselves, attacking anyone wearing the wrong colour in the wrong place. Moreover, independent human rights monitors have alleged that both sides are killing prisoners.

In early 1995, the fighting arrived at the provisional capital, a supposedly neutral enclave between the KDP and the PUK zones, and by the end of January the city had fallen to the PUK. The death toll was almost 500, including over 40 children. Estimates are that over 5,000 Kurds have died since the fighting began in May 1994, a total greater than the number of Kurds killed over the same period by military forces in Turkey.

In March [1995], a bomb went off, killing 18 civilians, in the town of Zakho. Both sides claimed that Saddam Hussien was behind the attack. For fear of bad publicity, both sides continually downplay the ferocity of the conflict, but inside sources have told Kurdish Times that the bombing was the doing of Talabani [PUK leader]. According to Saeedpour, the fact that the bomb was set off among the oil trucks and truckers who are such an important source of Barzani's income points to the PUK, though it should be noted that Saddam Hussein also has an interest in destroying Kurdish resources (1996, 166).

The New York Times of 22 June 1988 provided the following comments on the kidnapping of foreigners in Kurdish areas;

State Department officials also say the credibility of Kurdish leaders has been tarnished by their practice of seizing foreigners in Kurdish-controlled areas and obtaining ransoms for their release. But Mr. Talabani's involvement was not sufficient to deny him a visa, they said.

Mr. Talabani denied that he has engaged in kidnapping or received ransoms. But he does acknowledge that when foreigners working with the Iraqi regime venture into Kurdish-controlled areas, they are often detained for ''interrogations'' and later turned over to representatives of their governments or companies (22 June 1988).

In 1988, Facts on File: World News Digest reported that

Three Italian engineers kidnapped by the PUK in October 1987 were freed on Feb. 27 after months of quiet diplomacy. The PUK had demanded a halt to Italian aid to Iraq and the departure of the Italian naval flotilla from the gulf. Although Rome ruled out any deal with guerrillas, PUK leader Talabani claimed Italy had agreed not so sell arms to Iraq (17 June 1988).

On 28 May 1985, United Press International (UPI) stated that

Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq have kidnapped 26 people in a campaign to curb foreign support for the Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein, a rebel spokesman said today.

Omar Sheikhmouss, official spokesman of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two major Kurdish guerrilla organizations in Iraq, said 26 technicians were being held hostage at PUK headquarters in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

He said the 26 -- one Chinese, one Italian, two Japanese, six Bulgarians, four Poles, two South Koreans and 10 Romanians -- were being ''treated very well.''

Sheikhmouss charged the hostages had been ''engaged in military or related projects'' in the Kurdish region -- known as Kurdistan.

''All the governments of these foreign nationals have been informed and guaranteed their safety and well-being as well as their eventual release,'' Sheikhmouss said.

He said the group was demanding a commitment from foreign governments and companies not to engage in ''military or related projects in Iraqi Kurdistan without the approval of the PUK.''

The rebels also want foreign governments and companies to press Iraq to stop its ''harsh and repressive polices'' -- particularly the levelling of Kurdish villages believed to be harboring guerrillas, he said.

The guerrillas, supported by Iran and Syria, are waging a guerrilla war against Iraq for greater autonomy for Iraq's estimated 3 million Kurds and a greater share in the country's oil wealth.

Sheikhmouss said the governments of China, Japan, Bulgaria, Poland, South Korea and Romania had asked for proof of the PUK claim that it was holding the hostages.

''We are providing them with letters from the hostages,'' he said.

In 1998, Mideast Mirror reported the following story

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Masoud Barzani has accused its rival, Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), of being behind a massive car bomb blast which killed and injured scores of people in the Kurdish autonomous enclave of northern Iraq on Monday.

But the PUK dismissed the charge, blaming Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime, shut out of the region by Western air power, for the outrage.

The KDP and PUK, which have been engaged in on-off fighting since mid-December, come under heavy criticism by Amnesty International, which accuses both sides of gross human rights violations in the Western-protected enclave whose control they share.

The exact casualty toll from Monday morning's bombing, which occurred in the KDP-controlled town of Zakho near the Turkish border, was still not clear on Tuesday, but reports speak of around 80, perhaps as many as 100, killed and dozens wounded.

The bomb, packed into a red Volkswagen Passat car, tore through a busy marketplace in a section where foreign currency exchange kiosks operate.

A KDP spokesman said the latest casualty reports indicated that 73 people had been killed and 141 injured, but the number of dead could rise, while the PUK said as many as 80 people were killed and dozens wounded. A UN official in Iraq put the number of dead at 76 and "independent sources" quoted by pan-Arab al -Hayat Tuesday said over 100 people may have been killed (28 Feb. 1998).

In a 1998 document produced for INCORE, or the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity and entitled Factors For Cooperation and Conflict in Southern Kurdistan, Omar Sheikhmous provided the following analysis in trying to explain the recurrent violence in the Kurdish political scene of northern Iraq

One of the most important factors that has given rise to conflict is the lacking of a democratic and a pluralist political culture within the parties and movements that exist in Southern Kurdistan. The totalitarian character of these organisations that were modelled on non-democratic nationalist, socialist and communist parties in the Middle East (ironically their leadership organs are still called "Central Committee" and "Political Bureau") resulted in applying ruthless methods for gaining power and acquiring scarce resources by every means in a very poor society without any regard to human life and dignity. This tendency combined with the traditional values and norms of a hierarchical and vertical tribal and social system leads to extreme drives towards monoplisation of power and immense hindrances towards tolerance and acceptance of the other, like what we observe now with the KDP.

Hence, every dissension from it's line of thinking and policy is considered as treason and every demand for pluralism by newly aspiring political organisations is considered a threat to it's very existence and therefore must be eliminated.

Another important factor explaining the level of inter-Kurdish political violence is economic control of commercial goods. As reported in James Ciment's book,

Other problems lie in the Kurds themselves or, more precisely, with their political institutions and leaders. Virtually the entire market for food and other goods is controlled by the two tribal confederations that rule over their respective spheres of influence. Most foreign goods smuggled in or permitted to enter legally under UN guidelines, as well as many domestic products, are sold in urban areas on the black market, which itself is controlled by the KDP and the PUK, and which is regulated by their peshmerga (1996, 13).

For additional information on the PUK, please consult the attached Extremists Groups [Chicago] on Iraqi Kurdish Groups.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum.

References

Amnesty International. March 1995. Iraq: Human rights abuses in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991. (AI Index: MDE 14/01/95) http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aipub/1995/MDE/140195.MDE.txt [Accessed on 27 Aug. 1999]

Assyrian International News Agency (AINA). 17 January 1999. "Terror Campaign Against Assyrians in Northern Iraq." http://www.aina.org/terror.htm [Accessed on 26 Aug. 1999]

Bullock, John, and Morris, Harvey. 1992. No Friends But the Mountain: The Tragic History of the Kurds. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ciment, James. 1996. The Kurds: State and Minority in Turkey, Iraq and Iran. New York: Facts on File, Inc.

Facts on File: World News Digest. 17 June 1988. "Iraq Gains Over Iran in Persian Gulf War; Iraqi Raid Hits 5 Tankers." (NEXIS)

Hellenic Resources Network, Human Rights Internet. http://www.hri.org/docs/USSD-Terror/96/appa.html [Accessed on 25 Aug. 1999]

INCORE, Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity. 1998. Omar Sheikhmous. Factors For Cooperation and Conflict in Southern Kurdistan. http://www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/cds/bonn.html [Accessed on 24 Aug. 1999]

McDowall, David. 1996. A Modern History of the Kurds. New York: I.B. Tauris.

Mideast Mirror [London]. 28 February 1995. "KDP Blames PUK for Massive Car Bomb in Northern Iraq." (NEXIS)

The New York Times. 22 June 1988. Elaine Sciolino. "Kurdish Chief Gains Support in U.S. Visit." (NEXIS)

United Press International (UPI). 28 May 1985. James Dorsey. "Kurdish Rebels Kidnapped 26 People." (NEXIS)

Attachment

Extremists Groups [Chicago]. 1996. "Iraqi Kurdish Groups." Compiled by Jeffrey Builta. Office of International Criminal Justice.