Diesel Smugglers Lose Business as War Looms
The truckers want to cross to the town of Zakho where diesel can be bought at prices well below the Turkish price of one dollar a litre in defiance of the United Nations ban on any sales of Iraqi petroleum products outside the food-for-oil program, introduced in 1996 under UN Resolution 986, limiting Iraqi oil to be exported through the Kirkuk pipeline to Turkey or via the Mina al-Bakr terminal on the Persian Gulf.
The official programme revenues, which in 2000 amounted to 12 billion dollars, is administered by the United Nations. Meanwhile as much as 6,000 tons of crude oil was smuggled through this border town every day, a trade worth as much as 600 million dollars a year enriching the Kurdish minority which lives on both sides of the border.
In years past truckers say they could make 600 dollars for every trip until the government decided at first to cash in by taxing the drivers and then suddenly to shut down the trade almost completely in the past year.
"The decision was made purely for commercial reasons," Yusuf Buluc, deputy under secretary for foreign affairs, told reporters. "There is an excess of diesel fuel in Turkey. There is no point in allowing that material to come in."
But local people say that the real reason that Turkish government cracked down on the cross border diesel sales was to cut off funds to the Kurdish Democratic Party and the People's Union of Kurdistan who control northern Iraq in defiance of the Baghdad regime, protected by the no-fly zones that U.S. warplanes have established in the north of that country.
The Turkish government fears that the Iraqi Kurds might establish an independent state if Saddam Hussein is defeated in a possible future war.This state would potentially become a haven for militants from Turkey who have staged a decades long guerrilla war for Kurdish autonomy.
The Kurdish minority who live on the Iraqi side of the border have flourished as a result of the diesel trade. Supermarkets, internet cafes and new vehicles can be easily spotted in northern Iraq while they are almost unknown further south.
Now that this lucrative trade has come to an end, an estimated 50,000 abandoned trucks rust by the side of the road from Turkey to the Iraqi oilfields.
"Normally the trip takes two days but now sometimes we wait for 15 days to cross the border because of the war with America," says Mustapha Ozmez, a trucker from Gaziantep who has been driving across the border for the last ten years.
"The border guards make our life very difficult. We don't have proper papers, in fact we are working illegally so the police can stop us but we have no choice because there are no other jobs. We make just 35 dollars a month but the border guards want 100 dollars for every trip. We have no money for food and we cannot see our families for weeks at a time," he added.
Others have given up completely. Sayeed Darere, a trucker who gave up his vehicle to become a day labourer for local wheat farmers says: " Almost everybody in my village sold their tractors and animals to buy trucks. Now none of them have any jobs at all."
The clampdown has been devastating for the villages in this region. Before sunrise every day Kurdish women dressed in the colourful blouses can be seem gathering twigs from the cotton fields in order to cook food and heat their homes.
Fatima, an older Kurdish woman who lives near the town of Cizre, about 40 kilometres from the border, says she has to get up at 5 every morning to gather wood with her daughters.
" We have been affected very badly by the economic situation. Even our children have to help us in the fields or work as shoeshines in the towns. We are only able to survive because of the grace of Allah," she says.
Back at the Habur gate, in the evening, the Turkish border guards allow a few trucks with valid papers to return from Zakho carrying the official quota of 400 litres of diesel to get them back to the west of the country.
The drivers say that if the situation is bad in Turkey, it is much worse in Iraq. Abdul Kadir Kilij, a driver who drove over the bridge from Iraq where he sold a container of electric pipes and soft drinks, says: "I was very surprised when I first went to northern Iraq. They are really very poor. They cannot even get food to eat - it is really heartbreaking."
But none of the truckers are in favour of a war to oust Saddam Hussein either. Recep Yilmaz, a trucker from Ankara who crossed the bridge shortly after Kilij, says war will simply make the people on both sides of the border suffer even more.
" If somebody gave me a chance I would definitely go to Washington and say to George Bush, don't go to war with Iraq. It would be better if the gate was opened so that they can trade with us," he said. (END/IPS/MM/IF/PC/RAJ/03)