ABSTRACT
On 24 July, Abdullah Ocalan retaliated by 'successfully placing an embargo on trade between Turkey and northern Iraq' by shelling the Harbur border through which virtually all international aid and imports for Iraqi Kurdistan passed. Yet, in 1991, out of the debris of utter defeat and the suffering and grief of genocide, like a phoenix from the ashes, the Kurds in Iraq emerged almost born again, and, virtually overnight, came to determine their own fate by crafting the most independent political entity in Kurdish history. When, in October 1991, the negotiations between the Iraqi Kurdish parties and Baghdad on an autonomy statute broke down without result, Saddam Hussein, demonstrably a man of questionable strategic acumen, took a most unusual step. Both Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) received support from the same external actors, Iran and Syria, and the PKK prepared its assault on the Kurdistan Democratic Party from PUK territory.
