European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 10, 1995, Darmstadt, Hesse                                British Soldier Sean Hutchison stands guard while operation provide Comfort commanders meet with Village leaders in Khaner. From Page 1. Of kurd and other ethnic minorities re main trapped in these squalid Concrete collectives which Brownlee describes As somewhere Between benign concentration amps and  this particular collective known As Kha Neq is bulging with 13,000 people from 26 villages. They depend on humanitarian groups for food but there has t been a meal distribution Here in an awfully Long time. R they smuggle they steal they sell pos sessions they scrap whatever they can do to survive says Brownlee a Middle East expert who has spent his career in the infantry and special forces. To Tell you the truth water is their most desperate prob Lem. They Only have drinking water for 35 percent of the people Here and the Quality is bad. So there s a lot of disease Diar Rhea typhoid malaria.". Brownlee has misgivings about the wis Dom of giving these people handouts.1 -.-. If you fix the water problem and you feed them Here you Haven t done any thing Brownlee said. It s a terrible thing War sanctions sapping kurd Hope nday one Man s misery shows plight of Iraq Day will Saddam fall and when in essay Turkey s bitter War with the kurd to say but if you Don t fix the water and Don t feed them Here eventually they will move Back to their villages. So is that maybe not better the kurd Are free to return to their Vil Lages and attempt to rebuild their Homes. But they know it would be almost impossible to Prosper amid Iraq s economic ruins inflation is stripping the value of any currency that they Nave Brownlee says after conferring with the headmaster of Khaner s poorly attended school remakes 700 dinars a month and one of those yellow 10-liter cans of cooking Oil costs700 dinars. So where do you go from there v. \ nowhere especially when the ,-Ledcoalition s embargo against Iraq prohibits Commerce of nearly every kind with other nations to make matters worse Saddam has cutoff Northern Iraq from Trade within the nation. Thus the kurd not Only Are barred from doing business with the rest of the world but they also can t even do business with the rest of the country. About the Only Commerce permitted Isth Sale of fuel to Turkey in Exchange for food. Each Day thousands of turkish truck Drivers wait in lines that stretch for Miles at the iraqi Border for the Chance to trade3,000 pounds of onions or potatoes for a Load of cheap diesel fuel or gasoline that the kurd have smuggled out of Central Iraq. It s the sanctions really that Are crush ing them Brownlee says. The sanctions Are hurting the people of Northern Iraq very badly. But Saddam Hussein will always Finda Way to have the luxuries he s accustomed to no matter what you do. Sanctions will never make him and his Small coterie of friends suffer personally. The Only thin sanctions can do is make the iraqi people so mad that they la take care of him. " that s the contradiction of  s always the philosophical argument do sanctions work and what is the Price you have to pay to make them work the coalition is going to have to squeeze Iraq so tightly to make sanctions effective that the negative Impact it has on the peo ple will be very heavy. At what Point do you say wait a minute. The sanctions might work but they re so bad that they re no Worth it after an hour at Khaner Brownle drives to a number of intact villages Stop Ping at each one to quiz the locals. How i their water Supply have they had any Trou ble from the pkg a group of turkish kurd who use Northern Iraq As a base from which to launch terrorist attacks on Turkey Are their men being killed in the fighting be tween Iraq s Mam kurdish rivals the kurd ish democratic party Kip and the Patri Otic Union of Kurdistan Puk ? j. Ill Tell you another one of the delicious Little ironies of provide Comfort Brownlee tells a reporter Between villages. We have created the conditions in Northern Ira which have provided the kurd with the Lux Ury to Fig teach other. If we weren t Here the common enemy would be in the South and they would be by de Facto required to organize and cooperate for their survival As a people. So As Long As we Revere they can pick on each other because they Don t have to worry about  one reason they Don t have to worry about Saddam is Brownlee s highly visible travels to the various kurdish villages and cd Miami if Ymir my Syria aps a Peter Jaeger the stars and stripes sunday september 10, 1995