Jane’s Defense Weekly reported (sorry, no link) last month that the Kur­dis­tan Free­dom and Democ­racy Con­gress (KADEK), the suc­ces­sor to the Kur­dish Work­ers’ Party (PKK), has armed itself with man-portable surface-to-air (SAM) mis­siles along the Turkish-Iraqi bor­der. The news, leaked by the Turk­ish mil­i­tary to the national press, under­scores the Kur­dish rebels’ con­cerns that Turkey may be plan­ning an inva­sion of Iraqi Kur­dis­tan in con­junc­tion with a U.S.-Iraq war.
Accord­ing to the report, KADEK has acquired 70 to 80 Strela-2 mis­siles, and is look­ing to pro­cure more. (These are labeled by NATO as the SA-7 “Grail”.) The arms are posi­tioned in the Harkuk and Kandil moun­tains in north­ern Iraq, and the group is look­ing to fur­ther deploy the mis­siles in the Haf­tanin and Garadag moun­tains. KADEK is also report­edly seek­ing mines and other ordi­nance to be deployed along the bor­der with Turkey’s Sir­nak province. Fight­ers have been repo­si­tioned to the evac­u­ated vil­lages of Haf­tanin, Metine, Zap, Avasin-Basyan and Harkuk in North­ern Iraq. These weapons would pose a seri­ous threat to Turk­ish armed forces oper­at­ing in the region.
The weapons, worth about $200,000, have been acquired from Arme­nia, Iran and Iraq in the last cou­ple of months. Most of the arms are Russ­ian made.