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Short of
leaving Iraq altogether, the only chance of escaping
Baghdad’s overwhelming heat and the constant risk of
suicide bombs is to drive to Kurdistan. Little more
than three hours from the capital there is a land of
lakes and mountains, where you can venture outdoors
in the afternoon without having to dash to the
nearest spot of shade. Groves of slender date-palm,
now starting to brim with clumps of fruit, give a
certain dignity to the flatlands of Mesopotamia, but
there comes a time when you long for some undulation
in the landscape, a grassy knoll perhaps, or even a
respectable hill.
Go east, south, or west and there is no chance of
finding it. Travel north and you will. So it is no
surprise that increasing numbers of better-off
Iraqis who can afford a short holiday plump for the
Kurdish area. For 12 years, it was effectively
separate from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and Baghdadis
had little idea what was going on behind the
curtain. Many are stunned to discover a region which
is not just different scenically but has a thriving
economy, minimal unemployment and no serioussecurity
problems. The word has gone out that cities such as
Sulaimaniya are enjoying a boom in house-building.
As a result, workers from the Arab south are also
coming up in droves to take construction jobs.
But nothing is quite what it seems, and beyond the
attractive landscape and the security calm, the
Kurdish region has serious unsolved problems. Its
leaders try to project a united front in Baghdad and
abroad, but few Kurds in the north or Arabs in the
south have forgotten that the region’s two dynasties
spent four of their Saddam-free years fighting a
civil war. Indeed one of them, Massoud Barzani, the
head of the Kurdish Democratic party (KDP), based in
Irbil, even committed the ultimate sin of inviting
Saddam’s tanks to come up and help him push back the
forces of Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), which had advanced from Sulaimaniya.
US mediation produced a truce in 1998, and last year
the armies - known as peshmerga (those who face
death) - helped their US protectors to bring down
Saddam. They reject the label of militias and see
themselves as liberators.
Many Kurds hoped victory would produce unity. They
looked to a plan agreed with the US occupation
authorities in June, under which all Iraqi militias
were supposed to disband and become part of Iraq’s
national army. Barzani and Talabani accepted the
deal but, as Iraq gradually becomes sovereign, they
show no sign of implementing the so-called "peshmerger".
"There are meetings and discussions and, of course,
it would be good to have united Kurdish forces in
the north. But there is no plan for a merger," as
Simko Dizayee, the chief of staff of the PUK’s
peshmerga, puts it.
Kurdistan is due to hold elections for its regional
assembly in January, at the same time as Iraq’s
national elections. They will be the first
parliamentary vote for 12 years. But as long as the
two big parties rule their areas like fiefdoms,
Kurds fear that the peshmerga will act as
intimidators during the forthcoming campaign.
The KDP and the PUK have taken tentative steps to
unite the ministries they control in each half of
the region. Education, health, and justice have
merged, but the more sensitive portfolios of
economic planning and police, as well as the
peshmerga, remain separate.
The parties’ nepotism and lack of internal democracy
also cause anger. Some feel that Barzani and
Talabani failed to exploit their wartime alliance
with the US to extract more concessions on autonomy.
If the elections are free, they may show a surge for
radical nationalist and pro-independence candidates.
"People are very pessimistic. Kurds felt they had
friends abroad but now they don’t. The US and the UK
have their own interests, and we came out
empty-handed," says Bassit Hamaghareeb, the editor
of Khak, a monthly magazine.
His magazine supported a drive for a Kurdish
referendum on independence from Iraq, which the KDP
and the PUK leadership rejected as destabilising. "I
criticise our leadership for not producing a united
voice. They meet behind closed doors and are to
blame for the slowness of the whole process," he
adds. "There is a new generation outside the party
sphere which has its own voice but is not included
in decision-making".
Asos Hardi, who edits Hawlati, a political weekly,
condemns "the false politics of our leaders who
didn’t tell people what was going on. They had
powerful cards in negotiating with the coalition but
didn’t use them. They should have kept people
informed and used pressure from the streets, like
holding protest rallies in Baghdad."
The US plan for disbanding the peshmerga is based on
a twin formula of cash and restructuring. Instead of
the peshmerga being financed by the KDP and the PUK,
the Iraqi ministry of defence will pay them, thereby
cutting the party link. They are to be reduced by at
least two-thirds from their current estimated number
of 75,000, with some pensioned off or retrained for
police or other civilian jobs. The rest will be
divided between border troops, the national guard
and a counter-terrorism force based in Kurdistan.
Kurdish troops, although nominally under the Iraqi
army, will be deployed in the north under Kurdish
command. "We will train, organise and control them
ourselves," said Dizayee. Kurds will also have a
veto on southern battalions coming into Kurdistan.
The danger is that, in spite of the rebadging and
retraining, the new forces may reflect the
geographical split of the old peshmerga. The eastern
border guards and battalions would be under the PUK,
the western ones under the KDP.
Iraqi Kurds have a grotesque history of repression
and brutality under several southern regimes.
Saddam’s chemical warfare, aerial bombing and mass
deportations were not the first persecutions they
had suffered from Arabs, though they were the worst.
With Saddam gone, Kurdistan’s leaders have decided
to give Arab politicians another chance. They have
thrown in their lot with Baghdad and have five
ministers in the unelected, US-approved government.
They are focused on getting as firm guarantees of
autonomy as possible under the new Iraqi
constitution, which will be drafted next year.
Compromising with the Arab majority is an
understandable strategy but the ground needs to be
better prepared. Unless they depoliticise their
militias, accept open debate and cease to behave
like warlords, the two big party leaders may end up
producing a deal with Baghdad which their own people
denounce. Yesterday’s heroes can become tomorrow’s
traitors if they fail to change with the times.
The Guardian
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