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ERBIL, Iraq - Americans may be
vilified in much of Iraq, but in the 15,000 square
miles encompassing Iraqi
Kurdistan, wedding parties pose with U.S. soldiers,
American flags are posted proudly on dashboards and
officials beg visiting Americans to tell Washington
to establish a permanent military base here.
"That would send a message to everyone not to do
anything to the Kurds," said a visiting professor at
the 14,000-student Salahaddin University in this
sprawling north-central city.
Thirty years of political oppression, poison gas
attacks and outright genocide by the Ba'athist
regime in Baghdad have led northeastern Iraq's 4.5
million Kurds to rethink all their alliances.
Some even suggest contacting the Israelis for
advice. Although most Kurdish Muslims instinctively
distrust Jews, some say Israelis would be eager to
help bolster a Kurdish democracy in the Middle East.
Jews inhabited Kurdistan starting with the
Babylonian exile in 597 B.C. and ending in the
1950s, when many returned to Israel.
Others say Kurds are flirting with Zoroastrianism or
atheism, as Islam is seen as the religion of their
Turkish and Arab oppressors. Evangelical Protestant
missionaries who are quietly planting churches in
the major Kurdish cities report flickers of
interest. Copies of the New Testament, or at least
portions of it, are available in both Kurdish
dialects, and Campus Crusade's "Jesus Film" has been
on Kurdish television several times.
The evangelistic Dallas-based Daystar Television
Network can be seen in any Kurdish home with a
satellite dish.
The Amman, Jordan-based Manara Ministries, a
Christian agency that conducts relief work in
northern Iraq, estimates 200 Kurds have converted to
Christianity in 20 years and that Erbil has at least
one Christian bookstore. Other Christian agencies in
the region agree numbers remain in the low hundreds,
but thousands have received evangelistic literature
and have had some contact with Christians.
Kurds have substituted their own red, yellow, green
and white flag in place of the national Iraqi flag
on flagpoles everywhere. In the few places the Iraqi
flag is displayed, it is the de-Islamicized pre-1991
version before Saddam Hussein added "God is Great"
in Arabic to the red, white, black and green banner.
"Some people are blaming Islam for what's happening
to us," one college professor mused. "But I think
the fault is with the British who divided our land
after World War I. We have tolerated this bitter
reality, but we have never accepted it."
The Kurdish penchant for independent thinking begins
with its "Welcome to Iraqi Kurdistan" sign at the
Iraqi-Turkish border — a calculated insult to
Turkey, which has denied human rights to many of its
15 million to 20 million Kurds and whose border
guards lecture travelers that "Kurdistan" does not
exist.
Kurdistan is an unofficial nation-state encompassing
at least 25 million people in the 74,000-square-mile
mountainous region encompassing chunks of Turkey,
Syria, Iraq and Iran. It is the world's largest
ethnic group without a country of its own.
Kurds were promised a country in the Aug. 10, 1920,
Treaty of Sevres that divided the former Ottoman
Empire among Britain, Turkey and others, and gave
independence to Armenia.
However, the treaty drafted in Sevres, France, was
ignored by Kemal Mustafa Ataturk, founder of modern
Turkey, who did honor the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne
that established Turkey's present borders but
partitioned Kurdistan into four parts.
Kurds generally were oppressed in all their host
countries, resulting in the establishment of exile
communities in Europe and the United States. Iraqi
Kurdistan blossomed after the 1991 Gulf war, when
overflights by British and American fighter jets
generally kept Saddam's forces at bay.
Today, some Baghdad residents are moving their homes
several hundred miles north to tranquil Kurdish
cities such as Dohuk, where legions of peshmerga —
Kurdish militia — patrol the city streets and man
checkpoints on rural routes. The more American — or
Western — a passenger appears to be, the more
quickly one is waved on by the peshmerga. Cars
sporting Baghdad license plates or holding Arab
occupants are pulled over and searched.
One Assyrian Christian driver relates how, while
conducting business in Mosul 40 miles south of Dohuk,
he was threatened at gunpoint by insurgents. He
managed to talk his way out of trouble.
Asked the reason for the AK-47 assault rifle in the
front seat?
"To shoot Arabs with," he said.
Although danger remains, others are enjoying their
new lives.
"I'm 37 years old, but I feel like I am only 1 year
old because I feel freedom now," said the Rev. Mofid
Toma Marcus, an Assyrian Christian monk who oversees
the Monastery of the Virgin Mary in Al Qosh, a
Christian village near the burial spot of the Old
Testament prophet Nahum. "America has given new life
to Iraqi people."
In five years, he said, "Iraq will be better. Under
Saddam, we had no cell phones, no Internet, no
interviews with American journalists. America took
200 years to get to where it is today."
Al Qosh is one of seven Christian villages
stretching north from Mosul.
"We don't give permission for Muslim families to
live in Christian villages," Mr. Marcus said,
explaining that Muslims would gradually turn it into
an Muslim-majority village, then institute Islamic
law.
A half-mile down the road is Bozan, a village
populated by Yezidi Kurds who worship a pre-Islamic
peacock god linked to Zoroastrianism and Mithraism.
The children play in the town square near a
bombed-out school that the monastery is trying to
refurbish.
They run to fetch Elias Khalaf, the headmaster, a
dignified man in a Kurdish-style gray suit with
baggy pants, who begs for Americans to come stay in
some of the monastery's 200 rooms and help rebuild
his school. Missing are all the basics: paint,
windows, water, doors, blackboards, electricity,
desks and toilets.
Thirty teachers toil with 1,100 students, sometimes
as many as 60 per class.
"We need teachers," he begs. "We need everything."
The Yezidis were forced out of their villages 30
years ago by Arab Iraqis, gaining them back only
since the overthrow of Saddam. On their way out, the
Arabs cut the electric lines and poisoned the wells.
Kurdish cities are filled with unemployed men of all
ages idling in cafes to escape the 111-degree heat.
Despite the scorching temperature, many of the
Muslim women cloak themselves in heavy, long-sleeved
jackets, ankle-length skirts and head scarves.
Sulaymania, a city about 80 miles west of the
Iranian border surrounded by hot, rocky, barren
hills, has a reputation for free thinking and
slightly more liberal dress codes. It has become a
center for experimental newspapers that operate on
shoestring budgets. The London-based Institute for
War & Peace Reporting has an office in Sulaymania,
where it tries to instill journalistic standards
into eager but inexperienced reporters.
One student-run paper is in a tiny third-floor
office with no air conditioning. Cold sodas are
brought for the guests, who are told that the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which controls the
northwestern tier of Kurdistan, and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which controls the
southeast, exercise Mafialike control over Kurds.
Any newspaper that criticizes the parties, they say,
finds itself banned from local newsstands.
A similar conversation the next day with an Islamic
newspaper reveals how dissatisfaction with the slow
pace of change is everywhere. At a quiet dinner with
Kurdish businessmen in the touristy suburb of
Sarchinar, the topic of conversation is the failure
of Kurdish political leaders to encourage Western
investment and the reluctance of American companies
to take a chance on the Kurds.
"If you don't move quickly here," one computer
technician said, "the Chinese and the Germans will
fill your place."
The Iranians already have a consulate in Sulaymania,
one is told, while the Americans only have plans for
a consulate in Kirkuk, leaving most of northern Iraq
with no official American presence.
Meanwhile, the Kurds already have a functioning
airport in Erbil and plans are to open another one
soon in Sulaymania. Iraq has been on hold for too
many years, they say. Gas may be 3 cents a gallon
here but passports are impossible to come by,
reducing many Kurds to learning their English from
BBC World telecasts. There is no postal service.
Plus, any Kurdish public figure working with
Westerners knows his life could be snuffed out at
any time. A drive to a lunch interview with
Salahaddin University President Mohammed Sadik in
Erbil begins when two armed bodyguards jump into the
passenger seat of his car and perch on the back
bumper.
Their caution stems from the Feb. 1 suicide bombings
at the Erbil headquarters of the KDP and PUK during
celebrations for an Islamic holiday. More than 56
Kurds, adults and children were killed.
The Kurds at this lunch are distraught over U.N.
Resolution 1546, which they hoped would support
Kurds' semi-independent status. But the resolution
was vague, not even mentioning the regional
government for which Kurds have long campaigned.
Furious Kurds now refer to L. Paul Bremer, who
served as the United States' Iraq administrator
after the fall of Saddam, as "Lawrence of Arabia"
for selling them short to Arab rulers who have
little experience or taste for democracy.
"We feel Americans have bargained at the expense of
the Kurds," Mr. Sadik said. "The worst person they
brought here was Mr. Bremer, who didn't want to take
any advice from the Kurds but who was willing to
bargain with everyone else."
All the lunch guests scoffed at the notion of "a new
Iraq" touted by the Americans.
"We have nothing in common with the rest of Iraq,"
said Kirmanj Gundi, a Tennessee State professor
visiting his homeland. "Why did Bremer always
compromise on Kurdish interests in favor of the
Shi'ites and Sunnis who shoot at them?
"If America supports us, we'd be the most loyal
friend in the region."
Every Kurd in the room wanted independence. Why,
they asked, was America so quick to recognize Israel
56 years ago but today raises objection after
objection about Kurdish independence.
"When America decided to recognize Israel," one
said, "America didn't care about how the 22 Arab
countries would react or how the 56 Islamic
countries would react. So why should the Kurds care
what the Iraqi government thinks?"
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