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SAID
SADIQ, Iraq -- Brigadier Rahim Mohammed Shakur's
allegiance to the Iraqi Army is about as solid as
the faxed sheet of paper he received two weeks ago,
announcing that his Kurdish peshmerga fighters were
now regular Iraqi soldiers, under Baghdad's command.
"I am a Kurd," Shakur, 42, said cheerfully last
week, as his tank battalion trained with 100 Soviet
tanks and armored personnel carriers that his
fighters raided from Saddam Hussein's army in April
2003. "If we are ever attacked, I will stop being a
regular Iraqi soldier and become a peshmerga again."
Iraqi Kurdistan's de facto independence from Baghdad
-- and the popular desire in the three northern
provinces to secede from Iraq -- could pose one of
the thorniest problems over the coming year for the
ethnic, religious, and political factions trying to
craft a new Iraqi federal constitution.
The importance of the Kurds is not lost on US
officials; on Monday, as American forces launched
the attack on Fallujah, US Ambassador John
Negroponte flew from Baghdad to Sulaymaniyah for a
day to ask leaders from the PUK to commit to a
smooth national election process.
As the sole oasis of stability and unwavering
support for US policy in Iraq, the Kurds have made
themselves an indispensable linchpin of Washington's
hope to fashion a democratic Iraq. But the Kurds are
wary allies, suspicious that the United States will
barter Kurdish autonomy for the support of Iraq's
Arab majority. And public opinion in the Kurdish
provinces leans heavily toward declaring
independence: about 1.7 million people signed a
petition in April demanding a popular referendum on
secession, and the independence movement has
scheduled another conference for this week.
"I have no connection to Iraq," said Kharman Khasrow,
21, a history student at the University of
Sulaymaniyah. She does not speak a word of Arabic.
"I've never been to Iraq. I wouldn't even want to go
there," she said. When reminded that the Kurdish
provinces are part of Iraq, she smiled and said: "I
am in Kurdistan, not Iraq."
Separatist pushDepending on who is presenting the
census figures, Kurds in Iraq number from 4 million
to 7 million. Iraq's total population is about 25
million.
Kurds say 25 million to 40 million of their people
live in territory divided between Turkey, Syria,
Iraq, and Iran, with the lion's share, about half,
in Turkey. The separatist movement in Iraqi
Kurdistan provokes great anxiety in the neighboring
countries, where well-armed Kurdish independence
movements have smoldered for decades.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders fear that separatists will
provoke Turkey to send in troops, as it did in the
1990s when Iraqi Kurdish political parties started
sheltering Kurdish guerrillas from Turkey.
Subjected to a genocidal campaign by Hussein's
government, the three northernmost Kurdish provinces
won independence after the 1991 Persian Gulf War,
when the US created a no-fly zone that kept the
Iraqi Army away.
Now, many Kurds think any relation with a federal
Iraqi government is too much, and are agitating for
Kurdish leaders to annex, by politics or by force, a
belt of cities historically considered part of
Kurdistan -- including the flash point of Kirkuk; a
series of smaller, Arab-majority cities running
southward from Kirkuk to the Iranian border; and
half of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and a
burgeoning resistance stronghold.
Tensions have flared over the issue before. The
Kurdish parties threatened to withdraw from the new
interim government in June because they felt Arab
leaders did not respect Kurdish rights.
Such a move could prove disastrous, fragmenting the
government along ethnic lines and provoking a fight
over oil-rich Kirkuk, claimed by both Kurds and
Arabs.
Kurdish politicians are eager to quell such
concerns. "We won't occupy any place, and we won't
oblige anyone to join Iraqi Kurdistan," said
Nawshirwan Mustafa, a top official in the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, which controls the
eastern half of the Kurdish provinces.
But, he said, Kurds insist that towns and cities be
given free choice to join -- an expansion of the
autonomous region that will exacerbate the concerns
of Arab nationalists.
"We want our fair share," Mustafa said. "We want to
create a new political tradition in Iraq, that Kurds
are first class citizens."
North vs. south Sheik Sadoon Essa Yousif al-Qasimi,
a Sunni Arab tribal leader from Salahuddin Province,
which contains many towns claimed by the Kurds,
thinks they are overrepresented in Baghdad. One of
two vice presidents, the deputy prime minister, and
the foreign minister are all Kurds.
"Kurds already control too much of the national
government," he said.
Qasimi said he fears that Kurdish autonomy will
prompt secession movements by Shi'ites in the south
and Sunnis in central Iraq.
"We cannot allow such splits," he said. "We are one
united Iraq."
But such debate in Baghdad ignores a reality obvious
to anyone who travels to Iraqi Kurdistan, the
official name for the three northernmost Kurdish
provinces.
A de facto border, known as the Green Line, is
guarded by peshmerga instead of Iraqi police or
military. The US military presence, obvious
throughout Iraq, vanishes northeast of the Green
Line, where Kurdish forces have provided security
since 1991.
Arabs who cross into Kurdistan must have permission
letters or register with Kurdish security.
Most Kurds who went to school after 1991 never
learned Arabic.
Instead of the Iraqi flag, most buildings fly a
Kurdish flag, which replaces the three green stars
representing Arab unity with a bright-yellow sun.
Until a few months ago, Kurdish phones shared
England's international dial code -- a fluke of an
underground phone system developed when Kurdistan
was a rebel enclave in Hussein's Iraq.
US officials tiptoe around the issue, referring to
the area as "the northern provinces." Even Hussein
freely described the area as Kurdistan.
"People outside Iraq should know there's a huge
difference between the north and south," said Omar
Fattah, 52, prime minister of the PUK-controlled
part of Kurdistan.
If violence forces a long postponement of national
elections, Fattah said, the Kurdish provinces would
consider holding their own vote for the Kurdistan
Parliament, which was created in 1992.
"I am a Kurd, living within the frame of Iraq,"
Fattah said. "I live in Kurdistan. But the big
Kurdistan was divided, and I'm in the part clinging
to Iraq."
When Western powers redrew the Middle East's borders
after World War I, territory inhabited by Kurds was
split among Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Since
then, Kurds have fought for autonomy and the idea of
a united greater Kurdistan.
Turkey's bloody war with its Kurds, now in a state
of cease-fire, has claimed about 40,000 lives over
two decades. The Turkish government has vehemently
opposed independence for Iraqi Kurds, fearful that
formal secession would provoke more violence among
Turkey's separatists.
Indeed, the fear of outside intervention by Turkey
or even Iran puts the biggest damper on the Kurdish
secession movement.
"It's only the threat of invasion by the neighboring
countries that makes us willing to accept being part
of a federal Iraq," said Karzan Karem, 21, another
student at the University of Sulaymaniyah who
supports independence.
A risky futureBasit Hama Gharib, a leader of the
Kurdistan Referendum Movement, said the petition
with its 1.7 million signatures would be presented
to American, British, and United Nations officials
within the next month at UN headquarters in New
York.
"After the fall of Saddam, the people of Kurdistan
became part of Iraq without being asked," Gharib
said.
He acknowledged that a referendum almost certainly
would provoke a political crisis and very likely a
war.
"Without a doubt, it is risky," he said. "But you
cannot tear the root of independence from the heart
of the people where it is anchored."
At the base of the new Iraqi Army's First Mechanized
Infantry, Shakur proudly presented his troops; they
still consider themselves peshmerga, a Kurdish word
that means "he who faces death."
His division actually captured their Russian-made
tanks and armored personnel carriers from Hussein's
retreating Army in April 2003.
In his office at the tank base, Shakur has hung two
of the most popular images, visible in virtually
every home or office in this part of Kurdistan. One
shows PUK leader Jalal Talabani, standing before the
Iraqi Governing Council last spring, brandishing an
Ottoman-era map that shows the areas of Iraq that
were historically part of Kurdistan, including
Kirkuk.
The other is a modern-day map of greater Kurdistan,
the nightmare of Ankara, Damascus, and Tehran: It
stretches to include vast swaths of territory
populated by Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq.
"We are 40 million, but we have no country," Shakur
said. "Iraqi Kurdistan is small. We want a big
country. This is just the beginning, God willing."
Globe correspondent Sa'ad al-Izzi contributed to
this report from Baghdad. Thanassis Cambanis can be
reached at tcambanis@globe.com
http://www.boston.com
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