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DOHUK
(Kurdistan), Jan 28 (IPS) - As Iraq's first
national election since the fall of Saddam Hussein
draws near, the country seems more on the brink of
falling apart than of coming together in a
celebration of democracy.
Attacks against Shia targets have increased in an
effort to keep them away from the polling booths,
security sources say. The Sunni minority is battling
furiously to prevent the consolidation of a system
in which they forfeit their traditional dominance.
Yet it is in the northern, Kurdish part of the
country where violence is relatively rare and the
polls are going full-steam ahead, that the
fictitiousness of the unity of Iraq is most
convincingly exposed.
Kurdistan has been de facto autonomous since the
Gulf war of 1991, when the allies imposed a no-fly
zone over the area and the local fighters, the
Peshmerga, pushed Saddam Hussein's troops out of
their mountainous region.
The Kurds have had their own government, army and
police for the last 13 years and they are not about
to let the central government have any say over
their affairs ever again. They are for now forced to
stay in a nominally united Iraq but hatred between
them and 'the Arabs' runs deep.
The white pick-up truck of Dohuk's deputy commander
of police Shaalan Mustafa is riddled with bullets,
and has blood on the windows and dashboard. Just a
few days ago the pick-up was attacked and one of his
best friends was killed, he says.
The car is now parked safely outside the Dohuk
police station but the attacks took place just
outside Kurdistan in the Arab part of the country.
It was an ambush, Mustafa says. "The terrorists were
after me because they knew I was a high Kurdish
officer and I was traveling there," he told IPS.
As a precaution he had changed vehicle and the route
on his trip back from Syria and he was not in his
car when the attack took place. When he rushed to
the spot in village Mahmoudieh near the Syrian
border, his friend in the car was dead.
"We carried him in our arms in the rain and nobody
wanted to help us," said Shaalan. "It was an Arab
village and we were Kurds, they wanted us dead."
Kurds have suffered a lot under different Iraqi
governments, or Arab regimes as they say, and
especially under Saddam Hussein. They are not
inclined to forget this.
They see the election Sunday as an opportunity to
put on a show of strength. Kurdish parties are
putting forward a united list and are trying to
maximise voter turnout in their areas that by now
extend far beyond the borders of the three provinces
they controlled before.
The Kurdish political scene is dominated by two
parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (-PUK). The chairman of
the KDP in the Dohuk governorate is an old Peshmerga
commander who goes by the name of Qachay. He is
categorical about the aims of the Kurds.
"We have three objectives," he said. "To show how
many we are and get a lot of seats in the new Iraqi
national assembly, to achieve a federal
constitution, and to arrange for the areas that
belong to traditional Kurdistan to be officially
under our control."
That last issue is particularly explosive at the
moment. The focus of Kurdish territorial claims is
the oil-rich northern city Kirkuk. This infuriates
the Sunni population that already feels it is being
squeezed out of the political process, and now also
has to watch its territory challenged.
Regionally, Turkey is against a Kurdish claim on
Kirkuk because it will strengthen the Kurd case for
an independent state, something Turks strenuously
oppose. They are worried this will set an example
their own Kurdish population might then want to
follow.
Kurds are aware of the international situation. "We
would prefer to be independent but that is
unrealistic for now," says Qachay. "So we opt for
autonomy inside a federal Iraq, everybody wants Iraq
to remain intact."
A large turnout in the elections will send a signal
to the rest of Iraq that they have to take the
Kurdish claims seriously. "Now the decisions about
the future of Iraq have to be made by mutual
consent, we are no longer second class citizens like
we used to be before," Qachay says.
But mutual consent is not something Kurds apply to
the Arab population of cities such as Kirkuk. They
say many of these people were collaborators with
Saddam Hussein, and that they were given the houses
of Kurds who were driven out, or ethnically
cleansed, as they say.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, thousands of Arabs
have been told to leave. In many cases the old
owners of the houses, Kurds who had been sent away
to places in the south, have returned to claim their
property.
The few security problems that Kurdistan is facing
in the run-up to the election can be traced back
either to neighbouring violence-wracked Arab areas
such as Mosul, or to the "deported Arabs", says the
head of the security service in the Dohuk
governorate, Khalil Shakhi.
Over the last three months there have been three
attempts on the life of the governor of Dohuk. In
two of the cases Shakhi says the attackers were
caught, and turned out to be "deported Arabs".
He says they are members of the new Sunni
fundamentalist movement, Ansar al- Sunna, possibly a
successor to the Ansar al-Islam movement that used
to have bases in Kurdish territory under Saddam
Hussein.
Many Arabs are staying on in the Kurdish areas. "The
Americans would not allow us to send everybody
home," says Shakhi. But they are regarded as a
possible fifth column. "We keep a close eye on
them," he says.
"The strength of the Kurdish people is in their
cohesion," says Shakhi. "Assyrians, Chaldeans, even
Turkmen, all feel Kurdish. They help us keep the
quiet. When there is a problem, or somebody
suspicious, they inform us. Only the Arabs are a
problem."
http://www.ipsnews.net
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