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ERBIL, Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) -- For Kurds
who are likely to vote overwhelmingly for Iraq's new
constitution Saturday, one well-plastered poster
sums up the emotion.
"The new constitution," it reads over a photograph
that taps deeply into every Kurdish heart, "is the
end of genocide and repression."
The picture shows an elderly Kurdish woman, along
with 1 million fellow Kurds, fleeing Iraq into the
mountains as Saddam Hussein crushed an uprising in
1991. Kurds expected revenge, and knew how it
tasted. In 1988, Iraqi forces had gassed the town of
Halabja, and before that destroyed thousands of
Kurdish villages.
Which is why Kurds are preparing to celebrate
Saturday. For all, the new constitution is the first
time Kurdish rights have ever been enshrined in
Iraqi law. And for many, the new federalism is only
the first step toward their dream of a future
independent state.
"When people read this constitution, they are happy,
because for the first time on paper, officially, are
Kurdish rights," say Handren Mohammad Saleh, the
election training and operations officers for Erbil
Province. "People feel: Let us fix this now, and all
else will follow."
Mr. Saleh was inundated with 21,000 applications for
12,000 spots to help conduct the referendum. And
that enthusiasm spread across what is recognized as
the Kurdistan Regional Government.
"More than 95 percent of Kurds want an independent
state, and this is the first step," says Mohammad
Sadik, president of the University of Salahaddin.
Still, he says, the Kurdish leadership is "very
wise" settling for a federal state "at this stage,"
and not pushing further the Shiite majority and
nervous Sunni minority.
"Iraq was not created by God," says Dr. Sadik. "Iraq
was put together after the Ottoman Empire, and has
three distinct peoples. We don't have anything in
common with the Arabs ... the only thing we have in
common is religion, and the Kurds have never taken
religion seriously [as a basis for nation building].
"Saddam managed to keep it together, but he was a
brutal dictator, who used force and torture," adds
Sadik. "Even if you try to put the three parts of
Iraq together by force for the next 1,000 years, it
will fall apart one day."
After the 1991 exodus and crushing of the Kurdish
rebellion, American and British aircraft began
protecting northern Iraq from Mr. Hussein's armies
with a no-fly zone. Since then, Kurds have exercised
de facto self-rule.
And while the north has long been different, the gap
between Kurdish lands today and the rest of Iraq, by
every measure - from confidence and investment, to
the rule of law, and with a fraction of the violence
- could not be more stark.
Here it is a different world, the "other Iraq," and
that is how many Kurds want it to remain. In the
city of Dohuk, for example, not far from the border
with Turkey, large houses are being built with
confidence and painted with pastel colors.
Construction cranes mark the skyline and there is a
palpable hope - the kind that the architects of the
Iraq invasion hoped would spread all across Iraq
after US occupation - borne of the fact that people
here barely face the corrosive fear of begin blown
apart, that defines daily life for so many Iraqis.
And everywhere, the red, white, and green strips of
the Kurdish flag, with its yellow sun in the middle.
The Iraqi national flag is nowhere to be seen in
these parts. A "yes" vote Saturday will even
legalize the 1992 decision by the Kurdish
parliament, which turned the Kurd's peshmerga
militia into a formal military force.
"All of this is to prevent an excessive
centralization of power in Baghdad," says Stafford
Clarry, a former United Nations official who now
advises the Kurdistan government.
"People are getting increasingly relaxed about the
break-up of Iraq," says Mr. Clarry. "People look at
[violence in] the rest of Iraq and say it only
proves why the country should fall apart. If it is
going to happen, let it fall apart in the right
way."
Such thinking "is not coming from [the Kurdish
leadership]," says Clarry. "But people argue for
[independence], feel they deserve it, and that they
earned it."
Indeed, more than a year before the 2003 invasion of
Iraq, Kurdish leaders transformed their strategy of
isolation, to one that recognized that ensuring
Kurdish rights required holding some political power
in Baghdad.
On the eve of the referendum, that strategy appears
to be paying off. Besides controlling Iraqi
Kurdistan, a Kurd last year was prime minister of
the interim government. And President Jalal Talabani
- who announced a deal with Sunnis over the
constitution Wednesday, standing before the Iraqi
flag in Baghdad - is also a Kurd.
"People are very excited," says Dilshad Mustafa,
managing editor of Khabet, the largest newspaper in
northern Iraq. "There is a weakness in the
referendum. it is not a complete decision for our
self determination, but it will be complete in the
future, step by step."
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