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With parliamentary
elections due on 15 December, violence is expected
to surge in much of Iraq. But the Kurdish autonomous
region in the north of the country is a case apart.
While the Arab Sunni center and Shi'ite south have
been racked by violence since the U.S.-led invasion
that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq's Kurdish
region has been remarkably free of insurgent
activity. That has enabled the Iraqi Kurds to
concentrate on turning their region into a
relatively prosperous area that has many of the
trappings of a state.
Erbil, Kurdistan-Iraq 8 Dec. (RFE/RL) -- The
first thing that strikes a visitor to Erbil is how
hard it is to spot an Iraqi flag.
Instead, flagpoles fly the banner of the Kurdistan
Regional Government. That banner may have the colors
of the Iraqi flag, but it is overlaid with a Kurdish
emblem of the sun.
The modified flag is just one of the many signs that
Iraq's Kurds have quietly built an almost
independent -- and increasingly prosperous -- state
of their own in northern Iraq. While the rest of the
country is mired in security problems that keep all
but the most intrepid foreign civilians off the
streets, here foreign businesspeople move openly and
without armed escorts.
The businesspeople are carrying out local
development projects or setting up bases from which
to do business with other parts of Iraq. Everywhere
there is evidence of their presence -- and of
investment by the Kurdish diaspora in Germany and
other parts of Europe. New commercial buildings are
going up. So too is a new tract of homes for the
wealthy, dubbed Dream City.
Many of the visitors arrive aboard one of two Iraqi
Kurdish airlines that began regular flights from
Europe two months ago. Both are charter companies
that lease planes with German or Greek pilots and
crew. But the companies bear distinctively Kurdish
names -- Kurdistan Airlines and Sawan Airlines.
In Kurdish, Sawan means "newborn" -- a name that
recognizes that this is the first Kurdish airline in
history.
Kawa Besarani is chairman of the group of private
Kurdish investors who created Sawan Airlines. He
says the intention was to end the traditional
isolation that meant the region could only be
reached by flying to Baghdad or traveling across
neighboring Turkey, Syria, or Iran.
Besarani, who is based in London, speaks of the
airlines as if they were almost national symbols. He
suggests they are not only about doing business but
also about redressing historical grievances. "So
many times, we traveled back to our homeland,
Kurdistan, by flying hours and hours, driving hours
and hours, and stopping hours and hours in border
lines -- to see the humiliation, the questioning by
different police at borders, asking for your ID,
asking your destination, asking you, 'What's your
name?', asking where you're going, under the sun and
the rain," Besarani recalls. "All these sorts of
things pushed me and are the main reasons to take an
initiative and to initiate this project."
Governments in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran have
historically kept tight control over their Kurdish
minorities in an effort to stop the spread of
Kurdish nationalist sentiment. Those controls have
included restrictions on cross-border travel.
But the revival of Iraq's Kurdish region raises a
question pivotal for the future of Iraq and the
broader region: Will the Kurds in northern Iraq be
satisfied with the trappings of statehood they have
already achieved, or will they press on toward full
independence?
Adnan Mufti, president of the Kurdistan National
Assembly, the region’s parliament, says the aim of
Iraqi Kurds is to maintain a high degree of autonomy
but within the framework of a new federal Iraq. "It
is not easy to change the map now, at this moment,"
Mufti says. "So, because of that, we believe that it
is in the Kurdish interest, for the Kurdish future,
to follow the issues of Iraq, to have a new Iraq
which will be a democratic Iraq with federalism."
The United States and the central government in
Baghdad have repeatedly said they want to preserve
the territorial integrity of Iraq, and Kurdish
leaders have committed themselves to that goal.
Ankara, which has largely suppressed an armed
Turkish Kurdish movement for greater autonomy, has
warned that any independent Kurdish state emerging
from Iraq could reignite the conflict in southeast
Turkey.
Mufti says he hopes the Kurdistan region's success
in recent years will encourage Kurds in neighboring
states to seek change by pushing for federalism and
democracy, saying Iraqi Kurds' experience could be
"a good [example] for our other Kurdish brothers in
Turkey or Iran or Syria to struggle in a democratic
way to get their own rights."
Kurds and other Iraqis go to the polls on 15
December to elect a new national parliament that
will have to address a number of issues related to
the Kurdistan region's autonomous status. These
include the distribution of government revenues and
Kurdish demands for Kirkuk, Iraq's fourth-largest
city, to be recognized as the capital of the region.
The incorporation of oil-rich Kirkuk, which
currently lies outside the Kurdish autonomous
region, would strengthen the region's economic base.
The proposal is, however, opposed by other Iraqi
parties, including the minority Turkomans who, like
the Kurds, lay claim to the multiethnic city.
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