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The other day, the
deputy commander of the Peshmerga, the Kurdish
militia, explained in his wistful Kurdish that "the
Kurds and the Arabs are as different as the
mountains and the stones." I had three-and-a-half
hours to think about that as I drove through
Piramagrun Mountains from the dusty and polluted
Kurdish city of Irbil to the equally dusty town of
Sulemaniya.
The road winds past ruins of an ancient
civilization. Kurds will remind you that
civilization started here, and that the mud-colored
citadel of Irbil is the longest continuously
inhabited settlement in the world - some 8,000
years. The car: A 1990 Chevy Caprice locals call
"Dolphin" due to its porpoise-shape and perhaps due
to its reliability. There was a glut of these cars
just before the 1991 Gulf War, and the V8 beasts
chug on.
The narrow roads, considered fair-to-good by Iraqi
standards, are cluttered with oil tankers heading
into Iraq from Turkey or Iran. They either smuggle
oil one way or another or bring back gasoline after
it is refined in Turkey. Insurgents have badly
damaged Iraq's oil refinery capacity. And Iraqis are
left wondering how it is that a country with 12% of
the world's oil has spotty electricity and
interminable lines at the fuel pump.
Our "Dolphin" dodges a lazy flock of goats, several
exhausted donkeys and beat up cars crawling along
the road. We loop north and then head east to avoid
Kirkuk, a mixed Arab and Kurdish city now in the gun
sights of insurgents. The Kurds want it, partly
because the oil fields in its environs spurt out 30%
of Iraq's oil. The rest of the country wants to keep
it as part of Iraq.
Kurdish guards hold key checkpoints flipping through
passports they can't read. After a good long peruse
they ask the driver "what nationality." The answer:
"America." Camouflage caps pressed on heads, and
vests filled with AK-47 magazines corseted around
their midsection, they grunt a greeting and wave us
on.
The moonscape that scorches most of Iraq, deadly
boring stretches of tan dirt, is broken by the sweep
of hills. This is my fifth time to Iraq and this is
the first hill worth the name. They grow into huge
steeples, massive cathedrals of geology for which
the Kurds are so thankful and prideful. The
mountains, with their caves and streams, have
sheltered them over the generations. Those mountains
are likely the reason the Kurds - the world's
largest stateless people - have survived.
The road and the scenery are a relief from the rest
of Iraq. Kurdistan is known as Iraq's paradise and
there are still Christian missionaries here that
hope to find the Garden of Eden tucked among these
hills. The dun colored hills become craggier the
farther east we trek. Spiny scrubgrass gives way to
scrub trees, and an occasional grapevine. We pass a
dam, and leafy oaks beside the castle of Jalal
Talabani, president of Iraq, and head of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan at the quaint village
of Kala Chualan. He had expropriated one of Saddam's
many palaces. On the banks of the river, into which
men take their cars to wash as if they were dirty
beasts of burden, hotels boast modular homes
offering views of the river for Iraq's rich. "They
cost $70 per night," my driver says and then
whistles. Most Iraqis make about $250 a month.
Both places are unique in the world. Kurdistan is
the only place in the world that I've been in since
the start of the war, where saying one is American
is rewarded with a toothy grin and sometimes a: "I
love Gorge Booosh."
Coalition troops are rarely seen in either city.
Kurdish Peshmerga or members of the Kurdish internal
security service, the Asa'ish, line the streets.
During the mass celebrations throughout the week, in
the honking snarl of SUVs and sedans charging
through Sulimaniya streets, some of the vehicles
bore something unusual: American flags.
It is a romp through this city that makes foreigners
wonder: All this for elections they haven't even
won?
In many ways Kurdistan represents the future of Iraq
and some of its unbearable past. A nation of people
with few exports, save for massive amounts of oil,
living in relative security under a strongman
leader; in the case of Sulimaniya, Jalal Talabani,
who is also head of the PUK, which controls the
eastern part of Kurdistan and is president of Iraq.
(It all sounds very complicated, but the Kurds have
been living with the internal disunity for decades.
It is said that the British wanted to grant them a
state after WWI, but instead handed it to the Sunni
Arabs, who for the time being were able to organize
themselves instead of squabble.)
Tellingly, Talabani is called "Mum Jalal," (Uncle
Jalal) by his people. Massoud Barzani, president of
the Kurdistan Regional Government, and the strong
man leader of the western part of Kurdistan, ruled
by the KDP, is called "Kak Massoud," (Big Brother
Massoud.) But in fairness, every man in Kurdistan
calls comrades "Kak."
Photographs or posters of the leaders adorn every
shop, every public institution and much empty wall
space. One wonders if they were pasted into the same
picture frames or bare wall spaces once occupied by
Saddam with his Cheshire grin.
It is a place in which for now, these people, who
have spent the better part of a century hiding and
running, fighting and dying in these hills, are
simply happy to speak their language, listen to
their music and daydream about their legendary
fighters in peace. In one of the cacophonic
celebrations ahead of the polls, one man who might
have had a drink or two in him - in Sulimaniya one
can buy booze on the street in broad daylight -
marveled that children were out, enjoying,
celebrating their freedom from tyranny. For the
Kurds, especially those in the relatively affluent
city of Sulimaniya, rejoicing is in vogue. They even
got a six-day holiday to properly celebrate the
elections.
As opposed to other parts of Iraq, people here are
free to criticize the government. Aram Rabia, 20,
from Sulimaniya, gaped at the procession of flags,
SUV's and posters of "Mum Jalal."
"What is all this, what is it for?" he asked. With
hundreds of Kurds around him he openly criticized
the government, knowing he would be safe doing so.
Under Saddam's regime, children ratted on parents.
My translator once joked that Iraqis were so used to
getting governmental permission for the smallest
things, that some wondered if they needed it to
sleep with their wives.
Young Aram did not think the elections deserved such
a celebration. And he didn't vote.
In the new Iraq, in these mountains, that's his
right.
www.jpost.com
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