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CHAMCHAMAL, Iraq - A cane leans on the door, and
the old tribal leader sits in the sun below the
citadel. With a whisper, he could summon 1,000 armed
men. He chooses not to.
Nevertheless, he says, the time has come for the
Kurds to grab the oil fields, seal the northern
mountain passes and seize their independence.
Karim Agha is a proven ally of the United States,
but he is also part of a growing number of Kurds
whose push for an independent state could splinter
Iraq and undermine U.S. policy in the region.
Despite a strong showing in last Sunday's election
that would give them unprecedented influence in a
new national government, Kurds are debating whether
it's time for them to declare their own state.
"The war against Saddam Hussein is over, and
everyone has their freedom except the Kurds," Agha
said, a gun resting against his wall, prayer beads
laced through his fingers. "We are surrounded by
enemies, and we can wait no longer for our own
nation. It would be a great shame for the U.S. to
abandon us."
Fearing that a bid for independence would draw the
fury of neighboring Turkey and Iran, which have
restive Kurdish populations, the main Kurdish
political parties say they are committed to a
unified Iraq. But many Kurds think the chaos across
the country creates a prime opportunity for them to
claim the contested oil city of Kirkuk and break
away.
More than 1.7 million Kurds, or about 45 percent of
their population, signed a petition for independence
that was delivered to the United Nations recently.
The struggle is between pragmatism and a
centuries-old dream. It suggests that the influence
held by Kurdish politicians and U.S. allies such as
Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani might be
diminishing. Men such as Agha, chief of the Hamawand
tribe, are more willing to fight than to equivocate
in the face of international pressure, especially
when it comes to independence and the fate of Kirkuk.
"Talabani and Barzani must not give up Kirkuk," Agha
said. "If they do, the people will split with them.
We won't accept that. We want it to be solved
peacefully. But if not, we've already lost a lot of
lives over Kirkuk, and we're willing to lose a lot
more. The oil of Kirkuk will sustain us, and we will
not abandon it."
Kirkuk critical
What unfolds in Kirkuk in coming days and weeks is
as crucial to the stability of Iraq as the struggle
between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Arabs to the south.
The Kurds' goal has been to win a majority in the
local elections in Kirkuk and claim the multi-ethnic
city as part of their semiautonomous state in the
north. The next step, Agha and others say, would be
for the Kurds to demand independence.
The Kurds hope the votes of about 70,000 of them,
expelled from Kirkuk under Hussein and seeking to
return, will give them the edge in a local council
now balanced among Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and
Assyrian Christians. They appear to be close to that
aspiration. Arab voter turnout in Kirkuk was 25
percent to 40 percent, and Kurdish participation was
more than 70 percent, according to local political
parties.
A surge in Kurdish power would anger Turkey, which
is worried that Kurdish control of Kirkuk and its
oil reserves would embolden and create instability
among Turkey's disadvantaged 13 million Kurds. That
could create regional problems if Kurds in Iran and
Syria also demanded more autonomy.
Washington has been pressuring Kurds not to break
from Iraq. The two mainstream Kurdish parties, the
Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan, want to avoid angering their most
powerful ally. They say the political reality is
that the United States will side with its NATO
partner Turkey over a mountain people who have been
denied independence for generations.
"It favors the Kurds to be with the Arabs in a
united Iraq," said Nesherwan Mustafa, a senior
political adviser to Talabani. "The Kurds in Iraq
are a small population, so it's better for us to
remain with the Arabs. Arab populations control 22
countries in the region, so it's in our political
and economic interests to stay within Iraq. But at
the same time the young are asking us, 'What is your
achievement in Iraq since the fall of Hussein?'"
Kurdish leaders such as Talabani, who fought for
decades in the mountains against Baghdad's armies
and is a contender for president of Iraq, have made
spectacular progress in the country. But strides in
recent years have made other Kurds more determined
to break away.
Sherko Bekas, a poet, is one of them. His cigarette
ash lengthens as he speaks of his people's history
of suffering.
Bekas tells how the Kurds were forced into Iraq by
the Allies after World War I. Since then, he said,
the Kurds have been politically oppressed and
massacred by successive Iraqi governments.
He is a founder of the Referendum Movement, which
last Sunday placed unofficial ballot boxes outside
polling stations, asking Kurds whether they
supported independence.
"So now we want to remove ourselves from the
attachment that is Iraq," Bekas said, adding that
Kurds had enjoyed democracy and capitalism for 12
years as they were protected from Hussein's forces
by the U.S.- and British-patrolled "no-fly zone"
imposed after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"It is an impossible fit to try and push the Kurds
and Arabs together. We know geography and history
are against us. But if the U.S. allowed it, we could
have independence."
Bekas and other Kurdish intellectuals once strongly
backed Washington. During the U.S. invasion, the
Kurds gave the U.S. land for airfields, mountain
fighters for guides and use of their 50,000-strong
militia. But that support is waning among many
Kurds, who think the United States has overlooked
them so as not to incite the Arab population.
Disappointed with U.S.
"I'm disappointed in U.S. policy toward the Kurds,"
Bekas said. "The U.S. is not reading Iraq
accurately."
Goat paths are scattered over the winter mountains.
On some hilltops are Iraqi army bunkers singed from
bombing by U.S. planes two years ago.
In the valley, Chamchamal, a town of grays and
browns, unfolds in its everyday rhythms: boys
hawking black-market diesel, the creak and thrum of
donkey carts.
Agha is lean, a mountain fighter with a keen
political mind. He sits in a room filled with
sunlight. A black-and-white scarf tied around his
head, Agha sips coffee and slices fruit. This is the
room where tribal disputes are resolved, where
marriages are arranged and where muffled voices pay
homage and seek forgiveness. It is the room where
Agha likes to talk about a new nation.
A map on the wall shows the way he thinks an
independent Kurdistan should look. The borders
stretch from deep inside Turkey across northern Iraq
and into western Iran. That would unsettle the Bush
administration, but it is an old warrior's dream.
Agha says he would like to leave such a place to his
grandchildren.
"My grandfather fought against the Turks long ago.
We've all fought against the Iraqi regimes," he
said. "We've been victimized and killed, and still
we have no self-determination. Look at Kuwait. It is
a small country, smaller than Kurdistan. Yet, Kuwait
has a seat at the United Nations, and millions of
Kurds have no seat."
Like many clan leaders in this rugged country, Agha
understands the nuances of power. Allies, he says,
are more important than rash judgments. There is a
time to fight, he says, but often a way not to.
"We are a small people, but we are friends of the
American people, and we hope they keep their
promises," Agha said.
The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Publishing
newspaperw.
www.latimes.com
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