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Prosperous, democratic Kurdistan offers jobs in a
nation hungry for them. For the migrants, it's like
going to a new country.
SULAYMANIYA, Iraq - Sahib Ali Abbas hopped on
a bus and rode until the date palms turned scarce
and the mountains rose, big and wrinkled and waiting
for snow.
The Shiite Muslim carpenter and five friends had
left the bloodshed of central Iraq to head north
toward Kurdistan. The language changed and glances
turned suspicious. It was another country, but it
wasn't. After police interrogated him and decided he
wasn't a terrorist, a contractor handed him a tool
belt and a sack of nails.
Like thousands of Arabs from troubled southern and
central Iraq, Abbas, who left Baqubah several months
ago, has found a more prosperous life in the
democratic, free-market Kurdish region. Protected
from Saddam Hussein's armies for 12 years by a
"no-fly" zone patrolled by U.S. and British planes,
the ethnic Kurds in effect raised a nation within a
nation. Their clattering cities represent what many
want for the rest of Iraq.
"There's a big difference between the south and
here," Abbas said, stepping over metal rods and a
pile of rocks on an apartment building construction
site. "The Kurds are rich and educated. We're tired
of poverty in the south. I look around at all this
construction and see many, many Arabs just like me."
Authorities say 2,000 to 6,000 Sunni and Shiite
Muslim Arabs have migrated to the Sulaymaniya region
since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq two years ago.
They are laborers, doctors, waiters, professors.
There is even a civil aviation engineer hired from
Baghdad because the Kurds lacked the experts to
build an airport. Reliable statistics are scarce,
but estimates suggest that the number of Arab
migrants is steadily rising and may total more than
20,000 across northern Iraq, which is home to
between 3.5 million and 4 million Kurds. Recent
Kurdish history is a lesson in reversal of fortune.
Regimes based in Baghdad brutalized the north for
generations. Sunni Arabs, who dominated under
Hussein, were taught that Kurds were beneath them;
the Kurds' political voice was muted, and hundreds
of thousands of them were killed.
Then the no-fly zone, established after the 1991
Persian Gulf War, transformed the region. Kurdish
mountain guerrillas traded their baggy pants and
bandoliers for the suits of politicians and
businessmen, negotiating multimillion-dollar deals
in oil, technology and retailing with Iran, Turkey
and Dubai.
Over time, the Kurds fashioned a sprawling mountain
bazaar. They couldn't get McDonald's, so they
created MaDonal. They had cellphones before Baghdad.
Internet cafes became hangouts for the young, and
satellite TV dishes sprang up in the poorest
villages. Not all is laissez faire — the main
Kurdish political parties control much development.
Patronage and corruption fuel many endeavors,
diplomats and Kurdish officials say, and poverty in
rural areas is high.
Kurds make up about 18% of the country's population.
But thanks to high turnout, a unified Kurdish party
may have won 30% of the vote in last month's
national election, which would give the north a
large role in the new government.
"The Kurds are prosperous," said Naif Sabhan Khalaf,
a Sunni Arab councilman in the oil city of Kirkuk.
"They have smart political leaders who have taken
advantage of things. Other provinces should follow
this example. Western businesses tell me they are
going to the north because there's security there,
unlike places such as Tikrit, which are still
ablaze."
Not everyone in Iraq is quick to praise the Kurds,
most of whom are Sunnis but not Arabs.
Iraq has been a nation of resentment and suspicion
for decades. One ethnic or religious group's good
fortunes have meant another's suffering. As Sunni
Arabs' hold loosened after the fall of Hussein,
Shiites and Kurds emerged as the prominent forces.
Iraqi Arabs often wince when they credit the Kurds
and often describe the north's achievements as a
conspiracy by Washington to control Iraq. Kurds were
America's ally in the war to topple Hussein, and
many Arabs believe they betrayed the country's
sovereignty.
"The Kurds depend on the Americans," said Mikdad
Mustaf Ahmet, a writer in Kirkuk, a contested,
multiethnic city south of Sulaymaniya whose new
government the Kurds are expected to control.
"America is using the Kurds to change the political
show," Ahmet said. "There are secret deals. The
Kurds want to take Kirkuk for the petrol. They want
to draw Kirkuk into their autonomous region."
The main street in Sulaymaniya is a grid of Kurdish
aspirations. Lots are cleared, holes are dug, cement
mixers churn, wood beams are hewn and hammered, and
skeletons of half-finished cinderblock buildings
rise in perpetual dust. Twenty construction sites
dot the street, and building projects for the
district government alone are expected to cost more
than $740 million. The commercial and service
industries have grown by 200% in recent years,
according to the Kurdistan Finance Ministry.
"People from Ramadi and Fallouja want to copy what
we have, which is good, because when they come here
they help our economy," said Othman Ismail Shwani,
deputy finance minister of the Kurdistan regional
government. "For 45 years, the Kurdish struggle was
an armed struggle. Things have changed, and now the
best way to prosper is through diplomacy and a
strong economy."
Shaaban Nooradin draws a paycheck amid the
construction clatter on the main street. Standing in
muddy boots and watching girls pass in winter
dresses, the 19-year-old Sunni Arab moved here from
Kirkuk and was hired by a Turkish company building a
government office. When he could find work at home,
he painted cars for $136 a month. He earns nearly
$400 a month in Sulaymaniya.
"The pay here is good and fair," he said. "A lot of
young Arabs like me, even married guys, are coming
north to work. They treat us good. On New Year's
Eve, though, they forced the Arabs to go home
because they thought terrorists might be planning
something here. They let us back in later."
Ali Ibrahim Bayaty is a hematologist from Mosul.
When he received his doctor's license last year, the
Iraqi Health Ministry assigned him to a hospital in
Tikrit.
"I wasn't going to work in the city of the despot
Hussein," said Bayaty, a Sunni Arab, standing in the
afternoon sun in a clinic here. "I came to a safe
place. The Kurds needed my expertise, and I needed
security. It was a nice union. I hope the situation
in the north prevails over all of Iraq so I can
return home, get married and complete my life."
When asked if he would consider marrying a Kurd, he
said: "Why not a Kurdish wife? Marriage is what's in
the soul. It's not about nationality."
Arabs from conservative religious communities in the
south find the north permissive. Women are unveiled,
liquor is sold in shops, the Jihad Mosque has been
closed and extremist clerics are under surveillance
by intelligence agencies. Many of the new arrivals
struggle with Kurdish syntax. They live in rooms
provided by employers and travel home once a month,
giving their paychecks to wives and mothers and
having their clothes mended and washed.
"My wife and six children stay at our home in Mosul,"
said Akram Aziz Aabar, a Shiite who oversees a crew
at a site for a government office. "All of us are
from Mosul. I know these guys. I pick them and give
them a chance to work. We're doing well. I'm not
into politics. I'm a laborer, and I only care about
my family."
A few blocks away, clothes ripped, his thin beard
dusty, the carpenter Abbas climbs down from the
second floor of a new apartment building. He walks
past exposed metal rods and rows of concrete blocks.
He has a wife in Baqubah. They are too poor, he
says, to have children. He'll see her in a few days,
when the bus takes him out of the mountains to where
the land flattens and the heat rises.
"Everything is messed up in the south," he said.
"The only thing I know about the future is that the
number of Iraqis killed will go up. I'm lonely and
tired, and if it wasn't for this work, I couldn't do
it."
When Abbas works, he is silhouetted against a former
prison run by Hussein's Interior Ministry. Kurds
were interrogated and tortured there. Thousands
died.
Bullets and grenades shattered the outside walls
during a 1991 Kurdish uprising. There was no desire
to repair the building or to tear it down. The Kurds
turned it into a museum
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