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Altun Kupre: Tens of thousands of Kurds sang and
danced in triumph across Iraqi Kurdistan in euphoric
celebration of the election of the Kurdish leader
Jalal Talabani as President of Iraq.
"I feel for the first time that we will be treated
as human beings in Iraq," said Sa'adi Pira, a leader
of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Mr Talabani's
party, as he gazed over a sea of Kurdish flags at a
vast rally at Altun Kupre, a small town north of
Kirkuk.
The five million Iraqi Kurds, massacred, imprisoned
and driven from their homes by successive Iraqi
governments for almost a century, can hardly believe
their own victory. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein
has for the first time in Iraqi history given the
Kurds real power in Baghdad as well as militarily
unchallenged control of their region, the mountains
and plains of northern Iraq.
All morning yesterday, cars, buses and trucks poured
along the narrow road south of Arbil, the largest
Kurdish city, towards Altun Kupre, on the
fast-flowing Lesser Zaab river. Children hung out of
car windows waving the red, white and green Kurdish
flag with a golden sunburst in the middle. Others
frantically waved the green flag of the PUK.
The avuncular face of Mr Talabani, 71, peered from
posters plastered on the windscreens of cars, making
it hard for drivers to see. Throngs of Kurds, many
wearing their tunics with baggy pants and turbans,
walked and danced beside the road. One man was
dancing vigorously on the roof of a car despite the
fact that it was traveling at 30 miles an hour.
I know the road south of Arbil well because before
the war in 2003 it led through the front line
dividing the Kurds from the Iraqi army. Down the
road from the oil city of Kirkuk came frightened
refugees forced out of their houses or simply
fearful of battles to come.
Most of the villages beside the road were destroyed
in the fighting long ago. It was too dangerous to
till the fields and the only movement was of
shepherds who braved the minefields with their
flocks of sheep. The danger of mines also meant
that, in spring, yellow wildflowers carpeted the
uncultivated ground.
The Iraqi army, dug in on the low ridge defending
the Kirkuk oilfields to the south, fled under the
weight of the American bombardment. The only sign of
their presence yesterday was an enormous concrete
fortress, built like a medieval castle with towers
and arrow slits, overlooking the fields around Altun
Kupre.
The peshmerga - Kurdish soldiers - were guarding the
approaches to the rally, fearful of an attack by
suicide bombers. As we left Arbil we passed the old
PUK headquarters where in February last year a
bomber with explosives strapped to his chest killed
48 people. "I lost five relatives, including my
brother and my nephew, in the explosion," said
Sa'adi Pira.
The peshmerga wear Iraqi army uniforms these days
and are part of the new Iraqi army which the US has
been trying to create. But they still retain their
old arms, a strange medley of weapons from all over
the world. For the moment, however, they are the
most effective force within the Iraqi army.
Kurds are careful to emphasise that they want
autonomy and not a separate state. They speak of the
new "federal and democratic Iraq", but out of the
thousands of flags being waved yesterday only one
was the official flag of Iraq.
"We have the right to independence but we do not
want it now because it would create too many
problems with Turkey, Iran and Syria," said Ismail.
He explained that he had been living in Sweden
studying English but had returned to help. "My
friends say I am mad to come back here," he said in
a voice implying that he was not wholly sure they
were wrong.
The star attraction at the rally, his arrival
greeted by roars of applause, was Kosrat Rasul,
former peshmerga commander and number two to Mr
Talabani. Asked by The Independent if he had
expected his leader to be President of Iraq he said
firmly he had never thought it would happen.
For all the euphoria, Kurds harbour an inner caution
among about what has happened. For once in their
history, they have been lucky. In 1975 and 1991 they
believe they were betrayed by the US, which
encouraged them to fight Saddam Hussein and then
abandoned them.
In 2003 the US hoped to open a northern front
against Saddam Hussein by basing a US army in
Turkey. Ignoring the pleas of the Iraqi Kurds,
Washington was prepared to see American and Turkish
troops cross the border together. In the event, the
Turkish parliament rejected the deal. As the US
found itself in more and more trouble from
insurgents after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the
Kurds were the only Iraqi community on which it
could rely.
The danger for the Kurds now is that they may be at
the peak of their influence. Of the three Iraqi
communities, the Sunni Arabs have not recovered from
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Shias, 60 per
cent of the Iraqi population, want power but they
are disunited and lack experienced leaders.
The two main parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party
in the west and the PUK in the east, have so far
remained united in facing the outside world. Within
Kurdistan their divisions are as deep as ever and
likely to remain so. The wounds from the civil wars
they fought in the 1990s are only just below the
surface. But for now the gains they have made are
too great to be put in danger by a new conflict.
www.independent.co.uk
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