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SULAYMANIYAH, IRAQ—K.G. was just a kid when
Saddam Hussein's army swept into his village near
this city in northern Iraq.
It was spring 1991. Hussein's defeat in Kuwait at
the hands of the American-led coalition had inspired
both Shiites in southern Iraq and Kurds in the north
to revolt.
The result of the Kurdish revolt is still in
question in 2005, as Kurdish ambitions play out on
the stage of Iraq's nascent democratic government.
Kurds account for only 15 percent of Iraq's 25
million people. But with an estimated 75 to 85
percent of eligible Kurds voting on January 30, the
Kurdish alliance led by Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) chief Jalal Talabani won 75 of the new
national assembly's 275 seats. In recent weeks,
Talabani has forged a coalition with the majority
Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. As part of the deal,
Talabani will serve as the new government's first
president.
At stake as Kurds wield their growing political
power are the unity of Iraq, more than 5 percent of
the world's oil reserves located in one key Kurdish
city, and a peculiar relationship that has developed
over the years between the Kurds and the United
States.
In 1991, the Iraqi army, battered though it was in
Operation Desert Storm, swiftly crushed the Shiite
revolt. But in mountainous Kurdistan—the area around
Sulaymaniyah and north of the oil-rich city of
Kirkuk, where half of Iraq's estimated 4 million
Kurds live—guerrillas known as peshmerga, hardened
by decades of insurgency, stopped Hussein's soldiers
dead in their tracks.
Fourteen years later, the rusting remains of Iraqi
tanks littering Sulaymaniyah bear grim testimony to
the peshmerga forces' victory.
But Kurdish victory came too late for K.G. and his
family. K.G.'s father was a well-known "pesh" leader
in an area crawling with Iraqi agents. Their village
ravaged and his cover blown, they fled north into
Turkey in a column of refugees. K.G. recalls
stealing bread from the houses of dead families and
drinking from puddles teeming with frogs.
Eventually, they reached the relative safety of
Turkey. But in 1997, a brief civil war between
Kurdish factions in Turkey claimed the life of
K.G.'s father and put the family in flight
again—this time to America, which since 1991 had
become a sort of big brother to young Kurdistan.
Since the pesh victory, the U.S. Air Force had flown
daily air patrols over northern Iraq and dropped
food supplies to starving Kurdish villages.
Now, years later, Kurdistan is all grown up—and K.G.,
now in his mid-20s, is too. And like his father and
his grandfather before him, he's a soldier in the
Kurdish army.
Sort of.
Actually, K.G. is a U.S. Defense Department
translator working for the U.S. Army in Sulaymaniyah.
But he carries a weapon, wears a uniform, speaks
Kurdish most of the time, and is still an Iraqi (he
says "Kurdish") national. And in order to protect
himself from insurgents, he identifies himself only
as "K.G."—a practice entirely consistent with that
of other Kurds, who typically use only one name.
K.G. says that he's a Kurd and an American—and that
he's equally proud to be both. In a land whose
fortunes are irrevocably tied to the United States,
K.G. is a living, breathing symbol of an unusual
and, at times, uneasy alliance.
On
Kurdish maps, the limit of Saddam Hussein's former
reach into northern Iraq is marked in green with a
wobbly line running east to west through the 36th
parallel. The Green Line, they call it. Everything
north of the line is Kurdistan.
Officially, there is no Kurdistan, except to Kurds.
And while it has its own army, police, and
courts—even its own national assembly— Kurdistan is
not recognized by any other nation in any official
capacity. All of autonomous Kurdistan is contained
within the borders of Iraq, and these days, Iraq's
territorial integrity is a main priority of the U.S.
government. Meanwhile, Kurdish regions in
neighboring Iran and Turkey are anything but
autonomous—oppressed is more like it. While some
Kurds dream of a pan-state Kurdistan that would
unite all Kurds under one government, that's
unlikely as long as both Iran and Turkey have all
those tanks and helicopters, and as long as the U.S.
has any say. Only in Iraq, only in the unique
conditions created by U.S. intervention in the
region, beginning with Operation Desert Shield in
1990, could there be any Kurdistan at all, official
or otherwise.
Kurdistan only exists because, from 1991 to 2003,
the U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force flew
round-the-clock jet fighter patrols over northern
Iraq that kept Hussein's own aircraft on the ground
and hamstrung his forces. It was this advantage that
enabled the lightly equipped pesh fighters to best
the Iraqi army.
The pesh are the key to Kurdish autonomy and,
inasmuch as Kurdistan has prospered, the key to its
success—a fact not lost on the U.S. Army. There are
very few U.S. forces deployed north of the Green
Line, and those that are carry unloaded weapons and
defer to Kurdish commanders. American troops of the
Idaho National Guard's 116th Regiment, deployed to
Camp Stone in Sulaymaniyah, even live inside a pesh
compound.
There's a healthy respect for the pesh among
American soldiers here. But it's a respect tempered
by the danger the pesh pose to U.S. intentions in
Iraq. For America wants a stable, peaceful Iraq—an
Iraq where rival ethnic groups bury their
differences and where the oil flows freely. But
Kurds want at least their autonomy—many say their
independence—and in the short term, that would mean
breaking Iraq into pieces and shuffling around its
ethnic populations, a process that would be anything
but peaceful. And as for oil, 40 percent of Iraq's
reserves—5 percent of the world's—lie beneath Kirkuk,
a city of almost a million people just south of the
Green Line. But despite pumping nearly a million
barrels of oil per day, Kirkuk suffers a gasoline
shortage and still has neighborhoods that are "below
Third World," according to Brigadier General Alan
Gayhart, the 55-year-old commander of the 116th.
Since the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government in
Baghdad has a monopoly on the state's oil production
and is using oil revenue to fund reconstruction,
"nothing comes back into Kirkuk," says Major Darren
Blagburn, 36, also from the Idaho regiment.
All that would change if the Kurds had their way.
Kirkuk's population is evenly split among Shiites,
Arab Sunnis, and Kurds, but it's surrounded by areas
that are almost entirely Kurdish, and many Kurds eye
it as the heart of a future independent Kurdistan.
"The PUK's goal is to bring Kirkuk into Kurdistan as
the capital," Blagburn says.
But any Kurdish attempt at taking Kirkuk from Iraq
could instigate large-scale violence, because of
what Blagburn calls the city's "competing social
demographics."
"In order to keep a unified, peaceful Iraq,"
Blagburn adds, "Talabani must keep the Kurds back."
Kirkuk is a fascinating place. As Gayhart says, "A
political science major would go nuts here."
Old
pesh are a rare breed, because most pesh die
fighting. For a century, they've fought for Kurdish
independence—first on horseback with sabers and
breech-loading rifles, later with AK-47s and
Soviet-built tanks captured from the Iraqi army.
Even with the tanks, they were always outgunned by
their enemies. But the pesh relied on stealth, dark
of night, and not a little savagery to gain the
upper hand during the bloody '80s and early '90s.
K.G. remembers when pesh would slip into towns at
night, gun down collaborators in their homes or in
the streets, then slip away. That yesterday's pesh
used the same tactics as today's insurgents is not
lost on him. Old-school pesh were terrorists.
But these old pesh are now in their forties and
fifties. They've graduated from gaunt terrorists to
potbellied military officers and politicians. Their
goals are the same, but their means have evolved.
Anwar Dolani was a pesh fighter—and one of the best.
It was his troops that destroyed the last Iraqi tank
to penetrate Sulaymaniyah in 1991; its rusting
carcass is a famous landmark. After the liberation
in 2003, Dolani surrendered his PUK membership in
order to accept a general's commission in the new
Iraqi army.
His men came with him.
Today, fat and imposing at the age of 47, with a
cigarette always in one hand and a bottle of Scotch
in the other, Dolani is one of the most powerful men
in Kurdistan, commanding an entire brigade of 2,000
former pesh wearing Iraqi army uniforms and
overseeing security for all of Sulaymaniyah and its
environs. He wears the uniform of his former
enemy—and not with irony. Dolani says that his
people are becoming the real Iraq and that they want
the rest of the country to "stop falling behind."
He's got a point.
Kurdistan is the most prosperous region of the
country—so prosperous that it steals jobs from other
areas. "We're seeing a lot of businesses move to
Kirkuk from Baghdad because it's safer," Blagburn
says.
Kurdistan's a refuge too. Local security
forces—overwhelmingly pesh and former pesh—are
entirely capable of independent operations. They
even deploy to other parts of Iraq for emergencies.
On election day, Kurdish patrols appeared
unannounced in the Sunni town of Baqubah and began
clearing roadside bombs from polling sites. Kurdish
forces are so strong that the U.S. Army plans to
turn over Kirkuk within weeks, making it the first
city outside of Kurdistan proper to make the full
transition from foreign to local protection.
"Because of the safety and security, Arabs come here
to forget about the problems in their own towns,"
Colonel Kamal, one of Dolani's lieutenants and
another former pesh, says, as K.G. translates.
"Kurds have a good habit of respecting them."
During a visit to a shrine to the 5,000 victims of
Hussein's 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish town
of Halabja (a former pesh stronghold), a badly
scarred Arab gentleman in his fifties approaches
this reporter, introduces himself as a doctor, and
says in British-accented English that I must show
the world the evils of terrorism.
"I've tasted it," he says.
Two years ago, he was working for the U.N. in the
Baghdad Green Zone. On August 19, 2003, an insurgent
rocket attack blew off half his face. Only the quick
work of U.S. Army surgeons saved him. After months
of treatment abroad, he returned to Iraq. But word
was out on him; death threats piled up. So he fled
to Kurdistan—the only place in Iraq, he says, where
he feels safe.
"We're Kurds, but we're never against anyone,"
Dolani explains. "Our goal is every human on earth
considering every other human equal."
That's Dolani the pesh-turned-politican talking. But
even Dolani the politician betrays his nationalistic
priorities. "[Kurds and Arabs] are all the same, but
[the Kurds'] true leader is Talabani."
That's just Talabani. Not Talabani's coalition. Not
the Iraqi government. Just Talabani.
In a moment of candor after an emotional visit to
the Halabja shrine, Colonel Kamal is more direct:
"Arabs were troublemakers from the beginning. This
is our land, but no one will call it our land. It's
the 21st century . . . and we don't even have a
country."
And the U.S. government hopes it stays that way. In
the meantime, anxious American officers in Kurdish
cities keep an eye on their pesh and former-pesh
comrades. American diplomats walk a fine line
between their resolute demand for a unified Iraq and
their tacit recognition and open respect for Kurdish
accomplishments. Everyone waits and watches as
Talabani and his landless people plan their next
move.
As for K.G., he's torn. "I love the U.S. I love
Kurdistan," he says. And even while he's fighting
the good fight in Kurdistan—a Kurdish soldier in an
American uniform—he's applying for U.S. citizenship
so he can join the FBI.
But he says he'll always be a Kurd.
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