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IRBIL, Iraq - Two hundred miles south, in the
distant Iraqi capital of Baghdad, Iraq's top Kurdish
leaders have pledged that they want to keep the
Kurdish north as part of Iraq, as Washington and all
Iraq's neighbors want.
But here at noon on a tarmac training ground in the
north, in the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, the
Kurdish forces pivoting through a parade drill last
week were marching to a different tune -- under a
different flag, and to a different tongue.
Iraq's Kurds are "100 percent" for independence,
said the battalion commander, Col. Sayyid Hajar
Tahir, as his subordinates led the men in turning
battle squares.
The Kurds wore the brown-on-brown of Iraq's new
national forces, to which they technically belong.
But the flag flying here and across the region known
as Kurdistan was the Kurdish sunburst, with Iraq's
green and white banner nowhere in sight. Tahir's
officers droned their orders in Kurdish, not the
Arabic of the Arab majority down south.
With all the changes afoot in Iraq, the Kurdish
commander said, he expected Kurdish independence to
be coming soon.
"If not today, then tomorrow," Tahir said, smiling.
"If not tomorrow, the day after."
The demands from Kurdistan for independence and for
immediate action on broader territorial claims are
shaping much of the debate in Baghdad as Shiite
Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds, who mostly practice the
Sunni version of Islam, and other groups draft the
country's post-Saddam Hussein constitution.
Kurds have led the drive for a federal system for
Iraq -- one that would leave Kurdistan within Iraq's
borders, but preserve much of the de facto autonomy
Kurds gained under U.S. protection after the 1991
Persian Gulf War. Sunni Arabs say the federal system
could lead to the breakup of Iraq.
Delegates to the constitutional committee call the
federalism proposal the main unresolved dispute as
drafters of the charter struggle to meet an Aug. 15
deadline. Some delegates spoke Sunday of an
extension to work out the impasse.
While avoiding talk of independence, some top
Kurdish leaders in Baghdad are staking a claim to
the right of Kurdish self-determination, saying the
Kurdish north will remain in Iraq, but only by
choice.
Kurdistan and other regions of the new, federal Iraq
should "coexist voluntarily together as opposed to
being kept together by brute force and genocide,"
said Barham Salih, an influential minister in the
interim Iraqi government drafting the national
constitution.
The federal system "could provide the Kurdish people
with a safe and secure way to self-governance,"
Salih added.
It's a view seldom heard on the streets of
Kurdistan.
"Independence!" said mechanic Sammi Muhammed,
interrupting a question about whether he preferred
federalism or independence. He spoke at the foot of
Irbil's ancient fortress, the center of what Kurds
say is one of the oldest continuously inhabited
cities in the world.
"I don't like Iraq -- Arabic Iraq. I'm a Kurd and
I'm in Kurdistan," Muhammed insisted, then
volunteered, "I'm ready to fight."
At issue is the future of the 4 million to 5 million
Kurds in Iraq, as well as the total estimated 30
million ethnic Kurds inhabiting a swath of territory
from Turkey to the republics of the former Soviet
Union.
Historically stateless, Kurds have lost out on every
nation-building bid since the breakup of the Ottoman
Empire.
Turkey, Syria and Iran fear that independence for
Kurdistan would encourage uprisings by their own
minority Kurds. Some in Iran already blame violence
last month, when Kurds rioted in one border city and
Kurdish guerrillas killed three policemen, on the
recent inauguration of the first elected regional
president for Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, a longtime
Kurdish faction leader.
U.S. officials have tried to squelch Kurdish
aspirations for independence, endorsing instead a
weak federal system.
Iraq's Kurdish leaders know that declaring
Kurdistan's independence now would risk economic
strangulation or attack by its neighbors.
With no seaport of its own, Kurdistan depends on
trade rolling across the border by truck from Turkey
for its current economic surge. Foreign companies
and nonprofit groups, discouraged by bombings,
kidnappings and mayhem from setting up shop to the
south, are also moving in.
Scrambling to overcome Kurdistan's isolation, Kurds
opened international airports in Irbil in April, and
in the eastern Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah last
week. Newly created Kurdistan Airlines logged its
first flight last month. Arab neighbors have so far
refused it permission to schedule direct flights to
their countries, a sign of the shunning an
independent Kurdistan could expect.
Construction cranes, steel girders and rising
concrete blocks dominate the squat skyline of Irbil,
in contrast to the bombed-out blight of Baghdad.
The prosperity and comparative peace of the north
have brought increasingly assertive Kurdish demands
upon the struggling, Shiite-led national government
in Baghdad -- demands that leaders here say must be
met to ensure Kurdish approval of the eventual
constitution.
For example, the Kurdish parliament has called for a
Kurdish vote on independence to be held in eight
years, said Adnan Mufti, president of the Kurdish
assembly.
Kurdish leaders also have demanded the return of
several towns and cities they say are historically
Kurdish. The claim extends above all to Kirkuk, the
center of northern Iraq's oil production.
Hussein's government in the late 1980s moved
thousands of Arab families into Kirkuk to offset
other ethnic groups' claims to the city. Since his
fall, hundreds of Kurdish families have moved to
Kirkuk, squatting in a stadium and elsewhere, ready
for what Kurds say must be the mandatory relocation
of those Arab families.
Mufti said Kurdish leaders have pushed for the
Baghdad government to take concrete steps toward
moving out those Arab families before the Aug. 15
deadline for the constitution.
Kurdish leaders in Baghdad denied linking those
demands to Kurdish approval of the constitution.
They also said the resettlement of Arab families
installed by Hussein would be peaceful, and was
overdue.
Already, assassinations of Arab officials in Kirkuk
are frequent. Kurds in the security forces have also
been accused of kidnapping hundreds of Arabs and
ethnic Turkmens from Kirkuk, according to U.S. and
Kurdish officials and the family members of the
alleged victims.
Many Kurds fear those security forces as well. They
freeze and fall silent when asked in public about
Barzani's administration, as Iraqis did in Hussein's
time in Baghdad.
Alleged abuses under Barzani's government, and the
uneasy detente between Barzani's political party and
the one that controls the east of Kurdistan,
threaten future trouble for Kurdistan, whatever its
status.
Independence-minded Kurds, however, say they want
only to start the experiment of nation-building.
"The people are very happy," Tahir said. "Because
they're going to be part of the future."
Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington
contributed to this report.
www.washingtonpost.com
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