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Writing in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Iraqi
columnist Khaled Al-Kishtainy invited the Arab world
to "learn about the lessons of democracy from Iraqi
Kurdistan." "At this time," wrote Al-Kishtainy in an
article titled "The Opportunity Before Kurdistan":
"While the South [of Iraq] is stumbling in
backwardness, reactionism and sectarianism, and
[while] the Center [i.e., the Sunni Triangle] is
drowning in terrorism and in-fighting, hope remains
that the Kurds will raise the banner of freedom,
rationalism, and modernism not only in Iraq but
throughout greater Kurdistan and the Fertile
Crescent. The road ahead should turn Iraqi Kurdistan
into a torch for enlightenment and an oasis for
freedom and democracy."
Al-Kishtainy concluded with a call to the Kurds to
"light the candle of freedom, of rationalism and of
the equality of women and their progress" before
"darkness totally engulfs Iraq" and to "serve as the
light for those who may have lost their path."
Sea of Blood
In a moving interview published in the London daily
Al-Hayat, Mas'oud Barazani, one of the two leaders
of the Kurds (the other being Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani) tells of his meeting with Saddam Hussein
in 1991 after the latter's defeat in the second Gulf
War. When asked in the interview about the first
thing he had said to Saddam, Barazani answered: "I
told Saddam, I have come to meet you swimming in a
sea of blood." He was referring, of course, to
the gassing of the Kurdish population inHalabja, and
the Anfal operation which resulted in the
destruction of thousands of Kurdish villages, the
murder of many of their inhabitants, and the
forceful relocation of Kurds to other parts of Iraq,
outside Kurdistan.
The No-Fly Zone and its Implications
The defeat of Saddam in Kuwait in 1991 and the
subsequent enforcement by the Allied forces of the
no-fly zone of Iraqi planes over Kurdistan was a
turning point in the history of modern Iraqi
Kurdistan.
The no-fly zone, followed in 1996 with 13% of oil
revenues being earmarked for the "Northern
Provinces" from the proceeds of the Oil for Food
program, which was to be managed by the United
Nations, turned Kurdistan into an increasingly
prosperous part of Iraq, even while the rest of the
country was descending into abject poverty. This
latter tragic development was due largely to the
country's reduced resources caused by international
sanctions on Iraq, introduced in 1990 following the
invasion of Kuwait, and by Saddam's own ostentatious
projects that were meant to glorify him and his
regime rather than meet the basic needs of the Iraqi
people.
The progress that was made in Iraqi Kurdistan did
not go unnoticed in the rest of Iraq, thanks to an
uncommonly vivid and detailed report on the
situation in Kurdistan that was published in the
Iraqi daily Babil, owned by Saddam's son Uday, who
due to his kinship was able to publish material
which would have caused any other publisher an
untold amount of personal pain.
In the report from Kurdistan, Babil's reporter
made these observations:
"This is supposedly an Iraqi land, but no one utters
the name 'Iraq'…Here they use cellular phones called
kurdistell, they watch a Kurd TV… Kurdistan has
escaped from Baghdad's grip since the end of the
1991 war, and is protected by the American and
British no-fly zone…There are 30 registered
political parties [sic]. Its people argue that they
enjoy freedom unknown to neighboring countries.
Unbelievable changes have taken place here. Imagine:
Most of the children born after 1991 do not speak
Arabic… The surrounding neighboring countries of
Syria, Turkey and Iran do not wish to see
[Kurdistan] as a model for their minorities, even
though they represent 23 million people – the
largest group without a state in the Middle East."
The report concluded with this friendly advice:
"Current circumstances require the Kurds to act with
caution." And caution has indeed been the
hallmark of Kurdish politics – before, during, and
since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Economic Progress in Kurdistan
Writing from Baghdad, BBC correspondent Caroline
Hawley talks of her recent experience arriving at
the new "glass-fronted 'gateway' to the world," the
Erbil International Airport, which received its
first flights from Dubai, Beirut and Amman. The
airport was constructed on a former Iraqi air force
base which had been used to bomb the Kurds of
Halabjawith chemical weapons. The economic success
of Iraqi Kurdistan is apparent in Ms. Hawley's
description of "the cranes dotting the skyline" of
the city of Suleymaniya:
"Everywhere you look, bulldozers are at work. Things
are booming…. People have money, people are spending
it, they feel it's safe to spend – and to build for
the future."
Most of the new construction work is financed by
Kurdish businessmen who live abroad. The French
daily Le Figaro wrote about the new supermarkets,
hospitals, restaurants and milk factories. Land, in
addition to a five-year tax holiday, has been given
to investors to encourage foreign direct
investments. To encourage tourism, a 28-floor luxury
hotel is being constructed in Suleymaniya, a city
that has always attracted wealthy Iraqis seeking to
escape the stifling heat of Baghdadi summers.
Kurdistan Attracts Southern Workers and
Professionals
The economic prosperity of Kurdistan and the
region's relatively high safety level have attracted
many day workers and, more recently, many
professionals from the southern cities of Iraq.
According to the Iraqi daily Al-Zaman:
"At dawn, hundreds of Arabs arriving from southern
Iraq congregate near a mosque in this Kurdish city
[Suleymaniya] in northern Iraq hoping to secure a
job in one of the tens of construction sites. What
started 18 months ago as a trickling of a few poor
and unemployed young men looking for jobs and
escaping from violence in areas where they live has
become a torrid flood."
The brain migration from the south to the north has
included highly professional people, with doctors
leading the way. It has been estimated, for example,
that 25 ophthalmologists from Basra, and numerous
other medical specialists, have established medical
practices in Kurdistan. In the last two years, 40
Arab professors have joined the University of
Sulaymaniya alone.
In Kurdish schools, the Kurdish language dominates,
and many young Kurds do not speak Arabic, the
language of the Iraqi majority. In fact, the
secondary school curriculum devotes fewer hours to
the teaching of Arabic than it does to English. For
many young Kurds, the Arabic language is identified
with Saddam's oppression. The dean of the college of
languages at Salah Al-Din University in Erbil says:
"For 1400 years, we were in conflict with the Arabs.
Their language is the language of the executioners
[jalladoun]. English is the language of modernity
and globalization." In the judgment of a
teacher of Arabic, the level of comprehension in
Arabic of the Kurdish students is quite inadequate,
and very few could pass the test for the Arabic
language in their baccalaureate examination.
With the shift to the Kurdish language came a major
revision in many of the history and geography
textbooks, which in the past had made no mention of
Kurdistan, let alone of the Kurdish struggle for
freedom and self determination.In short, the process
of "Kurdization" is moving rapidly and unimpeded.
Kurdistan – a De Facto Democratic State
For all intents and purposes, Iraqi Kurdistan has
acquired most of the symbols of sovereignty. It has
its own constitution, its own parliament which was
democratically elected, a regional president and a
regional prime minister, a flag (which differs from
the Iraqi national flag), a legal code, elected
local government, and an organized army known as the
Pesh Merga.
Kurdistan maintains a secular society, with women
enjoying equal rights in government employment. They
are active in politics and they have noticeable
presence in the Pesh Merga. The region is also
served by multiple satellite television channels,
and the Kurdish people have access to multiple
newspapers in both Kurdish and Arabic. Indeed, an
environment of democracy and freedom appears to
prevail across Iraqi Kurdistan.
Kirkuk, the oil-rich city which the Kurds aspire to
include in their region, could strengthen their
economic base enormously. It could also provide the
means for a future deal, preferably with Turkey but
possibly also with Syria, to exchange oil for access
to a port on the Mediterranean and the rights for a
flyover should Kurdistan opts for, or forced into,
independence.
The Position about Independence
The official Kurdish position is that an independent
Kurdistan is not a viable alternative to a federated
Iraq in which Kurdistan maintains a large degree of
autonomy. While the Kurds have sought, and so far
failed, to introduce the principle of
self-determination into the draft constitution that
will be submitted for referendum on October 15, the
aspirations for independence remain alive, as
evidenced by a petition signed by two million Kurds
seeking such a status. However, it was President
Jalal Talabani who put the question of independence
in the perspective of realpolitik:
"The Kurds, like all other peoples, aspire to
self-determination. But facing the reality, we
[Kurds] recognize that this is not possible even if
our neighbors attack us [even] without closing the
borders. [An] independent Kurdistan cannot survive."
Turkey, the most dominant neighbor of Kurdistan, has
been unambiguous in its opposition to anything
resembling independence, and has threatened military
incursion into Kurdistan if anything of this sort
were to take place. Recently, Turkey tightened the
screws by declaring, "We do not recognize a region
called Kurdistan." At the same time, however,
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently
visited Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city in
southern Turkey, where he declared that "the Kurdish
problem" could not be solved through "purely
military means." This statement led The Economist to
suggest that "the Turkish prime minister [was
paving] the way for a deal with the Kurds."
Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli is Senior Analyst of MEMRI's
Middle East Economic Studies Program.
www.memri.org
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