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President Bush, Listen to Iraqis
25.10.2006
By Baqi Barzani - ekurd.net Contributing Writer - Opinion |
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After reviewing the
recommendations of the study group headed by former
U.S. secretary of state James Baker, the White House
proclaimed its opposition to partitioning Iraq.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration overlooked
the wishes of the majority of Iraq's people.
The U.S. made a decision on behalf of 25 million
people without consulting them. Both the Kurds and
Shiite who constitute the greater part of the county
(85 percent) are in favor of dividing Iraq.
The people of Iraq should be the ones to decide
whether, when, how and where partition lines should
be drawn. Many of the worst cases of modern,
organized violence -- Rwanda, Serbia, Chechnya, etc.
-- all had their roots in situations where different
ethnic populations were forced to live together
within a single state.
Should the Iraqi people continue to depend on the
liberating forces or do they reserve the right to
determine their political destiny? One of the
greatest lapses of the U.S. government has been that
it has not trained Iraq's people to stand on their
own feet and march toward self-reliance and
self-government.
President Bush indicated that interference by
neighboring countries would complicate any partition
of Iraq. Adjacent states already strike the
foundations of newly democratic Iraq, meddling in
its internal affairs and fueling the insurgency.
Countries such as Iran, Turkey and Syria restrict
their own citizens' democratic rights.
They restrict religious freedom, manipulate the
electoral system and repress political dissidents.
These are countries throttling the voices of their
own citizens. How can assistance be sought from such
countries in stabilizing the shattered Iraq?
Iraq must be partitioned. The U.S. can advance its
ultimate goal of spreading democracy in the Middle
East by doing so. In a partitioned Iraq, ethnic and
religious minority groups can take a breath and
protect their own rights. With autonomy and some
ability to determine local education, culture, and
economic development, ethnic minorities will grow
increasingly secure. They will be more willing to
accept the authority and legitimacy of the larger
national state.
A definitive answer to the future of the ethnically
mixed city of
Kirkuk has been and is a major
challenge. Geographically and historically dominated
by Kurds, Kirkuk was, is and will remain the
political capital of any Kurdish federal state.
Kirkuk underwent a process of Arabization in the
mid-1930s when the discovery of oil in the city
generated a flow of Arabs and Turkmen into it.
The process of Arabization, namely the settling of
Iraqi Arabs in the city to change its demographic
structure, continued throughout the reign of the
Hashemite monarchy, but was greatly accelerated
under the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein with the
introduction of new and extreme measures to destroy
Kurdish villages and to force deportation of their
people to other parts of Iraq under the "Anfal"
operation in the 1990s.
The only solution is to reverse the Arabization
policy and resettle Arabs in their provinces of
origin, primarily in southern Iraq. This would
eventually restore the Kurds to their historical
demographic weight. According to Article 140 in the
permanent Iraqi constitution, the situation in the
city must be contained by the end of 2007, and
Kirkuk will ultimately be annexed back into
Kurdistan's autonomous region.
Most significantly, the creation of an independent
Kurdistan state will serve strategic U.S. national
interests in the region. By sustaining the rights of
the oppressed and deprived Kurdish people, not only
will the U.S. be able to establish a safe haven for
its troops but it will also befriend 40-million
pro-Western, amiable, democratic people
Baqi Barzani was born in 1976 in Barzan-
Kurdistan Region (Iraq). His relatives and close
family members were killed when Saddam Hussein
attacked a Kurdish Village named Barzan. Barzani
fled to Pakistan in 1990 where he worked for United
Nation High Commissioner for Refugees. He is now
applying for U.S. citizenship and plans to work as a
linguist/cultural advisor for the U.S. government.
He contributes regularly to Kurdish press and media.
He is the editor-in-chief of a Kurdish-English
online newspaper Klawrojna.
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