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Kurdish part of Iraq calm for now
10.11.2006 |
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ERBIL, Kurdistan
Region (Iraq), -- The skyline in this Kurdistani
(northern Iraqi) boomtown is a mosaic of half-built
concrete retail centers, sparkling new hotels and
giant earthmovers and cranes working overtime. The
cafe-lined streets buzz late into the night.
While in much of Iraq, coalition troops never leave
their secure bases without donning bullet-proof
vests and helmets, the few U.S. troops stationed in
Erbil travel through the city wearing camouflage
baseball caps. Instead of staring resentfully,
Kurdish motorists honk their horns and smile as the
Americans drive by.
The calm here is part of a separate peace forged by
Kurds in the three northern provinces known as
Kurdistan since the start of the Iraq war—only that
peace soon may be in peril.
In coming months, Kurdish leaders will begin the
process of laying their historic claim to the
region's oil- producing center, the contested city
of Kirkuk, thereby opening the door to a dispute
with Arab and other Iraqis that potentially could
immerse the Kurdish enclave in the kind of violence
gripping the rest of the country.
The dispute could be one more headache facing the
Bush administration and U.S. military commanders as
they explore alternatives to their Iraq strategy in
response to voters' clear demand for changes at the
polls Tuesday.
Kurdish leaders say the constitutional annexation
and repatriation of Kirkuk is non-negotiable and
necessary to rectify Saddam Hussein's policy of
forced migration of Kurds, who for years were
uprooted from their homes in the Kirkuk area and
replaced by Arabs.
Kurdish leaders acknowledge their move on Kirkuk
could have a destabilizing effect, at least in the
short term. But for the Kurds, there is no bigger
prize than the dusty city that sits atop billions of
barrels of oil.
"There are many questions we face, but the only real
question is that of Kirkuk," said Sadi Ahmed Pire,
head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's politburo
in Irbil. "Kirkuk can be solved two ways: We can
discuss it with the neighboring countries and Iraqi
communities and solve the situation politically or
we can solve it militarily. We hope to solve it
peacefully, but this is an issue that cannot wait.
It will be resolved."
Since the fall of the former regime, Kirkuk has been
a flashpoint of ethnic strife, with fighting between
the city's Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, all of whom
claim to be the predominant group in the city with
ancestral ties to the land.
Thousands of Kurds who say they were displaced from
the area during Hussein's regime have been living in
a soccer stadium and other refugee camps around the
city since soon after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003
and are awaiting repatriation.
The three-step plan for normalizing the situation in
Kirkuk starts with bringing the predominantly
Kurdish villages and towns that were
administratively detached from the city under
Hussein's regime back into the fold by March 29,
according to the timeline set in the Iraqi
constitution.
The constitution also calls for a new census of the
area to be completed by July 15 and for the people
of Kirkuk to hold a referendum on whether they
should join Kurdistan by the end of 2007. The Kurds
also must negotiate an understanding with
neighboring Turkey, which believes any move toward
Kurdish independence will stoke unrest among the
millions of Kurds in Turkey. Iran and Syria also
have Kurdish minorities.
Further complicating matters, Kurdish leaders say
they might find themselves in a delicate position if
the intractable violence pitting Shiites against
Sunnis elsewhere in Iraq devolves into full-scale
civil war.
"We've been living in what feels like two separate
countries, because we are so separated from the
violence in the south," said Mowloud Murat, a top
political adviser with the Kurdistan Islamic Union.
"If there was a civil war between the Shiites and
Sunnis in the south … the Kurdish leaders would have
no choice but to separate us from the rest of Iraq."
The Kurdish north has operated as an autonomous
region since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war,
when the U.S. military established a no-fly zone
over Kurdistan. Kurd leaders point out that they had
more than a decade head start on the rest of Iraq in
practicing democracy, which has contributed to
relative stability in Kurdistan.
For the Kurds, the U.S.-led invasion was a risky
venture because it rejoined the country's fate with
Iraq's Sunni and Shiite Arab population. The Kurds
ultimately were willing partners in the invasion but
demanded that federalism and the return of Kirkuk
would be core points enshrined in the Iraqi
constitution.
Pire and other Kurdish leaders see Kirkuk as an
indisputable red line. The city, which is home to
large populations of Arabs and Turkmen, is
considered by Kurds the "heartbeat" of greater
Kurdistan. It is the economic nucleus that makes the
region, and perhaps an eventual Kurdish state,
viable.
Kurds and U.S. officials blame the forced migration
of Kurds, known as Arabization, on the former
regime, but the policy of Arabizing the city and
surrounding area goes back to the early days of
Iraq.
Kamal Kirkukli, the deputy speaker of the Kurdish
Regional Government, spends most of his days in an
office that his Kurdistan Democratic Party has set
up in Irbil to research the cases of families who
were expelled from Kirkuk. The office is filled with
hundreds of boxes of documentary evidence.
Kirkukli said that it is possible many young Arab
men and women, who were born in Kirkuk on land their
parents illegally gained, will be forced to leave
the only homes they have known. While Kirkukli said
the situation for some Arabs is difficult and not
their fault, it is necessary that they move.
"What is built on a wrong remains a wrong," Kirkukli
said.
Alaa Talabani, a Kurdish parliamentarian whose
family was expelled from Kirkuk in 1991, said she
fears that carrying out repatriation of Kirkuk too
quickly could do more harm than good for the Kurdish
refugees in the city.
In the short term, Kurdish leaders know they must
remain tied to Iraq, while keeping focused on their
long-term goal to establish an independent state,
said Talabani, who returned to Kirkuk in 2003. To
achieve the goal, she said, Kurds must help bring
stability to the rest of Iraq and improve
relationships with Turkey, Syria and Iran.
"It is too soon to deal with Kirkuk," said Talabani,
who is the niece of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
"Maybe in a year or two, we can let the people of
Kirkuk decide their fate."
In ways, both small and large, the Kurds seem to be
separating themselves from the rest of Iraq.
Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdish Regional
Government, in September banned the flying of the
Iraqi flag in the Kurdish region. The Iraqi national
government and Kurdish Regional Government also have
quarreled over who has the right to negotiate with
foreign companies vying for oil exploration in
Kurdistan after a Danish oil company discovered oil
near the northeastern town of Zakho.
Iraq's oil minister argued that oil is a national
resource and revenues from the new Zakho find have
to be shared with all of Iraq. Kurdish leaders
contend the constitution calls only for the sharing
of oil revenues from existing oil reserves and newly
found oil is the property of the region where it is
found.
While the security situation in much of Iraq has
stifled foreign investment, hundreds of foreign
outfits—from Turkish construction companies to a
German beer haus—have set up in Kurdistan. Although
there has been economic growth, some businessmen
complain Kurdistan is ultimately hampered by the
security situation elsewhere in the country.
On a cool night in Irbil recently, hundreds of
shoppers roamed the aisles of Ahmed Rekhani's $20
million venture, the New City Mall, while others
loitered in the parking lot to stare at a pristine
white Hummer that had pulled in.
The mall, which opened three weeks ago, is more of a
one-stop retail center where you can purchase food,
clothes and electronics. It sits on 23,000 square
yards of land and includes a Turkish restaurant with
a staff imported from eastern Turkey and a motel for
out-of-town shoppers.
Sitting in his second-floor office, Rekhani
nervously fingered a stack of invoices and explained
to a visitor that he has sunk his fortune into a
project that is risky at best.
"There is no one to insure us, no banks to give us
loans," he said. "The security situation in much of
the country is very dangerous. And while it is
peaceful here, the dangers elsewhere in Iraq can
easily affect us, and things could change quickly."
Anis Sandi, an Egyptian general manager that Rekhani
recruited to help run the project, was more blunt
about the situation:
"It's like we've built this whole thing on sand."
chicagotribune com
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