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In Halabja we ended our
work March 3rd, having interviewed three hundred
patients about their experiences of the chemical
weapons attacks in 1988. We have yet to do a
statistical analysis, but my sense from an initial
glance is that we may have underestimated the extent
to which psychiatric and physical ailments continue
to plague the community.
One final excursion took me to a region called
Howraman, which towers amongst the mountains
bordering Iran. In her travels through Kurdistan in
2002, Christiane Bird, the author of A Thousand
Sighs, A Thousand Revolts, was unable to visit the
area. This is because until 2003 the mountains were
occupied by the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam,
which consisted of Kurdish, Arab, and Afghan
radicals, and the region was cut off from the
secular Kurdish government in Sulaimania. Despite
this the Howramis have a reputation amongst Kurds
for cleverness, and after the American air force and
Kurdish peshmerga pushed the terrorists out, many
people returned to their villages to rebuild.
Howramis are talented in medicine, and I am told
there are more doctors in Tarwela, a small town we
visited during our drive, than in much-larger
Halabja. The region is also a visual feast, with
small towns built into the sides of mountains,
terraced hillsides that turn bright green even in
early March, and deep gorges where springs support
the growth of pomegranate and walnut trees.
What relevance does Howraman have for Americans? In
his recent essay titled "After Neoconservatism,"
Francis Fukuyama takes issue with the notion that
Americans can "'impose' democracy on a country that
doesn't want it." Instead he defines democracy
promotion as "a long-term and opportunistic process
that has to await the gradual ripening of political
and economic conditions to be effective." Sensible
enough, but I am surprised that Fukuyama finds no
place in his seven pages to discuss Kurdistan. One
thing that impresses me during my visit to Howraman
is that it is an example of US policy actually
working in the region. Unlike other parts of Iraq,
the Kurds in Howraman were not fundamentalist by
inclination, and a limited action by the American
and Kurdish governments was able to restore their
land and rid the area of terrorism. This is
important specifically because it is not the case in
most of Iraq, and yet it draws little attention in
the West.
After two months in Kurdistan I am convinced that
what applied to Howraman in 2003 can apply to the
Kurdish region in general. The people here have many
problems — a meddling and opaque government being
one of them — but they also have many of the core
qualities neccessary for liberalism to take root.
Most importantly, they are not chauvinists. There is
no theory of Islamic or Kurdish exceptionalism that
is spread through the media or popular culture; on
the contrary there is a great curiosity about
outsiders and a desire to form personal and
professional links with visitors. There is also the
widespread expectation that the government must
answer to the people and that delays to improve
civic society represent genuine failures of
leadership.
There is an argument pursued by some in the United
States that Iraq consists only of factions, not
citizens. This is true enough for much of the
country, but in this argument the Kurds are
inevitably presented as no more than the faction
obsessed with seizing Kirkuk. The fact that they
have built a university system, allowed a free
press, begun to embrace feminism, and held
successful elections makes no impression on
proponents of this thinking. The Kurds' eagerness to
work with UN agencies, NGOs, and private investors
also leaves them cold. And the fact that the Kurds
have done all of this while upholding minority
rights and inviting displaced Arabs to settle in
their territory, even after suffering a genocide
conducted by an Arab government, produces only an
icy shrug.
This thinking, which often masquerades as realism,
is no less petty than claiming that Lebanese are
responding only to clan politics, or that Ukrainians
are motivated only by their phobia and hatred of
Russians. In each of these instances there is an
element of truth — the Kurds do want Kirkuk, the
Lebanese are fractured, the Ukrainians do fear the
Russians — but to reduce these groups only to their
visceral motivations is to lie and do so cynically.
The future of Kurdistan is all the more important
because of America's inability to stabilize Iraq.
The people I am living amongst, whose friends and
family members are fighting alongside American
troops, wonder what will happen after a US
withdrawal. The signs are not reassuring: Iranian
meddling in Iraq's south is already a reality, and
Ibrahim Jafari's recent visit to Turkey created
panic that a deal is in the works to curtail Kurdish
autonomy after America draws down its forces. What
is certainly clear is that the Kurds face hostile
neighbors on all sides, and the failure of American
policy in Baghdad runs the risk of leaving them at
the mercy of governments with no interest in their
welfare and development.
As difficult as this situation is, America could
easily consolidate liberalism's gains in Kurdistan,
and in all likelihood it could do so without further
violence. The most important thing we could do is
simply keep Turkey and Iran out. In the longer run
we could facilitate the democratic transition by
working with nascent Kurdish institutions — the
universities, the press, the courts — to ensure
their relative independence from the political
parties. This would be a greater challenge than
merely preventing foreign interference, but a walk
through Sulaimania would convince most visitors that
even minimal investments in the region have made a
positive difference.
Most importantly liberals in America should
understand that to toss Kurdistan out the window
alongside the rest of Iraq would be to waste a
prescious opportunity, as well as to disgrace any
notion of internationalism within our party.
Kurdistan is not yet a full member of the free
world, but you will not find a people more favorably
inclined to America and its aspirations. That's
worth remembering the next time you go to vote.
Jonathan Dworkin, a medical student in his final
year at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York,
is travelling in Iraqi Kurdistan from January to
March of 2006.
www.washingtonmonthly.com
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