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Turkey no longer the only neighbour that worries
Iraq's autonomous north (Kurdistan)
His desk is cluttered with a pair of Motorola
walkie-talkies, a handgun and several thousand
dollars' worth of confiscated opium and hashish.
Despite the impressive haul of drugs seized near the
Iranian border, the Kurdish counter-narcotics
official is not happy.
"Drugs are a new phenomenon in our society," he
says. "Iran is trying to funnel the drug into
Kurdistan and spread it among us. They're trying to
weaken our society in every possible way, so as to
discourage us from forming our own state."
Such anti-Iranian accusations are increasingly
widespread in Kurdistan (northern Iraq), where a
Kurdish majority is anxious to claim independence.
Detecting malign Iranian influences has become a
popular Kurdish pastime — especially, for the
high-ranking narcotics official, when it involves
the land bridge between the poppy fields and hash
plantations of Afghanistan and users in Kurdistan.
But it's not just drugs.
Some local leaders blamed "Iranian elements" for
Thursday's rioting in Halabja, the Kurdish town that
was poison-gassed by the Saddam Hussein regime in
1988. A monument to the 5,000 Kurds killed in the
attack was destroyed as demonstrators protesting
local conditions turned violent during ceremonies
marking the 18th anniversary of the massacre.
Iran's new-found unpopularity comes as Tehran's
favoured faction in Iraq — the majority Shiites —
seek to form a government despite Kurdish and Sunni
opposition in Baghdad.
Increased clashes between the Iranian army and a
Kurdish militia called Pezhak in Iran's Kordestan
province have dismayed the Iraqi Kurdish leadership.
Pezhak is the Iranian militia offshoot of the
separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been
battling the Turkish government in southeast Turkey.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, an unlikely political
alliance has been formed as Iraq's Kurdish
president, Jalal Talabani, is speaking out publicly
against Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite former prime
minister who has been re-nominated for the post by
the United Iraqi Alliance, a grouping of mostly
Shiite parties that won the December elections.
Talabani has broken with his former Shiite allies to
link up with Sunni politicians in an alliance aimed
at depriving al-Jaafari of the post.
As the horse-trading continues among mostly secular
politicians inside the capital's isolated but
increasingly vulnerable Green Zone, the rest of Iraq
tears itself apart in a daily diet of
assassinations, car bombings and mass executions.
By contrast, northern Iraq remains relatively
peaceful, with the exception of Mosul and Kirkuk,
troubled cities with mixed Arab and Kurdish
populations.
Fifteen years of autonomy since the 1991 Persian
Gulf War have brought the region some prosperity,
allowing the main ruling parties — the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) — to decide that amalgamation
between them is the best course of action.
Despite a legacy of factional infighting that
culminated in an intra-Kurdish civil war in 1994,
the Kurds are rallying to guarantee control over
their own army and a 2007 referendum to decide the
fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
A Kurdish military intelligence operative, speaking
on condition of anonymity, says ordinary Kurds are
"not bothered at all" by the daily atrocities
perpetrated in the rest of the country by rival
militias.
"They believe that it's what the Sunnis and Shiites
had coming to them. They don't criticize it at all."
In Erbil, the political capital of Kurdistan
(northern Iraq), Kurdish politicians are sounding
cautious notes about the prospect of independence —
and the Iranian threat.
"The Iranians have their own policy and it's
something very complicated," says Adnan al-Mufti,
speaker of the Kurdish parliament.
"The Iraqi people cannot be used as a card in this
game. We cannot be used as pawns by the region's
powers."
www.thestar.com
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