|
Washington, March
21, (VOA) -- Last week most of the world's media was
focusing on major military operations in southern
Iraq. Little attention was given to the significance
of Kurdish protests in Halabja, which destroyed a
museum dedicated to Kurdish victims of a 1988 poison
gas attack by Saddam Hussein.
As VOA's Brian Padden reports, this outbreak of
Kurd-on-Kurd violence in Iraq illustrates tension,
mostly below the surface, between the desire for
real democratic change and the need for unity.
The Halabja memorial, which was full of pictures and
artwork commemorating the 5,000 Kurds killed by a
poison gas attack launched by Saddam Hussein in
1988, was a symbol of Kurdish unity against
oppression. But last week on March 16th, the
anniversary of the gas attack, Kurdish protesters
destroyed their own memorial.
Andrew Apostolou, a Washington-based Iraq analyst
says this attack reveals the tensions that exist in
post-Saddam Kurdistan.
Young Kurds in particular, he says, are tired of
what they see as a closed, unresponsive and corrupt
government. "One of the problems at the moment in
Kurdistan is that there's a feeling from the younger
generation that the political system is not open to
them. And they see this as the only away out."
Unity, he says, is necessary for Kurds to maintain
any power against the Sunnis and Shi'ites in greater
Iraq. Unity has brought relative peace and progress
to Kurdistan. And unity must take precedence over
political reform as long as sectarian violence
remains a serious threat to Iraqi stability.
"So unity comes before pluralism. If we were to see
an end to violence, and that's really a decision
that the Sunni Arab community alone can make, then
you would see much more change."
And while Mr. Apostolou does not condone the
violence, he says the fact that Kurdish protesters
felt safe to take to the streets was a sign a
political progress.
"The good thing is this, the fact that people feel
empowered to raise their voices, which they wouldn't
have done before. And that's because you have
140,000 Americans there. I mean one of the key
things ensuring that there is variety of opinion in
Iraq, is the presence of the Americans."
He says maintaining unity while encouraging real
democratic reform will require a significant
American military presence there for years to come.
www.voanews.com
Top |
® 