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Who is Talabani?
22.4.2006
By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli : Opinion
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I have no problem with anyone choosing any identity,
ideology and approach as long these are based on
clear values or at least boundaries. So I do not
have a problem with a Kurd being an Iraqi president
or even assuming identity, ideology and role of an
Arab as long as this is a personal choice that does
not affect me, my people or infringe upon our next
generations. The Arabs know what they want. They
have history, culture, identity, power, oil, money,
22 states, a history of ethnic and cultural
colonisation of many nations and above all an
ideology which is chauvinist and as far as the Other
is concerned, racist and assimilationist. When
Talabani was chosen as a candidate for the president
of Iraq, a racist Arab writer in Assharq Alawsat
wrote an article entitled Ta’arib Talabani, meaning
“Arabizing Talabani”. He suggested a strategy: Let
us allow Talabani be president but Arabize him in
the process and not let him use this position to
take Kirkuk for the Kurds!
Now I do not think that Arab chauvinists even needed
such a strategy or even thought. Who is more
prepared than Talabani to be anything and everything
but not a principled Kurd? Anything that anyone
wants apart from his people. My problem is here. I
do not care if Talabani, Barzani, Mahmud Osman or
whoever become Arabs, Turks, dictators, mini-Saddams,
etc But please stop doing this at the expense of our
dignity, blood, history and future of our
generations. The generations of children whose
fathers you have victimised are beginning to see and
think. You do not have much time left for your
gimmicks.
But let us focus on Talabani. While this Arab writer
and with him all Arab chauvinist regimes and powers,
had this plan to Arabise him, what was Talabani
doing to ensure that he would be elected as
President of Iraq? Did he go to the Arab League,
Iraqi Arab parties, his good friends in Syria to ask
them to be baptised as a veteran Arab and purify
himself from any past connections to Kurds and
Kurdistan and then guarantee his post through this
clever tactic or genuine metamorphosis? If he had
done this, I would have been the first person to
congratulate him. But he did not do that. For a
month or two before elections, he surprisingly
became a genuine nationalist Kurdish ‘leader’ again.
He promised and promised. He even drew red lines of
Kurdish interests which he promised he would not
compromise. The post was not important to him,
Kurdish interests were.
Let me not make assumptions and retrospective
speculations. Here is the proof of what Talabani was
saying and doing before elections.
When Talabani was nominated for presidency and he
needed the votes of his Kurdish people to achieve
his dream, I wrote an article which was published on
www.kurdmedia.com [http://www.kurdmedia.com/articles.asp?id=10130
],
www.kurdistanreferendum.org , and also on
Talabani party’s website www.puk.org. (The article
has been removed now!). The article was entitled:
Kurdish Consensus. And it talks about a consensus
which was surprisingly promoted and achieved by
no-one else but Mr Talabani.
In this article I summarised the positive
environment and advantages of Kurdish people and the
role that Talabani could play to ensure the respect
of all his people not in South Kurdistan but in all
Kurdistan and the world. This would be on the other
hand a great popular asset and support for him
personally to gain international respectability as a
great leader by acting with principle, courage and
integrity to do what he promised his people to do.
Let us remind us of what Talabani said then and the
most favourable conditions and opportunities we had
when the article published on 1st March 2005: I
quote it verbatim:
[In the last few days [that is before 1 March 2005]
the PUK leader, who is also the Kurdish candidate
for Iraqi presidency, Mr Jalal Talabani has repeated
with great consistency and strong emphasis that the
issue of Iraqi posts is secondary to him and the
Kurds and the important thing is the political
issues which are of concern for the Kurdish people.
And Talabani has rightly identified four priorities
which he has often stressed would be the solid
Kurdish conditions for entering into alliance with
any of the elected Iraqi groupings.
These priorities are: Kurdish identity of Kirkuk and
it being part of Kurdistan region should be
recognised, federalism as principle and practice to
be enshrined in Iraqi Constitution (of course
including the recognition of Kurdistan region
including Kirkuk), Kurdistan’s share of oil and
other resources should be established and Kurdistan
to continue to have its independent army (peshmarga
forces).
On these priorities, starting with the issue of
Kirkuk, Mr Talabani, as far as we can judge from his
statements as reported by PUK media, has been so far
consistent and firm. In a latest meeting in Kirkuk
on 27 February 2005, Talabani reiterated that “the
Kurds will support political programmes and not
personalities. Any one who supports the four
priorities of the people of Kurdistan will have the
full support of our people.” (PUKmedia.com. in
Arabic, 27/02/2005)
Then the article goes on to explain the favourable
conditions and legal aspects which make it easy for
the Kurds to achieve not even these four aims but
even independence. It reads:
[This is an important strategic step in the right
direction. The Kurdish people, thanks to their unity
before, during and after the elections, have many
important strengths and leverages which the
political leaders need to use positively and
decisively. All the positive factors, however, are
embodied now and can be enacted within the consensus
of the four priorities starting with the issue of
Kirkuk. If we put the issue of Kurdistan’s
self-determination in its broader context, we see
that the people of South Kurdistan now have all
possible moral, historical, political and legal
means to pursue the case of self-determination
internationally. The fact that Kurdistan has been
subjected to oppression for the last 80 years and to
genocide, gives our people the right of national
self –determination and right of secession based on
the moral and legal principle of “remedial justice.”
Anfal genocide of 1988 does not only entitle our
people to secession but to take the Iraqi state to
international court for the crime of genocide and
crimes against humanity. The fact that Kurdish
people have been exercising de facto independence
and self-rule for the last 13 years, supported by
Security Council Resolutions and international
protection, provides a legal base for
self-determination, too.
Now the ethnic issue of who are Kurds and which
areas are Kurdish has been settled through the
elections. This has added a legal dimension to our
already-established political cause. There are four
legal bases which give the Kurds a strong political
position: the number of seats obtained by the Kurds
(77 seats), the Kurdish majority in Kirkuk, and the
legal tools provided by Iraqi Administrative Law (TAL)
that two thirds of votes are needed for the
appointment of Prime Minister, President, and main
posts on the one hand, and that any future
Constitution can be nullified if three combined
governorates reject it. The unity of the Kurdish
political scene and the emerging strategic consensus
also provide a strong solid political ground to
allow the Kurdish people achieve their political
aims. Add to this another strong political factor
which is the role and achievements of Kurdistan
Referendum Movement.}
So this was the context and environment in which
Talabani got the post of the President of Iraq. Then
Talabani, as his PUK media quoted him, promised that
“the Kurds will support political programmes and not
personalities. Any one who supports the four
priorities of the people of Kurdistan will have the
full support of our people.” (PUKmedia.com. in
Arabic, 27/02/2005)
What has happened to these four priorities Mr
Talabani? Can you tell us what have you achieved
regarding each priority? Can you tell us what is
happening in Kurdistan? What is happening to the
displaced Kurds of Kirkuk, to the women of Anfal? Do
you know what is happening to Kurdish society, to
your own party?
Did you return to your people, did you consult
anyone at all, or did you ever give an explanation
to the people who voted for you when with a
telephone call from a chauvinist Arab Omaru Mousa,
from a country where Kurdish women were bought for
prostitution, you agreed to drop the word federal in
the name of Iraq and to review the constitution,
which you asked your people to vote for to ensure
their future, to meet anti-Kurd Arab Sunni Ba’thist
demands?
You know, I can go on and on. But I stop here.
Can you please tell us who you are? Honestly, I do
not know!
Kurdistanreferendum.org
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