ERBIL, Kurdistan-Iraq, -- Sipping
tea at a café in Erbil, Moayed Rafiq, 25, watches news of a car
bombing in Baghdad on an Arab television channel. Others around him
also watch, quietly.
"When I see this every day on TV, I think there is no need for us to
tie our destiny with Iraq," Moayed said.
To Moayed, Iraq is just a word he hears through media. He believes
the time has come for Kurds to secede from Iraq "once and forever."
Despite the rhetoric by Kurdish politicians that they want Kurdistan
to remain a part of Iraq, many of the young feel as Moayed does.
Kurdish leaders are rushing in to join a rebuilding of Iraq, but
many people in Kurdistan want to break away from it.
"Of course, I feel sad for their suffering, but we can't just wait
until things get better there. We have had enough already," said
Moayed.
Kurds have been a part of the modern Iraq state for the last 80
years, but feel distinct from Arab Iraq.
"Kurdistan, both as a people and a land, is not part of Iraq. It was
attached to Iraq by a political decision against the will of its
people," Ghafour Makhmuri, member of the Erbil-based Kurdistan
parliament, told IPS.
Kurds suffered most under Saddam Hussein. More than 100,000 were
massacred in ethnic cleansing operations known as Anfal (the name of
a Koranic verse meaning "spoils of war").
Fortune turned for them in 1991 when they established an autonomous
region after the Gulf War.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was another boost to Kurds' status
in Iraq. For the first time, a Kurd (Jalal Talabani) became
president of Iraq. Governing their northern region themselves, Kurds
came to exercise huge power in Baghdad as well.
But rejoining Iraq, as many Kurds like to call it, has not stopped
Kurdish efforts for independence. In January 2005, alongside
national elections, more than 98 percent of Kurds voted for
independence in an unofficial referendum.
The Iraqi constitution that was ratified last year did not recognize
the right to self-determination for Kurds. That angered many
independence-minded Kurds.
"The peoples of Iraq must be united on the basis of a voluntary
union, and whenever they don't want to live together, separation is
the only solution," said Aso Karim, a member of the Kurdistan
Referendum Movement, the organization that held the 2005 unofficial
referendum.
Kurds' acceptance of federalism in the Iraqi constitution is not the
end of the road for them. Some say it is only a launching pad for a
higher goal.
"I believe Kurdistan people look at federalism only as a gateway to
independence," said Makhmuri, who also heads the Kurdistan National
Democratic Union, a hard-line nationalist party.
Makhmuri believes the country's sufferings will end only when it
disintegrates. "The best solution to the current problems of this
country is dividing it into several states. Given the current
situation, I am now more optimistic than ever that we step toward
independence."
The prospect of Kurdish independence has been a nightmare to Iraq's
neighbors, Turkey particularly, that have sizable Kurdish
minorities. They fear Kurds' separation from Iraq would provoke
nationalist sentiments among their own Kurds.
But Kurdish leaders admit that without broad international support,
a landlocked Kurdish state will not be able to survive.
"I can go to parliament now and declare independence," Massoud
Barzani, president of the Kurdistan region, told a gathering of his
Kurdistan Democratic Party in Erbil last week. "But when nobody
supports it, it will just disrupt the current situation of the
Kurdish people."
Pro-independence Kurds say they need investments from powerful
nations to create and safeguard an independent Kurdish state. There
is no certainty that this would be forthcoming for an independent
Kurdish state.
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