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In Kurdistan, Iraq seems a Million miles
away
4.9.2006
By Borzou Daragahi
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The autonomous region is an oasis of safety in
comparison to other, violence-stricken areas.
September 4, 2006
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan-Iraq , -- The night
is young. The women are pretty. Danyar Farok,
wearing a sparkly gray shirt and skin-tight
acid-washed jeans, and a buddy are strutting along
this Kurdish city's main drag.
Maybe they will wind up at one of the outdoor bars
in the riverside Sarchinar district. Or maybe they
will sit at a teahouse shooting the breeze.
Faruk, a 25-year-old high school computer teacher,
complains that he and his girlfriend, Medea, can't
put together enough money to live together. His
artist pal Shakwan Siddik, a 23-year-old with black
hair down to his shoulders and sunglasses dangling
from an open-collar shirt, is searching for a sunny
studio to do his oil paintings.
As for the kidnappings, car bombings, drive-by
killings and economic misery unfolding in the rest
of Iraq, Farok is blunt.
"I don't care," he says. "The Arabs never cried for
us when we were suffering. I'm going to a teahouse
with my friend to have some fun."
Although much of Iraq is engulfed in insurgent,
sectarian, political and tribal violence, the
Switzerland-sized Kurdish autonomous region in the
north of the country, established after the 1991
Persian Gulf War, is an oasis of safety and
tranquillity where young and old concern themselves
with mundane matters of life such as work, dating
and home furnishings.
The growing sense that the Kurdish region is turning
away from the rest of the nation was driven home
over the weekend, when Kurdistan regional President
Massoud Barzani banned the Iraqi flag from being
flown atop official buildings. To many in Kurdistan,
the banner symbolizes years of oppression and
slaughter under Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki criticized the
decision Sunday. "Until this moment we still have
the current Iraqi flag and it should be raised over
every point in Iraq," he said during an interview
with an Arab satellite television program.
"Not only the Kurds were slaughtered under this
flag, but many Iraqis were slain under this flag.
Iraq was slain under this flag," he said.
Whichever flag prevails will fly in a prosperous
area. The Kurdish region has thrived even as Iraqis
elsewhere have taken their money and skills with
them, fleeing cities such as Baghdad, Basra and
Mosul.
A real estate boom has transformed cities such as
Sulaymaniya and Irbil into noisy construction zones.
The once-desolate road around Sulaymaniya is being
filled from scratch with apartment towers and
commercial buildings on a scale seen in oil-rich
Persian Gulf kingdoms.
Towns and villages in the mountainous Kurdish
countryside are seeing modest housing booms as
Kurdish expatriates and Iraqi Arabs fleeing the
violence flood into the region.
In Sulaymaniya, an opera house is being built. New
hotels abound. New international airports in
Sulaymaniya and Irbil offer direct flights to cities
such as Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Istanbul,
Turkey; Amman, Jordan; and Tehran. Visitors to
Kurdistan can now bypass Baghdad altogether.
At Sulaymaniya's airport, wireless Internet access
lets travelers check their e-mail. U.S. service
members, accustomed to glares and roadside bombs in
the rest of Iraq, wander in amazement through the
terminal almost unnoticed, ordering snacks at the
cafeteria as if they were on a layover in Cleveland.
"We've tried for 15 years to have some sense of
normalcy here," said Diari Tarek, a 37-year-old
architect shopping for windows and doors for a house
he is building for his family. "After 15 years, we
finally found it."
Kurds, the world's largest ethnic group without a
nation, have a language and culture distinct from
Iraq's 80% Arab majority. Successive Sunni Arab
governments in Baghdad brutally repressed the Kurds,
whose region is home to much of Iraq's water and
energy resources.
Hussein's forces destroyed hundreds of Kurdish
villages and allegedly used chemical weapons during
the 1988 Anfal campaign, now the subject of a
genocide trial in Baghdad.
Since Hussein's ouster in 2003, the Kurdish region
has not been immune to violence. Several times,
insurgents have slipped past soldiers guarding the
internal frontier along the three Kurdish provinces
and attacked government buildings. An undercurrent
of fear persists.
"The same explosions and bombings might come up
north tomorrow, blow me up with my business," says
Issa Hamad Abdul Rahman, who said he grosses $1,500
a month selling imported chewing gum to passersby in
Sulaymaniya's main market. "Terrorism spares no
one."
Some Kurds, especially those with ties to the rest
of Iraq — perhaps from having studied in Baghdad or
owning property elsewhere — worry about the
violence.
Tarek, the architect, and his schoolteacher wife,
Nasiq, own property in eastern Baghdad.
"It's very sad what is happening in the rest of
Iraq," she said. "I see the rest of Iraqis as our
children, brothers and sisters."
By and large, though, Kurdistan feels distinctly
different from the rest of the nation. The regional
government announced over the weekend that it would
no longer fly the red, white and black flag of Iraq,
opting for the sun-splashed red, white and green
banner that has been a symbol of Kurdish
independence for 60 years.
Being here means forgetting the hard-set rules that
govern the rest of Iraq.
Westerners can walk out of hotels and catch taxis
without fearing for their lives. Restaurants and
kebab stands can stay open late. Young men can blast
their car stereos. Brightly lighted liquor stores
can sell bottles of low-grade whiskey and wine.
Young men and women can — and do — kiss in parks.
"I change the channel every time there is news about
bombing and killing on television," said Lana Tofiq,
an 18-year-old whose skimpy purple T-shirt would
draw stares, recriminations and possibly worse in
the rest of Iraq. "As long as Sulaymaniya is nice
and quiet, why should I worry about other places?"
Her boyfriend, Rebwar Jamal, an 18-year-old working
at a bakery, also could not care less what happened
in the rest of Iraq.
"We were being killed and repressed for decades by
Arabs, and not one of them ever said anything on our
behalf," he said. "Why should I care about Shiites
and Sunnis who kill each other?"
Jamal said his biggest worry in life was being so
busy that he would not be able to see his girlfriend
enough.
"When I get a chance, I go out with her to the
park," he said, his hair glistening with gel. "But I
cannot see her every day. I spend hours calling her
on the cellphone and sending her text messages. I
send her about 20 text messages a day."
latimes com
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