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Kurdish dreams find a foothold in Iraq
13.10.2007
By Borzou Daragahi |
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As
autonomous Kurdistan's clout grows, so has fear that
the haven for a group with nationalistic goals could
destabilize the Mideast.
October
13, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region 'Iraq', --
Unshackled from Arab domination and the yoke of
Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi Kurdistan has grown
into a powerful incubator of Kurdish ambitions and
nationalism. But the enclave in northern Iraq also
has the potential to destabilize the Middle East,
with recent tensions raising the specter of a
regional war.
For months, neighbors Iran and Turkey have been
engaged in battles against Kurdish separatists who
have established camps in Iraq's Kurdistan region.
This week, lawmakers in Ankara raised the stakes,
threatening to authorize an invasion of Iraq to
crush Kurdish rebels blamed for attacks in Turkey.
From their autonomous enclave carved out after the
1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds have for years
quietly undermined attempts by Syria, Iraq and Iran
to halt their community's cultural and political
aspirations, throwing open the doors to their
brethren in neighboring countries. In doing so, they
have also provided shelter to the separatist groups
fighting the Turkish and Iranian governments.
"We can't help them," a Kurdish official in this
city said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But
we can't hand them over, either."
Turkey, Iran and Syria, which have long histories of
suppressing Kurdish separatist movements, eye the
Kurdish administration in northern Iraq warily, even
though all have an economic stake in the enclave and
maintain cordial ties with its leaders.
In the last five years, hundreds of foreign Kurds
have come here to study at universities. Kurdish
filmmakers from Iran make movies here that would be
forbidden by the Islamic Republic. Linguists have
reinvigorated efforts to unify the populace by
bridging the gaps between Kurdish dialects that have
bedeviled the struggle for a pan-Kurdish movement.
In addition, Kurdish exile groups and political
parties, along with Kurdish refugees from
neighboring countries, have found protection from
political persecution.
"They're us," said Mohammed Qader, a leader of the
Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of Iraq's two main
Kurdish political groups. "We take care of them."
Leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan argue that their regional
government, which covers three of Iraq's 18
provinces, provides an attractive blueprint for
Kurdish autonomy that would not require a formal
redrawing of the Middle East's borders. Turkish
authorities, however, fear that Kurdish separatists
are determined to break off part of Turkish
territory for their own state.
Kurdish officials say they have urged foreign
movements to relinquish violence and band together
with other opposition groups to achieve a more
feasible vision: the same type of decentralized
government that gives Iraqi Kurds autonomy without
formal statehood.
"We no longer struggle for an independent
Kurdistan," said Abdul-Razzaq Moradi, an official of
the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.
Kurds, with a total population estimated at 25
million to 40 million, are overwhelmingly Sunni
Muslim. They speak a different language and have a
culture distinct from that of Arabs, Iranians and
Turks. They are believed to be the world's largest
ethnic group without a state, the victimsof
superpower machinations after the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire at the close of World War I.
Kurds fought violent battles against governments in
Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran during the 20th
century. The four countries have at various points
suppressed the Kurdish language, destroyed Kurdish
villages and executed Kurdish political activists
for treason. During the 1980s, Hussein slaughtered
tens of thousands of Kurds to quell a rebellion.
Kurdistan's first sustained period of
self-governance in centuries began in 1991, when, in
the wake of the Persian Gulf War, British- and
American-enforced no-fly zones were established in
northern Iraq. The 2003 toppling of Hussein
strengthened Kurdistan's legal standing.
In 2005, the new Iraqi Constitution enshrined the
three-province Kurdistan regional government into
the nation's law.
An economic boom that began shortly after the
collapse of the former regime has mushroomed,
filling Kurdish coffers.
Satellite television channels have sprouted, linking
Kurds here in Irbil with those in the city of
Diyarbakir in Turkey, Sanandaj in Iran and Qamishli
in Syria as well as Stockholm and the San Francisco
Bay Area.
Two international airports have been opened since
the U.S.-led liberation.
"Before the fall of Saddam, I would go to Iran and
Syria and beg their intelligence services to let me
travel out of the region, or smuggle myself out,"
said Nureddin Agiri, leader of the Socialist Party
of Kurdistan, a Turkish group. "Now I get on the
airplane and fly to Frankfurt."
Despite the newfound economic power, the Iraqi
Kurdish leadership is rooted in armed struggle.
Though they don suits now, many leaders were
gun-running rebels not long ago, products of
pan-Kurdish guerrilla and political movements.
During years of fighting as a peshmerga warrior in
the mountains of Iraq, Omer Fattah, now deputy prime
minister of the Kurdistan regional government,
entrusted his wife and children to the care of
Iranian Kurds.
"We view them as our family," he said. "Our
traditions are the same."
Kurdish groups in northern Iraq that are working for
autonomy in Syria, Iran and Turkey get housing,
offices and budgets for their activities.
But officials here say they forbid the exile parties
from taking up arms or fighting for radical causes.
Instead, they say, they call for Kurdish
organizations to negotiate with their respective
governments.
Turkey, for one, accuses the Iraqi Kurdistan
government of failing to rein in the Kurdish rebels
attacking Turkish forces.
Negotiation in Turkey, where animosity and deadly
retaliation is escalating, is unlikely.
"We at this time advocate federalism and democracy,"
said Qader, the Iraqi Kurdish party leader. "We
don't want them fighting for separation. It's not
realistic. It's not possible."
To resistance groups, Iraqi Kurdistan is a haven
where members can remain politically and militarily
active without exiling themselves to Europe. One
official called it the "incubator" where all the
political groups can sit down and work together.
A dozen groups from Iran, Syria and Turkey recently
formed a coalition in Iraqi Kurdistan. Even the most
radical groups are allowed to operate here,
including militant groups clustered around the
Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, that have fought
the Turkish and Iranian militaries and brought the
region closer to another war.
"I regard Iraqi Kurdistan as the base of all Kurds
in other parts of Kurdistan," said Abdullah
Hassanzadeh, secretary-general of a faction of the
Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, a Marxist
group founded in 1968.
Kurdish culture flourishes in Iraqi Kurdistan.
More than a dozen Kurdish-language satellite
television channels have been launched by political
parties and entrepreneurs, many of the most popular
ones in the five years since the overthrow of
Hussein. Twenty-four hours a day, they broadcast
images of Kurds governing, educating and celebrating
with their distinctive two-step line dance.
"People say, 'The Iraqi Kurds have this. Why don't
we?' " said Agiri, the Turkish Kurdish activist. "It
gives them confidence and makes them believe in
themselves."
Kurdish theater and musical festivals draw troupes
from Istanbul and Tehran.
Iranian Kurdish director Jamil Rostam's
feature-length "Jani Gal," or "The Pain of a
Nation," was filmed in Iraq.
It tells the story of separatists who tried to
establish a Kurdish state in Iran and Iraq in the
late 1940s, an explosive subject that would never
make it past the front gates of Iran's Ministry of
Islamic Culture and Guidance.
"The things that have kept us alive were our
language, folklore, music and celebrations," said
Falakaddin Kakeyi, the culture minister for the
Kurdistan government. "Rights may vanish, oil may
finish, buildings can be destroyed, but language is
forever."
The greatest ambition is to surmount differences of
dialect and writing to forge a standardized Kurdish
language. Satellite TV has helped, as Kurds speaking
the northern dialect of Syria and Turkey become
familiar with the southern dialect spoken in Iran
and Iraq.
For restaurateur Mehmet Gulsum, the mix-ups over the
differing Turkish and Iraqi dialects quickly melted
away. Iraq's Kurdistan soon became like home, and
better, the native of the Turkish city of Diyarbakir
said.
"I chose to come to this land here because it is
very special to me," Gulsum said. "Now there is a
closeness between the Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds.
Ten years ago, even five years ago, there was no
such thing."
Despite its precarious political status, Iraqi
Kurdistan has begun to provide economic
opportunities for Kurds of neighboring countries,
who remain among the poorest classes in Syria,
Turkey and Iran.
Sami Haso, 56, a Kurd from Syria, operates a
drilling machine in Sulaimaniyah. Every six months
he returns to visit his wife and eight children,
some of whom don't get identity cards or government
benefits at home because they were given Kurdish,
not Arabic, first names.
One son asks Haso to bring back a Kurdish flag. But
he doesn't dare, for fear of being caught at a
Syrian checkpoint. But he brings back stories.
"Kurdistan is like heaven," he said. "All Kurds can
live and share comfortably here."
Special correspondent Asso Ahmad in Sulaimaniyah
contributed to this report.
latimes com
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