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A New Power Rises in Iraq 20.3.2007
by Michael J. Totten |
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March 20, 2007
Erbil, Kurdistan region (Iraq), – What a
difference a year makes.
Fourteen months ago I flew to Erbil, the capital of
Iraqi Kurdistan, from Beirut, Lebanon, on the
dubiously named Flying Carpet Airlines. Flying
Carpet’s entire fleet is one small noisy plane with
propellers, cramped seats, and thin cabin pressure.
Only nineteen passengers joined me on that
once-a-week flight. Everyone but me was a Lebanese
businessman. They were paranoid of me and of each
other. What kind of crazy person books a flight to
Iraq, even if it is to the safe and relatively
prosperous Kurdistan region? I felt completely
bereft of sense going to Iraq without a gun and
without any bodyguards, and it took a week for my
on-again off-again twitchiness to subside.
Last week I flew to Erbil from Vienna on Austrian
Airlines to work for a few weeks as a private sector
consultant with my colleague Patrick Lasswell. This
time I didn’t feel anything like a fool. Almost half
the passengers were women. Children played on their
seats and in the aisle with toys handed out by the
crew. We watched an in-flight movie and ate the
usual airline lunch fare served by an attractive
long legged stewardess. The cabin erupted with
applause when the wheels touched down on the runway.
The pilot announced the weather (sunny and 60) in
three languages and cheerfully told us all to have a
great day. Have a great day may seem an odd thing to
say to people who just arrived in Iraq, but this is
Kurdistan. I did, indeed, have a great day.
A man named Hamid picked up me and Patrick just
beyond the passport control booth. He was kindly
sent by a friend on the Council of Ministers. “Here
is your car,” he said as he led us to his vehicle
out in the parking lot.
As he drove us into the city I felt none of the fear
and apprehension I experienced the first time I came
here. Instead I saw considerable signs of progress.
The first time I drove from the airport into Erbil I
felt that I had arrived in a dodgy and ramshackle
backwater. This time I felt – properly, I must say –
that I had arrived in the capital of a serious and
rising new power in the Middle East.
Nation-building is a hard and violent slog in the
center and south of Iraq, and it might not ever work
out. But in Kurdistan, in the north, it already is a
reality.
Massive new construction projects are literally
everywhere. Most of those that had started when I
arrived for the first time are finished, and
ambitious new projects are well underway.
The Dream City, which only existed on paper when I
first got here, is now partly constructed. Fancy new
homes in the new city – designed on the New Urbanist
model – are everywhere under construction.
The Korek Tower will be the tallest building
anywhere in Iraq when it is finished. It will more
resemble a tower in Dubai or the United States than
anything down south in Baghdad. |
New apartment towers next to the Dream City project
This is what nation building looks like
Erbil’s new mall takes shape next to the souk
Photo: Michael Totten |
Dingy and banged up road signs were replaced in the
last couple of months with crisp shiny new ones. It
may not seem like much, but the new signs give the
city a more serious and modern look and heft.
The so-called Naza Mall recently opened to much
fanfare in Erbil, and it made me wonder if the Kurds
even know what a mall is. Naza Mall is a store, and
it isn’t a particularly large one. But a new
Western-style mall under construction next to the
old souk downtown will be home for 6,000 stores and
offices when it is finished.
A whole new town called “American Village” is under
construction next to the luxurious Khan Zad hotel on
the road between Erbil and the resort town of
Salahadin. Foreigners and locals alike are snapping
up the properties well in advance.
Iraqi Kurdistan is still a Third World country in
many ways – there is no sewer system, for instance,
and the electricity fails every day. Unemployment is
high. But it’s a Third World country with hope, and
it is rapidly moving upscale. New houses cost more
in and around Erbil than they do in some parts of
the United States. An average sized 200 square meter
lot can cost as much as 150,000 dollars – and that’s
before a house is built on it. There are literally
thousands of brand new houses here in this city, and
the population is still just a little bit shy of one
million.
Arabs are moving up here from the center and south –
when they can, and as long as they are cleared by
internal security – and they’re hired to do menial
jobs the Kurds no longer want. Sunni Arabs were once
the oppressors of Kurds. Now they are reduced to the
same low status as migrant Mexican workers in the
United States.
The ancient old city walls next to downtown are an
impressive sight, but inside the walls is a vast
slum. Well, it was a vast slum until recently. A few
months ago the residents were moved out so the city
government can fix it up and restore it.
Erbil isn’t pretty, as Paris and Vienna are pretty.
Some of it is aesthetically brutal, and much of it
is still rough around the edges. But it’s
stimulating and interesting all the same. The
go-go-go and build-build-build attitude is
infectious. Every time I come here it looks cleaner,
and richer, and more like a normal place.
I’m less prone to boredom here than I am in Europe’s
splendid capitals even though there is little in the
way of entertainment culture. Erbil is the most
ramshackle of Iraqi Kurdistan’s cities, but there is
real raw power rising in this city and land.
I have never seen so much construction going up so
quickly anywhere. (There is more in Dubai, but I
have never been there.)
The Hilton hotel chain is building a massive
full-service tourist resort that will take five
years to construct. It may seem dumb to build a
tourist resort in Iraq of all places, but this is
Erbil Province, not Anbar Province – there is no
war, no insurgency, and no terrorism here
whatsoever. The Middle East is a funny place. One
part of a country may be consumed by blood, fire,
and mayhem, but that rarely means the whole country
is dangerous -- even when that country is Iraq.
*
I met two old friends for dinner and embraced them
both. We knew we would see each other again, but it
was nice to confirm it with another actual visit.
This trip is my fourth to Iraqi Kurdistan in just
fourteen months. A year and a half ago I could not
have imagined that anywhere in Iraq would become a
part of my life, let alone a pleasant part of my
life. Iraq is strange, though, and more complex than
it appears from far away. The civil war and the
insurgency in Baghdad are real. But the civil war
and the insurgency are not all there is.
“So much has changed since you were last here,” one
of my friends said at dinner. “Kurdistan is a
different place now.”
“What changed?” I said. Of course I had to ask, but
this was a social dinner and not a formal interview.
So I’ll leave their names out of this and paraphrase
what they told me. Understand that they are in a
position to know exactly what they are talking
about.
Iraqi Kurdistan is de-facto independent already. The
three northernmost provinces exist as a
liberal-democratic state-within-a-state with their
own parliament, their own laws, their own
immigration policies, and their own military, border
guards, and police. That much was already known. The
region now, though, is even closer to formal
sovereignty and actual independence than it recently
was.
The United Nations doesn’t recognize the existence
of Iraqi Kurdistan because the United Nations is
hung up on state sovereignty. But the individual
governments that make up the United Nations are
coming around. More diplomats from all over the
world are coming here now, and this is exciting to
the people who live here. Foreign dignitaries who
meet with local officials recognize there is a
government in Iraq that isn’t in Baghdad. 99.8
percent of Iraqi Kurds voted to secede from Iraq in
a non-binding referendum, and recognition of their
de-facto independent country is as welcome as love
letters.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties in the
United States have sent people here recently. One of
my Kurdish dinner companions, who never wants to be
quoted by name but is in a position to know, says
the Democratic officials who come here support
Kurdish interests as staunchly and reliably as the
Republicans.
I still hear complaints about the Kissinger Betrayal
in the 1970s, when Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger summarily abandoned the Kurds to Saddam
Hussein after promising them support for their
resistance and liberation. But I don’t get the sense
that too many Kurds are bracing for another round of
that kind of statecraft even if the U.S. does
withdraw its forces from south and central Iraq.
Three major obstacles to independence remain. The
first is Iraqi Kurdistan’s relationship with Turkey.
That relationship is bad but improving despite the
Turkish military’s well-publicized threats to invade
Northern Iraq to eject the (Turkish) Kurdistan
Worker’s Party, the PKK, from using Iraqi soil to
launch attacks against military and civilian targets
in Turkey. Relations between the (Iraqi) Kurdistan
Regional Government and the Turkish government have
quietly improved at the same time. Iraq’s Kurds
genuinely want a civil relationship with Turkey
because they can’t safely declare independence
without it.
The Turks fear nothing more than Turkish Kurdistan
declaring itself independent and attaching itself to
a free Iraqi Kurdistan. A bitter civil war is still
simmering in Turkey between the PKK and the Turkish
state. Ethnic Kurds make up almost 25 percent of
Turkey’s population. If they leave and take their
land with them, the Turks will lose a huge amount of
the eastern part of their country. A truly
independent Kurdish state in Iraq would likely
embolden Kurdish militants in Turkey – or so the
Turks fear.
Iraqi Kurdistan is land-locked and surrounded on all
sides by hostile people and states. They cannot
survive on their own without first building a
physical infrastructure that will allow them to
survive border blockades as well as military
invasions.
Kurdistan, unfortunately, is still connected to
Iraq’s main electrical grid. And that means, as
often as not, there is no power. If you want 24-hour
electricity, buy a generator. And keep it topped off
with fuel. (Generators are everywhere, and the large
ones are louder than lawnmowers.)
Erbil Province is building a brand-new electrical
grid that should work 24 hours a day and can’t be
shut down by sabateurs in the Sunni Triangle or by a
hostile government in Baghdad. As soon as all of
Iraqi Kurdistan is electrically severed from
Baghdad, the Kurds’ only remaining physical need is
an oil refinery of their own.
The Kurds have enough oil. Huge new fields near
Zakho were just discovered. Gasoline is expensive
here, though, because oil has to be exported and
then reimported.
The Kurds of Iraq may not need to bother with a
declaration of independence. It may fall from the
sky, my source said, if the Sunni and Shia Arabs
break Iraq in the course of their civil war. “What
would we do, decide if we want to remain with the
Sunni Arabs or the Shia?” he said. “We don’t want to
remain with either of them.”
The Kurds couldn’t stick with the Shia if they
wanted to. The Shia and the Kurds are on the
opposite side of the country, with the Sunni Arabs
wedged in between from Baghdad north to the southern
portions of Kirkuk and Mosul. The Sunni Arabs are
the Kurds’ principal enemies, and there is no way
the Kurds (who also are Sunni Muslims) will stick
with the Sunni Arabs if the Shia Arabs decide to go
their own way. If the Arabs break Iraq, as they seem
hell-bent on doing, the Kurds will be freed by
default. There will be no more “Iraq” for them to
stay shackled to.
In the meantime, the Kurds are doing their best to
cultivate civil relations with the Sunni Arabs while
digging a massive trench on the Green Line to keep
the insurgents, the car-bombers, and the
suicide-bombers out. The trench is more like a
castle moat, really. It’s 5 meters wide, 5 meters
deep, and it drops straight down. Anyone trying to
cross it without building a bridge will find
themselves in a free fall. It’s an inverted version
of the wall that separates Israelis from
Palestinians. Walls and trenches can be still be
crossed, to be sure, but they can’t be crossed
quickly, and they certainly cannot be crossed with
any vehicles.
My dinner companions were shocked when I told them
I’m going to Baghdad next month with the American
military. (I’m going, that is, unless the Department
of Defense delays my trip yet again.)
“Are you sure you want to go down there?” one of
them said. “The Sunni militias cut throats and the
Shia militias drill holes in people’s heads. That’s
Baghdad.”
Recently some terrorists from one of the militias
dumped three dead bodies on a street and broadcasted
an announcement for the neighbors: Anyone who tries
to bury one of the bodies will join them. For three
weeks everyone walked past decomposing corpses as
dogs tore at and ate the flesh. Innocent children
who do not yet understand the cruel ways of their
terrible city asked their parents why those people
were sleeping so long in the street.
Kurdistan is safe even without its anti-terrorist
trench, and that’s not because it is protected by
American soldiers. Only 50 or so troops remain in
this part of Iraq. There is no anti-American
insurgency (because there is virtually no
anti-Americanism) and there is no terrorism. If the
Arab Iraqis were as peaceable as the Kurds, the
American military could have folded its tents a long
time ago.
Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign
power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of
the most absurd in human history. Dr. Ali Sindi,
advisor to Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, told me
that South Korea is the official occupier of
“Northern Iraq.” Korean soldiers are stationed just
outside Erbil in a base near the airport. He laughed
when he told me the Kurdish military, the Peshmerga
(“those who face death”), surround the South Koreans
to make sure they’re safe.
Every couple of weeks another government somewhere
in the world drops their travel advisory for Iraqi
Kurdistan. The regional government sends me an email
every time it happens. It is always seen as yet
another milestone passed on the road to independence
from Baghdad. Not only is Kurdistan recognized as
separate from Iraq, it is also recognized as
different from Iraq. Iraq is dangerous, but the
north really isn’t.
Kurdistan’s rise flips Iraq on its head. The Kurds
are ahead, but they started from nothing. Under
Saddam’s regime they had the worst of everything –
the worst poverty, the worst underdevelopment, and
worst of all they bore the brunt of the worst
violence from Baghdad. 200,000 people were killed
(out of less than four million) and 95 percent of
the villages were completely destroyed.
The Kurds seem happy and well-adjusted. Scratch the
surface, though, and any one of them can tell you
tales that make you tremble and shudder. Everyone
here was touched by the Baath and by the genocide.
If living well is the best revenge, the Kurds got
theirs.
“You see this place now with its government, its
democracy, and its system of laws,” my guide Hamid
said. “It wasn’t like this even recently, believe
me. Before, it was a jungle.”
Baghdad, the Sunni Triangle, and Shia South are
still jungles. No one I know here thinks the Sunni
and Shia Arabs will be able to reconcile and live
with each other in peace – there is too much bad
blood between them. I don’t know if that’s true or
if it’s not. The Middle East is an unpredictable
place, and I’ve made a fool of myself often enough
by thinking I know what will happen.
What I do know for sure is that Baghdad is burning
and Kurdish power is rising. The question up north
isn’t whether Iraq will come apart, but only when,
how, and into how many pieces
More pictuers from Michael J. Totten
www.michaeltotten.com
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