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Letter from Iraqi Kurdistan
4.9.2007
By Gerard Alexander |
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September 4, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
Landing in Iraq triggered in me an unattractive
self-centredness. Instead of wanting to immediately
strike out by foot and car to learn everything
possible about the country, the very prospect of
walking the streets – even in the Kurdish north –
induced shyness, and an acute concern with what
passers-by were thinking about me. In some parts of
the country, of course, such anxieties would hardly
be a sign of neuroticism. But, I soon learned,
things are different in Iraqi Kurdistan, and by the
first evening I was walking the streets with hardly
a concern about violence of the political sort. I
did remain worried that I was a juicy target for
petty criminality. Credit cards are effectively
useless in much of Iraq because of anaemic banking
connections to the rest of the world, so foreign
visitors can be expected to carry around the
hundreds or even thousands of dollars in cash needed
to pay for their hotels and other expenses. But
within hours even my self-consciousness about my
bulging wallet had faded. |
Gerard Alexander is an associate professor of
politics at the University of Virginia. He is
writing a book about perceptions of America abroad. |
Iraqi Kurds, not habituated to foreign faces, stare
at you, not always politely, with expressions
neutral enough to conceal their emotions. I
responded by smiling and, if in a vehicle, by
waving. The reaction was almost always the same: all
but the most elderly Kurds broke into wide grins and
waved back. Beneath a surface of caution and concern
lay a deep reservoir of friendliness and welcome.
That first night, I ate kebabs for dinner in a tiny,
working-class restaurant and, when exiting, the
owner pointedly and repeatedly refused to be paid.
After a back-and-forth, I left money on the counter
anyway, but his smiles, refusals, and gestures –
placing his hand over his heart – made clear that a
Westerner's (or perhaps all I can safely say is that
an American's) money was no good there. This dynamic
recurred again and again over the next ten days.
This was, after all, not Anbar province. Iraq's
Kurds had been brutalised by Saddam's regime, and
unambiguously welcomed relief from the Ba'athist
sword that had hung over their heads for nearly 35
years. Free now to memorialise the tens of thousands
killed by Saddam's security forces, rebuild their
economy, and attract foreign investment, Kurds have
good reason to appreciate the Western presence. And
while most Iraqi Kurds are devoted to their region's
eventual independence, they have repaid their
liberation with strenuous efforts to make Iraq work.
Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has sought
stable and effective governance in Baghdad. The same
can be said of Kurds serving as ministers and
sub-ministers in the national cabinet. And there are
thousands of Kurdish members of Iraq's armed forces
who daily risk their lives patrolling the streets
and back-alleys of Baghdad.
If anything, Kurds have provoked hostility from
other Iraqis not for their steps in the direction of
separatism but for their extensive cooperation with
other national parties. This has attracted the rage
of insurgents and al Qaeda extremists who badly want
to see the post-2003 political order fail. So
despite the tight security provided by the Kurdish
fighters, the Peshmerga, the north has suffered from
such events as a double suicide bombing that killed
over 100 people in February 2004 and bombings that
left more than 70 dead in May and June of 2005.
A car bomb in Erbil left 19 dead on the morning I
landed in May. That afternoon, at the blast site, I
found myself alongside Kurds who have not been made
blasé to such events by sheer repetition. But unlike
many other parts of Iraq, there is scant
sociological basis for home-grown political violence
here. A substantial minority of Kurds are Shia, yet
there is essentially no sectarian strife in the
region, because sectarian affiliations are easily
trumped by a unifying Kurdish identity. Iraq's Kurds
hold out an image of what the rest of the country
might aspire to.
Until then, though, Kurds have pervasive concerns
about violence-prone infiltrators from other Iraqi
provinces. Soldiers or police are positioned with
astonishing frequency and check passing cars and
trucks with great professionalism. In a week and a
half on the ground, I passed through perhaps 100
checkpoints and never had an officer even drop hints
that I should bribe my way out of some contrived
trouble. On previous research trips, I could not
have passed through five checkpoints in central
Africa without several of them demanding a 'gift'.
This commitment to Iraq was evident in most of the
senior Kurdish officials I was in Iraq to interview
– whether they were serving in the regional
government or the national one in Baghdad. Almost
all lamented what they considered ill-advised
Coalition policies in the first several years after
the invasion, including the failure to establish
security in the streets much earlier and to
challenge Moqtada al-Sadr's politics of Shia
chauvinism (which they generally believe to be
orchestrated from Teheran). But most were optimistic
that Washington and London were getting it far more
right in the recent 'surge,' in terms of both higher
overall troop levels and more aggressive approaches
to the bearers of sectarian as well as ideological
violence.
Like commentators elsewhere, they were above all
struck by the switch of many Sunni Arabs in Anbar
from what had been a relatively explicit alliance
with al Qaeda and other Islamist radicals, to a
tacit alliance with the U.S. military and an Iraqi
national government that is (inevitably, given the
demographics) dominated by Shia and Kurds. If this
switch reveals an acceptance by Iraq's Sunni Arabs
that they cannot shoot their way back to power and
privilege, then it represents a momentous shift in
the political as well as the military conditions
inside Iraq. And it testifies to the success of new
political as well as military strategies that
anti-extremist forces in Iraq have developed to
combat both insurgency and terrorism.
Perhaps surprisingly, the officials I interviewed
generally guessed that the United States, Britain,
and their Coalition partners would not abandon
Iraqis through an abrupt withdrawal. They know that
Western publics and decision-makers are perfectly
free to choose to withdraw, and that Western publics
are averse to wars in general and impatient about
this one in particular. But while they expect troop
levels to decline and in-field tactics to be
adjusted, most simply cannot believe that the
leaders of Coalition countries would make a decision
that runs so catastrophically against the interests
of – as they insisted – both Westerners and Iraqis
alike.
Iraqis are eager for Western help. University
students in Erbil and Sulaimaniyah grasp at contact
with the outside world.
Businesspeople and political leaders are hungry for
engagement with the global economy. Average citizens
are desperate for foreign investment because of the
employment they know it can bring. If anything, they
are frustrated that Western countries have appeared
shy to get more involved, or to show moral support
to a people under siege from thugs who place
nail-bombs in public marketplaces.
To be brutally honest, some of those who call for an
immediate withdrawal from Iraq would quickly move on
to other issues if they got their way. Once Iraq is
out of their sights, it will be out of their minds
and cease to exert a moral pull on them. The Kurds
are not going anywhere. What they want above all is
a well-grounded, long-term relationship with the
United States and Western Europe. One Kurd I spoke
to said that Kurds will reach out to whoever extends
a hand to them, and smile back at whoever smiles at
them. They know it is they who will face the violent
chaos that would fill the vacuum created by a
precipitate withdrawal. We should keep smiling back.
Gerard Alexander is an associate professor of
politics at the University of Virginia. He is
writing a book about perceptions of America abroad.
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