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Mr Smith goes to Kurdistan?
7.2.2008
By Jim Nolan
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February 7, 2008
Earlier last week our new foreign Minister Stephen
Smith delivered the news to Washington that a
withdrawal date for troops engaged in combat
activities in Iraq would be set. Notwithstanding
this, he stated that, "Australia stands ready to
consider what other avenues of support there may
well be to support the effort in Iraq ... this of
course goes to aid matters, it goes to building
Iraq's capacity."
Let me recommend at least one such deserving
recipient for this Australian support. It’s a
secular government of a predominately Muslim
population in the Middle East which promotes
religious tolerance and women’s rights, has a free
press, free trade unions and conducts free
elections. Surely there’s some mistake I hear you
say- after all, we’ve been told for years by a
chorus of the new “realists” both left and right
that “stability” trumps all and that such a
phenomenon is a pipe dream.
Sorry to disappoint, but just such a place exists -
and in Iraq no less - Iraqi Kurdistan. Governed by
the Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraqi Kurdistan
boasts women cabinet members; Shia and Sunni
religious leaders who support the separation of
church and state; a growing public health system;
free universities,www.ekurd.net
to which better off
Iraqi Arabs, Shia and Sunni send their children; and
vast oil reserves which will be competently managed
and exploited for the benefit of all.
Another (at least) equally propitious event
coincided with Mr Smith’s Washington visit. KRG
Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani addressed a
conference in Erbil, in Northern Iraq, on the Anfal
Genocide.
From 1987 to 1989, Saddam carried out the genocidal
Anfal campaign against Kurdish civilians, using mass
summary executions and disappearances and the
widespread use of chemical weapons. The campaign
destroyed some 2,000 villages and an estimated
180,000 Kurds were killed in the campaign. In March
1988, Saddam’s air force dropped chemical weapons on
the town of Halabja. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Kurds
were killed.
In 2005, the bodies of 500 of Saddam’s Kurdish
victims were found in mass graves near Iraq’s border
with Saudi Arabia, hundreds of kilometres from the
Kurdistan Region. Last week 371 bodies found in four
mass graves near the cities of Mosul, Duhok and
Sulaimaniyah in the north and Samawa in the south of
Iraq were returned for burial in Sulaimaniyah. The
search for the “disappeared” continues.
Barzani said:
The Kurdistan liberation movement ... tried to
inform the international community, the UN, the
superpowers, and the Arab and Islamic countries of
this crime since the Anfal campaign in 1987 and
1988. It did this through declarations, meetings,
political and diplomatic channels, conferences,
seminars, gatherings and demonstrations, in
countries around the world in order to publicise and
condemn this crime. Apart from various small groups
of intellectuals and peace and freedom loving
people, no state or intentional organisations
formally answered our documents. Our demands were
ignored.
Barzani didn't say so, but it was worse than this.
Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid - the gruesome
"Chemical Ali" - was asked in 1998 how he would deal
with the Kurds. He said: "I will kill them all with
chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The
international community? F**k them!" He did as he
promised, and the international community did
nothing.
Barzani’s dry observation was only that the world
considered its relations with Saddam’s regime more
important than attempted genocide.
But the Kurds face yet another hurdle in their
struggle to overcome Saddam’s genocidal legacy.
After two postponements, in June this year, a
referendum will be held on the status of the
Northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Historically a major
Kurdish centre, Kirkuk became a centre of “ethnic
cleansing” by Saddam. His motives were clear,www.ekurd.net
Kirkuk just happened to
be located over one of the richest oil deposits in
the Middle East. The Ba’athists policy oversaw the
forced expulsion of tens of thousands of Kurds and
other non-Arabs and their replacement by Arab
Iraqis, as part of Saddam's drive to “Arabise” parts
of Kurdistan.
But the “High Committee for the Implementation of
Article 140”, which was set up by the Iraqi federal
government, has been slow to deal with property
claims and compensation packages and has, as yet,
failed to carry out a census.
Many Kurds including KRG lawmakers have expressed
understandable frustration at these delays. Rather
than react with the hysterical brutality we have all
too often come to expect from the enemies of secular
democracy, the KRG reconciled itself to the delay
because it believed in a peaceful and legal
solution. It should be congratulated for its
moderation and a peaceful “Article 140” process
supported and resourced.
Australia’s track record in capacity building on
numerous overseas assignments places it in a special
position to offer aid: in the crucial civil society,
infrastructure and institution building. I am
certain that it will find an eager partner and
interlocutor in the KRG. It should offer aid and
resources to ensure that a free and fair Kirkuk
referendum is properly prepared for, and held.
The Kurdish parties have long been members of the
Socialist International - the organisation of social
democratic parties of which the ALP is a long
standing member. Iraqi President - the Kurd Jalal
Talabani gave the keynote address to the last
Socialist International Council Meeting in Geneva.
The Kurds of Iraq have been the victims of heartless
and ruthless foreign policy “realism” of the left
and right for far too long. It’s time for the
forgotten, displaced and victimised Iraqi Kurds to
receive the international solidarity and tangible
support which is their due. What better way to say
“sorry” for decades of international indifference to
genocide? What better way to keep alive the memory
of the victims of Anfal? Stephen Smith and
Australian Labor should heed their call.
onlineopinion com.au
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