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Return to Kurdistan
26.3.2008
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Michael Goldfarb is a journalist who has reported
extensively from the Middle East.
He is the author of Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace:
Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq.
Here he writes about his impressions of going back
to Kurdistan after five years.
March 26, 2008
Part 1
Erbil, Kurdistan region 'northern Iraq', --
every foreign correspondent has one place that gets
under the skin more than others, for me that place
is Kurdistan.
Actually, Kurdistan doesn't exist but regardless of
what country the Kurdish lands are in, whether
Turkey or Iran or Iraq it just gets to me.
There are good reasons for this: the compelling
injustice at the heart of the Kurdish story: as the
world's largest ethnic group without a nation of
their own they have suffered everything from
cultural and economic oppression to genocide; the
Kurds are exceptionally friendly; finally, there is
the raw physical beauty of Kurdistan.
Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, gets to me as
well but this is more difficult to explain, because
the city itself is dusty and ugly.
Maybe it's because I only ever go there when news is
being made and the heat from covering conflict cools
into vivid memories.
Maybe it's just because I have made dear friends
covering those conflicts and I miss them all the
time.
Anyway, I was desperate to go back and see the city
and the region five years after the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein.
Changing with time
While the rest of Iraq has torn itself apart, I had
heard these were the best of times in Erbil and the
rest of the Kurdish region but I wanted to see for
myself.
But nothing I heard could have prepared me for what
I saw as soon as I came out of the marble halls of
Erbil's brand-spanking new airport...
A 30 storey high luxury hotel under construction,
new, western-style suburban communities with
four-bedroom houses starting at $200,000 and blocks
of luxury flats.
The first time I visited Erbil, there was no
airport, just a landing strip and small control
tower and the tallest building was probably a
five-storey high crumbling concrete piece of
ugliness built in the 1960s.
That was a mere 12 years ago.
The rest of the city bore the signs of heavy
fighting.
The two main Kurdish factions, the KDP and the PUK,
had just fought a vicious two-week civil war.
The KDP had even asked Saddam Hussein to send his
army to help them fight the PUK and the Iraqi
dictator had been happy to oblige.
Today the PUK's leader, Jalal Talabani is president
of post-Saddam Iraq and the KDP's leader, Massoud
Barzani is President of the Kurdistan Regional
Government, which enjoys remarkable autonomy under
the new federal constitution.
But even four years ago the last time I was in town
none of this building existed.
There is one big reason for this explosion of
surface glitz in an area that a dozen years ago was
one of the poorest parts of the Middle East.
The reason is oil.
The Kurds claim that there are 50 billion barrels of
the black stuff just under their land.
The problem is that most of it is around Kirkuk and
for the moment the Kurdistan Regional Government
doesn't control that historically Kurdish city.
The politics of Kirkuk are too complex to go into
this introduction,www.ekurd.net
but what is clear is
that all the building in and around Erbil is based
on the optimistic view that sometime in the next
couple of years the town will be the oil capitol of
the region.
But while waiting for that magic moment, a wide
range of problems is simmering just under the
surface.
The surge of money and the collapse of the dollar
(the currency in which many people are paid) has
created extraordinary inflation.
Uncovering corruption
It's one thing to build houses costing hundreds of
thousands of dollars, quite another to find locals
who can afford them.
Food seems to have quadrupled in price, along with
petrol.
The brand new shopping malls seem to have goods that
appeal only to young men with gelled hair, denim
clothes and fancy electronic goods.
People ask why these malls and suburbs are being
built now, when there are other, better uses for
money.
Many answer the question with a single word:
corruption.
At the University of Sulaimaniyah up in the
mountains a two hour drive from Erbil, I was told by
a student, "There is a cancer of corruption" at the
heart of government.
The hopes of this new era had been dashed by the
pursuit of politicians for "money and power."
The students complained that good jobs go to the
children of the elite. If you haven't got a family
connection or can't pay a bribe your future is
blighted.
The young people I spoke to all had a real patriotic
fervor and they also had fear of reprisal for
speaking out.
I agreed to quote them but not use their names.
It seemed a shame. Kurdistan's future will be
difficult enough, with or without the oil from
Kirkuk, and these passionate students are the key to
the region's growth.
It would be a shame for them to be excluded because
they don't come from the right family.
My time in Kurdistan didn't shake my love for the
place, but it did make me realise that the best of
times are built on very shaky foundations.
I worry that my future visits may once again involve
conflicts.
Part One
In the hours before the war began in March 2003,
reporter Michael Goldfarb met Ahmad Shawkat, an
Iraqi Kurd.
He was born in Mosul but had been living in internal
exile, in Erbil.
Shawkat was an English-speaking academic by trade
and a journalist and poet by avocation.
He had been a frequent visitor to Saddam's torture
chambers for his political opinions.
He was hired by Michael to be his translator and
they soon both became good friends.
In the first part of this series, Michael follows
Saddam Hussein's upheaval through Shawkat's eyes.
Fired with a sense of mission and renewal, Shawkat
returned with his family to Mosul and started a
weekly political and cultural journal.
He was consequently murdered for writing brave
editorials against the Jihadi's who were creating
chaos in his city.
Michael visits Shawkat's extended family to find out
how their lives have changed, five years on from the
invasion.
He reflects on the historic events which re-shaped
their country and ultimately took their father's
life.
Part two
For all the chaos and tragedy that Iraq has known in
the last five years one part of the country has more
or less avoided the worst: Kurdistan.
In fact, for Iraqi Kurds these are the best times
they have ever known.
They live in relative autonomy and their economy is
stronger than it has ever been.
But can the desire for full independence be
contained, particularly among young people who have
known only good times and stability, and not the
endless violence and fear and poverty that marked so
much of Iraqi Kurdish history?
And what about the minority sects and ethnicities
living in northern Iraq who are not part of the
Kurdish nation, such as the Yezidis and Chaldeans?
In this programme, Michael Goldfarb, who made his
first visit to Kurdistan in 1996, looks at the
physical changes in what was once the poorest region
of the country and is now the richest.
He gauges the effect on the next generation of
Kurdish leaders, visits minority sects and finally,
goes to Kirkuk, disputed heart of northern Iraq's
oil industry, and the future source of wealth,
against which today's Kurds are borrowing.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, BBC
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