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The Kurds lose again ?
31.7.2009
By Gwynne Dyer, opinion
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July
31, 2009
It was a triumph of democracy. On 25 July, in a free
election, Iraq's Kurds finally elected a real
opposition party to their regional parliament.
According to preliminary results, the Change Party
won 25 of the 111 seats in the parliament, breaking
the monopoly of the autocratic traditional parties.
But this democratic shift also suggests that Iraq 's
Kurds are going to lose again.
Lose, that is, in terms of their maximum objectives
as defined by their leaders over the past twenty
years. Those goals included an independent Kurdish
state in what is now northern Iraq , or at least a
region so autonomous and self-sufficient that it was
independent for all practical purposes. For the
government of that country or autonomous region to
be self-sufficient economically, it had to control
the oil-producing area around the city of Kirkuk.
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Gwynne Dyer, worked as a freelance journalist,
columnist, broadcaster and lecturer on international
affairs for more than 20 years |
Achieving such ambitious goals
required unshakeable unity, for the Kurds are only
six million of Iraq 's thirty million people, and
neither the Arabs of Iraq nor their other neighbours,
the Turks and the Iranians, like the idea of a
Kurdish state. The outcome of this month's election
shows that the reflexive unity among the Kurds is
now fading fast.
It is fading partly because younger Kurds are fed up
with the corrupt and oppressive rule of their
traditional leaders, who have dominated Kurdish
affairs for more than a generation. The Barzani
family reigns in the west of Kurdistan (Massoud
Barzani succeeded his father as the
general-secretary of the Kurdish Democratic Party
thirty years ago). The Talabani family rules the
east (Jalal Talabani created the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan thirty-four years ago and has led it ever
since). And both families have become very, very
rich.
The families earned their roles by leading the fight
for Kurdistan's independence or autonomy over
decades of struggle against Baghdad governments of
every hue. The rival parties they created,www.ekurd.net
the KDP and the PUK, plunged the
Kurds into a nasty civil war in the mid-1990s, but
since then they have cooperated in keeping the
Kurdish region separate from the violence and chaos
down south.
So long as independence or something very like it
was the long-term goal, the traditional leaders
could demand and get the obedience of most Kurds:
unity came before everything else. But now that a
measure of stability is returning to Arab Iraq, the
prospect of Kurdish independence is dwindling - and
there is even a dawning suspicion that the KDP/PUK
alliance has left it too late to take control of
Kirkuk . In that case, what's the point of leaving
them in charge of everything?
The Change Party came out of a split in the PUK, and
it won almost half the votes in Jalal Talabani's
home province of Sulaimaniyah . Dissatisfaction with
the current system is just as great in the rest of
Kurdistan , and the KDP/PUK alliance could have lost
the whole election if there had been a similar
revolt within the KDP.
In due course, there probably will be, because
Kurdistan is going to spend the next generation as
part of Iraq . One sign of the changing balance of
power is the fact that the election on 25 July was
not accompanied, as planned, by a referendum on the
draft Kurdish constitution, an explosive document
that declares oil-rich Kirkuk and other disputed
areas to be "historically" and "geographically" part
of the Kurdish homeland.
Since those areas are currently under Arab rule,
entrenching this claim in the Kurdish constitution
would lead to confrontations between Kurds and
Arabs. US Vice-President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki both leaned on the
Independent High Electoral Commission, which
obediently said that "for technical reasons" it
could not hold a referendum in Kurdistan on the same
day as the election. This was patently untrue, and
the Kurds had to decide whether or not to defy
Baghdad.
In effect, the central government just said "no" to
the draft Kurdish constitution, or at least "not
now" - and the outgoing Kurdish parliament meekly
accepted the decision. It voted to postpone the
referendum indefinitely. That is the new reality in
Iraq.
In retrospect, it's clear that the only time when
the Kurds might have achieved their maximum
ambitions was right after the US invasion of 2003.
To do so, however, they would have had to defy their
only ally, the United States , and neither Barzani
nor Talabani was willing to take the risk.
Fearing a clash with the Americans, they did not
seize Kirkuk and ensure an overwhelming Kurdish
majority there when they had the military power to
do so. Fearing a Turkish invasion, they did not dare
to declare independence. Now they can't do either,
for Iraq has a functioning army again and
Kurdistan's whole budget depends on oil revenues
sent north by the government in Baghdad .
This is not necessarily a tragedy. A prosperous,
democratic, secular Kurdistan, using its own
language and running its own institutions, within a
rather less democratic and more theocratic
Arab-majority Iraq that hands over a fair share of
oil revenues and leaves the Kurdish minority alone,www.ekurd.net
would be an outcome beyond the
wildest dreams of previous generations of Kurds. It
is still within reach, if the bitter question of
Kirkuk can be finessed. And it doesn't need the
Talabanis and Barzanis at all.
Gwynne Dyer. has worked as a freelance
journalist, columnist, broadcaster and lecturer on
international affairs for more than 20 years, but he
was originally trained as an historian. You may
visit his website at:
Gwynnedyer.com
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
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