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Establishing the Kurdish empire: The end
of a united Iraq?
15.12.2011
By Zanko Ahmad - Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan |
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Iraqi Kurds in Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, March
11, 2011. Photo: Reuters
December 15, 2011
SULAIMANIYAH,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — As the US withdrawal
nears and Iraq’s regions call for more independence,
the conditions seem right for the Kurdish to push
for their own homeland. Is this the beginning of the
end of a united Iraq?
A white Mercedes is in the process of parking in the
city of Sulaimaniyah. It’s like any other vehicle
seeking a spot to stop in this city, the most
important in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi
Kurdistan after the region’s capital, Erbil. But
there is something special about this car. Besides
numbers and the city’s name on the license plate,
there is also a Kurdish flag, instead of an Iraqi
one.
The owner of the car is a 23-year-old local man,
Samal Nouri. Nouri says he covered the Iraqi flag on
his license plate with a Kurdish one because he
wanted to publicly state his support for Kurdish
independence.
“All my life I’ve lived under Iraqi rule,” Samal
told Niqash. “And I’ve seen nothing but war and
problems. It is time for us to have our own
independent state.”
The Kurdish people are one of the world's largest
ethnic minorities without a state of their own.
Kurds form a significant part of the population in
Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey,www.ekurd.net
mostly in adjacent parts of each of those countries.
And there have often been calls for the formation of
an official Kurdish nation. The closest the Kurdish
actually get to this though, is in the
semi-autonomous state of Iraqi Kurdistan, which has
its own government and military even though it is
still part of Iraq. An estimated 6 million live in
Iraqi Kurdistan, making up 20 percent of the total
population of Iraq.
Since early in 2011, discussion about an official
and independent Kurdish state has grown louder and
more demanding. As the various Arab Spring uprisings
have had an impact around the region, and as the
political map of the Arab world has evolved, there
has been talk about the importance of changing the
geo-political map of Iraq too. And more
specifically, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Part of the reason fooir this is the fact that other
Iraqi regions have also been calling for some form
of independence from the central Iraqi government.
The Iraqi constitution allows a state or region this
option, if they can fulfil certain criteria that
include gathering enough popular and political
support for such a move.
Yet another reason for the increased debate around
this topic is the upcoming withdrawal of US troops
from Iraq. Although the Kurdish region already had
some independence from the central government in
Iraq under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, this
was effectively legitimised after the 2003 US-led
invasion of Iraq that toppled Hussein. And now some
Kurds are expressing concern that, once the US is
gone, the guarantee of relative safety that US
troops provided the Kurdish would no longer exist.
The bi-weekly, independent Kurdish newspaper Hawlati
(the Citizen), based in Sulaimaniyah, has been
encouraging debate about the idea of an independent
Kurdish nation for the last six months, publishing
articles and analyses on how the current state of
affairs in Iraq may be leading toward this.
A few weeks ago Hawlati’s editor-in-chief Kamal
Raouf was one of a group of activists – others
included academics, journalists and civil society
activists – who set up a foundation that would
further explore the subject of “a greater
Kurdistan”, which would also take in parts of
Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. The state of Iraqi
Kurdistan would be “southern Kurdistan”. And the
organisation is called the Strategic Institute for
Establishment of a Kurdish State in Southern
Kurdistan.
The first draft of the objectives of this institute,
as sighted by Niqash, was to “educate people on the
right to self-determination, the national right to
declare an independent state and the dissemination
of international law in this regard”.
Raouf believes that Iraqi Kurdistan is facing
something of a political power vacuum and this, he
says “requires quickly moving toward the declaration
of a Kurdish nation”.
Many have already noted that Iraqi Kurdistan has all
the prerequisites to become an independent nation:
international airports, its own military, its own
language, history and culture as well as important
natural resources such as oil and gas.
And according to the newly founded Strategic
Institute, the first incarnation of a Kurdish
homeland could simply include the provinces of
Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Duhok. This wouldn’t be that
controversial as these provinces already make up the
semi-autonomous state of Iraqi Kurdistan. The more
controversial areas include the nearby city of
Kirkuk and parts of other states like Ninawa and
Diyala; who controls these areas is disputed with
both the Iraqi and the Iraqi Kurdish governments
laying claim to them.
The Strategic Institute’s plan suggests that it
would settle for what is basically Iraqi Kurdistan
at the moment on the condition that the United
Nations conducts a referendum inside the disputed
areas, asking the inhabitants whether they wish to
remain a part of Iraq or become a part of the new
Kurdish territory.
Currently it feels as though calls for the
establishment of an independent Kurdish homeland are
peaking. But there is one significant group in Iraqi
Kurdistan that is not of this mind, among them
leading Kurdish politicians. Many of these leading
figures in the Kurdish region have tended to make
use of any possible opportunity to stress that they
are committed to being part of Iraq and that they
wholeheartedly support the Iraqi constitution.
Often they’ll quote the results of a referendum held
on Oct 15, 2005, as evidence of how many Kurdish
actually want to remain part of Iraq. According to
the referendum, which saw a high voter turnout in
Iraqi Kurdistan, most Kurdish want to be part of
Iraq rather than establishing their own nation.
However the average man-on-the-street may well see
things somewhat differently. As Nouri, the owner of
the car with the license plates that pre-empt the
establishment of a Kurdish nation, put it: “what the
Kurdish leaders say is nothing more than a political
courtesy that’s meant to keep all the money they get
from the Iraqi budget flowing”. Iraqi Kurdistan
receives 17 percent of Iraq's budget.
And in fact, Fattah Zakhoyee, a former minister of
culture in Iraqi Kurdistan, told Niqash that he
believed that “the results of the vote on the
Constitution were manipulated to serve the interests
of the ruling parties”. Zakhoyee, who has publicly
stated his support for an independent Kurdish
nation, was dismissed from his post for not taking
part in the 2005 referendum.
Even earlier Zakhoyee was actually one of the people
behind a campaign that tried to measure the popular
sentiment on this issue. His group set up booths in
front of official polling stations during the first
Iraqi election in January 2005. The question they
asked then was: Do you want Kurdistan to remain
within Iraq’s borders or do you opt for Kurdistan to
be separate? They estimated that around 96 percent
of those who answered, voted for the separation of
Kurdistan.
Zakhoyee and his colleagues have declared that they
will continue to press for an independent Kurdish
homeland. And what makes them more optimistic is the
support they are receiving from some prominent Arab
Iraqis.
For example, during an October visit to Iraqi
Kurdistan, Hassan Allawi, a prominent member of the
opposition Iraqiya political bloc led by former
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayed Allawi, held several
speeches in which he expressed his support for an
independent Kurdish state. Alawi and his family are
long time supporters of the Kurdish – however his
party distanced itself from his comments almost
immediately, saying that Alawi had only been
expressing personal opinions.
Raouf believes such support is still important
though. The Arabs “will be our neighbours,” he says,
“and we should have strong relationships with them.
The state which we want to build will not be a state
just for the Kurds, it will also be inhabited by
people from different ethnic and religious
backgrounds and will certainly include Arabs.”
For other Kurds, it seems that a more independent
Kurdish homeland is only a matter of time. Last week
Khalid Shwani, a Kurdish MP working in Baghdad, made
just such a statement during a televised interview.
“Because of its demographic composition and because
of its political problems, there is no way that Iraq
can remain united over the next five years,” Shwani
concluded. “In fact, there is no need to demand a
separation now. In this matter, time will tell.”
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