THE KURDS’ CUNNING PLAN.Good Actors

The New Republic, DC
July 25, 2006

By Spencer Ackerman

Erbil, Iraq

On the highway leading out of Erbil, the capital city of Iraqi
Kurdistan, the only place to eat before reaching the city of Kirkuk
is the Kurdistan Restaurant. The low-slung cinderblock building is in
the Baghdad-controlled governorate of Tameem, but you wouldn’t know it
from the image on the restaurant’s facade. Superimposed against the
red, yellow, and green colors of the Kurdish flag is an impressive
map of Greater Kurdistan, the ideational Kurdish homeland stretching
from southern Turkey to western Iran.

That such a map appears just outside of Kirkuk is no coincidence.
Kirkuk, which Kurds call their Jerusalem, is a fundamental component
of the dream of Greater Kurdistan. Every Kurd can recite the story of
how Iraq’s Arabs stole the city from them. Located about 150 miles
northeast of Baghdad, Kirkuk had never been of great historic or
political significance. But, in 1927, a consortium of oil prospectors
headed by Calouste Gulbenkian, the legendary Armenian oil magnate,
discovered that the city was afloat some of the richest oil fields
on the planet. The then-fledgling Iraqi government started exerting
control over Kirkuk, moving Kurds out and Arabs loyal to Baghdad’s
Hashemite monarchy in. For nearly 80 years, the city has been a symbol
of the Kurds’ fragmented and oppressed status. With Saddam Hussein
gone and Iraq’s Arabs mired in sectarian disarray, they intend to
take it back.

The reconquest of Kirkuk has begun not with an army but with a creeping
of Kurdish settlers along the highway south from Erbil. Before Saddam
was ousted in 2003, the Iraqi army prevented Kurds from living south
of the Qushtapa checkpoint, just a few miles outside Erbil. As soon as
the Iraqi army abandoned its positions during the U.S.-led invasion,
however, defiant Kurdish civilians immediately occupied the barracks
to mark their new frontiers. Over the last three years, they have
pushed closer and closer to Kirkuk. Crumbling stone structures along
the road have become new Kurdish villages, displaying red, yellow,
and green flags. And, in the northernmost sector of Kirkuk itself,
just beyond where plumes of fire illuminate some of the world’s
richest oil fields, the first outpost isn’t an Arab area, but rather
the Kurdish neighborhood of Rahimawa.

What the highway from Erbil to Kirkuk reveals is that, for three years,
while Sunni and Shia Arabs have bitterly fought one another–and the
U.S. occupation–the Kurds have methodically established a presence
on the ground. Any peshmerga–guerrillas who serve as Kurdistan’s
army–who travel south to take Kirkuk will be treated as heroes along
the road. Any Iraqi soldiers who travel north to retain it will have
to subdue a hostile population.

There would seem to be few better moments for the peshmerga caravans
to fly down the Erbil-Kirkuk highway. This week’s orgy of violence–in
which Sunnis bombed Shia shrines and Shia militiamen pulled Sunnis out
of their homes for execution in broad daylight–underscores how Iraq
is at a point of permanent sectarian emergency. But the independence
of Kurdistan is not imminent. After the attack on the Askariya shrine
in February, instead of exploiting increased sectarian tensions, Jalal
Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the president of
Iraq, worked energetically to restart talks between Sunni and Shia
leaders. Indeed, at every turn, the Kurds have opted not to declare
independence but to keep the country united. "It’s ironic," wrote
Turkish columnist Cengiz Candar, "that Talabani … long considered
a secessionist, is now functioning as the glue most likely to make
Iraq stick together and to prevent it from breaking apart."

But Talabani’s efforts aren’t ironic. They’re strategic. The current
generation of Kurdish leaders has reached a consensus about Kurdistan’s
future: For the next several years, the Kurds must remain part of Iraq
if they are to achieve statehood. That’s because they need to convince
Iraqis, often-hostile neighbors like Turkey, and foreign powers like
the United States that Kurdish independence is a positive–or at
least nonthreatening–development. The timetable for independence
varies: Some Kurdish leaders suggest independence is only a few
years away, while others see it in a decade or even a generation. The
most important factor in winning recognition, however, will be the
visible and consistent demonstration that they paid, in the words of
one Kurdish leader, "more than our fair share" for building Iraq.

But, in order to have a shot at independence, the Kurds must also
set up an economic and political infrastructure that will make
their dream of statehood viable. They must develop their copious oil
resources. They must cement ties with bordering countries. And they
must consolidate their hold over Baghdad politics. These moves run
directly counter to the interests of Iraq, the country the Kurds are
supposed to be paying more than their fair share.

ver a dinner of grilled fish, Tariq Namiq, a bespectacled
thirtysomething journalist, argues passionately that Americans are
fooling themselves if they don’t consider all Arabs terrorists. His
virulence reflects a long-standing fear. Ever since British and
French imperial machinations grafted a portion of the mountainous
Kurdish homeland to the artificially created Iraq after the collapse
of the Ottoman empire, the Kurdish experience in Iraq has been a
story of relentless and bloody repression. That repression reached
its apogee in 1987 and 1988 with the Anfal genocide, during which
Saddam murdered 100,000 Kurds, destroyed hundreds of Kurdish villages,
and evicted thousands of Kurds from Kurdish cities like Kirkuk. Namiq
hosts a weekly TV program on the Kurdish network Zagros TV, which, he
explains, reminds viewers that Kirkuk by rights belongs to Kurdistan,
despite also being home to thousands of Arabs. When I ask if the
Arabs can remain in the city–the Kurdish leadership insists they be
relocated, and American diplomats have traced over 180 disappearances
and kidnappings of Arabs to Kurdish forces–Namiq equivocates.

Namiq is hardly alone in his distrust of Arabs. Despite Kurdish
prominence in Baghdad, no one in Kurdistan has much faith that
post-Saddam Iraq offers the Kurds anything more than the torments
of the past. The entrance of the Sunnis into the political process
in December was met in Kurdistan with apprehension that the formerly
dominant minority is simply trying to use ballots as well as bullets
to regain power. "Everyone has to have both legs in–not one leg in
terror and one leg in the cabinet," says Fadhil Merani, the head of
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) politburo who helped negotiate
the sectarian character of the new government in Baghdad. Not that
everyone thinks the Shia, with whom the Kurds allied against their
mutual Sunni enemies, are much better. Many Kurds describe them as
fanatical and backward proxies of Iran. Sunnis and Shia may not be
able to find common ground in Baghdad, but, in Kurdistan, both are
simply Arabs, and so both merit contempt.

For the last three years, American and Iraqi officials thought they
had a solution to the Kurdish problem: federalism. Transforming
Iraq from a centrally administered state into one where the various
regions enjoy considerable autonomy from Baghdad was intended to
mollify the country’s mutually suspicious factions and keep the
country whole. Indeed, federalism has been a nonnegotiable demand
of the Kurds, who have always said that, unless post-Saddam Iraq
allowed them tremendous freedom of action, they would have no
choice but to secede. Accordingly, both the interim and permanent
Iraqi constitutions contained far-reaching guarantees for regional
autonomy. The permanent constitution, approved in October, allows
Kurdistan to nullify unacceptable national legislation; to retain
the 100,000-strong peshmerga; and to control much, if not all, of
Kurdistan’s oil wealth. But federalism has proved unacceptable to
the Sunnis, who rejected the constitution en masse and only agreed to
participate in the December elections after receiving U.S.-brokered
assurances that they could seek to amend the document this year.
Defending the controversial provisions of the Iraqi constitution in
October, American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad explained, "You couldn’t
bring the Kurds back into Iraq without federalism."

But, contrary to the White House’s claim that federalism is "a
prerequisite for a united country," federalism has stoked, not
tempered, secessionism. In January 2005, as Iraqis voted to elect
their first government, a referendum was held in Kurdistan asking
respondents whether they would prefer independence. Nearly 98 percent
of an estimated two million voters said yes. "Federalism is a fact
that’s imposed on us," explains Dilshad Farriq, a 27-year-old
Persian-literature student at the University of Salahuddin.
"Independence is something we want."

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