Photos by Stewart Innes
From Baghdad, the seat of the Iraqi Government, to eastern Kurdistan, in name, at least, a dependent province, may be no more than three hundred kilometers. But it is a journey from civil war to social peace; from chaos and military occupation to reconstruction and proud autonomy; from grief and pessimism to revival and hope. Of course Sheikh al-Yawar’s visit, rich in symbolism and statecraft, was designed to help keep these two distinct realms from travelling further apart. His first visit to Kurdish territory as leader of the new Iraq was artfully scripted. For Halabja is the little frontier town the last Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, destroyed with his chemical weapons 15 years ago. It has been rebuilt by the fiercely patriotic Kurdish regional government in Suleimaniyah, and made into a shrine of national suffering and will. And there to receive Sheikh al-Yawar was the portly Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, a resistance hero turned political kingpin. There was an honour guard, there were the crack troops of the Kurdish army, there were all the trappings reserved for a visit by the head of a vaguely friendly neighbouring foreign state.
Which is pretty much what Iraq is for the Kurdish people these days. Modernising, western-leaning, European-accented Kurdistan is speeding on its course away from political connection with the troubled southern, Arab regions of Iraq. Race theorists, of whom there are many among the Kurdish intelligentsia, love to explain that the Arabs are semites and the Kurds are Aryans: two distinct civilizations forced into an unwieldy, and ultimately unfeasible, alliance.
For almost all Kurds, Iraq is an encumbrance, a piece of historical baggage they wish, at some point, to leave behind. But when, and how? Those are the shadow questions everyone here dwells on. With the West, and Washington above all, seeking to engineer a stable, unitary Iraq, the key piece of the jigsaw has another outcome in mind.
Yet the Kurds have limited freedom to act, and must follow a slow, subtle path. They are only 5 million, in a much larger, Arab-dominated Iraq. And beyond their little fief of Iraqi Kurdistan there are 20 million more Kurdish people, living in hard conditions within the borders of other nations: Syria, Turkey and Iran. Kurdish politicians inside Iraq wish both to engineer a degree of independence for their own people, and to hold out a beacon to their brothers across those borders. Their immediate task is to unify the two separate Iraqi Kurdish governments, based respectively in the north-eastern cities of Erbil and Suleimaniyah, and led by rival clans, the Barzanis and Talabanis. This process is expected to be complete by the end of the year - itself a considerable gain, given that the two camps were engaged in a bitter civil conflict until six years ago.
Embryonic states like Kurdistan need models - and the blueprints on people’s lips in Erbil and Suleimaniyah are themselves intriguing. The Kurds rather fancy a future based on the pattern of Israel, or Singapore, or a mix of the two. Commerce, and military muscle. A free trade zone is being planned for Suleimaniyah, and an international airport is being built. Major foreign investors are being wooed with five-year tax holidays. Unlike much of Iraq, Kurdistan is mountainous, and fertile, so the development of high-tech agriculture and small-scale dam construction are top priorities. Muslim, but not Arab, overwhelmingly secular in flavour, traditional in culture but modern in their dreams, the Kurds today are very much in the position of a small East European nation just after the collapse of Soviet communism: they want the West’s help in order to be themselves.
Jalal Talabani and his counterpart in Erbil, Masoud Barzani, have both been careful, at least in public, to downplay their desire for full independence. Ever since 1991, when Britain and the US began policing a no-fly zone over the Kurdish north, they have run their own affairs, and operated in a state of quasi-autonomy from Baghdad. There have been valiant efforts to transform a largely rural economy. What the Kurdish politicians most want, though, is full control over oil-rich Kirkuk, a traditionally Kurdish city which was part-cleansed and resettled with Arab transmigrants by Saddam Hussein.
Everyday Kurds have even greater ambitions. Past generations have struggled, fought guerrilla wars, died in vast numbers. The young, now coming to maturity in conditions of relative freedom, no longer seek sacrifice and national ordeal: what they want is to travel, wear western clothes, enrich themselves in some loosely-defined capitalist way.
Overlaid above these “aspirationals” is a sophisticated political elite, who decide between them how things actually are in Kurdistan. These men and women are prepared to remain, for the moment, inside Iraq’s embrace - on condition Baghdad meets their demands. The Minister for Human Rights in the Talabani Government, Salah Rashid, puts it succinctly in an interview: all people, Kurds included, have the right to self-determination, but the prospects for a small state in their region are not good. If a tranquil democracy eventually prevails in a federal Iraq, then that would be acceptable: “Kurds,” says Rashid, “Will no longer accept feeling like second-class people. But if they feel they are equal in their strivings, then they will accept to stay in Iraq.”
Another member of the “pragmatic” political elite is Fareed Asasard, Kurdistan’s top political analyst, and head of the Strategic Research Centre in Suleimaniyah.
Asasard argues that the Kurds today need Iraq, for a very simple reason: independence is a quality as much economic as political. Kurdistan needs support from a stable central government in Baghdad, in order to establish a modern, well-funded, socially progressive state. The elite, in other words, have a long-term national plan: but for the present, politicians in Erbil and Sueimaniyah aim to achieve the maximum possible local autonomy within a refashioned Iraq.
“There is a secret program ordinary Kurdish people simply don’t know about,” says Asasard: “What we want is to stay under the government in Baghdad for the next 20 to 30 years, and raise up our economic situation, and get back all our Kurdish territories within Iraq. If we were to demand independence now, the central government would withdraw its financial support, and we would then face the gravest difficulties.”
The problem with this prudent strategy, which bears in mind the military ordeals of Kurdistan in recent years, and seeks to skirt the dangers of a Yugoslav-style break-up, is very simple. The Kurdish people have higher expectations.
There is a deep strain of romantic nationalism within the Kurdish consciousness. It has been nurtured over years of struggle, and it seems, to its adherents, that the golden prize is now within reach. This camp places the ideal of freedom far above the dictates of economic rationalism. Here are the views of Kurdistan’s great national poet, Sherko Bekas. It is Bekas’ words that are engraved on the Halabja martyrs’ memorial. He presides over Sardam, an independent publishing house that lies at the heart of the present Kurdish cultural revival:
“We stand right at the crossroads now,” he says: “Iraq is like a boat drifting in the sea with its destination unknown. Really, we here are already living in a separate Kurdistan, this is not Iraq. We only see Iraq on TV. The Iraqi Arab psychology is not ours, and Arab chauvinism and extreme religious movements are simply not our way.”
The clear preference of Bekas, and the many Kurdish thinkers who incline towards his arguments, is for an immediate move to a federated Iraqi state, with Kurdistan only loosely attached - but even that arms-length association would itself be only the prelude, presaging a swift move to full sovereignty. A new Iraqi constitution is being drafted, and should be ready for adoption in six months. Most Kurds are prepared to take a “wait and see” position, and accept the deal now being discussed.
But it will never be a love match. Entrepreneur and Kurdish celebrity Suleiman Qassab cuts to the heart of the matter: “Perhaps,” he says, “If Iraq resolves its problems and becomes truly democratic, then we’ll stay within its structure. But the truth is we don’t want to deal with Arab oligarchs. In our hearts, we want to become a Kurdish country, we don’t want to live with Arabs any more. It is every Kurdish person’s dream to have an independent state.”
This is the bottom line, and it is curiously close to the surface of life in Kurdistan today. Hence the urgency with which President al-Yawar was pitching his vision of a new Iraq on his visit this week to Halabja. “We are all brothers,” the president insisted, peering around the heads of his security detail: “A federal Iraq would be good for all of us - and that should be our pursuit, our goal.”
The complete ministry of the eastern Kurdish regional government was on hand, listening to him politely. On their faces played confident, saturnine expressions. You could tell exactly what they were thinking: Yes, that may be true for now - but for how long?
(Copyright © 2003 Stewart Innes. All rights reserved)