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ARBIL: For Iraqi Kurds, the euphoria over Saddam Hussein’s defeat has quickly turned to concern over what the minority group stands to gain, if anything, for its support of the US war against Baghdad.
On the surface, Kurds’ claims in post-Saddam Iraq sound modest, given the brutal persecution they suffered at the hands of the ousted Baath party and the military support they gave the United States along the northern front.
They demand the right to return to towns and cities from which they were expelled under Saddam’s Arabization programme, and want the key oil hub of Kirkuk, as well as other towns including Khanaqin, as part of Kurd-administered northern Iraq.
They want to keep the political autonomy they have enjoyed since after the 1991 Gulf War, to have their own parliament and to have a say in a future central government in Baghdad.
“What Kurds want is to be more realistic than in the past,” said Hoshang Farooq, an assistant lecturer at the university in Sulaimaniya, the main city in the eastern part of Kurd-controlled northern Iraq governed by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
“We have forgotten about separatism and independence, as these are not workable right now, although Kurds do see this as their legitimate right,” he added.
But even the more limited goals are fraught with problems, and have already raised alarm in Turkey, which fears that greater freedom and economic clout in northern Iraq could embolden its own Kurdish minority to demand more rights.
Veteran PUK leader Jalal Talibani on Tuesday dismissed talk of an independent Kurdish state. “This is not our dream. Our dream is to live in the framework of a democratic Iraq.”
Jay Garner, the retired US general overseeing Iraq’s reconstruction, told Talabani during his tour of northern Iraq he wanted Iraq’s new government to be a “mosaic” of Iraqi people.
KIRKUK A KEY TEST: The sight of hundreds of Kurdish “peshmerga” fighters pouring into Kirkuk the day Iraqi forces collapsed there not only worried Turkey. It made the city’s other ethnic groups — Turkish-speaking Turkmen, Arabs and Assyrians — distinctly uneasy.
Even though the US military forced most “peshmerga” to leave the city, Kurds are now demanding that Arab settlers leave the homes from which they were expelled under Saddam’s regime, and many are carrying guns to make their point.
PUK officials in Kirkuk, a city of 700,000, admit that the task of resettling Kurds will not be easy.
“The problem is that this is all to do with retaliation,” said Rozgar Ali. “During the last 40 years the Baath party has abused many people, taking land, killing and imprisoning. What is happening here is very difficult to control.”
Turkmens, who also lay historical claim to Kirkuk, are concerned their voices will be drowned out by Kurds demanding that the city be made part of what they call Kurdistan.
“Geographically, Kirkuk is part of Kurdistan,” said Ibrahim Hassan, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), the other main Kurdish faction in northern Iraq.
“It is for all the people who live there. Not just Kurds, but Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldean (Catholics) and Turkmen.”
He said Kurdish parties would not claim the city’s vast oil wealth, key to funding reconstruction in Iraq and attracting investors keen to tap the world’s second largest oil reserves.
But he added: “We (the KDP) say oil revenues should be collected by the central government, but the Kurds should have a share of that.”
INTERNAL RIFTS: Another hurdle facing Iraqi Kurds is the suspicion and discord that still divides the northern enclave between the PUK and KDP, which fought each other in the mid-1990s but formally united against Saddam before the war began.
The PUK’s decision to enter Kirkuk the day it fell, without the permission of the United States, infuriated the KDP, which said it had jeopardized the Kurdish position in Washington and given Turkey the pretext to send military observers to the area.
Asked which faction reached Kirkuk first, a senior PUK commander grinned and said unapologetically: “The PUK”.
“They should not have entered unilaterally,” Hassan said in Arbil, the KDP capital.
He said the KDP also wanted areas of Mosul, Iraq’s third city, to be made part of the Kurd-controlled north.
The success or otherwise of Kurds’ limited expansionism will depend largely on the United States, and Kurds in Sulaimaniya took heart on Tuesday from Garner’s visit.
But they are also wary of Washington’s motives, accusing the US military of betraying them in the past, most recently when it failed to back a Kurdish uprising against Saddam in 1991.
“We have had bitter experiences with the United States,” said Farooq. “If we can win Kirkuk then we have won something, if we cannot, we have gained nothing.”—Reuters
