BAGHDAD, Sept 2: A leading Sunni politician levelled the harshest criticism yet by Sunnis against Kurdish politicians on Saturday, accusing them of insulting Iraq. Sunni lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlaq made his comments a day after Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani ordered the Iraqi national flag to be replaced with the Kurdish one in his northern autonomous region, in what appeared to be another move toward more self-rule in the north.
“What will be taken by force today, will be returned by force another day,” he said, without elaborating. “We can defend our dignity, our people and our land ... and no one should be under the illusion that he could take a tiny bit of somebody else’s land.”
Al-Mutlaq said there was no problem with the Kurds ‘keeping the land that’s within their acknowledged borders’, but said that lowering the Iraqi flag ‘is definitely disturbing for us and any patriotic individual in Iraq’.
A spokesman for the Kurdistan government refused to comment. But he defended his government’s decision to remove the Iraqi flag.
“We consider that this flag represents the ideology of the Baath Party” of Saddam Hussein, Khalid Saleh said. “And this regime has collapsed.”
Prominent Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman dismissed Al-Mutlaq’s remarks.
“There is no need for threats,” he said, adding that it was not the right time to make such remarks, given the violence plaguing the country. “This is rejected and everything can be resolved through the political process,” he said.
Iraq’s northern Kurdish region has slowly been gaining more autonomy since 2003. The move has troubled Sunnis, who fear that Kurds are pushing for secession under the nation’s new federal system. Such a step, if imitated by the Shias in the oil-rich south, would leave Sunnis with little more than date groves and sand.
“We have a brotherly, friendly relationship with brother Massoud, but whatever kind of relationship it is, we can never be silent when the Iraqi flag is insulted,” Al-Mutlaq said.
“The Kurdish people have been persecuted for many years, and it’s been proven that no one can crush a people or ethnicity ... Similarly no one will be able to persecute the Arab people,” he said.
The lawmaker insisted the country belonged to all Iraqis. “He who wants to have a separatist desire has to be just and should keep the amicable relationship between Arabs and Kurds,” he said.
He insisted that Sunnis ‘do not want to reach to a point of having a vendetta with the Kurds. The brotherhood between the Kurdish and Arab people remains’.
Sunnis have long complained that the Kurdish-championed federalism project could lead to the country’s division.
“And here it is _ our premonitions coming true,” he said. “Today, we see this happening in northern Iraq, tomorrow maybe it will happen somewhere else.”
KURDS NOT FOR SECESSION: Mr Saleh, the Kurdish spokesman, however, reiterated that Kurds do not want secession.
“Federalism will not lead to dividing Iraq,” he said. “Division is the farthest thing from our mind.”
Al-Mutlaq also unleashed a barrage of criticism against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s national unity government, saying it should not be taking its cue from the top Shia religious authority, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The remarks came as Mr Maliki met Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf. The country’s most influential Shia leader is credited with restraining the Shia community from widespread retaliation against Sunnis following horrific attacks on Shias.
“I hope his eminence Sistani confirms the same concepts he made before that he wants Iraq’s unity,” Al-Mutlaq said. “But I say we don’t need to visit anyone as a government, an independent government that should be making its decisions on its own, not based on (directions) from a religious authority.”
He warned that relying on advise from clerics could turn the country into another Iran.
“If we continued in this vein, we’re headed toward the principle of Welayet al-Faqeeh,” or the right to rule by the most learned, as it is practised in Iran.
Many of Iraq’s Shias strongly disagree with the ‘Welayet al-Faqeeh’ concept.
The leading Sunni politician also alluded that Mr Maliki’s national reconciliation plan might not be working.
“‘I hope that the national reconciliation (process) is a real, comprehensive one that will take Iraq to the safe shore,” he said. “One that will separate between state and religion, one that will leave the clergy to educate us religiously .. but not interfere in politics.”
He called for a process that will lead to forming a new government ‘that can lift Iraq from this current situation’.—AP
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