KurdistanObserver.com

Analysis: Kurds have their way in Iraq

By Roland Flamini Aug 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The Iraqi draft constitution gives virtual independence to the country`s Kurds -- and the jitters to neighboring governments with Kurdish minorities. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said recently you need a microscope to detect where the status obtained by the Kurds differs from full sovereignty. Inevitably, observers say, the compromise deal worked out by Iraq`s Shiite Arab majority and the Kurds will raise expectations in Turkey, Iran and Syria.

The constitution creates a federal system that Kani Xulam, who heads the Washington-based American-Kurdish Information center, calls "a marriage of convenience," and "a nominal relationship" between the Shiite and Kurdish communities. On Thursday, talks to persuade the Sunni Arab minority to sign off on the agreement thus opening the way for approval by the Iraqi National Assembly seemed stalled. If the process toward a federal republic collapses by the end of this week, the Kurds will have least to regret -- at least privately -- because it will bring them closer to their most widely desired goal of total independence.

The Kurds have de facto control of their cohesive, secular, terrorist-free enclave of northern Iraq, protected by the only effective standing military force made up of Iraqis, and about 40 percent of the country`s oil reserves. Should the fragmentation of Iraq that analysts warn may be the end result come about, Xulam says, the Kurdish territory "will fall like a ripe fruit from the tree."

The Kurds make up around 20 percent of the Iraqi population, or 5.2 million people. Under Saddam Hussein, what is often called Iraqi Kurdistan was largely autonomous, with U.S. and British combat planes protecting it from regime attempts to seize control. In return for significant help to U.S. troops in the Iraq war, the Bush administration promised the Kurds they would not lose their pseudo-independence in any post-Saddam democratic system.

In reality, in the constitutional drafting talks, the Kurds had to fight hard to ward off Shiite pressure to impose an Iranian-type Islamic theocracy, with its implied oppression of women, once it came into force, and its lack of attention to minorities.

Meanwhile, developments in Iraqi Kurdistan are having an impact on other Kurdish minorities -- on the 2 million Kurds in Syria whose minority rights are more or less ignored, and more so on the 14 million -- or around half of the Kurdish total population -- in Turkey, and on the 4.6 million Kurds in Iran.

Tension has continued in Iran since Iranian security agents allegedly killed a Kurdish activist in Mahabad, in northwestern Iran. His death sparked protests in Mahabad and elsewhere and clashed with police; and street skirmishes were still being reported on July 19. There were further clashes when Iranian Kurds took to the streets to mark the election of Masud Barzani as president of the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq. More celebrations led to more arrests following the election of Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as Iraq`s president.

Although Iranian Kurds are certainly envious of Kurdish political success across the border, analysts say there is little indication of separatist sentiment in Iran, at least not yet. But analysts say that may emerge if the ruling ayatollahs fail to pay attention to Kurdish demands for greater attention from Tehran, citing inadequate political representation and inattention to their culture. A low turnout in ethnically Kurdish areas in the recent Iranian election -- around 20 percent compared to the national average of 60 percent -- was seen as a reflection of Kurdish discontent.

Separatism is at the heart of a resurgence after a long lull of attacks in Turkey against army patrols and a series of at least four bomb attacks on tourist resorts in the past two months. A hitherto unknown group calling itself the Kurdish Liberation Hawks claimed responsibility for at least one attack, and experts have labeled it and other groups as offshoots of the Kurdistan Workers` Party, or PKK. But last week the separatist, originally Marxist, insurgent organization that has been waging war in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran since 1973 announced a month-long unilateral cease-fire.

The PKK announcement raised the prospect of an end to an insurgency that is said to have claimed 35,000 lives in the past 20 years. It followed a promise by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of "more democracy, more civil rights, more prosperity," and an admission that "Turkey should face its past," a reference to the harsh tactics employed against Kurdish militants by the Turkish military in the 1980s and 1990s.

For Erdogan, the internal violence needs to stop soon if his country has any hope of polishing its human rights image and fulfilling its aspiration of becoming a member of the European Union. The same EU pressure is useful insurance for Iraqi Kurds that Ankara will not be tempted to intervene militarily in Iraq, should the dream of an independent Kurdistan start taking shape by default.