KurdistanObserver.com

A Step Toward Autonomy?
 
By Jackie Spinner

washingtonpost.com

 IRBIL, (Southern Kurdistan), Jan. 30 -- Dressed in a long green velvet dress and black scarf, Adhima Mustafa huddled against the chill and fog in the back of a dented pickup truck, where she and five female relatives were sharing a long, bumpy ride to their first free elections.

The women members had set out at dawn Sunday to cast ballots in the Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq, but the first two polling centers they visited turned them away because ballot boxes were already full, Mustafa said. They ended up in a farming village outside Irbil, the regional capital, where they were still waiting to vote nine hours after they left home.
 
But Mustafa, 22, who had to check her national identification when asked her age, said the trip was worth it. "We are very happy to be free," she said, beaming.
 
For Iraq's ethnic Kurds, Sunday was a day of reckoning after more than three decades of brutal oppression under Saddam Hussein. After casting their ballots, voters triumphantly held up purple ink-stained fingers, a symbolic poke in the eye of a dictatorship that subjected its Kurdish population to dislocation, imprisonment, torture, execution, even attack with chemical weapons.

Voters who jammed polling centers around the region spoke of ethnic pride, the endurance of their people and their ultimate quest for independence. Few talked about Iraq or about being Iraqi, showing just how disconnected Iraqi Kurds feel from the central government in Baghdad.

The major Kurdish political parties agreed to form a unified slate of candidates for the national election, an extraordinary compromise for historic rivals like the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Party leaders said they had to join together to ensure that they would pick up a large block of representatives in Iraq's 275-member National Assembly, which will choose new governmental leaders and draft a constitution.
 
The head of the KDP on Sunday estimated that 2 million Kurds voted in the election, which the Kurds hope will give them 25 percent to 30 percent of the seats in the new assembly.
 
But the real question for many Kurds was whether the elections -- they had three ballots, one for the central government, one for regional councils and one for the Kurdish parliament -- will be the first step to becoming an independent state.
 
In tents set up outside polling centers -- with the approval of the regional government -- the Kurdistan Referendum Movement asked voters if they wanted an individual homeland, free from Iraq.
 
"It's an unofficial vote," said Besar Faris, 18, a university student who, along with Ismael Mohammad, 19, hung a banner advertising the referendum on a green tent outside a polling center in Irbil. "But Kurds are a big nation that until now does not have any rights of a state or an independent state."
 
Said Mohammad: "Like other nationals of the world, we want to be independent."
 
Kurdish leaders in the central government have steered clear of promising independence. In a news conference Sunday in Salahuddin, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the only Kurd to hold a top cabinet spot in Iraq's interim government, said the more important goal should be true representation in the central government.
 
"The Kurdish political leaders have made it very clear that we want a united, federalist, pluralistic Iraq," he said from behind a desk that had been moved onto the lawn of a regional governmental building.
 
An hour later, Massoud Barzani, president of the KDP, said he hoped to see an independent Kurdistan in his lifetime. "The people of Kurdistan have a right to their own state," he said.
 
To some extent, the Kurdish region already feels like its own place. Voter turnout was high here, in part, because this part of the country is relatively secure after 13 years of semi-autonomy from the rest of Iraq.
 
Although security was extremely tight at polling centers, voters expressed little fear that insurgents would target them. After voting, many people lingered around the polls for hours to talk with neighbors and friends. Except for authorized vehicles, the streets in Irbil and the highways leading into the city were free of traffic, but the sidewalks were filled with people celebrating.
 
At a polling place in the center of the city, Camaran Fathi, 45, directed 39 volunteers who showed up to help stage the election. Some had brought kerosene heaters from their homes to warm the private community center where the vote was taking place.
 
"We hope we will have many representatives in the government and not just a few," he said.
 
A volunteer interrupted him. "What do I do with this?" the woman asked, holding a plastic bottle of purple powder. No one had told Fathi or the volunteers that they had to mix the powder with water to make the indelible ink used to identify people who had already voted. "I have no idea," Fathi told her. "Do you know?" he asked a visitor.
 
"They didn't tell us anything," Fathi said. "We don't know who our supervisors are. This hall is too small for the elections. We have no food. We do not know how long we will have to stay."
 
At another polling center in a snowy mountain village outside of Salahuddin, Shukrani, a 26-year-old Kurdish soldier who said he was not allowed to give his last name, stood in line for nearly two hours to vote. "We are very happy," he said. "The future of our nation rests on these elections. For years, we have made many sacrifices. This is the fruit of the blood of our martyrs."
 
Inside, Zubaida Muhammad, 51, broke into a huge grin as she slid her ballot into the box. "For many years, we have not had free elections," she said. "We want a free, independent Kurdistan. We want Mr. Massoud Barzani to be president."