KurdistanObserver.com

Waiting For a Miracle

By: Rashid Karadaghi

July 17, 2005

If the history of the last two years since Iraq's liberation and the apparent fall of Saddam, and the many hundreds of years of our suffering at the hands of Arabs (and Turks and Persians), is any guide, we would be terribly mistaken if we expect any change in Arab Iraq's attitude towards the Kurds and their demand to be recognized as a nation entitled to all that Arabs and other nations are entitled to, including the right to an independent state of their own. Bitter experience has ---or should have --- taught us Kurds that to think that Iraqi Arabs would eventually come to see the legitimacy of our demands is nothing more than wishful thinking, unless we believe in miraculous conversion.

It is abundantly clear from all the thinly disguised and not-so-well-disguised hostile statements by every Iraqi official ---the builders of the so-called "new" Iraq ---since the liberation that Arab Iraq is not, and never will be, ready to accept the principle of equality between Arabs and Kurds. Once it gets back on its feet, Iraq will go back to its old ways and Saddam's heirs will follow in their master's footsteps if they are allowed to do so.

Recognizing the right of the Kurdish people to live in their homeland free from domination and oppression by their Arab" brothers" requires changing the mentality of a people that is fixed in time, a people steeped in all kinds of prejudices and misconceptions about themselves and others, a people who have visions of conquest and grandeur about themselves and still have a hard time accepting "losing" Spain. There is a long history behind this dark and unchanging mentality, which we cannot do much about. But while we cannot change other peoples' minds, we can certainly change our own, or, at least, try to do so.

 The mentality we are dealing with is not only rigid and unchangeable but skilled in the art of stonewalling and deviousness. Commenting on the negotiations between the Kurdistan Alliance and the Shi'ite Coalition to form the current government and, now, to write a permanent Constitution, a veteran Kurdish politician, who is known for his candor, summed up the perennial problem between the Kurds and Iraqi Arabs by saying, "We presented our demands to the Iraqi Opposition and they [the Arab side] said that it would be best to postpone taking a decision on them until after the Saddam regime was toppled. Then the demands were presented to the Governing Council and they said it would be best to wait until there was a sovereign government and when the demands were presented to the Allawi government, which was/is a sovereign government, they said that they had to be postponed until after the elections. And now after the elections the Kurdish side wants a solution for these problems or at least a written commitment to solve them."

 But the problem is much deeper than this, for even if there were "written commitments," we can never count on the other side to honor them. The 1958 Interim Iraqi Constitution, which was proclaimed after the monarchy was overthrown, stated that "Arabs and Kurds are partners in this homeland." However, Iraq did not honor the Constitution and this so-called "partnership" never materialized, which is why the Kurds revolted against Baghdad in 1961. Broken promises by Arab Iraq is nothing new. It started from the very inception of Iraq as an independent state, for not only did it not in any way honor its pledge to respect the Kurdish people's special status when Southern Kurdistan was annexed to it after WW1 by force and against the Kurdish people's wishes, but it committed genocide against them.

As to be expected, the Kurds are still waiting ---five months after the elections and two years after the liberation--- as they have been for almost a hundred years for Arab Iraq to do the decent thing and recognize them as a nation with all the rights of a nation. It is safe to assume that they would still be waiting many more years from now unless they change their own mind and change their condition by themselves instead of waiting for Iraqi Arabs to change it for them.

We are presumably part of the government, yet we are "asking" that same government to implement article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), for instance, as if we were not part of the government but outside of it. If we are a true partner in the government and a major player in the decision-making process, it should be up to us as much it is up to our partners in the government to implement this law or that law or not to implement it. Instead of "asking" the government to implement TAL, we should implement it ourselves. History tells us, as do Kurdish political tradition and folklore and proverbs, that freedom is never given; it is always taken --- and our struggle with Iraq will not be an exception.

There is something terribly wrong with how we Kurds have been thinking and acting because we have been telling ourselves that it is up to our torturers to decide how much freedom we can have or how our future is shaped. We have given them the power to be the arbiter of our fate. Who said that it is up to Iraq whether we can be free from it or not? Why are we empowering Iraq instead of empowering our own people? In this age of freedom, can Iraq really keep six to seven million people captive by force unless those millions allow it to keep them so?

We must get it in our heads once and for all that Arab Iraq has no power over us unless we give it such power. As Albert Camus says, "The minute the slave says 'NO!' he is free." I say that it is time to say "NO!" to Iraq and all of Saddam's heirs. We must say "NO!" not timidly or half-heartedly for fear of offending our "brothers," but emphatically and loudly for all the other occupiers of Kurdistan to hear as well and not just the Iraqis. We must stop hoping for a miracle to change the mind of the occupier. It is time we gave ourselves the power to decide our future instead of Iraq, which has been the cause of all our pain and suffering for a hundred years.

 By going to Baghdad after the liberation and helping to rebuild Iraq from its ashes, we made the ultimate concession to Arab Iraq, which we should never have done. We sacrificed Kurdistan for Iraq, a country that has committed genocide against our people. We helped to recreate a monster and gave it the power of life and death over us and now we are reaping the bitter fruits of our actions as the monster is going back on every agreement it had made with us before. We   put the monster in the position of master and now it is paying us back, as masters usually do.

There must be no more concessions and no more compromises at the expense of our legitimate national rights. It should not be up to Arab Iraq or any other foreign nation  in the region to decide whether the Kurds will have their freedom or not; it should be up to the Kurds themselves, 98% of whom voted in last January's Referendum for complete independence from Iraq. It is time the people's vote counted for something.