Unease Among Kurds As Leaders Eye Baghdad Power
By Gareth Smyth in Suleimania
March 1 2005

Jalal Talabani, at 72 one of the great survivors of Kurdish politics, is likely to become president of Iraq after the main Kurdish parties took 75 of 275 seats in Iraq's new assembly.

But Iraq's 5m-6m Kurds are at a testing time in their troubled history.

There is little jubilation within the Kurdish heartland, where many people express scepticism at their leaders' talk of the “big prize” of constitutional autonomy that has always eluded the 25m Kurds spread across Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran.

The roots of the scepticism are a sense that Kurdish energies should not be diverted into propping up Iraq, and a frustration at the behaviour of the Kurdish leaders.

Just after the election on January 30, Mr Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Massoud Barzani, who heads the Kurdistan Democratic Party, jointly proclaimed Mr Talabani as the Kurds' choice for a top post in Baghdad.

Mr Barzani, in turn, would be “president of Kurdistan”, a position yet to be defined by either the Kurdish parliament or in the new Iraqi constitution.

“Kurdistan TV reported Massoud was elected president with the votes still not yet announced,” said a young man in Suleimania. “It's tribalism, not democracy, and I regret voting.”

While most Kurds welcomed the parties' common list for the Iraq-wide assembly, many felt a common list for the Kurdish regional assembly left them with no choice at all.

The parties used nationalist sentiment and tribal patronage to motivate voters, but some, especially the young, wanted to pass a verdict on the way the PUK and the KDP have run separate administrations since their brutal civil war of 1994-1997.

The parties' two zones have separate armed forces and television stations. Distinct cellular networks force users to switch Sim cards as they cross from one checkpoint to another.

Mr Barzani and Mr Talabani have pledged to merge the administrations, and Nichervan Barzani, prime minister in the KDP administration and Massoud Barzani's nephew, recently said unification could be complete by May.

“It will be easier in health and education than in security and military affairs,” said a senior PUK official.

But the real obstacle is vested interests, said Zirak Abdullah, a journalist with Hawlati, an independent newspaper. “Government, party and business are all mixed up.”

Both parties have assets once owned by the Iraqi government including hotels and villas and are becoming entangled in a web of trade and construction projects as the region begins to develop.

“There is a lack of transparency,” said Asos Hardi, Hawlati's editor. “It's hard to find out who owns what and people suspect the parties are often hiding behind the scenes.”

In October leading PUK members secured a commitment from Mr Talabani that financial decisions required approval by the party's political bureau.

Officials said this resulted from concern over the business affairs of Mr Talabani's sons and brother-in-law. “We have dealt with this,” said one. “The PUK, unlike the KDP, is not a family party.”

The PUK's media gave wide local publicity to December's FT report that the KDP-run administration had sent abroad $500m in hard currency, transferred from the US-led administration in Baghdad.

And the Islamic Union of Kurdistan (IUK) while joining the Kurdish lists for Baghdad and the regional assembly attacked nepotism in an independent campaign for provincial councils.

“We promised to investigate any official who suddenly became rich,” said Salahadin Babakr, spokesman for the IUK. “This is what people complain about.”

But with violence continuing in Iraq and Kurdish self-rule insecure, the struggle for pluralism and transparency in Kurdistan remains in its infancy.

“When there is no security, there can be no other life,” says Nawsherwan Mustapha, a senior PUK official. “Where security does exist, as in Suleimania [in the PUK-run zone], then people ask for other things.”

When Bashiqa, a town 15km northeast of Mosul and outside the Kurdish-run zone, was left short of ballot papers in the election, Zuhair Qaisar Khalaf was very angry.