Kurdistan Observer

Kurds Blame Iranians For Drugs And More
Turkey no longer the only neighbour that worries Iraq's autonomous north
Mar. 19, 2006.
IASON ATHANASIADIS
SPECIAL TO THE Toronto STAR

His desk is cluttered with a pair of Motorola walkie-talkies, a handgun and several thousand dollars' worth of confiscated opium and hashish. Despite the impressive haul of drugs seized near the Iranian border, the Kurdish counter-narcotics official is not happy.

"Drugs are a new phenomenon in our society," he says. "Iran is trying to funnel the drug into Kurdistan and spread it among us. They're trying to weaken our society in every possible way, so as to discourage us from forming our own state."

Such anti-Iranian accusations are increasingly widespread in northern Iraq, where a Kurdish majority is anxious to claim independence.

Detecting malign Iranian influences has become a popular Kurdish pastime — especially, for the high-ranking narcotics official, when it involves the land bridge between the poppy fields and hash plantations of Afghanistan and users in Kurdistan.

But it's not just drugs.

Some local leaders blamed "Iranian elements" for Thursday's rioting in Halabja, the Kurdish town that was poison-gassed by the Saddam Hussein regime in 1988. A monument to the 5,000 Kurds killed in the attack was destroyed as demonstrators protesting local conditions turned violent during ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the massacre.

Iran's new-found unpopularity comes as Tehran's favoured faction in Iraq — the majority Shiites — seek to form a government despite Kurdish and Sunni opposition in Baghdad.

Increased clashes between the Iranian army and a Kurdish militia called Pezhak in Iran's Kordestan province have dismayed the Iraqi Kurdish leadership. Pezhak is the Iranian militia offshoot of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been battling the Turkish government in southeast Turkey.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, an unlikely political alliance has been formed as Iraq's Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, is speaking out publicly against Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite former prime minister who has been re-nominated for the post by the United Iraqi Alliance, a grouping of mostly Shiite parties that won the December elections.

Talabani has broken with his former Shiite allies to link up with Sunni politicians in an alliance aimed at depriving al-Jaafari of the post.

As the horse-trading continues among mostly secular politicians inside the capital's isolated but increasingly vulnerable Green Zone, the rest of Iraq tears itself apart in a daily diet of assassinations, car bombings and mass executions.

By contrast, northern Iraq remains relatively peaceful, with the exception of Mosul and Kirkuk, troubled cities with mixed Arab and Kurdish populations.

Fifteen years of autonomy since the 1991 Persian Gulf War have brought the region some prosperity, allowing the main ruling parties — the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) — to decide that amalgamation between them is the best course of action.

Despite a legacy of factional infighting that culminated in an intra-Kurdish civil war in 1994, the Kurds are rallying to guarantee control over their own army and a 2007 referendum to decide the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

A Kurdish military intelligence operative, speaking on condition of anonymity, says ordinary Kurds are "not bothered at all" by the daily atrocities perpetrated in the rest of the country by rival militias.

"They believe that it's what the Sunnis and Shiites had coming to them. They don't criticize it at all."

In Arbil, the political capital of northern Iraq, Kurdish politicians are sounding cautious notes about the prospect of independence — and the Iranian threat.

"The Iranians have their own policy and it's something very complicated," says Adnan al-Mufti, speaker of the Kurdish parliament.

"The Iraqi people cannot be used as a card in this game. We cannot be used as pawns by the region's powers."