Kurdistan Observer 
May 29, 2002

All our fears as Kurds, as an oppressed and deprived nation struggling for its survival were summed up and realized in a far from reality statement made recently by Mr. Barham Saleh to the British Daily Telegraph in its issue of May 24th 2002.

But first of all, I would like to ask Mr. Tom Clancy for forgivness for employing the title of his novel for this article, simply nothing else suited the content of these lines better than these few words. 

The article written by Ambarin Zaman is titled "Saddam's Cleansing of Kurds Continues". In it Mr. Barham Saleh the Prime Minister of the Kurdish Administration in Sulemani has made a very powerful but unsubstantiated claim in his statement regarding the city of Kirkuk. I would like to make clear that we are not in the business of personal attacks. I was simply and I am sure millions of Kurds as well were appalled to read between the lines what struck me like a thunder in an unexpected and one of the worst moment of the Kurdish history and struggle. The statement constitute a historic precedent, no Kurdish leader has ever made such a concession before and the Kurdish response to such a claim will definitely be overwhelming in the defense of their beloved city of Kirkuk. This statement simply declares that " Kirkuk is a highly explosive issue, we have to keep the Turks as comfortable as possible. Their intervention would produce chaos," said Brahma Sale, a senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern part of the Kurdish enclave. The statement further continues, by dropping a bombshell on the Kurdish people everywhere," We cannot say it is (Kirkuk city of course) a Kurdish city. Arabs, Turcomens, and Assyrians have lived there for centuries too." Now I as a Kurd am compelled to express my dismay and astonishment at the fact that no Kurd has responded to this flimsy claim yet. The Kurdish people have been used previously to such statements coming out of the capitals of the regional governments that controls various parts of Kurdistan. Theywouldn't be so surprised if this claim was made by an ordinary Kurd. But for the statement to be made by a Kurd, who is in the position of authority, would only increase the Kurdish frustration and perpetuate Baghdad and Ankara's unsubstantiated claims in respect to a city that has long been described as the heart of Kurdistan.

I really do not know of any basis that such a claim can be based on except the fact that Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Mr. Jalal Talabani has a history in denying the Kurdish nature of Kirkuk City. During their negotiations with Saddam Hussein in 1983 they agreed on a similar concept regarding Kirkuk which had been a stumbling block in any Kurdish-Iraqi negations. Kirkuk occasionally has been described by Mr. Talabani as Quds of Kurdistan rather than the heart of Kurdistan. We have to wonder what that mean in the light of the fact that Palestinians have already given up on half of the city which is the official capital city of Israel.

Mr. Barham Saleh could not have chosen a worse time to make this infamous statement. It came at a time when United States has made up its mind in massing all the efforts to topple Hussein. This U.S. campaign has put a tremendous pressure on the Kurdish leadership to partake in that effort. It was only a few weeks ago when the Kurds where endeavoring to secure a promise from U.S. and the Europeans that their cooperation should be rewarded by including Kirkuk within the framework of the Kurdish federation in the post Saddam era. Therefore, the Kurdish people have every right to wonder what benefits they possibly could gain from such irresponsible statement at a time like this. On the other hand, they are wondering such a claim end up in whom's interests, when it is obvious that it brings nothing other than harm and damage to the Kurdish people and their legitimate cause.

Now historically, Kirkuk has been a Kurdish city. It is a part of Zagros highlands which is the original dwelling of the ancient Kurds who were the native inhabitants of the area long before the migration of the other races and tribes. In an article published in Kurdistan Times in its issue of winter 1990, Mr. Mustafa Qaradaghi states that Gutium or Guti, the ancient Kurds who spoke a branch of Hurrian language, which was also spoken by their kin of Lulu, Kassite, and Mittani. Their capital city was in and around the town of Kirkuk, named Arrapha.

Since the division of Kurdistan and the constant Kurdish struggle for freedom, the Kurds have never made such a concession as to give up on a part of Kurdistan. The Kurdish legendary leader Mustafa Barzani always maintained the fact that Kirkuk is the heart of Kurdistan. During the 1961 revolution, at a moment of a truce and negotiations, Mr. Barzani left the session when the Iraqi delegation led by Abdul Salom al- Samirayi hinted at non-Kurdish nature of Kirkuk.He did not return to the meeting until Mr. Salom has left the room and waited in the reception area for the meeting to end.

In the aftermath of the WWI and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the whole debacle of the Mosul Wilaet between Turkey and Iraq which was under the British mandate. The League of Nations sent a committee led by a Swede to survey the demographic nature of the Mosul Wilayet, which included entire today's Iraqi Kurdistan.The committee found that the entire population of the wilayet was 800,000. Among those 500,000 were Kurds. The Arab population was no more than 180,000 while Assyrian and Turcomans made up the remaining 120,000 of the total population of the whole Wilayet of Mosul not just Kirkuk.

If Kirkuk is not a Kurdish city, then how Mr. Barham Saleh explains the non-stop and successive Arabisation campaigns by the Iraqi government. These measures have never stopped and the Kurdish people from the city of Kirkuk are scattered all over Iraq and Kurdistan because of deportation, forced immigration, and government transferes, not to mention the new Iraqi administrative division that served Baghdad's purposes in depopulating Kirkuk from the Kurds.

After Hussein almost emptied the city from the Kurdish population, his sick mentality devised a new approach to desecrate the Kurdish graveyards. Now he is offering the Kurds 4,000,000 million Iraqi dinar to any Kurd to dig up their deceased ancestors and move their remains to somewhere else, while offering the Arabs the same incentive to bring their deceased and bury them in Kirkuk.

The Arabisation process is continuos and is well documented and known to the whole world and its only end is to change the Kurdish demographic nature of city. That only prompts the Kurds to embrace their city rather than abandoning it to some frail baseless claims regardless of the source of those claims.

The Kurdish people have no choice but to cling to the well-established fact that Kirkuk is a Kurdish city and it will remain so. Mr. Barham Saleh has to realize that this is not a political game .You can not negotiate on a limb of your body, especially if that part happens to be your heart. And Kirkuk always will remain the heart of Kurdistan. No Kurdish political organization or leader has the right to concede it. It is an issue to define your national borders and claim your sovereignty even when you have no country of your own, and it is a whole another issue to give up on a part of your land to your opponent simply because your goal is not attainable at the moment. The Kurds should insist even in their weakest moment on every national demand especially when it comes to the Kurdish cities and towns. It is a deadly mistake for the Kurdish political organizations to assume under the pretense of realism to minimize and downscale their national demands, simply because these ends are not conceivable at that time. They have to differentiate between their tactical and strategical goals and act accordingly. Today the Kurds are in a better position to negotiate, and their opponent is weak. Therefore they must take advantage of the opportunity to maximize their gains. Kirkuk is a Kurdish city and it will remain so. And the Kurdish leaders should insist on its inclusion into the upcoming Kurdish federation. Their cooperation with the United States to oust the dictator Saddam Hussein from power should be subjected to this particular demand in addition to all the other Kurdish national demands. The Kurds need to secure a political recognition from the international community now when the political atmosphere is right and in their favor and before the change of government in Baghdad. 

Eamad Mazouri