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Kurds Offer a Model -- but Also a Challenge  for Postwar Iraq
Newhouse News Service
1 May 2003
by John Hassell*

WASHINGTON /  If the Bush administration is seeking a model for postwar Iraq -- one that is secular, pluralistic and rooted in democratic institutions -- it could do much worse than the fledgling society that Iraq's 3.6 million Kurds have cobbled together in the country's rugged north over the past dozen years.

At the same time, regional experts say, there is no single minority group in Iraq's complex ethnic quilt with more potential to create instability in the region if the new government that emerges in Baghdad does not recognize the autonomy and social progress Kurds have achieved.

The anti-American Shiite protests in southern Iraq last week showed how fractious the country's body politic can be, analysts say. But the Kurdish situation underscores how quickly trouble could affect Iraq's neighbors -- namely, Turkey, Iran and Syria, all of which are home to Kurds.

"The Kurdish issue is going to be the next big problem in the Middle East," predicted Henri Barkey, a former member of the U.S. Department of State's policy planning staff and an expert on Kurdish politics and history at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. "The more they taste freedom, the more conscious they become, and the more they will demand."

Described often as the largest stateless nation in the world, the estimated 25 million Kurds who inhabit the swath of land between the Mediterranean and Caspian seas have maintained a distinct culture and language for more than a millennium, despite numerous efforts -- most notably by the Turks --  to suppress their ethnic identity.

The Kurds' failure to achieve statehood through their long history is partly a matter of geography; spread out in small villages across an unforgiving landscape, they have never developed a political center. They also have been divided by great powers: by the Ottomans and Persians for almost 500 years, and by the Allied victors after World War I.

During Saddam Hussein's reign, the Kurds of Iraq suffered mightily.  According to Human Rights Watch, an international watchdog group, the Iraqi government systematically destroyed 4,000 to 5,000 Kurdish villages from 1977 to 1987. Then, in a series of attacks in
the late 1980s, Saddam's forces slaughtered more than 100,000 Kurds.

After the Kurds mistakenly believed the U.S. military would support an insurrection at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, they were brutally suppressed yet again. The Kurds' first real glimpse of autonomy came later that year, when U.S. and British warplanes began enforcing a no-fly zone in northern Iraq.

In an area roughly the size of Switzerland, the Kurds have created the building blocks of civil society in short order, including democratic institutions with opposition parties, dozens of lively newspapers and satellite TV stations, and unfettered access to the Internet and international telephone lines.

Politically, the Kurdish territory has been split into two regions, one controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Massoud Barzani, the other by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani. After fighting a four-year civil war during the 1990s, the two parties are still not on the best of terms.

So far, despite their differences, the Kurds have proven the best of allies for the United States, fighting beside U.S. soldiers to oust Saddam's Republican Guard troops from northern Iraq, and staging a celebratory rally last week for Jay Garner, the retired general who leads the U.S. effort to rebuild postwar Iraq.

"What the Kurds have accomplished in 12 years is extraordinary, and they don't want to lose it," said Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East Forum at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That accounts for their extremely good behavior so far. They are relying on the Americans to preserve the gains they have made."

Already, though, tensions have become apparent. In the days since the U.S.-led war drew to a close, Kurds have pushed into areas previously controlled by Iraqi authorities. South of Mosul and Kirkuk, Kurdish fighters have evicted thousands of Arabs from villages the Kurds claim as their own.

These events have been watched closely by Turkish authorities, who reached a cease-fire with Kurds in southeastern Turkey in 1999, after a 15-year struggle that left 37,000 people dead.  The Turks fear an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq -- or even quasi-autonomy in a federalized Iraqi state -- could once again spark rebellion.

The existence of vast oil reserves in Kurdish areas adds urgency to Turkey's concerns. Turkey believes it has a historical claim to the legendary oil fields in the Mosul and Kirkuk provinces, which Turks ruled during the Ottoman era. Iraqi Kurds believe they should have control of these areas, along with their energy resources.

Turkish authorities also worry about the possible persecution of northern Iraq's 1 million ethnic Turkmen, who live primarily in the cities of Mosul, Kirkuk and Erbil. Largely middle class, Iraqi Turkmen have exercised broad influence over the cultural and political life of those cities -- influence that some Kurds have had reason to resent.

"If these cities are going to be integrated into a Kurdish region, Turkey will want to see how that plays out," said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The Turks are very concerned about the welfare of Turkish-speaking communities in their neighborhood."

Another concern in Ankara is the continued presence of 4,000 to 5,000 Turkish Kurds, guerrillas known as the PKK, in northern Iraq. Although relations between the Turkish government and the Kurds of southeastern Turkey are better than they have  been for decades, the existence of these armed fighters is viewed as an ever-present threat.

The problem for Turkish leaders is that the government's recent decision to  deny the United States permission to base ground troops in Turkey has severely reduced Ankara's sway over the Bush administration's plans. Had Turkey cooperated, Turkish troops would likely have joined the action in northern Iraq.

"The way things have turned out, Turkey has been left almost completely out of the development of northern Iraq, despite historically close ties with Washington," said Sabri Sayari, director of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Georgetown University. "They have literally been left on the other side of the fence."

This has not gone down well with Turkey's military, which exerts powerful influence over national affairs. According to Time magazine, U.S. units in northern Iraq caught a Turkish special forces team last week as it infiltrated the country on a mission to stir up ethnic  Turkmen and provide a pretext for sending troops into the region.

Col. Bill Mayville, commander of the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, told the magazine that the soldiers "did not come here with a pure heart." Rather, he said, "their objective is to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk."

In the meantime, said Barkey of Lehigh University, the Kurds of northern Iraq will work hard to preserve whatever independence they can under the federal system of government envisioned by planners in the Bush administration. "They have worked very hard, and suffered a lot, to get where they are," Barkey said. "The danger is, if there are setbacks, they could bolt."

*John Hassell is a staff writer for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.