A Kurdistan already exists...in Northern Iraq
Posted: 2003-03-05 09:09pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... 3Mar4.html
Kurds Cling to Their 'Experiment'
Independence in N. Iraq Imperiled By Threat of War
By Karl Vick and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 5, 2003; Page A01
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq -- Qadir Mala Khadhir is standing in the doorway of his stall in the central market, in front of wardrobes, end tables and bedsprings no one is buying. His business is off, war looms, his car is gone and his family is packed into one jumbled room. But on balance, he said, life is getting better all the time.
"Of course it's better," said the used-furniture salesman, recalling a time before the Kurds of northern Iraq enjoyed relative autonomy, as they do today. "Even if there was no water to drink, the situation would be better than before 1991."
In the dozen years since one-sixth of the Iraqi population began a new life in the northern mountains, they have built a quasi-state within a state, protected by U.S. and British fighter patrols. Now, with war again on the horizon, Kurds are pondering whether their independence will last.
The Kurdish zone is not sovereign, nor is it ruled by any of the surrounding states that have frustrated Kurdish ambitions for centuries. It extends from the mountains on Iraq's northern border to an armed front line where the government of President Saddam Hussein assumes control. Three and a half million ethnic Kurds here revel in what their leaders call a scale model of the Middle Eastern democracy that President Bush says he wants to see rise in post-Hussein Iraq.
"The Kurdish experiment," as it has come to be known here, boasts an elected parliament, a free if careful press and a feeling of independence that eases the hardship and virtual isolation. "I don't want to lose this," said Khadhir.
The Kurds have been protected in their northern enclave since their failed revolt against Hussein in 1991, when Iraqi helicopter gunships forced tens of thousands of Kurds to flee toward Turkey. The creation of a "no-fly" zone in the north allowed the Kurds to return to a haven that has flourished in the past decade.
Kurds applaud any military campaign to unseat Hussein, whose forces gassed, shot and bulldozed about 100,000 Kurds 15 years ago, according to estimates by human rights groups. "He's the murderer of Kurds," said Azad Mohammed, trimming a sheet of tin in his shop.
At the same time, however, Kurds fret aloud that a new war will put their fragile golden age in jeopardy. Their autonomy could be doomed either by the whims of a new Baghdad government or the meddling of Turkish forces who threaten to enter from across the border, even if U.S. forces do not. Kurdistan may be a less-than-official version of the real thing, like MaDonal, the premier fast-food palace on the bustling main street here. But it is more than the Kurds have ever had, and they find it immensely satisfying.
"We are in the beginning of a renaissance for the Kurdish people," said Sherko Abdullah, editor of the satirical monthly Sekhurma, which means nudge. "It's not a gift from anyone, this situation. And I personally believe the U.S.A. understands how we've been treated in the past."
The Dream of Kurdistan
In Irbil, an ancient city of more than a million on the edge of the vulnerable plain to the south,
booksellers offer a map of the ultimate dream: "Kurdistan," a mythical country extending from the Mediterranean coast of Syria east to Iran, north into Turkey and south toward the middle of Iraq. But the reality of the Kurdish zone today is more limited -- 17,000 square miles, mostly in the Zagros Mountains, to which Kurdish guerrilla fighters retreated often over the last century while trying in vain for something grander.
Kurds may be a nation in almost every sense of the word; the estimated Kurdish population of 25 million spread around the region is united by language, culture and a stubborn history of fighting for self-determination. But the Kurds have never had a state. And the collective desire for one is a force that complicates the Bush administration's best-laid plans for war.
Turkey, fearing such a Kurdish state, may send tens of thousands of troops into northern Iraq. Turkey's population of 12 million Kurds is the world's largest, and separatists among them waged a 15-year insurgency against Turkey; 30,000 people were killed before it ended in 1999. A nascent Kurdish republic on Turkey's doorstep might revive the conflict, the Turks say.
Turkey's fear of Kurdish nationalism runs so deep it denies that Kurds exist -- in Turkey, they were long called "mountain Turks." Kurds, for their part, regard the Turks as an enemy the equal of Saddam Hussein, if not worse.
"When Saddam kills us, he kills us as Kurds. The Turks consider us dead already," said Barzan Ishmael, a Kurdish militiaman in the northern town of Dahuk, which is governed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two groups that administer the northern zone. Both groups warn that a Turkish incursion would incite a prolonged war in the mountains, just as the United States is trying to fight one elsewhere.
At the same time, Iraqi Kurds insist that they have learned their lesson. After losing every fight they have ever started, Kurdish leaders say they have deferred their aspirations to independence. They insist they will remain part of a new democratic Iraq built on a federal model that preserves vital elements of their autonomy.
"We have no option," said Barham Salih, prime minister of the part of the Kurdish zone governed by the other major group, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "If you can't beat 'em, you might as well join 'em."
Competing Parts
The city of Dahuk, 50 miles south of the Turkish border, is a modest showcase for Kurdish achievements. It boasts the largest supermarket in northern Iraq, the most modern hotel and streets that bustle so vibrantly that local leaders decided the city needed a break from the sepia tones that dominate Kurdish buildings. Storekeepers were ordered to paint their facades one of four colors, depending on their neighborhood: bright blue, purple, onion yellow or shocking pink.
The Kurds may have instituted parliamentary democracy in their region, but in this instance, democracy runs only one coat of paint deep. "I have purple nightmares," said Salah Abdul Salaam, who works in a music store in the pink Suzann district. "They didn't ask anybody. They just told us. This is not the democracy we want. I prefer blue like the sky."
Nichervan Ahmed, the appointed governor of Dahuk, shrugged off the complaints. "We are trying to add variety," he said. "If everyone voted, nothing would have gotten done."
That top-down attitude clouds the Kurdish experiment. After creation of the no-fly zone above the 36th parallel, the Kurds came back and promptly held parliamentary elections. The vote split 50-50 between the two parties that for decades had jousted for primacy in Kurdish liberation politics. They agreed to set up a joint parliament, but parallel administrations.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, governs the western and northern reaches of the Kurdish zone, including the mountainous areas where tribal traditions are strongest. Headed by Massoud Barzani, son of the most famous Kurdish resistance fighter, the KDP reflects those intensely hierarchical clan traditions.
To the east, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, governs the regions nearest the Iranian border from Sulaymaniyah.
Both the city and the party regard themselves as the more cosmopolitan alternative to the rural tribesmen across the way. But the PUK's politburo, chaired by Jalal Talabani, a lawyer, has the same firm grip on power as the Barzani clan.
When Abdullah was looking for backers for his satirical magazine, the richest people in the PUK zone demurred, fearing his Nudge might offend the powerful. But one investor loved the idea: Hero Talabani, the chairman's wife. "A satirical magazine supported by the wife of the big boss," said Abdullah. "It seems funny. But it's not."
Hero Talabani, who also supports a private TV channel that competes with the staid official PUK TV, said someone had to carry on a "tradition of freedom" that sustained the Kurds even when they were hiding in the mountains. "I had a nice life in Damascus, and before that in Baghdad," she said in an interview, referring to years in exile and her childhood. "I didn't leave that to be in a prison and just obey."
Five years after the 1991 ballot, instead of new elections there was war. The KDP and PUK turned their guns on each other over revenue from Iraqi oil smuggled through Kurdish territory to Turkey. The two sides have since made peace, and last month opened branch offices in each other's base cities, but the memory lingers.
"Those parties are losing the charm of liberation," said Shaho Saeed, a philosophy professor at Sulaymaniyah University. "The relationship between people and parties is seeing a certain amount of turbulence and anxiety."
The prospect of a new war has deflected the hardest questions for now, Saeed said, while underscoring the substantial gains, which are visible from his office window.
The university, which Hussein's government shuttered after student protests, was reopened by the Kurdish administration and anchors one end of Sulaymaniyah's showcase boulevard.
The street is lined with a new (and PUK-owned) high-rise hotel, crowded Internet cafes and CD shops. Satellite dishes, forbidden under Baghdad's rule, stipple the skyline, while the pedestrian traffic below displays a society in transition. A few older men in turbans stride along in traditional costume -- billowing pants and cummerbunds. But the young men crowded around the ubiquitous pistachio carts wear black jeans and jackets.
"We are thankful for the situation we are in," said Mohammed Ali, a money-changer in the city's central bazaar. "And we want better."
High Unemployment, Heavy Dependence
Outside the cities, the harsh Kurdish countryside is broken by mud huts and curiously uniform hamlets marked by blue-and-white signs. The huts survived Hussein's late-1980s Anfal campaign of systematic destruction, designed to punish the Kurds for siding with Iran in the war with Iraq. The new neighborhoods were built by the United Nations, which reconstructed not only the Kurds' homes but also their economy.
Kurds refer offhandedly to "986" as if everyone knows the number of the 1995 U.N. resolution that, with a subsequent agreement between the United Nations and Iraq, brought 13 percent of the proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil to the autonomous zone. "Before 986, a bag of flour cost 1,150 Iraqi dinars," said baker Nabaz Hussein, standing by the comforting heat of the open hearth into which he flips ovals of flatbread all day. "Now it costs 50 dinars," or about $6.
Like other Iraqis, Kurds can eat free with U.N. rations of flour, oil and other staples. The wealthier, in fact, sell their rations for pocket money, or trade them for better brands. But other essentials are harder to come by.
The Kurdish region has its own oil well and refinery, but the gasoline it produces is so rough that most motorists buy from translucent jerrycans stacked beside the road. The fuel the color of lemonade comes from the Baghdad side, the preferred darker grade from Iran. But there are no guarantees, and garages do a brisk trade cleaning fuel filters.
Also scarce is vital economic information of any kind, though unemployment is universally acknowledged as high in all sectors. In Shaqlawa, a town 25 miles northeast of Irbil, the sweeping vistas were once a magnet for tourists from as far away as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Restaurant owner Adnan Mohammed Ahmed Garaz is optimistic that tourists will return once Hussein is gone, but the reality is that in the run-up to war, even the few tourists who traveled from Irbil have stopped visiting.
"No one wants to spend money, even if they have it," Garaz said with a frown. "Some people come here for prostitutes. It is a shame, but true. Now, the prostitutes have no work."
Worst is the dependence on hostile neighbors for basic needs. Last autumn Turkey shut down fuel oil shipments across its border. Last month Hussein unilaterally cut back the allotment due under U.N. rules by 40 percent to Irbil and 20 percent to Dahuk. Prices shot up. Also, Kurds complain, the United Nations has not provided tents for refugees or other emergency provisions, including medicine or gear to protect against chemical and biological weapons.
"We are weeks away from conflict and these guys are not doing any contingency planning except to ask, 'Can you watch our buildings for us?' " said Salih, the PUK prime minister. "This organization really, really is becoming irrelevant."
The United States has also dragged its feet on promises to protect the Kurds, who watched angrily as Washington fought to get NATO protection for Turkey. Kurds complain that they have no Patriot anti-missile batteries, no antidotes for chemical or biological attacks.
"In our zone, we have 40 gas masks," said Karim Sinjari, the KDP interior minister. "We are almost forgotten."
Kirkuk: 'The Temple of Our Homeland'
One goal that Kurds make no pretense of giving up is their abiding claim on Kirkuk. The city, which has been called the Jerusalem of Iraq, lies on the plain just beyond the Kurds' reach on the south side of Iraqi front lines. Its residents include Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen -- groups that might live together in peace, but for the oil fields just west of town.
To maintain control of those fields, Baghdad decades ago began a process of ethnic cleansing called "Arabization," moving Arabs north and forcing all others out. In the polarized environment, both Kurds and Turkmen claim the city as their own. To further complicate the picture, Turkey also notes that at one point Kirkuk belonged to it, too. But the Kurds are closest -- just a 20-minute drive -- and have made the city a symbol of the aspirations its oil could let them realize.
"Kirkuk, the temple of our homeland . . . we will return to you, raising liberation banners," wails a male voice on Kurdistan TV, over an image of an oil refinery flare.
Such bald ambitions unsettle U.S. war planners, who have forbidden the PUK and KDP to send their militias into Kirkuk. The Turks reportedly have also promised not to enter, against a solemn U.S. promise that American troops will secure the city.
Kurdish officials say they cannot prevent armed Kurdish civilians from rushing back to Kirkuk, or prevent Kurds inside the city from grabbing hidden Kalashnikovs and rising up as they did in 1991. That prospect has prompted warnings from Turkey that it would retaliate by moving troops into Kirkuk.
"If there is a Kurdish uprising in the city, who is to protect the Turkmen?" said Isa Muhsin Kasab, an officer of the Iraqi Turkmen Front in Sulaymaniyah. "Only the United States and Turkey."
The treacherous dynamic has many Kurds expecting the worst once again. In Irbil, Mohammed Rasul, 64, paused from hauling bags of U.N. flour. The work earns him the equivalent of $10 a month, enough to feed his wife and four children meat once a month.
"I am hoping things will get better after Saddam goes," Rasul said. "But then I think: When did things get better for the Kurds?"
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Kurds Cling to Their 'Experiment'
Independence in N. Iraq Imperiled By Threat of War
By Karl Vick and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 5, 2003; Page A01
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq -- Qadir Mala Khadhir is standing in the doorway of his stall in the central market, in front of wardrobes, end tables and bedsprings no one is buying. His business is off, war looms, his car is gone and his family is packed into one jumbled room. But on balance, he said, life is getting better all the time.
"Of course it's better," said the used-furniture salesman, recalling a time before the Kurds of northern Iraq enjoyed relative autonomy, as they do today. "Even if there was no water to drink, the situation would be better than before 1991."
In the dozen years since one-sixth of the Iraqi population began a new life in the northern mountains, they have built a quasi-state within a state, protected by U.S. and British fighter patrols. Now, with war again on the horizon, Kurds are pondering whether their independence will last.
The Kurdish zone is not sovereign, nor is it ruled by any of the surrounding states that have frustrated Kurdish ambitions for centuries. It extends from the mountains on Iraq's northern border to an armed front line where the government of President Saddam Hussein assumes control. Three and a half million ethnic Kurds here revel in what their leaders call a scale model of the Middle Eastern democracy that President Bush says he wants to see rise in post-Hussein Iraq.
"The Kurdish experiment," as it has come to be known here, boasts an elected parliament, a free if careful press and a feeling of independence that eases the hardship and virtual isolation. "I don't want to lose this," said Khadhir.
The Kurds have been protected in their northern enclave since their failed revolt against Hussein in 1991, when Iraqi helicopter gunships forced tens of thousands of Kurds to flee toward Turkey. The creation of a "no-fly" zone in the north allowed the Kurds to return to a haven that has flourished in the past decade.
Kurds applaud any military campaign to unseat Hussein, whose forces gassed, shot and bulldozed about 100,000 Kurds 15 years ago, according to estimates by human rights groups. "He's the murderer of Kurds," said Azad Mohammed, trimming a sheet of tin in his shop.
At the same time, however, Kurds fret aloud that a new war will put their fragile golden age in jeopardy. Their autonomy could be doomed either by the whims of a new Baghdad government or the meddling of Turkish forces who threaten to enter from across the border, even if U.S. forces do not. Kurdistan may be a less-than-official version of the real thing, like MaDonal, the premier fast-food palace on the bustling main street here. But it is more than the Kurds have ever had, and they find it immensely satisfying.
"We are in the beginning of a renaissance for the Kurdish people," said Sherko Abdullah, editor of the satirical monthly Sekhurma, which means nudge. "It's not a gift from anyone, this situation. And I personally believe the U.S.A. understands how we've been treated in the past."
The Dream of Kurdistan
In Irbil, an ancient city of more than a million on the edge of the vulnerable plain to the south,
booksellers offer a map of the ultimate dream: "Kurdistan," a mythical country extending from the Mediterranean coast of Syria east to Iran, north into Turkey and south toward the middle of Iraq. But the reality of the Kurdish zone today is more limited -- 17,000 square miles, mostly in the Zagros Mountains, to which Kurdish guerrilla fighters retreated often over the last century while trying in vain for something grander.
Kurds may be a nation in almost every sense of the word; the estimated Kurdish population of 25 million spread around the region is united by language, culture and a stubborn history of fighting for self-determination. But the Kurds have never had a state. And the collective desire for one is a force that complicates the Bush administration's best-laid plans for war.
Turkey, fearing such a Kurdish state, may send tens of thousands of troops into northern Iraq. Turkey's population of 12 million Kurds is the world's largest, and separatists among them waged a 15-year insurgency against Turkey; 30,000 people were killed before it ended in 1999. A nascent Kurdish republic on Turkey's doorstep might revive the conflict, the Turks say.
Turkey's fear of Kurdish nationalism runs so deep it denies that Kurds exist -- in Turkey, they were long called "mountain Turks." Kurds, for their part, regard the Turks as an enemy the equal of Saddam Hussein, if not worse.
"When Saddam kills us, he kills us as Kurds. The Turks consider us dead already," said Barzan Ishmael, a Kurdish militiaman in the northern town of Dahuk, which is governed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of two groups that administer the northern zone. Both groups warn that a Turkish incursion would incite a prolonged war in the mountains, just as the United States is trying to fight one elsewhere.
At the same time, Iraqi Kurds insist that they have learned their lesson. After losing every fight they have ever started, Kurdish leaders say they have deferred their aspirations to independence. They insist they will remain part of a new democratic Iraq built on a federal model that preserves vital elements of their autonomy.
"We have no option," said Barham Salih, prime minister of the part of the Kurdish zone governed by the other major group, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "If you can't beat 'em, you might as well join 'em."
Competing Parts
The city of Dahuk, 50 miles south of the Turkish border, is a modest showcase for Kurdish achievements. It boasts the largest supermarket in northern Iraq, the most modern hotel and streets that bustle so vibrantly that local leaders decided the city needed a break from the sepia tones that dominate Kurdish buildings. Storekeepers were ordered to paint their facades one of four colors, depending on their neighborhood: bright blue, purple, onion yellow or shocking pink.
The Kurds may have instituted parliamentary democracy in their region, but in this instance, democracy runs only one coat of paint deep. "I have purple nightmares," said Salah Abdul Salaam, who works in a music store in the pink Suzann district. "They didn't ask anybody. They just told us. This is not the democracy we want. I prefer blue like the sky."
Nichervan Ahmed, the appointed governor of Dahuk, shrugged off the complaints. "We are trying to add variety," he said. "If everyone voted, nothing would have gotten done."
That top-down attitude clouds the Kurdish experiment. After creation of the no-fly zone above the 36th parallel, the Kurds came back and promptly held parliamentary elections. The vote split 50-50 between the two parties that for decades had jousted for primacy in Kurdish liberation politics. They agreed to set up a joint parliament, but parallel administrations.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, governs the western and northern reaches of the Kurdish zone, including the mountainous areas where tribal traditions are strongest. Headed by Massoud Barzani, son of the most famous Kurdish resistance fighter, the KDP reflects those intensely hierarchical clan traditions.
To the east, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, governs the regions nearest the Iranian border from Sulaymaniyah.
Both the city and the party regard themselves as the more cosmopolitan alternative to the rural tribesmen across the way. But the PUK's politburo, chaired by Jalal Talabani, a lawyer, has the same firm grip on power as the Barzani clan.
When Abdullah was looking for backers for his satirical magazine, the richest people in the PUK zone demurred, fearing his Nudge might offend the powerful. But one investor loved the idea: Hero Talabani, the chairman's wife. "A satirical magazine supported by the wife of the big boss," said Abdullah. "It seems funny. But it's not."
Hero Talabani, who also supports a private TV channel that competes with the staid official PUK TV, said someone had to carry on a "tradition of freedom" that sustained the Kurds even when they were hiding in the mountains. "I had a nice life in Damascus, and before that in Baghdad," she said in an interview, referring to years in exile and her childhood. "I didn't leave that to be in a prison and just obey."
Five years after the 1991 ballot, instead of new elections there was war. The KDP and PUK turned their guns on each other over revenue from Iraqi oil smuggled through Kurdish territory to Turkey. The two sides have since made peace, and last month opened branch offices in each other's base cities, but the memory lingers.
"Those parties are losing the charm of liberation," said Shaho Saeed, a philosophy professor at Sulaymaniyah University. "The relationship between people and parties is seeing a certain amount of turbulence and anxiety."
The prospect of a new war has deflected the hardest questions for now, Saeed said, while underscoring the substantial gains, which are visible from his office window.
The university, which Hussein's government shuttered after student protests, was reopened by the Kurdish administration and anchors one end of Sulaymaniyah's showcase boulevard.
The street is lined with a new (and PUK-owned) high-rise hotel, crowded Internet cafes and CD shops. Satellite dishes, forbidden under Baghdad's rule, stipple the skyline, while the pedestrian traffic below displays a society in transition. A few older men in turbans stride along in traditional costume -- billowing pants and cummerbunds. But the young men crowded around the ubiquitous pistachio carts wear black jeans and jackets.
"We are thankful for the situation we are in," said Mohammed Ali, a money-changer in the city's central bazaar. "And we want better."
High Unemployment, Heavy Dependence
Outside the cities, the harsh Kurdish countryside is broken by mud huts and curiously uniform hamlets marked by blue-and-white signs. The huts survived Hussein's late-1980s Anfal campaign of systematic destruction, designed to punish the Kurds for siding with Iran in the war with Iraq. The new neighborhoods were built by the United Nations, which reconstructed not only the Kurds' homes but also their economy.
Kurds refer offhandedly to "986" as if everyone knows the number of the 1995 U.N. resolution that, with a subsequent agreement between the United Nations and Iraq, brought 13 percent of the proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil to the autonomous zone. "Before 986, a bag of flour cost 1,150 Iraqi dinars," said baker Nabaz Hussein, standing by the comforting heat of the open hearth into which he flips ovals of flatbread all day. "Now it costs 50 dinars," or about $6.
Like other Iraqis, Kurds can eat free with U.N. rations of flour, oil and other staples. The wealthier, in fact, sell their rations for pocket money, or trade them for better brands. But other essentials are harder to come by.
The Kurdish region has its own oil well and refinery, but the gasoline it produces is so rough that most motorists buy from translucent jerrycans stacked beside the road. The fuel the color of lemonade comes from the Baghdad side, the preferred darker grade from Iran. But there are no guarantees, and garages do a brisk trade cleaning fuel filters.
Also scarce is vital economic information of any kind, though unemployment is universally acknowledged as high in all sectors. In Shaqlawa, a town 25 miles northeast of Irbil, the sweeping vistas were once a magnet for tourists from as far away as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Restaurant owner Adnan Mohammed Ahmed Garaz is optimistic that tourists will return once Hussein is gone, but the reality is that in the run-up to war, even the few tourists who traveled from Irbil have stopped visiting.
"No one wants to spend money, even if they have it," Garaz said with a frown. "Some people come here for prostitutes. It is a shame, but true. Now, the prostitutes have no work."
Worst is the dependence on hostile neighbors for basic needs. Last autumn Turkey shut down fuel oil shipments across its border. Last month Hussein unilaterally cut back the allotment due under U.N. rules by 40 percent to Irbil and 20 percent to Dahuk. Prices shot up. Also, Kurds complain, the United Nations has not provided tents for refugees or other emergency provisions, including medicine or gear to protect against chemical and biological weapons.
"We are weeks away from conflict and these guys are not doing any contingency planning except to ask, 'Can you watch our buildings for us?' " said Salih, the PUK prime minister. "This organization really, really is becoming irrelevant."
The United States has also dragged its feet on promises to protect the Kurds, who watched angrily as Washington fought to get NATO protection for Turkey. Kurds complain that they have no Patriot anti-missile batteries, no antidotes for chemical or biological attacks.
"In our zone, we have 40 gas masks," said Karim Sinjari, the KDP interior minister. "We are almost forgotten."
Kirkuk: 'The Temple of Our Homeland'
One goal that Kurds make no pretense of giving up is their abiding claim on Kirkuk. The city, which has been called the Jerusalem of Iraq, lies on the plain just beyond the Kurds' reach on the south side of Iraqi front lines. Its residents include Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen -- groups that might live together in peace, but for the oil fields just west of town.
To maintain control of those fields, Baghdad decades ago began a process of ethnic cleansing called "Arabization," moving Arabs north and forcing all others out. In the polarized environment, both Kurds and Turkmen claim the city as their own. To further complicate the picture, Turkey also notes that at one point Kirkuk belonged to it, too. But the Kurds are closest -- just a 20-minute drive -- and have made the city a symbol of the aspirations its oil could let them realize.
"Kirkuk, the temple of our homeland . . . we will return to you, raising liberation banners," wails a male voice on Kurdistan TV, over an image of an oil refinery flare.
Such bald ambitions unsettle U.S. war planners, who have forbidden the PUK and KDP to send their militias into Kirkuk. The Turks reportedly have also promised not to enter, against a solemn U.S. promise that American troops will secure the city.
Kurdish officials say they cannot prevent armed Kurdish civilians from rushing back to Kirkuk, or prevent Kurds inside the city from grabbing hidden Kalashnikovs and rising up as they did in 1991. That prospect has prompted warnings from Turkey that it would retaliate by moving troops into Kirkuk.
"If there is a Kurdish uprising in the city, who is to protect the Turkmen?" said Isa Muhsin Kasab, an officer of the Iraqi Turkmen Front in Sulaymaniyah. "Only the United States and Turkey."
The treacherous dynamic has many Kurds expecting the worst once again. In Irbil, Mohammed Rasul, 64, paused from hauling bags of U.N. flour. The work earns him the equivalent of $10 a month, enough to feed his wife and four children meat once a month.
"I am hoping things will get better after Saddam goes," Rasul said. "But then I think: When did things get better for the Kurds?"
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
