Children of a lesser Kurdistan.

Publication: Kurdish Life

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Jalal Talabani escaped an attempt on his life in March. Less than a month later, he was installed as president of Iraq. Full of praise, BBC's Jim Muir called him a leader as "pragmatic" as Saddam Hussein. Here he reasons why: "At the height of the Iraq-Iran war in 1983, Saddam Hussein, anxious about the threat of an Iranian-Kurdish alliance, tried to divide the Kurds, and wooed Mr. Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) into a ceasefire that lasted over a year. The collapse of that truce reinvigorated a united Kurdish campaign against the Baathist regime, which reacted by launching what is widely seen as a brutal campaign of genocide against the Kurds. In 1987 and 1988, hundreds of villages were razed, and uncounted thousands of Kurds were arrested and summarily executed in what Baghdad called the Anfal Campaign."

True. The brutal Anfal did occur. On the other hand, Talabani and rival Barzani had no business taking sides in the war between Iraq and Iran. Better had they allied themselves with Kurds in Iran. They did not do so. Instead they actually helped the Iranian Pasdaran to scout out the Iranian Kurdish guerrillas, the KDPI. I remember back in the early 1980s having called a Kurd in the Virginia office of the KDP to ask why they were helping Iran, only to hear him reply that Iran would surely win the war and they would be rewarded with Iraqi Kurdistan. "What about a contingency plan, just in case Iran doesn't win the war?" I asked. That possibility never crossed his mind.

Now Muir harkened back to the 1991 Gulf war when, as he put it: "triumph turned to tragedy as the Baathist forces struck back. Virtually the entire Kurdish population fled into the high mountains along the Turkish and Iranian borders, where many perished in the snow. Mr Talabani and his ally and rival Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) stayed on with their peshmerga guerrillas, and fought off the government forces."

Truth be told, Iraqi government forces never reached Iraqi Kurdistan back in 1991. but tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians were told they must flee at once if they were to escape the wrath of Saddam's reprisals. They took with them little more than the clothes on their backs. And they died in the mountains, not from attacks by Iraqi forces, but from exposure to the elements. In Iraqi Kurdistan a year later I was told by evacuees that peshmerga came in the middle of the night with bullhorns ordering their exodus.

According to Muir: "Mr. Talabani's pragmatism again broke surface: One night in the spring of 1991 when staying at his camp in a ruined school in Mawat--a mountain village north of Sulaymaniyah where he had taken refuge during earlier struggles with the rival KDP in the 1960s--he disappeared, and nobody would say where he had gone. Then he popped up on television from Baghdad, kissing Saddam Hussein on the cheeks." True. While Talabani embraced Baghdad, the poor Kurds were left to fend for themselves. And hundreds died.

Since then Talabani has embraced Washington. No wonder he would now tell Muir: "Firstly, I am going to lead the country in alliance with the Western countries, not against them. Secondly, I don't think I will have the authority to lead the country alone. The presidency is a symbolic one. But it has of course its importance, that for the first time in the history of Iraq, a Kurd will be the president."

Talabani spoke of an alliance. But the Kurd is not an ally, the Kurd serves a new master. "I know the Kurdish people want independence, but they understand that it cannot be achieved now," he said. "The Kurdish leadership is realistic, they know it's impossible at this time, so they are struggling for federation within the framework of a democratic Iraq." But that's not why Kurds have been fighting and dying for over a hundred years.

Armed with some, but not enough Kurdish history, Muir suggests that Talabani is "Saladin's heir." And yet he refutes his comparison in his next sentence: "The last Kurd who really made his mark in the wider Arab Middle East was Saladin (Salah al-Din al-Ayyoubi), who drove the Western Crusaders out of Jerusalem in the 12th Century." (4.7.05) Talabani did not drive the crusaders out, he ushered them in.

By so doing, he ushered the real Kurdistan out. If that was not enough, in Baghdad he took this oath of office: "I swear by God the Great that I will work with devotion to preserve the independence and sovereignty of Iraq and to preserve its democratic and federal system." (Reuters 4.7.05) In his written statement, he went further to declare: "The Iraqi people have shown their commitment to democracy and we, in turn, are committed to Iraq." (NYT 4.7.05) To reporters he proceeded apace, proclaiming: "After being liberated from the most hideous of dictatorships ... our people--the Arabs, the Kurds, the Turkmen and the Assyrians--want to build a new Iraq free from dictatorship and tyranny a democratic, unified Iraq." (Independent 4.7.05)

Four days later, he told CNN TV's Wolf Blitzer: "We are in great need of American forces." (NYT 4.11.05) His words were read as a reference to Iraq's need. But it takes no Delphic oracle to prophecy that given the decisions of Kurdish leaders since 1991, Iraqi Kurds will always be in "great need" of American forces.

Pepe Escobar drew this portrait of Talabani in a commentary for Asia Times: "The new Iraqi president, reconstructed Kurdish warlord Jalal Talabani, also revealed his true colors: he said he wanted the American military to stay. Talabani has a history of shady deals with everyone and his neighbors--Israel, the Shah of Iran. Turkey, Britain, the US--and his tug-of-war with rival warlord Masoud Barzani has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds. To add fuel to the fire, Talabani now is also in favor of using Kurdish peshmerga and assorted Shi'ite militias to fight the Sunni Arab resistance--a certified recipe for civil war: this could begin the day the peshmerga are sent to guard Kirkuk's oil fields." (4.20.05)

On May 29th Agence France Presse covered the ascent of rival Massoud Barzani to the presidency of lesser Kurdistan, news that appeared weeks earlier on Kurdish web sites. Captioned "Kurdish leader Barzani to head new regional government," it read: "After years of political discord between Talabani and Barzani, the two agreed at a meeting on Saturday that Barzani should rule Iraq's three northern provinces for the next four years." Speaker Adnan al-Mufti told a press briefing that the June 9th vote electing Barzani was "unanimous." (Reuters 6.12.05) This is democracy, Kurdish style.

Meanwhile, during an interview with the German magazine, Der Spiegel, Talabani was asked, "Do you dream of an independent Kurdistan?" And Talabani replied: "No. I dream of a prosperous, progressive, cultivated Kurdistan. Poets can dream that other dream, but as politicians we must be realistic. Imagine we Kurds were to declare our independence, and Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria would impose a blockade on us. How would be able to enter or leave this country?" Had he and Barzani refused to go along with Turkey and the U.S. back in 1991, Iraqi Kurdistan never would have been an isolated enclave designed to suit others. Had they not supported Turkey against the PKK, the situation would not have been as it is. But that is history. Now, owing to their decisions, the "prosperous, progressive, cultivated Kurdistan" will be confined to the north of Iraq, for that is the only Kurdistan the U.S. has in mind.

"The Kurds, and you personally, are considered America's most reliable partners in Iraq. But hasn't America made a series of mistakes?" the interviewer asked. And Talabani replied. "America liberated us from dictatorship, and now we have friends we can trust. But of course America made mistakes, especially here in central Iraq, among the sheikhs and tribal leaders."

Tactical errors notwithstanding, U.S. policy is right on track. The same cannot be said of the policies of Kurdish leaders, if indeed their goal was a united Kurdistan. But the status quo they helped to create is not without compensations. As Talabani said: "The Kurds have a lot of influence. I'm president, Barzani is president of the Kurdistan region, and Iraq's foreign minister is also a Kurd."

But all is not sweetness and light as they prefer to believe. In the first week of April, this appeared in a Kurdish newspaper: "In Arbil (Hewler) supporters of the PUK and KDP started to provoke each other by parading the photos of Talabani and Barzani and the PUK and KDP flags. Many photos of Talabani were torn. In the village of Asihi near Zakho, the PUK organized a party on April 8th. When KDP supporters carrying yellow KDP flags entered the party, PUK supporters attacked them. KDP supporters left and set up a checkpoint near a road leading to Smel, but KDP security forces drove them off. On the following day 500 peshmerga of the KDP's Zaweta forces surrounded and attacked Smel and arrested a number of PUK members at the PUK headquarters." The PUK members were then "publicly beaten and detained at the Asayish security headquarters in Smel." In Soran on April 9th KDP and PUK supporters rallied and "threw stones at each other."

Strange. On April 7th AP reported that on October 4 of 2002 during a session of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament, Talabani "proposed that the parliament should pass a law prohibiting and criminalizing inter-Kurdish fighting."

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. Edward R. Murrow

Kirkuk: a tree full of fruit

On April 9th Al Ahram Weekly carried this statement by the new president of Iraq: "'Kirkuk,' says Talabani, 'is an Iraqi city and Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law will form the basis of dealing with any disputes, including renaming and reuniting the province which was called Al-Tameem under Saddam.'"

But is it an Iraqi city? In a report captioned "Kurds Wield New Power in Kirkuk Politics," Edmund Sanders told another story. Here is the gist of it: "In Kirkuk they conduct their public meetings in Kurdish, not Arabic. For 90 minutes, about two dozen Kurdish council members debated issues and shared jokes, leaving Arabic-speaking citizens and journalists in the audience scratching their heads and walking out in frustration. U.S. officials in attendance scrambled to replace their usual Arabiclanguage interpreter with one who spoke Kurdish. One slightly exasperated Assyrian Christian member. Sylvana Boya, finally pleaded that she didn't understand what was going on. 'I don't object to Kurdish,' she said later, 'but the language used should be understood by all members' ...

'We are extending our hands to the members of the other slates,' said Abdulrahman Mustafa, a Kurd and the U.S. backed governor of Kirkuk, who is likely to retain the job. 'They are all our brothers' ... But Turkmen and Arab leaders don't believe a word of it ... The recent Kurdish language council meeting only heightens their anxiety, and a rise in insurgent activity in the area has added to their sense of instability ... 'If they want stability, we are all going to have to participate,' said Tahsin Kahya, a leader of the Islamic Union of Turkmen. But Kahya's chances of retaining his post as Kirkuk's council chief appears dim. He said Kurds recently had informed him that the head of the council must speak Kurdish." (3.27.05)

"Everybody's business is nobody's business in Kirkuk" titled a commentary by Saadulah Abdulla. Decrying "the end of civilization in an ancient city, the city of Babagurgur, the eternal fire," he went on to observe: "The ethnic communities in Kirkuk, particularly the Kurds and the Turkomans, claim the ownership of the ancient city--the Kurds, for example, say the city has a Kurdish identity, historically home to the Kurdish people and must therefore be administratively part of Kurdistan. However, none of the communities in Kirkuk make any effort to promote the city culturally, socially or economically, invest in the city, make compromises for the sake of their city or take any effective steps to reduce tensions between the ethnic groups that make up the population of the city. The ethnic communities of Kirkuk behave in an irresponsible and greedy way, consistently trying to exacerbate the political situation and capitalize on the special status of the city as home to five diverse and at times hostile ethnic groups: Kurds, Turkomans, Arabs, Armenians and Chaldeo-Assyrians. Kirkuk has probably the worst local government, which is rendered ineffective and powerless by futile intercommunal rivalries ... This intercommunal deadlock has been going on for two months and there are no signs of any progress towards solving the problems ... At the level of Iraq, Kirkuk belongs to nobody and nowhere ...

"The political landscape in Kirkuk has...

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