If this war has a victor, it is the Kurds
They have gained territory and seized control of Iraq's largest oil field, STEPHANIE NOLEN writes
By STEPHANIE NOLEN
Wednesday, March 10, 2004 - Page A15
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KIRKUK, IRAQ -- In the Masbah neighbourhood of Baghdad, there is a very fine house that looms behind a high stone wall. The house is guarded, these days, by soldiers carrying new automatic rifles. Until recently, the house belonged to Tariq Aziz, the urbane Iraqi vice-president who spoke for Saddam Hussein. Now it is occupied by Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The soldiers out front are Kurds from the peshmerga militia.
"Jalal Talabani lives here now," one of them said. "He sleeps in Tariq Aziz's bed." The soldier smiled. "And we guard the house. The peshmerga are all over Baghdad," he added, and grinned a little wider.
This new house represents a dramatic improvement in the fortunes of Mr. Talabani, who a year ago ruled a small patch of northern Iraq and now sits on the Iraqi Governing Council and entertains in the former vice-president's lounge. It is symbolic of the overall fate of the Kurds: If the war in Iraq can be said to have a victor, one year later, the long-persecuted Kurdish minority has best claim to the title.
The Kurds have won the promise of self-government from the U.S.-led military coalition, and have seen that right enshrined in the temporary constitution; they have expanded their territory and have seized de facto control of the country's largest oil field.
There is a new sense of freedom in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, a feeling that has precipitated a building boom, as people invest their long-squirrelled-away savings. The government has used a windfall of almost $1-billion (U.S.) from the coalition (recovered funds of Saddam Hussein) to start road repairs and triple civil-service salaries. But little else has changed here since the war, and that suits Kurds just fine. The two Kurdish political parties continue to administer civil affairs, as they have since a Kurdish self-rule area was established in 1991 under a UN no-fly zone.
The Kurdish region was almost entirely unscathed during the war, after Turkey prevented the coalition from using that country as a base to launch an attack from the north. So the United States and its allies relied on the peshmerga as their northern front, and it was Kurdish troops who secured the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. Thus, Kurdish leaders had two goals going into the postwar negotiations. First, they wanted to keep what they had, with Kurdish control over civil affairs based on "ethnic federalism," rather than the 18 separate geographic regions proposed by Washington.
And they wanted recognition of historic Kurdish claims to territory from which Mr. Hussein and his predecessors had driven the Kurds, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
The Kurds are well-positioned at the moment: They are the best organized of the parties grappling for position on the Governing Council, with 12 years experience in political pluralism. Their peshmerga fighters are the largest military force in Iraq. And as the coalition battles Sunni insurgents in the south, while preparing to hand over control to Iraqis by summer, there is little incentive to meddle in the stable north.
Washington has appeared keen to placate the Kurds so far. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, said early on that they must be given sweeping federal rights -- but the Kurds are the smallest minority in Iraq, with four million people, and they are utterly dependent on the United States for protection, from the Arabs and from Turkey, which has fought its own Kurd population.
Mr. Talabani of the PUK and his rival, Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, say the best option for Kurds is membership in the new united Iraq.
"The time of the mini-state is over," said Noshirwan Mustafa, a veteran PUK leader involved in some of the key negotiating. "We believe this is a golden chance to get more." He said the Kurdish position is that they will keep the regional government and turn over foreign affairs, financial affairs and defence to a federal level.
Mr. Mustafa said Kurds have already reaped substantial benefit from being reunited with the rest of Iraq, and will see more. "The budget of the Kurdish regional government is larger, so salaries are higher and we can do more projects. People can go and come freely to other countries," he noted. "And there is more freedom . Once a member of the PUK would be hung in Baghdad or Kirkuk, and now our newspaper is on sale there. And above all, it is the end of Arabization."
But the charm of federalism is not widely felt in the north. A recent editorial in Hawalati, the bold independent newspaper published in the autonomous zone, said bluntly that Kurds were "better off under Saddam Hussein" because they had a de facto state, whereas under the U.S.-led occupation they are losing control of things they once managed. They can no longer appoint their own police, for example, and they might soon see Arab soldiers in Iraqi uniforms in their area.
Nearly two million people in the autonomous zone signed a petition last month asking for a referendum on whether Kurds would prefer to join a federal Iraq, or be an independent state. Copies were delivered to the provisional authority, the UN and the Governing Council.
"If you ask people: 'Federal Iraq or independence?' they will say independence," said Fouad Baban, a physician and instigator of the petition. But like most older Kurds, Dr. Baban has a realpolitik understanding that the United States will not allow an independent Kurdistan, and that even were the Kurds to declare independence, such a state would be invaded by neighbouring Turkey, Iran and Syria, which have large, restive Kurdish minorities.
But he sees other value in the plebiscite, demonstrating the political acumen Kurds have developed over the past decade: "If there is good media coverage of this, it will have a big influence. If we ask for independence, we may get a good framework for a federal Iraq. We must aim high in the negotiations."
The most sensitive issue in those negotiations may be the northern oil fields, the largest in Iraq, which recently returned to their prewar production levels, and over which Kurdish forces currently have firm control. A Kurdish company has the U.S. contract to provide security, and a prominent Kurd has been brought in by the American executive manager to serve as general manager. Ghaza Talabani was the former quality-control manager at the oil field under Mr. Hussein, and he is reportedly working closely with his clansman, Jalal Talabani.
Such internal political ties may yet prove the biggest obstacle to Kurdish political aspirations. The PUK and KDP have engaged in vicious civil wars, most recently in the mid-1990s, and relations are still icy despite meetings between the parties in the past year.
Still, life is appreciably better in the northern region than anywhere else in Iraq -- safer, more prosperous, more orderly -- and the Kurdish leaders act like men who have won and will go on winning. "We will always insist on keeping what we have now," said Mr. Mustafa, with a smile that suggested that what they have now is more than the Kurds could have hoped for.
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