Independence still a Kurdish
priority By Mohammed A Salih
ARBIL, Iraq - Sipping tea in a cafe in
this city in Iraqi Kurdistan, Moayed Rafiq, 25,
watched news of a car bombing in Baghdad on an
Arab television channel. Others around him also
watched, quietly.
"When I see this every
day on TV, I think there is no need for us to tie
our destiny with Iraq," Moayed said.
To
Moayed, "Iraq" is just a word he hears through
media. He believes the time has come for Kurds to
secede from Iraq "once and forever".
Despite the rhetoric by Kurdish
politicians that they want Kurdistan to remain a
part of Iraq, many of the young feel as Moayed
does. Kurdish leaders are rushing in to join a
rebuilding of
Iraq, but many people in
Kurdistan want to break away from it.
"Of
course, I feel sad for their suffering, but we
can't just wait until things get better there. We
have had enough already," said Moayed.
Kurds have been a part of the modern Iraqi
state for the past 80 years, but feel distinct
from Arab Iraq. "Kurdistan, both as a people and a
land, is not part of Iraq. It was attached to Iraq
by a political decision against the will of its
people," said Ghafour Makhmuri, a member of the
Arbil-based Kurdistan parliament.
Kurds
suffered most under Saddam Hussein. More than
100,000 were massacred in ethnic-cleansing
operations known as Anfal (the name of a Koranic
verse meaning "spoils of war").
Fortune
turned for them in 1991 when they established an
autonomous region after the Gulf War. The US
invasion of Iraq in 2003 was another boost to
Kurds' status in Iraq. For the first time, a Kurd
(Jalal Talabani) became president of Iraq. Already
governing their northern region themselves, Kurds
came to exercise huge power in Baghdad as well.
But rejoining Iraq, as many Kurds like to
call it, has not stopped Kurdish efforts for
independence. In January 2005, alongside national
elections, more than 98% of Kurds voted for
independence in an unofficial referendum.
The Iraqi constitution that was ratified
last year did not recognize the right to
self-determination for Kurds. That angered many
independence-minded Kurds.
"The peoples of
Iraq must be united on the basis of a voluntary
union, and whenever they don't want to live
together, separation is the only solution," said
Aso Karim, a member of the Kurdistan Referendum
Movement, the organization that held the 2005
unofficial referendum.
Kurds' acceptance
of federalism in the Iraqi constitution is not the
end of the road for them. Some say it is only a
launching pad for a higher goal. "I believe
Kurdistan people look at federalism only as a
gateway to independence," said Makhmuri, who also
heads the Kurdistan National Democratic Union, a
hardline nationalist party.
Makhmuri
believes Iraq's sufferings will end only when it
disintegrates. "The best solution to the current
problems of this country is dividing it into
several states. Given the current situation, I am
now more optimistic than ever that we step towards
independence."
The prospect of Kurdish
independence has been a nightmare to Iraq's
neighbors, Turkey particularly, that have sizable
Kurdish minorities. They fear Kurds' separation
from Iraq would provoke nationalist sentiments
among their own Kurds.
But Kurdish leaders
admit that without broad international support, a
landlocked Kurdish state will not be able to
survive. "I can go to parliament now and declare
independence," Massoud Barzani, president of the
Kurdistan region, told a gathering of his
Kurdistan Democratic Party in Arbil last week.
"But when nobody supports it, it will just disrupt
the current situation of the Kurdish people."
Pro-independence Kurds say they need
investments from powerful nations to create and
safeguard an independent Kurdish state. There is
no certainty that this would be forthcoming.
