Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Özeti
➤ and away from Baghdad. For a decade
Turkish companies have poured into KRG
and are doing trade worth at least $8bn
(£5.3bn) a year there. The Shia-Kurdish
alliance is the backbone of the post-Saddam
settlement brokered by the Americans, but
is today it is looking frayed. Mr Barzani and
the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are
barely on speaking terms. The Kurds feel, as
do other opponents of Mr Maliki, that he
has repeatedly reneged on power-sharing
agreements, particularly when it comes to
military and security appointments.
When it seemed likely in 2003 that the US
would invade Iraq from the north accompanied
by 40,000 Turkish troops, the Iraqi
Kurds were terrified and demonstrated vigorously
in protest. These days a Turkish
alliance with the KRG appears to many to
be a reassuring alternative to dealing with
the chaotic and increasingly hostile government
in Baghdad. Arab-Kurdish links are
weakening at many levels. At the top,
Kurdish influence in Baghdad is declining,
particularly since the incapacitating illness
of President Jalal Talabani who had previously
played a conciliatory role at the centre
of Iraqi politics. At street level fewer Kurds
speak Arabic compared to 20 years ago
when many were former conscripts in the
Iraqi army. Few Kurds travel to Baghdad
except for urgent business because it is dangerous,
though many travel to Turkey on
holiday. Only a few years ago the Turks
would regularly close the Khabour bridge,
the main crossing point between the KRG
and Turkey, leading to enormous traffic
jams. These days it is Baghdad that tries to
emphasise the KRG’s isolation, refusing
even to allow the plane carrying the Turkish
Energy Minister to cross its airspace for a
conference in Erbil.
Kurdistan has changed enormously in
the last decade. At several moments
over the last 40 years the Kurdish cause
seemed irretrievably lost. In 1975 their
forces, then led by Mullah Mustafa Barzani,
the father of the current KRG President
Massoud, were betrayed by the US and the
Shah of Iran who suddenly withdrew support
as the Kurds were locked in battle with
the Iraqi army. Saddam Hussein seemed
triumphant and Kurdish prospects for selfdetermination
were apparently extinguished
forever. But the Shah fell and Saddam
invaded Iran in 1980, leading the Iranians
to renew support for the Iraqi Kurds. They
took over much of the country, only to see
Iran forced to agree a truce in 1988 leaving
the Kurds to face Saddam’s vengeance.
Many were gassed in Halabja and 180,000
civilians slaughtered in the al-Anfal campaign
in 1988 and 1989. Again, everything
looked dark for the Kurds until Saddam
invaded Kuwait and was defeated in 1991.
The Kurds rose up, failed to get US support,
and were forced to flee in their millions in
the face of an Iraqi counter-attack. In the
The Erbil Rotana hotel in the Iraqi
Kurdish city of Erbil
midst of an international outcry, US relented
and rescued the Kurds by declaring a
no-fly zone.
But Kurdistan was devastated. People had
been forced into cities and 3,800 villages
and towns were destroyed. This was
oppression on the level of Hitler’s armies in
Poland and Ukraine. The very land was carpeted
with anti-personnel mines like large
yellow and white mushrooms. The mountains
were stripped bare of trees for heating
and cooking. The two main parties – the
Kurdistan Democratic Party of Mr Barzani
and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Mr
Talibani – made a bad situation worse by
fighting a ferocious and wholly unnecessary
civil war.
The contrast between Kurdistan as a ruined
battlefield and its appearance today is so
striking as to take one’s breath away. It may
also be so great as to unbalance its leaders’
sense of the feasible. One critic says: “We
are making the same mistake with the
Turks today as we did with the Americans
and the Shah in 1975. We are once again
becoming over-reliant on foreign powers.”
For all the economic development in KRG it
remains dependant on getting a 17 per cent
share of Iraqi oil revenues proportionate to
its population. The KRG likes to present
itself as “the other Iraq” so different from
the rest of the country. But some things
work the same. For instance, some 660,000
Kurds have official jobs though at least half
do nothing at all. Much government revenue
goes on paying them and without a
share of Iraq’s oil revenues the economy
would collapse. “Ease of doing business in
Erbil compared to Baghdad is very good,”
says a businessman. “Compared to the rest
of the world it is rubbish.” A sign that many
Kurds do realise their continued economic
dependence on Baghdad is a sharp drop in
the last three months in property prices in
Erbil, a fall attributed to disagreements
with Baghdad.
Kurdistan may have greater security and
better political direction than Baghdad, but
it is similarly corrupt. “I call it
‘Corruptistan’,” said one woman. “I live in
an area surrounded by the houses of director
generals working for the government,”
said another source. “I have a higher salary
than any of them but they have houses three
times bigger than mine.” He complained
that it has taken him months to find a
decent school for his daughter and, likewise,
a good hospital for a sick friend. Erbil
may have several five-star hotels, but so few
ordinary Kurds visit them that local taxi
drivers often do not know where they are.
In many respects the exaggerated expectations
generated by the Kurdish tiger resemble
those surrounding the Celtic tiger in
Ireland before 2008. Both nations are
small, long-oppressed and impoverished,
and feel history has treated them unfairly.
Having endured hard times for so long,
both may be vulnerable to seeing a boom as
being permanent when it is in fact partbubble.
Momentous decisions must be taken by the
Kurds and their neighbours when the
pipeline to Turkey is finished. One expert
on Kurdistan asks “is Turkey playing a
game of bluff or will it give up on Baghdad?
Do they see it as having fallen permanently
into the hands of Iran?” The Kurds are gambling
for high stakes in balancing between
Turkey, Iran and Baghdad. They have hitherto
done so with success but they are in
danger of over-playing their hand.
Where are they now? Hans Blix
Few people were more qualified to find
out whether Saddam Hussein was
hiding weapons of mass destruction than
Hans Blix.
As director general of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1981 to
1997, he was in charge of overseeing inspections
of the country’s nuclear programme.
During that time Iraq concealed the programme
from inspectors – it was only discovered
after the 1991 Gulf War. As head of
the UN team responsible for searching for
weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blix
returned to Iraq in December 2002 and
remained until the week before the war
began in March 2003. In his final report to
the Security Council, Mr Blix reported
minor infractions by Iraq, but said there
was no compelling evidence that it had a
hidden arsenal or was blocking the work of
the inspectors. He repeatedly called for
more time to search for the WMD.
Following the 2003 invasion, Mr Blix
became a fierce critic of the US and the UK.
The 82-year-old Swede is now retired, but
Blix has warned against making the same
mistake, this time with Iran. “Today there is
talk of going on Iran to eradicate intentions
that may not exist. I hope that will not
happen.”●
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