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

30
Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Özeti
By Karin Laub, Associated Press
March 10, 2013
10 years after US
invasion, Kurds look to
the West
Leaders consolidate autonomy 10 years
after U.S. invasion
IRBIL, Iraq — At an elite private school in
Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, children
learn Turkish and English before
Arabic. University students dream of jobs in
Europe, not Baghdad. And a local entrepreneur
says he doesn't like doing business
elsewhere because areas outside Kurdish
control are too unstable.
In the decade since U.S.-led forces
invaded Iraq, Kurds have trained their
sights toward Turkey and the West, at the
expense of ties with the still largely dysfunctional
rest of the country.
Aided by an oil-fueled economic boom,
Kurds have consolidated their autonomy,
increased their leverage against the central
government in Baghdad and are pursuing
an independent foreign policy often at odds
with that of Iraq.
Kurdish leaders say they want to
remain part of Iraq for now, but increasingly
acrimonious disputes with Baghdad
over oil and territory might just push them
toward separation.
“This is not a holy marriage that has to
remain together,” Falah Bakir, the top
foreign policy official in the Kurdistan
Regional Government, said of the Kurdish
region's link to Iraq.
A direct oil export pipeline to Turkey,
which officials here say could be built by
next year, would lay the economic base for
independence. For now, the Kurds can't
survive without Baghdad; their region is
eligible for 17 percent of the national budget
of more than $100 billion, overwhelmingly
funded by oil exports controlled by
A Kurdish flag flies
at the Citadel
fortress in the old
center of Irbil, the
capital of Iraq's
autonomous
Kurdish region.
Disputes with Iraq
over oil and territory
could push
Kurds toward a
split. / KARIN
LAUB/ASSOCIAT
ED PRESS
the central government.
Since the war, the Kurds mostly benefited
from being part of Iraq. At U.S. prodding,
majority Shiites made major concessions
in the 2005 constitution, recognizing
Kurdish autonomy and allowing the Kurds
to keep their own security force when other
militias were dismantled. Shiites also
accepted a Kurd as president of predominantly
Arab Iraq.
Still, for younger Kurds, who never
experienced direct rule by Baghdad, cutting
ties cannot come soon enough.
More than half the region's 5.3 million
people were born after 1991, when a
Western-enforced no-fly zone made
Kurdish self-rule possible for the first time
by shielding the region against Saddam
Hussein. In the preceding years, Saddam's
forces had destroyed most Kurdish villages,
killing tens of thousands and displacing
many more.
Students at Irbil's private Cihan
University say they feel Kurdish, not Iraqi,
and that Iraq's widespread corruption, sectarian
violence and political deadlock are
holding their region back.
“I want to see an independent
Kurdistan, and I don't want to be part of
Iraq,” said Bilend Azad, 20, an architectural
engineering student walking with a
group of friends along the landscaped campus.
“Kurdistan is better than other parts
of Iraq. If we stay with them, we will be bad
like them, and we won't be free.”
Kurds are among the main beneficiaries
of the March 20, 2003 U.S.-led invasion
that ousted Saddam, and sympathy for
America still runs strong here.
Rebaz Zedbagi, a partner in the Senk
Group, a road construction and real estate
investment company with an annual turnover
of $100 million, said his success would
have been unthinkable without the war.
The 28-year-old said he won't do business
in the rest of Iraq, citing bureaucracy
and frequent attacks by insurgents, but
said opportunities in the relatively stable
Kurdish region are boundless.
“I believe Kurdistan is like a baby
tiger,” said Zedbagi, sipping a latte in a
Western-style espresso bar in the Family
Mall, Irbil's largest shopping center. “I
believe it will be very powerful in the
Middle East.”
The Kurdish region has undergone a
dramatic transformation in the past
decade.
Its capital, Irbil, once had the ambience
of a large village. It has grown into a city of
1.3 million people, with the beginnings of a
skyline, several five-star hotels and
construction cranes dotting the horizon.
The SUV-driving elites have moved
into townhouses in new communities with
grand names like “The English Village.”
Irbil's shiny glass-and-steel airport puts
Baghdad's to shame.
The number of cars registered in the
province of Irbil — one of three in the
Kurdish region — jumped from 4,000 in
2003 to half a million today and the number
of hotels from a handful to 234, said
provincial governor Nawzad Mawlood.
Planning Minister Ali Sindi took pride
in a sharp drop in illiteracy, poverty and
unemployment in recent years.
But the Kurds have a lot more work cut
out for them. The region needs to spend
more than $30 billion on highways,
schools and other basic infrastructure in
the next decade, Sindi said. A housing
shortage and a high annual population
growth rate of almost 4 percent have created
demand for 70,000 new apartments a
year.
There's also a strong undercurrent of
discontent, amid concerns about the
concentration of power in the hands of a
few. Opposition activists complain of official
corruption, and the international
group Human Rights Watch said security
forces arbitrarily detained 50 journalists,
activists and opposition figures in 2012.
The region's parliament “is weak and
cannot effectively question the (Kurdish)
government,” said Abdullah Mala-Nouri of
the opposition Gorran party.
Iraq's central government strongly
opposes the Kurds' quest for full-blown
independence.
Iraqi leaders bristle at Kurdish efforts
to forge an independent foreign policy, and
the two sides disagree over control of disputed
areas along their shared internal
border. In November, Kurdish fighters and
the Iraqi army were engaged in a military
standoff, and tensions remain high.
Oil is at the root of those disputes.
Iraq sits atop the world's fourth largest
reserves of conventional crude, or about
143 billion barrels, and oil revenues make
up 95 percent of the state budget. ☞