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

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
JUNE 21, 2004
\oj
Rebels With a Cause
Iraq's well-anned Kurds could go their own way
BY BABAK DEHGHANPISHEH
AT FIRST GLANCE, AR! NASSER
seems like a splendid guardian for
Iraq's future. In recent months he
and other recruits in the newly
formed Iraqi Civil Defense Corps have patrolled
Kirkuk, helping U.S. forces keep order
in the volatile northern city. The local
troops have earned high marks for their
professionalism; many of them, like the 24-
year-old Nasser, got years of military training
in the fight against Saddam Hussein
with the peshmerga guerrillas of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan. That's where Nasser's
loyalty remains, he readily admits. "I'm
still a peshmerga," he says, laughing. "I only
wear this uniform because our party's leadership
told us we have to join the ICDC."
How long they'll tell him to stay is an open
question. "If our leaders decide
to pull out of the government,"
he says, "we will .leave with
them. It will be easy for us to go
to the mountains and fight the
new government.'~
It's no idle threat. Iraq's
Kurds have spent many years
rebelling against the Baghdad
days after Saddam's fall, the peshmerga
evicted some 2,000 Arabs from homes in and
around the city. Since then the Kurds have
begun using less violent tactics, setting up
land offices to help displaced Kurdish fanlilies
buyout the Arabs. One local real-estate
agent calculates that 5,000 or so Arabs have
sold their homes to Kurds in the past year.
Most of all, Kurds don't want other Iraqis
telling them what to do. Their leaders have
managed to get serious guarantees of Kurdish
rights written into the "transitional administrative
law:' the interim constitution
that was approved by U.S. and Iraqi authorities
in March. The constitution recognized
Kurdish as an officiallanguage. It allowed
the Kurdistan regional government to retain
control over local security forces, and it
promised that victims of Saddam's Kirkuk
government, and recent developments
have intensified the
ethnic disputes that could ultimately
rip apart Iraq. Behindthe-scenes
intervention barely
averted a revolt last week within
the new interim governmènt
after language guaranteeing
Kurdish rights was excised STORM CLOUDS: Kurds guard their homeland
from. a U.N. Security Council
resolution on Iraq. The Kurdish deputy
prime minister, Barham Salih, threatened
to quit even before being sworn in, and the
leaders of the two main Kurdish political
parties sent a letter to President George w:
Bush warning that the Kurds would boycott
the new interim government if it
reneged on Kurdish rights..
The political threats are backed by muscle.
The peshmerga have an estimated troop
strength as lligh as 75,000. Their troops are
professional and heavily armed with tanks,
armored personnel carriers and artillery. If
the Kurdish-rights dispute bursts into war,
it's likelyto center on the Kurds' oil-rich capital,
Kirkuk. Saddam leveled entire neighborhoods
to drive out the Kurds and encouraged
Arab tribes to relocate from southern Iraq..
Now the Kurds want the place back. In the
relocation campaign would get their homes
back or be given compensation.
The Kurds don't trust their countrymen
to keep the deal. In an effort to give the constitution
international standing, Kurdish
leaders tried to get it mentioned in last week's
Security Council resolution. The attempt
was foiled by the objection of one man: Iraq's
most influential Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani. With the June 30 deadline for
Iraqi sovereignty less than three weeks away,
no one had time to argue. The reference was
dropped. The country's new interim prime
minister, Ayad Allawi, acknowledged the
Kurds' trepidations. "There are reasons [for
the Kurds] to be concerned:' the Shiite politician
said. "Absolutely. It's something I sympathize
with." But sympathy won't mollifY
the Kurds for long.
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