NYT Mag Cover Story on Iraqi Kurdistan

NY Times Magazine: “In the Balance,” by Nir Rosen, February 20, 2005.

Yet more excellent coverage by the NY Times of the structural dynamics of Iraq in particular, and that whole part of the Middle East in general …

Think about this in connection with the Sandra Mackey piece on Kirkuk … as well as our earlier piece “It’s the Society, Stupid – NOT the Election.”

You should read the whole thing … but here are some quick quotes:

With the Iraqi election it looked as if an altogether new kind of Iraqi politics might be born at last. Yet, listening to Mam Rostam [a leader of the Kurdish militia, the pesh merga], it also seemed possible that this election might be the beginning of the end for a unified Iraq. Thanks to multiple accidents of history – the uneasy presence of Sunni and Shiite Arab minorities; an embittered local ethnic group, the Turkmens; meddlesome neighboring countries with their own restive Kurdish populations; and, not least, control of about 40 percent of Iraq’s known oil reserves – the city of Kirkuk, population about 850,000, is where all the pieces of Iraqi politics come together, or where they may well fall apart. …

Kirkuk was historically a cosmopolitan center where Jews, Arab Sunnis, Christians and Shiites, Turkmens and Kurds lived and worked side by side and attended one anothers religious celebrations. As nationalism spread throughout the region in the 20th century, replacing the relative tolerance that characterized the Ottoman Empire, the Jews fled, mainly to Israel, and Turkmen and Kurdish identities were forcibly suppressed.

Kurds, who are Muslims but not Arabs (or Persians), speak their own distinct language. (It is fast becoming the lingua franca in the north.) The origins of the Kurds are nebulous, but by the time of the Arab conquest in the seventh century, the word “Kurd” was used to describe people living in the region of the Zagros Mountains. The Kurds say they have been in the region for 3,000 years, surviving the empires of the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Byzantines and finally the Ottomans. By the 19th century, there was a Kurdish nationalist movement. In 1918, Kurds pinned their hopes on the 12th point of President Woodrow Wilsons famous 14-point plan for world peace: that the nationalities of the collapsing Ottoman Empire should be given autonomy. In the 1920’s, however, the presence of oil in Kirkuk led the British to attach the area to Iraq, which Britain controlled at the time. Other Kurdish lands were divided among the larger countries of the region, and not long after the Kurds began rising up in rebellion. …

Turkmens and Kurds alike were suppressed by the aggressive Arabism of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Official “Arabization” began in the 1960’s and accelerated significantly in 1975, when the Iraqi regime began forcibly removing tens of thousands of Kurds, Turkmens and Assyrian Christians from Kirkuk and bringing in Arabs to take their place. This Arabization was chiefly motivated by the government’s wish to consolidate its grip on the oil-rich and fertile region – and to pre-empt a gradual demographic takeover of the city by the Kurds. Under Arabization, as many as 250,000 non-Arabs, mostly Kurds, were expelled north into Iraqi Kurdistan. Their former land titles were declared invalid, and ownership was assumed by the government, which rented the land to Arabs. …

Turkey’s Gray Wolves [is] a paramilitary organization founded in Turkey in the 1960’s. The Gray Wolves sought to establish a greater Turkey that would include Kirkuk and its oil fields. They battled leftists and opposed any recognition of the Kurds in Turkey.

“We belong to the Turkish Gray Wolves because we believe that anything taken by force can only be taken back by force,” one of the men told me. It is their rights that the Turkmens want back, I was told, though their politics came to a sudden stop when they were asked to explain what those rights were. “The Turks have lived here for 4,000 years,” another of the men said, in a historical addition of about 3,000 years, and “governments considered us relics of the Turkish occupation, all governments ignored our rights.” Now, I was told, the interim Iraqi government “has started taking sides.” The men claimed that the independent electoral commission had registered an additional 108,000 internally displaced Kurds. “This was a gift to the Kurds,” one said. …

Was [the Gray Wolves leader] expecting violence during the election? “God willing,” he said, “there will be violence. We are expecting it. You think we will keep silent about the 108,000 Kurds? Civil war has to happen, but we won’t start it. Why do you think we were cleaning our weapons? Today there was a demonstration of Kurds – all of them armed, a provocation – and where were the Americans? How can you come here to teach us about democracy, and you dont give us freedom?”

He continued: “We are ready for anything. Maybe after an hour, after a day, after a week, but civil war has to happen. The Kurds are four million, and we are three million. Our young men are ready to defend us.” He did not expect Turkey to come to their rescue. “Turkey will pursue its own interests, and if the Kurds give Turkey oil, then the Turks will support the Kurds,” he said. …

The division of the vote along ethnic or religious lines marked the election … nationwide. Because the electoral “lists” had to compete on a national basis, they could not appeal to particular local needs or issues. This meant that the political appeal of any particular list almost had to be much less than the sum of its candidates; in effect, the national lists became reflections of ethnicity or religious belief. During the campaign, this had the result of solidifying the connection between religion or ethnicity and political power.

And it keeps going and going … a MUST-READ …