A bastion of Kurdish hopes in Iraq

irbil, iraq -- Unshackled from Arab domination and the yoke of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraqi Kurdistan has grown into a powerful incubator of Kurdish ambitions and nationalism. But the enclave in northern Iraq also has the potential to destabilize the Middle East, with recent tensions raising the specter of a regional war.

For months, neighbors Iran and Turkey have been engaged in battles against Kurdish separatists who have established camps in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. This week, lawmakers in Ankara raised the stakes, threatening to authorize an invasion of Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels blamed for attacks in Turkey.

From their autonomous enclave carved out after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds have for years quietly undermined attempts by Syria, Iraq and Iran to halt their community’s cultural and political aspirations, throwing open the doors to their brethren in neighboring countries. In doing so, they have also provided shelter to the separatist groups fighting the Turkish and Iranian governments.

“We can’t help them,” a Kurdish official in this city said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But we can’t hand them over, either.”

Turkey, Iran and Syria, which have long histories of suppressing Kurdish separatist movements, eye the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq warily, even though all have an economic stake in the enclave and maintain cordial ties with its leaders.

In the last five years, hundreds of foreign Kurds have come here to study at universities. Kurdish filmmakers from Iran make movies here that would be forbidden by the Islamic Republic. Linguists have reinvigorated efforts to unify the populace by bridging the gaps between Kurdish dialects that have bedeviled the struggle for a pan-Kurdish movement.

In addition, Kurdish exile groups and political parties, along with Kurdish refugees from neighboring countries, have found protection from political persecution.

“They’re us,” said Mohammed Qader, a leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of Iraq’s two main Kurdish political groups. “We take care of them.”

Leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan argue that their regional government, which covers three of Iraq’s 18 provinces, provides an attractive blueprint for Kurdish autonomy that would not require a formal redrawing of the Middle East’s borders. Turkish authorities, however, fear that Kurdish separatists are determined to break off part of Turkish territory for their own state.

Kurdish officials say they have urged foreign movements to relinquish violence and band together with other opposition groups to achieve a more feasible vision: the same type of decentralized government that gives Iraqi Kurds autonomy without formal statehood.

“We no longer struggle for an independent Kurdistan,” said Abdul-Razzaq Moradi, an official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.

Kurds, with a total population estimated at 25 million to 40 million, are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. They speak a different language and have a culture distinct from that of Arabs, Iranians and Turks. They are believed to be the world’s largest ethnic group without a state, the victims of superpower machinations after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the close of World War I.

Kurds fought violent battles against governments in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran during the 20th century. The four countries have at various points suppressed the Kurdish language, destroyed Kurdish villages and executed Kurdish political activists for treason. During the 1980s, Hussein slaughtered tens of thousands of Kurds to quell a rebellion.

Kurdistan’s first sustained period of self-governance in centuries began in 1991, when, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, British- and American-enforced no-fly zones were established in northern Iraq. The 2003 toppling of Hussein strengthened Kurdistan’s legal standing.

In 2005, the new Iraqi Constitution enshrined the three-province Kurdistan regional government into the nation’s law.

An economic boom that began shortly after the collapse of the former regime has mushroomed, filling Kurdish coffers. Satellite television channels have sprouted, linking Kurds here in Irbil with those in the city of Diyarbakir in Turkey, Sanandaj in Iran and Qamishli in Syria as well as Stockholm and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Two international airports have been opened since the U.S.-led invasion.

“Before the fall of Saddam, I would go to Iran and Syria and beg their intelligence services to let me travel out of the region, or smuggle myself out,” said Nureddin Agiri, leader of the Socialist Party of Kurdistan, a Turkish group. “Now I get on the airplane and fly to Frankfurt.”

Despite the newfound economic power, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership is rooted in armed struggle. Though they don suits now, many leaders were gun-running rebels not long ago, products of pan-Kurdish guerrilla and political movements.

During years of fighting as a peshmerga warrior in the mountains of Iraq, Omer Fattah, now deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government, entrusted his wife and children to the care of Iranian Kurds.

“We view them as our family,” he said. “Our traditions are the same.”

Kurdish groups in northern Iraq that are working for autonomy in Syria, Iran and Turkey get housing, offices and budgets for their activities.

But officials here say they forbid the exile parties from taking up arms or fighting for radical causes. Instead, they say, they call for Kurdish organizations to negotiate with their respective governments.

Turkey, for one, accuses the Iraqi Kurdistan government of failing to rein in the Kurdish rebels attacking Turkish forces. Negotiation in Turkey, where animosity and deadly retaliation is escalating, is unlikely.

“We at this time advocate federalism and democracy,” said Qader, the Iraqi Kurdish party leader. “We don’t want them fighting for separation. It’s not realistic. It’s not possible.”

To resistance groups, Iraqi Kurdistan is a haven where members can remain politically and militarily active without exiling themselves to Europe. One official called it the “incubator” where all the political groups can sit down and work together.

A dozen groups from Iran, Syria and Turkey recently formed a coalition in Iraqi Kurdistan. Even the most radical groups are allowed to operate here, including militant groups clustered around the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, that have fought the Turkish and Iranian militaries and brought the region closer to another war.

“I regard Iraqi Kurdistan as the base of all Kurds in other parts of Kurdistan,” said Abdullah Hassanzadeh, secretary-general of a faction of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, a Marxist group founded in 1968.

Kurdish culture flourishes in Iraqi Kurdistan.

More than a dozen Kurdish-language satellite television channels have been launched by political parties and entrepreneurs, many of the most popular ones in the five years since the overthrow of Hussein. Twenty-four hours a day, they broadcast images of Kurds governing, educating and celebrating with their distinctive two-step line dance.

“People say, ‘The Iraqi Kurds have this. Why don’t we?’ ” said Agiri, the Turkish Kurdish activist. “It gives them confidence and makes them believe in themselves.”

Kurdish theater and musical festivals draw troupes from Istanbul and Tehran.

Iranian Kurdish director Jamil Rostam’s feature-length “Jani Gal,” or “The Pain of a Nation,” was filmed in Iraq.

It tells the story of separatists who tried to establish a Kurdish state in Iran and Iraq in the late 1940s, an explosive subject that would never make it past the front gates of Iran’s Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance.

“The things that have kept us alive were our language, folklore, music and celebrations,” said Falakaddin Kakeyi, the culture minister for the Kurdistan government. “Rights may vanish, oil may finish, buildings can be destroyed, but language is forever.”

The greatest ambition is to surmount differences of dialect and writing to forge a standardized Kurdish language. Satellite TV has helped, as Kurds speaking the northern dialect of Syria and Turkey become familiar with the southern dialect spoken in Iran and Iraq.

For restaurateur Mehmet Gulsum, the mix-ups over the differing Turkish and Iraqi dialects quickly melted away. Iraq’s Kurdistan soon became like home, and better, the native of the Turkish city of Diyarbakir said.

“I chose to come to this land here because it is very special to me,” Gulsum said. “Now there is a closeness between the Iraqi Kurds and Turkish Kurds. Ten years ago, even five years ago, there was no such thing.”

Despite its precarious political status, Iraqi Kurdistan has begun to provide economic opportunities for Kurds of neighboring countries, who remain among the poorest classes in Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Sami Haso, 56, a Kurd from Syria, operates a drilling machine in Sulaymaniya. Every six months he returns to visit his wife and eight children, some of whom don’t get identity cards or government benefits at home because they were given Kurdish, not Arabic, first names.

One son asks Haso to bring back a Kurdish flag. But he doesn’t dare, for fear of being caught at a Syrian checkpoint. But he brings back stories.

“Kurdistan is like heaven,” he said. “All Kurds can live and share comfortably here.”

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daragahi@latimes.com

Special correspondent Asso Ahmad in Sulaymaniya contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

A people apart

Believed to be the world’s largest ethnic group without a state, Kurds chiefly occupy territory stretching from western Iran through northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey and eastern Syria, and often have been at odds with the governments in those countries. They have a cultural identity distinct from that of the Arabs, Persians and Turks dominating the region.

Population: 25 million to 40 million, with about 55% in Turkey.

Language: Kurdish, an Indo-European language close to Persian.

Religion: Almost completely Sunni Muslim

Politics: More secular than the rest of the Middle East, with strong socialist leanings.

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Source: Los Angeles Times research