Iraqi Kurds Struggle With Their Past -- and Hussein

Ali Askeri was a mercurial mountain fighter with a bandoleer and a Kalashnikov. He battled the Iraqi regime in the ‘70s, but in the end it was his fellow Kurds who executed him with a rocket-propelled grenade.

One of the killers -- in a comment destined for folklore -- quipped: “A big gun for a big man.”

The Kurdish past echoes with tribal wars, murder and vengeance. Over the last six years, living in a northern enclave protected from President Saddam Hussein’s forces by U.S. and British warplanes, the Iraqi Kurds have suppressed historical tendencies and built a quasi-democracy. Their currency is staked to the dollar. Satellite television brings them pornography and the Arabic version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

The U.S. wants the “Kurdish experiment” to be a touchstone example for Iraq’s other ethnic and cultural groups in forging any post-Hussein federated government. But the 1978 murder of Askeri by rivals and a civil war that killed about 3,500 Kurds during the 1990s are reminders that the harsh rhythms and troubled legacies of these mountains linger beneath talk of capitalism and globalization.

This region is known as Kurdistan, and in many ways it is really two distinct areas. One is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, the other by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP. Each has a 50,000-strong militia and its own views on democracy. Under pressure from the U.S., the two parties formed a parliament last year. But sometimes even their technology divides them: A cell phone bought in PUK territory will not work in the KDP region, and vice versa.

“The history of struggle between the KDP and the PUK is longer than their history of peace,” said Shaho Saeed, a professor at Sulaymaniyah University. “The question no one can answer is whether this semipeace between them is genuine or a tactical move to please the West. Our leaders have a tendency not to respect their signatures.”

And animosity between them has often turned lethal. Askeri was killed by KDP comrades after he broke away to form the PUK. But his son, Shalaw, who was wounded during the civil war, believes that the treachery of the past must be overcome.

“You cannot take revenge into your hands,” said the younger Askeri, the PUK’s agriculture minister. “You need to fight, but not in a war. We will beat the KDP in elections.... There is pressure on both parties to build a strong, democratic Kurdish state. If we don’t do this, we lose the sympathy of the world.”

Throughout the last century, the Kurds at times have had the world’s compassion. But they have seldom won the world’s respect. Perceived promises of an independent state after World War I were blocked by regional powers. Most of the 25 million Kurds today live in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Language and political differences have contributed to keeping them apart. And in northern Iraq, home to 3.5 million Kurds, parties such as the KDP and PUK evolved from alliances between tribes and guerrilla groups.

The two parties’ leaders -- Massoud Barzani of the KDP and Jalal Talabani of the PUK -- are revered by their followers. Both men’s resilience embodies the Kurdish struggle. Some political analysts suggest that the two are so dominant that Kurdish democracy -- for good or bad -- is filtered through the personalities of these guerrilla leaders, who have been transformed into what are essentially big-city mayors. Both have been accused of pocketing millions of dollars from oil customs taxes and other party funds.

Barzani and Talabani were fierce in fighting Hussein. They were also tough on each other. When PUK guerrillas were defeating KDP forces in 1996, Barzani -- desperate not to lose territory -- asked Hussein to send in the Iraqi army to rout Talabani’s fighters. It was a stunning ploy: requesting help from the dictator whose forces eight years earlier had killed 5,000 Kurds with chemical weapons in the town of Halabja.

Barzani then looked to Turkey, which also deployed forces to battle the PUK. Talabani was accused of turning to Iran for backing.

The civil war highlighted how neighboring countries manipulated the turmoil to keep the Kurds divided. This hampered moves toward independence and revealed that suspicions between Kurdish factions were so high that brief alliances with international enemies were preferable to unity.

“A lot of hands are involved in Kurdistan,” said Fakher Maraan, KDP deputy minister of reconstruction and development. “Iran, Iraq and Turkey will not leave us alone. We could become a clean stream if our outside enemies didn’t come with a stick and muddy the waters.”

In many ways, the autonomous region of northern Iraq is a success. The Kurds have built a free-market society. Land Cruisers and Mercedes-Benzes jockey alongside tractors and donkey carts. Money changers gather on the corners. The PUK and KDP have made progress on representative democracy, education and security.

The Kurds speak eloquently of civil rights, but sometimes past tendencies appear. Journalists recently saw PUK police beat a man in custody. The party’s counter-terrorism chief detained two American photographers and confiscated their film for taking photos of U.S. operatives near Sulaymaniyah. Translators hired by journalists in PUK territory are often considered spies in the KDP’s zone and are sometimes banned from interviews.

“We are new to the environment of freedom and democracy,” Barzani said in a recent interview. “Bear in mind we need some time to learn these things.”

The story of the Surchi tribe offers a glimpse into the shadowy alliances that have often undermined Kurdish political unity. Made wealthy through contracting businesses, the northern tribe had close ties to Hussein and to members of both leading Kurdish parties.

In 1996, a strain emerged between the KDP and the Surchi. Barzani claimed that some tribal members were “raised on the milk of treachery” and were plotting against his organization. The Surchis contended that Barzani wanted to demolish a clan he viewed as a potential rival.

Barzani’s fighters attacked a Surchi stronghold in the village of Kalakien, killing several men. The dead included a tribal leader, Hussein Agha Surchi, whose nephew Zeid assembled 1,400 loyalists and fighters and joined the PUK in its conflict with the KDP.

It was a familiar form of Kurdish horse trading, one faction facing off against another in messy turf battles. “Barzani is a blood enemy of the tribes in the region,” Zeid Surchi said from his guarded compound in the PUK-controlled city of Sulaymaniyah. “I don’t think the PUK and the KDP will ever have peace.... But outside pressures will force them together. If they don’t, they’ll lose Kurdistan.”

Barzani, a deliberate man wearing a turban and a cummerbund, sat in a gold-inlaid chair in his compound above the city of Irbil during the recent interview. He spoke methodically, balancing his warrior heart with phrases of democracy and reconciliation. He accused members of the Surchi tribe of collaborating with Iraq and attempting to “put fuel on the fire between the PUK and the KDP.”

“If they come back, then we welcome them,” he said. “We have opened a new peace.”

When told that one of the Surchi tribe wanted to kill him, Barzani moved slightly in his seat and half-smiled: “He knows very well he can’t assassinate me.”

Shalaw Askeri, who bears the strong face of his slain father, said the Kurds must stop this cycle of recrimination and unite to defeat Hussein.

“This is my son,” said Askeri, pointing to a boy who has run into the living room. “He sees Saddam on TV. He says, ‘Is Saddam our enemy? I want him dead.’ ” Askeri wants such hatred to end with Hussein.

Someone who was his son’s age in 1991 is an adult today, Askeri noted.

“We told those children the history of what Saddam did to us. Then they grew up in the civil war between Kurds. They saw it was no good,” he said. “They’ve seen 10 years of democracy and this is what we want to build.

“Sooner or later the checkpoints between the PUK and the KDP will be removed,” he added. “The only revenge will take place in elections.”