Kurds Strive Toward Self-Rule With Elections

“Welcome to Kurdistan” reads a new poster on the bridge over the river from Turkey into northern Iraq, greeting visitors to a country somewhere between a mirage and a miracle where historic elections are expected to take Iraq’s 3.5 million Kurds one step closer to self-rule.

The elections, initially scheduled for today, were put off until Tuesday after a problem was discovered in plans to guard against vote fraud. Polling officials discovered that a donated supply of supposedly indelible ink for marking the hands of voters to prevent their voting more than once could easily be rubbed off. A new ink supply was being sought.

A democratic fervor that has swept the New Jersey-size enclave for weeks is a bizarre, unplanned byproduct of the Persian Gulf War, giving rise to expectations of support for Kurdistan and its new “executive authority” that the West may find hard to meet.

“The first step will be to unite the armed forces, the budget, foreign relations, to talk with one voice to people at home and abroad,” said Mahmut Othman, a 54-year-old physician, leader of the small Kurdistan Socialist Party and a voice from the center of Iraqi Kurdish politics.

“Our Parliament will then ask for observer status in the United Nations, like the Palestinians,” he said. “Self-determination is a distant goal, but autonomy is not enough. We need federalism at least to protect us from Saddam Hussein. With him there is no constitution, no law, no humanity.”

Othman, also a fringe candidate for the Kurdish leadership, pointed out that the Kurds’ success depends on how well the exemplary unity shown during the election campaign holds up after the results are in, especially since most Kurds’ experience of government has only been to rebel against it.

Favored to win is Masoud Barzani, 45, a veteran guerrilla leader whose Kurdistan Democratic Party defends the most moderate position, strictly limited to autonomy. His rival is Jalal Talabani, a mercurial 57-year-old who has mounted a serious challenge by ruling out any talks with Hussein until Baghdad drops its 5-month-old blockade of the Kurds.

So far all has gone well, with no major internal disputes. “This is a great time for the Kurds. There has been a lot of excitement, a festival atmosphere, a parade on every corner,” said U.S. Army Col. Richard Wilson, soon to take over the small allied liaison office in northern Iraq.

Allied warplanes still roar over cities such as Irbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, scanning Iraqi army front lines 10 miles to the south of Irbil and underlining the ill-equipped Kurds’ reliance on the allied Operation Provide Comfort II to protect them.

Kurdish autonomy is now recognized as a legitimate goal by the United States, Britain and France. But anything further is anathema for the allies, who originally came only to save the 2 million Kurds who fled to the wintry mountains of Iran and Turkey after the failure of their post-Gulf War revolt.

Allied officials stress that they want to keep an integral Iraq as a bolster against Iran. As one Western diplomat said: “These elections should be for local administration and nothing more. A united Kurdish army is outside the envelope of what we can see.”

Such views have lagged far behind the pace of events inside northern Iraq, which, since Hussein withdrew all government and government services last October, has been effectively ruled by the eight-party Iraqi Kurdistan Front.

The front then announced its historic “Law No. 1” in April for unprecedented free elections to a 105-seat Iraqi Kurdistan National Assembly and a “Law No. 2” to elect a supreme Kurdish “leader.”

The two laws amount to a virtual constitution, on which 15 Iraqi Kurdish jurists labored for a month, treading through a minefield of language, checks and balances that leaves many avenues open and only once or twice hints at Baghdad’s “central authority.”

“The law says the assembly will decide on the fate of the Iraqi Kurdish people. I am against separation (from Iraq) myself at this point, but is the right of separation fine for everybody else but banned for the Kurds?” asked Judge Amir Hawaizi, head of the electoral commission and an author of the laws.

The laws have already prompted official protests from Baghdad and neighboring Turkey, which, like Syria and Iran, have substantial minorities from the region’s 20 million Kurds and oppose any sign of Kurdish progress toward independence.

The “constitution” envisages a parliamentary system in which the assembly will elect the head of an “executive authority” and must vote confidence in his government. The assembly would draft and approve laws, which the “leader” could not reject outright.

The “leader,” however, would remain chief of the “armed forces,” likely to be the most important post for some time to come in a land where every man carries a pistol or an automatic rifle.

In a vague formulation, he also would share with the executive authority responsibility for “the general policy of Iraqi Kurdistan.”

“It’s amazing. It’s very good. Given the problems of the Iraqi people, it’s a miracle,” said Michael Meadowcroft, head of Britain’s Electoral Reform Society, who has been asked to coordinate a group of more than 30 foreign observers to check that the election is fair. “The trouble is nobody knows what the international response will be.”

An independent state is not on the program of any of the competing parties of the Iraqi Kurdistan Front. But in a new world where the lines between independence and federalism are increasingly blurred, “Kurdistan” has many of the attributes of an independent government already, and some groups do not hide that it is their ultimate goal.

“According to human rights and our holy Koran, all peoples should have an independent entity,” said Abdulgader Brayeti, the bearded Irbil chief of the small Islamic Movement in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kurdish guerrillas already wear army uniforms at the border; energetic Kurdish officials charge taxes on the heavy Turkish truck traffic of food going to Iraq and diesel fuel going out, and Kurdish customs inspectors give receipts printed in the name of the Iraqi Kurdistan Front. The money is used to pay police, schoolteachers, garbage collectors and even some of the 200,000 to 400,000 Kurdish rebels.

Kurdish parties have missions abroad. Their semiofficial envoys to neighboring Turkey have already rented neighboring apartments so that they can unite and represent the new Parliament.

The election laws even have a Kurdish date--2692 Kurdy, according to a solar calendar from the mythical 8th-Century BC rebellion of a Kurdish blacksmith against an unjust prince.