Kurds Keep Their Chins Up Over Reunification With Iraq

The streets flicker with commerce: flat-screen TVs, blenders, gold and diamonds. There are Italian suits, French wines and a free-for-all currency exchange where traders smelling of sheep and cologne speculate on dollars and euros.

Kurdistan is a curious, lively corner of Iraq. Protected from Saddam Hussein’s grasp for more than a decade, the 3.5 million ethnic Kurds in this northern, mountainous area have embraced capitalism and thrived -- at least in relation to the rest of the nation -- in a quasi-democracy. They have grafted the West onto the East, creating an autonomous region where an Eminem riff may linger in the night air with the Muslim call to prayer.

Kurds wince at the insurgency and turmoil that for the most part still occur to the south. But the unified Iraq envisioned by the Bush administration is forcing Kurds to reattach themselves to a predominantly Arab nation in which they will be a minority. The Kurds fear that their strides in civil rights and a free-market economy may diminish if Islamic clerics seize the country’s future.

“Our language and traditions are much different from the Arabs’,” said Dlawar Hammid, a mechanical engineer who was sitting with friends in a teahouse here. “But we’ll accept reunification so long as Iraq doesn’t become a theocratic state.”

Twin suicide bombings that killed more than 100 people at Kurdish political offices in Irbil early this month were a reminder of the volatility that can suddenly strike, even in the north. Since the end of the war to topple Hussein, Kurdistan has escaped much of the bloodletting that roils central and southern Iraq. In a posting on an Islamic website, a previously unknown group called Jaish Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for the Irbil bombings.

Kurdistan is in a precarious part of the Middle East. Bordered by Syria, Turkey and Iran, its people have been denied independence for generations, and tens of thousands of them were killed by Iraqi security forces. Their predicament improved after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when a “no-fly” zone patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes kept Hussein’s forces out of the north.

That glimmer of freedom has evolved into what is essentially an ethnic enclave that has little in common with the larger Iraq. But the Kurds -- pressured by the U.S. to forgo independence because it would upset the political balance in the region -- have reconciled to the fact that their fate is entwined with a new federal government based in Baghdad. They insist, however, that they retain much of their autonomy and cultural liberation, including Western-influenced universities and less strict attitudes about Islam.

“We have enjoyed almost a state of independence,” said Barham Salih, prime minister of the eastern part of the region, which is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK. “The irony is that now we are giving up power to join the state of Iraq. Our young have no concept of Baghdad, or that Iraq is their fate. The country must open up to the Kurds so we can feel part of Iraq.”

Traders at the Sulaymaniya currency exchange are less wary than most Kurds about the prospect of integration. A unified Iraq conjures talk of wider markets and bigger profits. Crowded with men hanging over stairwells, barking out rates and shaking wads of U.S. dollars, British pounds and euros, the exchange is more evidence of the feisty capitalism that propels much of the north.

Satellite dishes track the gyrations of global stock markets. Kalashnikov rifles are checked at the door. There’s no tote board, no slick veneer. Dress is rural casual -- sneakers, boots and tattered coats -- and the air is wispy with tea steam and cigarette smoke. Outside, traders stand amid Land Rovers and donkey carts, eating lunches of boiled turnips and walnuts and watching unveiled dark-haired women shop for baubles.

“To join Iraq will be good for us,” said Faisal Mohammed, grimacing at the sliding dollar. “It means we can trade throughout the country. Before, we were in a kind of prison, not being able to trade with Baghdad or the rest of the nation.”

“Our economy is better than all of Iraq,” said Karzan Ahmed Najar, a trader who also runs a transportation business. “But it will be better and wiser for business if we join the new Iraq.”

Sabah Mohammed had a clump of money in each fist, a calculator in his pocket and a smile on his face. “I was born in Baghdad,” he said. “I have Arab friends. Can I live with Arabs? It depends on attitude. If the Arabs respect my rights as a Kurd, I can live with them.”

Attitudes are more circumspect at the teahouse down the street. Amid sugar bowls and the clatter of backgammon, artists and intellectuals ponder what traders do not. The north is a delicate place. The two main Kurdish political camps -- the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP -- fought a civil war in the mid-1990s. Publicly they have resolved their differences and founded a joint parliament, but animosities run deep in this territory of tribes and clans.

Constituting only about 19% of Iraq’s population, however, Kurds realize that if they are divided they might be marginalized by the majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs. Kurdish political leaders are already dismayed by what they see as U.S. catering to Arab demands. Many Kurds are also worried about the strong influence of Iraqi clerics such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Under the U.S. plan for Iraqi self-governance, the Kurds may enjoy some autonomy but still answer to authorities in Baghdad.

“We oppose a theocracy,” said Hammid, sitting with a group of intense men in a corner of the teahouse. “You can see long beards and head scarves in Kurdistan, but this is not a heavily religious place. Everyone has the right to be himself. We don’t want a Sistani or a person like Saddam Hussein to have control over us.”

History has taught the Kurds that pragmatism tempers righteousness. Mohammed Nergiz, a folk singer and teahouse philosopher, believes there will be no better moment in history for the Kurds to declare independence. But he predicts geopolitics will trump Kurdish ambition, and the Kurds, as they have for more than a century, will again settle for half the prize.

“If they give us independence, I will dance for it,” Nergiz said, “but the people understand what’s behind the curtain.” He paused and added: “All my life has been this last 10 years of freedom. We felt we were human, away from Hussein.... If this new federalism will respect Kurdistan and our rights, why not? I’d like to have a good relationship with the Arabs.”

Silk pajamas and in-line skates are on sale on the second floor of the new shopping mall in Sulaymaniya. Such items represent the awkward and inconsistent affluence that has emerged in Kurdistan -- a region marred by poverty where shepherds outnumber bankers. But the pajamas and the computer checkout stands at the mall’s grocery are, symbolically at least, what Kurds aspire to these days.

“We want to have the same kind of development as Europeans,” said Susan Shahab, the mall’s manager whose father was a revered mountain fighter against Hussein’s Baath Party decades ago. “We are not less than the European individual.”

Shahab shares an Iraq with many Arabs who abhor European ideals. She is not deterred.

She fled Kurdistan’s civil war in 1996 and moved to the Netherlands. She returned to Sulaymaniya several months ago, leaving her teenage children to finish their Dutch schooling. She keeps in touch with them through the Internet and the cellphone on her desk. Her children will join her in a few years, and she hopes they will attend an American-sponsored university that Kurdish leaders want to build in these mountains.

“Kurdistan has changed much from when I left,” she said. “There are new buildings going up. The economy is better than before. Kids and everybody want more and more consumer products. It’s the necessity of life.”