Iraqi Kurds wrestle with desire for autonomy
Iraq's Kurdish minority was ecstatic with last week's signing of the country's interim constitution guaranteeing the Kurds cultural and political rights, but celebrations obscured deep anxieties about the issues left unresolved.
Many of Iraq's four million Kurds, who helped US forces capture oil-rich cities such as Khaneqin and Kirkuk, say they have paid their dues by enduring Saddam Hussein's violence and racial policies for decades. Now they want autonomy.
'If not now, when?' asks Sara Kamal, 28, an English instructor at the University of Sulaymaniyah. 'We have suffered a lot, now it's time for us to speak and show our own voice and get our rights. We deserve more.'
From the rubble of wars and neglect, Kurds have created the Kurdistan Regional Government, a relatively prosperous, liberal and secure autonomous zone ruled by Governing Council members Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani.
The Kurds enthusiastically took part in the war to overthrow Hussein, who had subjected them to several ethnic cleansing campaigns and sprayed chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja and other villages in 1988.
But, voicing rare criticism of Mr Talabani and Mr Barzani, many said they felt their leaders had betrayed them, not winning enough for the Kurds in the Baghdad negotiations over the future of Iraq.
Specifically, most Kurds want representatives from Kirkuk and Khaneqin included in a future government, the 50,000-man Peshmerga militia enshrined by law and control over northern Iraq's natural resources, which include considerable oil and water reserves.
'We should have gotten more,' said Mola Bakhtiyar, a Kurdish politician.
But not all Iraqi Kurds are dissatisfied. Nechirwan Mustawfa, a journalist and adviser to Mr Talabani, is overjoyed with the transitional law.
'For the first time I feel Iraqi,' said Mr Mustawfa, who fondly recalled his days as a Baghdad University student in the 1960s.
'For 80 years we fought in Iraq for our natural rights. Now I can relax.'
But the younger generation of Kurds generally do not have much trust for Arab-Iraqis. They do not identify with the Iraqi nation and consider Baghdad the wellspring of 80 years of anti-Kurdish policies.
'The Arabs will simply elect another version of Saddam,' said taxi driver Mahmoud Fallah. 'It was the government of Baghdad that wronged us in the previous decades.'
Thousands of Kurds have signed a petition calling for a Kurdish referendum on the status of northern Iraq.
Amanj Saeed, who collected signatures for the petition, said: 'We want to let the people decide whether we're a part of Iraq or something else, like a new state.'
Their separatist tendencies have long worried Turkey, Iran and Syria, all home to large restless Kurdish minorities. Both Ankara and Tehran have wrestled with armed Kurdish uprisings over the past few decades.
They view Iraqi Kurds' demands for autonomy as a dangerous inspiration for their own Kurds.
'There's a big difference between declaring and sustaining a Kurdish state,' said Fareed Asasard, director of the Kurdistan Strategic Studies Centre.
'They would like an independent state. But no one would recognise or back up such a state.'
