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Iraqi Kurds Set Out Their Demands
Kurdish parties’ controversial claim on Kirkuk likely to be source of tension in post-election coalition building.
By Talar Nadir and Zaineb Naji in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 113, 18-Feb-05)
Kurdish politicians, keen to capitalise on their newly acquired political power, are outlining their demands in negotiations to establish a new government.
The Kurdish Alliance List, made up of the two main Kurdish parties, came second in the January 30 elections with almost 2.2 million votes, giving it 75 seats in the National Assembly.
Because a two-thirds majority is required to take key decisions in 275-member parliament - including forming a cabinet - the Kurdish coalition has been courted in recent days by the Shia-dominated United Iraqi Alliance and by the Iraqi List led by interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia.
The United Iraqi Alliance, which is supported by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, will have 140 seats in the assembly, with 183 needed for a two-thirds majority, and the third-placed Iraqi List will get 40.
In meetings with various parties to hammer out who will hold various government posts and other issues, Kurdish politicians are making their demands known.
It seems likely that the Kurds will get their wish of holding the presidency and they have put forward Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, leader Jalal Talabani for the post.
But other Kurdish demands, such as moving the border of Iraqi Kurdistan further south to include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and maintaining their militia, the peshmerga, are more contentious. The Kurds also want to increase their share of national budget expenditure, which currently stands at 17 per cent.
“We will be receptive to the faction which is more responsive to our demands, and those demands should be included in the constitution,” said Mullah Bakhtiar, a member of the PUK political bureau.
The status of Kirkuk, which is also claimed by Arabs and Turkomans, is an extremely sensitive issue, largely because it is the home of Iraq’s northern oil fields. But the Kurds are unlikely to budge on their claim to the city. Adnan Mufti, a member of the PUK political bureau, said, “ The issue of Kirkuk had been a main issue in the negotiations with the Baath regime,” he said. “So now, in a democratic, federal country, how can we [drop] the issue of Kirkuk?”
Arabs and Turkomans are worried because the Kirkuk Brotherhood List, made up of the two main Kurdish parties, received 59.2 per cent of the vote for the local governorate elections, the top spot in the race. That means the Kurdish parties would get at least 24 of 41 seats on the governorate council of Taamim province, which includes Kirkuk.
“Kirkuk originally is not a Kurdish city,” said Mueen Ahmed Ali, a professor at the University of Baghdad’s College of Law. “If we give up Kirkuk, then the Kurds will be independent and have this oil wealth for themselves and deprive Iraq of it.”
It seems Kurdish desires for a federalist state may be shared by the United Iraqi Alliance, which would have more control over the oil fields in the Shia-dominated south under such a system.
Iraqi Kurdistan, which includes the provinces of Dahuk, Arbil and Sulimaniyah, has been a semi-autonomous region since the 1991 Kurdish uprising.
“Federalism should be prevalent in all the corners of Iraq,” said Mofaq Rubai, a candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance. “Look at the experience of Kurdistan, which is enjoying the benefits of federalism.”
But Kurdish wishes to maintain their autonomy is not agreeable to other Arabs, who fear that a federalist state would be a precursor to complete independence for Iraqi Kurdistan.
Sheikha Lamia Abdulsakr, a candidate on the Iraqi List, said her personal opinion was that it was too early to decentralise Iraq.
“I don’t encourage federalism in Iraq because we want a united Iraq from north to south, with one heart, one hand and one flag,” she said.
As for maintaining the Kuridish militia, Bakhtiar said the national government should be grateful because having the peshmerga maintain security in Kurdistan would free up Iraq’s national security forces to deal with other areas.
“We can defend our own area with our own forces so we lessen that burden on their shoulders,” he said.
Although Kurdish politicians will face pressure from other political groups to make concessions during negotiations, their supporters will urge them not to give way, as they see the elections as an historic opportunity to finally make their voices heard.
“This time the Kurds will go to Baghdad with great power and they will get most of their demands,” said Fareed Asasard, head of the Kurdistan Journalists’ Union. “Iraq can’t be run without the Kurds, so making a coalition with any faction should be on the basis of agreement, not concession.”
Talar Nadir and Zaineb Naji are IWPR trainee journalists in Sulaimaniyah.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_113_3_eng.txt
Kurdish politicians, keen to capitalise on their newly acquired political power, are outlining their demands in negotiations to establish a new government.
The Kurdish Alliance List, made up of the two main Kurdish parties, came second in the January 30 elections with almost 2.2 million votes, giving it 75 seats in the National Assembly.
Because a two-thirds majority is required to take key decisions in 275-member parliament - including forming a cabinet - the Kurdish coalition has been courted in recent days by the Shia-dominated United Iraqi Alliance and by the Iraqi List led by interim prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia.
The United Iraqi Alliance, which is supported by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, will have 140 seats in the assembly, with 183 needed for a two-thirds majority, and the third-placed Iraqi List will get 40.
In meetings with various parties to hammer out who will hold various government posts and other issues, Kurdish politicians are making their demands known.
It seems likely that the Kurds will get their wish of holding the presidency and they have put forward Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, leader Jalal Talabani for the post.
But other Kurdish demands, such as moving the border of Iraqi Kurdistan further south to include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and maintaining their militia, the peshmerga, are more contentious. The Kurds also want to increase their share of national budget expenditure, which currently stands at 17 per cent.
“We will be receptive to the faction which is more responsive to our demands, and those demands should be included in the constitution,” said Mullah Bakhtiar, a member of the PUK political bureau.
The status of Kirkuk, which is also claimed by Arabs and Turkomans, is an extremely sensitive issue, largely because it is the home of Iraq’s northern oil fields. But the Kurds are unlikely to budge on their claim to the city. Adnan Mufti, a member of the PUK political bureau, said, “ The issue of Kirkuk had been a main issue in the negotiations with the Baath regime,” he said. “So now, in a democratic, federal country, how can we [drop] the issue of Kirkuk?”
Arabs and Turkomans are worried because the Kirkuk Brotherhood List, made up of the two main Kurdish parties, received 59.2 per cent of the vote for the local governorate elections, the top spot in the race. That means the Kurdish parties would get at least 24 of 41 seats on the governorate council of Taamim province, which includes Kirkuk.
“Kirkuk originally is not a Kurdish city,” said Mueen Ahmed Ali, a professor at the University of Baghdad’s College of Law. “If we give up Kirkuk, then the Kurds will be independent and have this oil wealth for themselves and deprive Iraq of it.”
It seems Kurdish desires for a federalist state may be shared by the United Iraqi Alliance, which would have more control over the oil fields in the Shia-dominated south under such a system.
Iraqi Kurdistan, which includes the provinces of Dahuk, Arbil and Sulimaniyah, has been a semi-autonomous region since the 1991 Kurdish uprising.
“Federalism should be prevalent in all the corners of Iraq,” said Mofaq Rubai, a candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance. “Look at the experience of Kurdistan, which is enjoying the benefits of federalism.”
But Kurdish wishes to maintain their autonomy is not agreeable to other Arabs, who fear that a federalist state would be a precursor to complete independence for Iraqi Kurdistan.
Sheikha Lamia Abdulsakr, a candidate on the Iraqi List, said her personal opinion was that it was too early to decentralise Iraq.
“I don’t encourage federalism in Iraq because we want a united Iraq from north to south, with one heart, one hand and one flag,” she said.
As for maintaining the Kuridish militia, Bakhtiar said the national government should be grateful because having the peshmerga maintain security in Kurdistan would free up Iraq’s national security forces to deal with other areas.
“We can defend our own area with our own forces so we lessen that burden on their shoulders,” he said.
Although Kurdish politicians will face pressure from other political groups to make concessions during negotiations, their supporters will urge them not to give way, as they see the elections as an historic opportunity to finally make their voices heard.
“This time the Kurds will go to Baghdad with great power and they will get most of their demands,” said Fareed Asasard, head of the Kurdistan Journalists’ Union. “Iraq can’t be run without the Kurds, so making a coalition with any faction should be on the basis of agreement, not concession.”
Talar Nadir and Zaineb Naji are IWPR trainee journalists in Sulaimaniyah.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_113_3_eng.txt
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By Rebaz Mahmood in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 113, 18-Feb-05)
Figures collected by officials in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region suggest that Kurds both inside and outside the semi-autonomous area are being killed and assaulted by insurgents as part of a deliberate campaign.
At least 130 Kurds were killed in attacks in the Sulaimaniyah governorate and in Kirkuk last year, according to an internal report prepared by the Kurdistan Regional Government of Sulaimaniyah.
Hoshyar Ahmed, director-general of the Kurdistan Ministry of Human Rights, said the true number of victims was probably much higher because the report only covered areas either directly controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, or within its broader sphere of influence.
The PUK runs the Sulaimaniyah governorate, one of the three provinces that make up the Kurdish-administered region, and enjoys influence in Kirkuk, which is not part of the region but has a substantial Kurdish population. The report does not survey the situation in the other Kurdish provinces - Dahuk and Arbil - which are run by an administration controlled by the other big political force, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP.
Ahmed said extremist groups are targeting Kurds both in Kirkuk and in other flashpoint towns such as Mosul, Tikrit and Hawija. Many of the killings involved kidnappings and beheadings. He said his ministry had sent staff members into these high-risk areas to investigate and verify the reports of violence against Kurds.
A student at the University of Sulaimaniyah described the ordeal that he – unlike most people who are kidnapped – survived. Speaking on condition that he would not be named, the man told how ten masked insurgents captured him and some friends on June 24, 2004 in Baaqubah, the main city of Diyala province east of Baghdad.
“When they discovered we were Kurds, they started beating us and called out our [Kurdish] leaders’ names,” he said. The student was released four days later after paying his abductors 20,000 US dollars.
Kurdish leaders say their community is threatened by insurgents for a range of reasons. Arif Taifoor, a senior KDP member, said he believes the insurgents see the ethnically distinct Kurds as a threat to Iraq’s Arab identity.
“These Baathists, former intelligence agents and extremist Islamists are pushing Arab nationalism under the guise of Islam, and they are concerned that Iraq should be Arab in composition,” he said.
Arbil Governor Nawzad Hadi Mawlood said the insurgents also want to punish the Kurds for cooperating with the multi-national forces, “We are allies of the Coalition forces and we have a role to play, so the extremist groups publicly tell us that they are going to annihilate us.”
Both Kurdish administrations are seeking help to bring an end to the violence, and have been talking to the human rights ministry in Baghdad, Arab tribal leaders, international organisations, and the multi-national forces.
Taifoor, who is a member of the outgoing transitional parliament, admits that political efforts to solve the problem have so far failed. He said Kurdish leaders asked Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to let the Kurdish administration take control of security on the Kirkuk-Baghdad road, but the offer was ignored.
“We travel to Baghdad in armed convoys, and sometimes I won't go there for a National Assembly meeting because of the risk on that road,” said Taifoor.
Kurdish politicians are more than likely to table the issue in the new transitional National Assembly, in which the Kurds will hold the second-highest number of seats after the Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance.
But Ahmed said he believes a solution will come only when Iraq is stable and the average citizen rejects violence and discrimination.
“It is the duty of every Iraqi who wants a federal and united Iraq to work to eradicate these violations being perpetrated against the Kurds,” he said.
Rebaz Mahmood is an IWPR trainee journalist in Sulaimaniyah.
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/irq/irq_113_4_eng.txt
"Sheikh Mullah Mohammed Rustom Kaka, leader of the (Sunni) Kurdish Committee of Alemas, was killed by unknown gunfire aimed at his car in the east of Kirkuk at 10:55 (0755 GMT)," said police General Sherko Shaker Hakim.
The 58-year-old was involved with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, police said.
The KDP is one of two major Kurdish parties in northern Iraq, both of which had considerable success in last month's historic elections, unseating Sunni Arabs who held power in the region under deposed leader Saddam Hussein.
A KDP representative in the city suggested that Kirkuk "security forces and government officials" were to blame.
He said that the sheikh "fought for the Kurdish identity and the Kurdish personality of Kirkuk".
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan6/20-2-05-moslim-kurdish-leader-killed-kirkuk.htm
The border with the Arab-dominated rest of Iraq is far off. Baghdad lies even farther off and, if Kurdish leaders like Mr. Barzani have their way, will fade almost entirely out of the picture here.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds have made known their determination to retain a degree of autonomy in the territory they have dominated for more than a decade. Now, after their strong performance in the elections last month, Kurdish leaders are for the first time spelling out specific demands.
From control of oil reserves to the retention of the Kurdish militia, the pesh merga, to full authority over taxation, the requested powers add up to an autonomy that is hard to distinguish from independence.
"The fact remains that we are two different nationalities in Iraq - we are Kurds and Arabs," Mr. Barzani said as he sat in a reception hall at his headquarters in Salahuddin. "If the Kurdish people agree to stay in the framework of Iraq in one form or another as a federation, then other people should be grateful to them."
Kurdish autonomy is expected to be one of the most divisive issues during the drafting of the new constitution, alongside the debate over the role of Islam in the new Iraq. The Kurds' demands are already alarming Iraq's Arabs, particularly the majority Shiites, and raising tensions with neighboring countries, where governments are trying to suppress Kurdish separatist movements within their own borders.
In interviews, top Kurdish leaders like Mr. Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, set out a list of demands that are more far-reaching than the Kurds have articulated in the past:
¶They want the ownership of any natural resources, including oilfields, and the power to determine how the revenues are split with the central government.
¶They want authority over the formidable militia called the pesh merga, estimated at up to 100,000 members, in defiance of the American goal of dismantling ethnic and sectarian armies. The pesh merga would be under nominal national oversight, but actual control would remain with regional commanders. No other armed forces would be allowed to enter Kurdistan without permission from Kurdish officials.
¶They want power to appoint officials to work in and operate ministries in Kurdistan, which would parallel those in Baghdad. These would include the ministries that oversee security and the economy.
¶They want authority over fiscal policy, including oversight of taxes and the power to decide how much tax revenue goes to Baghdad. The national government would make monetary policy but would not be able to raise revenue from Kurdistan without the agreement of Kurdish officials.
Moreover, the region's borders would be changed, in the Kurds' vision. The "green line" that defines the boundary between the Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq would be officially pushed south, to take in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, the city of Khanaqin and the area of Sinjar. Kurdish leaders argue that this would just reestablish historic borders where Mr. Hussein had drastically altered the demographics by displacing Kurds with Arab settlers.
"It must be clear in the constitution what is for the Kurds and what is for the Iraqi government," said Fouad Hussein, an influential independent Kurdish politician.
The fierce political drive of the Kurds, who make up a fifth of Iraq's 28 million people, became apparent during the Jan. 30 elections, when turnout across the three provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan - Sulaimaniya, Erbil and Dohuk - averaged 84 percent, well above the national average of 58 percent.
Those votes secured for the main Kurdish alliance 75 of 275 seats in the constitutional assembly. The alliance finished second, behind the main Shiite slate, which ended up with a slim majority of 140 seats, which is short of the two-thirds needed to form a government.
The Kurds are now in the position of kingmaker, courted by the Shiite parties and competing smaller groups like the secular slate led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
The Kurds are asking for Mr. Barzani's main rival, Jalal Talabani, to be chosen as president. More audacious is their insistence on broad powers for their region under a federal system. The autonomy envisioned by the Kurds is likely to inflame the formerly ruling Sunni Arabs, who lack officially authorized militias and rich natural resources in their own traditional territory.
But it is the Shiites, having finally achieved here after decades of struggle, who are likely to offer the strongest opposition to Kurdish autonomy.
The top Shiite clerics "are very difficult," said Nawzad Hadi Mawlood, the governor of Erbil Province, the largest Kurdish province. "They're hard negotiators," he said. "They're inflexible. The Shia do not want to admit the federal system for the Kurds."
Many Shiite leaders complain that the Kurds press too many demands and already exercise power in the interim government out of proportion with their numbers. Kurds hold the posts of deputy prime minister, foreign minister and the head of Parliament, as well as one of two vice presidencies.
"There is a sense that the Kurds have taken more privileges than the others," said Sheik Humam Hamoudi, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party. "So we advise the Kurds to be more Iraqi."
Besides holding more than a quarter of the seats in the constitutional assembly, the Kurds have another powerful tool in the transitional law approved last spring. Under that law, a two-thirds vote in any three provinces can veto a national referendum on the constitution. Kurdish leaders could easily mobilize such a vote.
The relatively secular Kurds might also make a deal with the religious Shiites in which the Kurds would gain significant autonomy in return for agreeing not to block Shiite efforts to establish an Islamic form of government elsewhere in Iraq.
Kurdish leaders argue that their push for federalism is nothing more than an attempt to maintain the status quo. Iraqi Kurdistan, a mountainous area the size of Switzerland, has existed as an autonomous region since the end of the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when the American military established a no-flight zone in northern Iraq.
"Like all the nations of the world, all the people of the world, we have the ability to rule ourselves, and we've proven that in the last 14 years," Hezha Anoor, 18, said as he and his friends stood outside a Chinese restaurant here in Sulaimaniya, the capital of eastern Kurdistan.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders maintain that while they would like to see an independent Kurdistan in their lifetimes, secession is not practical now.
The threat from countries like Turkey is too great, they say. And the economy of Kurdistan, which depended on smuggling during the United Nations sanctions against Iraq imposed in the 1990's, would benefit from sharing in revenues from the vast southern oilfields, said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister of Iraq and a top Kurdish official.
Yet if the Kurdish leaders do succeed in winning strong autonomy, that could inspire greater calls for independence. "Iraq is a beast," Pire Mughan, 63, a grizzled poet and former pesh merga fighter, said as he sipped tea in the shadow of the citadel of Erbil. "Arabs are beasts, because their entire history is one of killings and massacres.
"I didn't vote for anyone in the elections, because I believe in independence, not in federalism. If I had voted, it would have meant voting for federalism, and that would have been treason for future generations."
http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan6/20-2-05-kurdish-demands.htm