The Kurds: a fragile spring

The UN has just prolonged the oil for food agreement with Iraq for five months, further
profiting the Kurdish area under international military protection. But the Kurds' chance to
reconstruct their world may be brief. 

By . Kendal Nezan
President of the Kurdish Institute in Paris.
Translated By: Wendy Kristianasen 
August 2001

Ten years ago the western powers decided to create a "protection zone" to allow the return of
some 2m Kurds who had fled to Iran and Turkey to escape the massive Iraqi offensive
against them. This was based on United Nations Security Council resolution 688 adopted in
April 1991. The 40,000 square kilometre zone with its 3.5m Kurds is protected by a
multinational air force based in Turkey.

The West's primary aim was to reassure its Turkish ally, which was facing a destabilising
influx of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees from Iraq to provinces already affected
by Turkey's own Kurdish problem. The initiative, which came three months after the end of
the Gulf war, did not meet with resistance from Baghdad: the Iraqi regime withdrew its civil
administration from three governorates in the protected zone - Duhok, Erbil and Suleimanieh
- in October 1991 and stopped paying the salaries and pensions of employees who decided to
remain there. However, the West, under pressure from Ankara, which feared the emergence
of an autonomous Kurdish state, did not want to look after the population itself by setting up
a specific administration or type of UN protectorate, as it did in Kosovo in 1999; nor did it
encourage a proper regional Kurdish government.

The West's message was clear: once home, the Kurds would be protected from Iraqi army
attacks but they would have to run their own affairs and rebuild their devastated country on
their own. For the Kurds, worn out by 30 years of war, this was a formidable challenge: they
would have to run a country the size of Switzerland, in which some 20 towns and 90% of the
(5,000) villages had been demolished, whose economic infrastructure had been destroyed,
agricultural land mined and inhabitants dispersed. Nearly 80% of the active population were
unemployed. The Iraqi regime had also cut the Kurdish region from the national electricity
grid and placed an embargo on petrol and fuel.

The Kurds had to improvise in this chaotic situation and use their imagination and staying
power. The United Front of Kurdistan, representing the eight local political parties, took
over regional government and organised elections for a Kurdish parliament. These took
place on 18 May 1992. Massoud Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and Jalal
Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) won 51 and 49 seats respectively, and the
(Christian) Assyrian/Chaldean minority, which counts 30,000 people, won five seats. The
other parties (communist, socialist, Islamist etc) did not reach the 5% barrier but, even
without seats, collaborated with the government of national unity formed in July 1992.

The Kurdish political leadership hoped that the West would swiftly recognise this new
democratic institution and give it financial assistance. Instead, it ignored it. Ankara,
Damascus and Tehran, despite their various disagreements, all talked of the danger of a
Kurdish state and held three-monthly meetings of their respective foreign ministries to "keep
an eye on the situation in the north of Iraq". The United States, anxious not to displease its
Turkish ally, gave no support to the Kurdish democratic experiment, and nor did the
European countries.

The double embargo (Iraqi and international) and absence of a minimum means of
functioning led to a painful failure of the experiment [1]. Squabbling over meagre customs
revenues degenerated into armed clashes between the KDP and PUK in May 1994. The
neighbouring countries added to the troubles. The clashes went on until 1997. Nearly 3,000
died and tens of thousands were displaced. Finally the two warring factions realised that
neither could eliminate the other militarily and that, in any case, the regional players (Iran,
Turkey and Iraq) needed to maintain a balance of power between them, which would
preclude the dominance of a single Kurdish political party even if it were to win a military
victory. A cease-fire was concluded in November 1997. An agreement between the two
Kurdish leaders, Barzani and Talabani, signed in Washington in September 1998 under the
aegis of the US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, marked the official end to hostilities
and established the basis for peace negotiations.

Under the accord, Barzani won recognition of his victory at the May 1992 legislative
elections and its implications for the formation of a transitional government whose task was
to organise new elections. Talabani, for his part, won agreement that part of the customs
revenues would go to his party. No fewer than 60 meetings have been held since then to
smooth out difficulties between the KDP and PUK and bring their viewpoints nearer
together.

Administrative decentralisation 

Painfully, and despite themselves, the Iraqi Kurds embarked on another new experiment, a
form of administrative decentralisation. The territory protected by the western powers has
been divided into two, north and south, and is governed by two identical administrative
bodies. In the northern region, far more prosperous and better run, there is a coalition
government based in Erbil, led by the KDP, but with a third of its members coming from the
smaller parties, minorities (Assyrian/Chaldean and Yezidi) and independents.

In this northern region, 70% of the destroyed towns and villages have been rebuilt. The road
infrastructure has been restored and extended, and communications re-established. Nearly all
children in the north are now at school. There are also two universities (Duhok and
Salaheddin) which teach arts, sciences, medicine and law to 12,500 students. The courses
are in Kurdish, Arabic and English according to subject; teaching at primary and secondary
school is in Kurdish. Students have decent university accommodation, teaching staff earn
$140 a month (seven times more than their Iraqi counterparts) and are provided with
housing.

In the south, the PUK-run government also includes smaller parties and independents. The
university of Suleimanieh has 3,500 students; and there are 1,677 schools (for 367,755
schoolchildren). Unlike in the north, primary school is not yet compulsory for all children.

The technical services (health, education, transport, energy) of the two administrations
cooperate with each other. After education, health is the main priority. Services are free and
the authorities have rehabilitated the hospitals, built new health centres and provided them
with modern equipment, often acquired on the black market because of the embargo - which
is also responsible for the poor quality of medicines reaching Kurdistan via Iraq or Turkey.
Two police academies train personnel to assure security in the towns, and two other centres
train former guerrilla fighters (Peshmerga) to transform them into professional armed forces.
The Kurdish parliament is located in Erbil, as is the Kurdistan Appeal Court.

A cultural renaissance 

This Kurdish renaissance is even stronger in the field of culture. People are trying, with great
enthusiasm, to make up for lost time. Three daily papers and more than 130 weeklies and
magazines are trying to assuage people's thirst for information and knowledge. They deal
with all sorts of issues, literature, cinema, history, computer science. A dozen television
channels offer a variety of programmes for different categories of viewers; two of them go
out on satellite and are watched by all the Kurdish communities in the Middle East and in
Europe. Parabolic antennae also allow people to receive the international channels forbidden
in Iraq and Iran, but free in Kurdistan (where internet cafés are also multiplying).

Newspapers of all political persuasions, including that of the Baghdad regime, are on sale.
The small Assyrian and Turkman minorities have respectively 14 and nine schools that
teach in their own languages, as well as publications and radio and television broadcasts.
Kurds of Yezidi belief, (wrongly) accused by their Muslim neighbours of being devil
worshippers, are free to practice their religion and their places of worship are protected.

Women are playing an important role, in particular in speaking out against acts of violence
by Islamist groups supported by Iran and against archaic customs (such as so-called honour
killings of adulterous women). This is helping to create a growing climate of freedom. The
combined effect of these various internal factors - as well as the wish to win the sympathy of
western opinion - has led the Kurdish political system, originally based on the dominant
party/state model common to the region, to evolve towards a pluralist democracy. Even so,
the historic leaders of the Kurdish armed resistance are a long way from reconciling
themselves to becoming ordinary citizens or simple elected representatives.

Autonomous Kurdistan is experiencing relative prosperity, largely due to funds generated by
the application of UN resolution 986 (oil for food) [2]. It allocates 13% of the revenues from
oil sales to three governorates in the Kurdish region under international protection. The use
of the revenues is supervised by nine specialised UN agencies who identify and finance
projects in health, education, housing, repair of infrastructures and provision of water to
displaced peoples. A food programme ensures that the inhabitants of the Kurdish region
receive the same food rations as the rest of Iraq.

The Kurdish administration is helping develop these projects, giving protection to the UN
agencies and providing them with warehouses and technical facilities. The UN agencies
finance and execute projects that have received the backing of Baghdad "in the name of the
absent Iraqi government". But the procedure is long and complicated. A project frequently
takes more than a year to receive financial authorisation; and some projects are turned down.

Since 1997 $4.9bn has been allocated to the autonomous Kurdish region: $3bn has been
used, the rest will be released as projects are approved. This financial assistance, together
with the enterprising spirit of the Kurds and an efficient administration, is beginning to
produce results. The country has become a vast worksite for the manufacture of roads,
schools, libraries, housing, stadiums, parks, factories etc. Living conditions are improving
noticeably.

Stable Kurdish dinar 

The Kurdish administration is financed mainly by customs duties on lorries transporting
various commodities to Iraq from Turkey and Iran, and to a lesser extent by income
generated by the protection of the Kirkuk/Yumur/Talik pipeline and from border trade,
especially in petrol. In order to relaunch the local economy, the Kurdish authorities have
turned their region into a type of free zone, providing the Iraqi and Iranian markets with a
variety of products, starting with cigarettes. These sources of income provide the Kurdish
administration, which employs more than 250,000 civilians and around 80,000 security
staff, with a yearly budget of $230m. The Central Bank of Kurdistan watches over the
Kurdish dinar, which is stable vis-à-vis the dollar ($1=18 Kurdish dinars) and is at present
worth 100 times the Iraqi dinar.

It is the first time in more than a century that the Kurds have administered part of their
historic territory for such a length of time. On the whole they are doing it well. This Kurdish
spring is raising hopes among the 25-30m Kurds who live in Turkey, Iran and Syria. But the
future remains uncertain. The oil-rich districts of Kirkuk, Sinjar and Khanaqin, with their
population of 2m, remain under the rule of the Iraqi regime, subject to a policy of
Arabisation. Kurds here live in extreme poverty made worse by widespread exodus to
Europe.

Furthermore, the reconciliation between the two main Kurdish parties is not complete. They
collaborate, but not always in complete harmony. Old demons still lurk. In addition, the
bordering states with their own large Kurdish communities still do what they can to
destabilise the Kurdish administration, despite its pledges of neighbourliness and economic
cooperation. Kurdistan could not survive without Anglo-American air protection and the
13% revenue allocated by UN resolution 986. Any revision of sanctions against Iraq must
include guarantees of protection and financial assistance for the Kurds. Without these, there
would be another humanitarian disaster that would bring this fragile Kurdish spring to a
premature end.
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