Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Baszn (jzeti
Iraqi Kurds Reflect on Revolution
By Donna Bryson Associated Press March 21, 2000
BAGHDAD, Iraq fifi Sitting cross-legged Tuesday over a traditional meal of buttered rice and chicken, Bestun
Moustafa related the Kurdish legend of blacksmith Kawa's defiance of a mad, evil king.
Kawa smote the king with his iron rod, and then set a fire to let oppressed villagers know a new day had
dawned. And at that moment, spring came to Kurdistan. To this day, March 21 is known to Kurds as Nowruz,
or "new day," celebrating both the end of the long mountain winter and the revolutionary streak among
Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority.
A national holiday in Iraq, Nowruz is celebrated by Arabs and Kurds, Muslims and Christians. Later at the
picnic in a park northwest of Baghdad, Moustafa turned to modern politics. In the disarray following the
Gulf War a decade ago, Iraqi Kurds in the north staged another revolution, this one against President
Saddam Hussein. Moderate Kurds like Mustafa say they still feel the heat of those flames.
Saddam has been accused of oppressing his Kurdish minority, but Kurds in Baghdad insisted Tuesday they
were being treated better under his government than Kurds elsewhere in the region.
"The Kurds here have their rights, while our brothers in Syria, Iran, Turkey can I t even say they are
Kurds," said Mohsin Barzinjy, head of the state-sponsored Kurdish Education Committee, as he surveyed hundreds
of Kurdish families gathered in the park to ring in the spring. Teen-age Kurdish girls wore thick
makeup and their dark hair streaked with gold. They danced to rap-inspired Arabic music at one end of the
park, while across a field their elders linked arms and danced the traditional chobi, moving rhythmically
in a circle of shifting shoulders and stamping feet.
Barzinjy fi wearing traditional pleated pants of rough wool and a scarf wrapped neatly around his head fi
said it was Saddam who had ordered the establishment of the Kurdish cultural group in 1970. But as Barzinjy
spoke, a uniformed police officer positioned himself nearby to make it clear he was listening. Expression
is carefully controlled under the strongman Saddam. Since the Gulf war, Saddam has lost control over the
Kurdish north. U.S. and British warplanes patrol the northern skies, defying Saddam to launch airstrikes
against militant Kurdish groups.
Kurds make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population of 18 million, with about 1 million living in the Baghdad
area and the rest in the north.
Moustafa said his father once had a flourishing business shipping fruits and nuts from the north to markets
in Baghdad, where merchants gathered from Syria, Jordan and other countries. Gulf war trade sanctions have
kept the foreign buyers away, and for years after the 1991 uprising, the road link was cut off between
Baghdad and Moustafa's hometown of Suleimaniya, 225 miles north.
Moustafa revived the family's transport company after the government reopened the route in 1994, but business
is not what it was before the war, he said. "I am a strong believer that things will go back to what
they were before between the Arabs and the Kurds, because it is better for both the Arabs and the Kurds fi
we are one people," Moustafa said.
In the distance, ululation and ringing shouts competed with the pounding pop music, and barbecue smoke smudged
the sky.
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