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

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
\ . You don't picture amusement parks, free elections and a (mostly) free press in the.
. ~,~ nation of Saddam Hussein. But that's reality in the 12-year-old Kurdish autonomous
~
~< zon"e, reports STEPHANIE NOLEN from northern Iraq. Now, the Kurds are willing to give it
all up - to get rid of their enemy in Baghdad
un.oun
.Sana Sarwat, 9, left, and Dalya Saman, 5, on a ride last month at Azady Park in Sulaimaniya, Iraq _ once a t0J:'lUl1!.andprison faclUty,
transformed under Kurdish autonomy into an amusement park complete with social club, roUer-skating rink, open-air theatre and swimming pooL
In a smoky coffee shop in the
Kurdish town of Salahuddin,
two dozen men sat around a
big-screen 'IV last .weekend,
watching. the footage from
peace demonstrations all
over the world. And scowling.
"No.war with Iraq?" one elderly
man hissed. "What do those people
know about war? They should
spend five minutes as a Kurd. That
would change their minds."
The men around him - dressed
in the traditional baggy trousers,
cummerbund and turban of Kurdish
warriors, or peshmerga - all
nodded in agreement. "So they say
'no war,''' another man said.
"They made this regime, but now
. they do not want to fix the mess
theymade."
These days, people here in the
Kurdish self-rule area of northern
Iraq keep their lYs tuned- to Fox
News. The hawkish American
news channel is right in sync with
Kurdish sentiment. The overthrow
of Saddam Hussein, the dictator.
the Kurds accuse of genocide, is so
close they can taste it. There are
no peace marches in the streets of
Erbil or Suleimaniya or Salahud- .
90
din. For them, the war cannot start
soon enough.
But support for the U.S. military
intervention is a gamble for the
Kurds. For more than a decade,
they have ruled themselves, and
pieced together a tiny but flourishing
nation. Now, it hangs in the
balance: Will the Kurds take the
lead in a new Iraq, or will Kurdistan
disappear once again?
To arrive here is a bit like landing
in Oz. To the south is Saddam
Hussein's repressive regime, to the
north the harsh theocracy of Iran' s
Islamic Rëpublic. Syria's police
state is on one side and tanks from
Turkey, with its harsh anti-Kurd
policies, are lined up on the other.
But turn on the television in Suleimaniya,
and flip through a
dozen Kurdish channels: There is
the prime minister, Barham Salih,
being grilled in a town-hall meetingby
qïs consp.tuents. Pick up the
newspaper in Erbil:A stinging editorial
criticizes the inter-party
squabbling in parliament. There is .
an Internet café on every city corner,
and no Web sites are blocked
that a democratic, pluralistic system
can work here.
But Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are
deeply threatened by the idea of
an American-backed democratic
government on their doorstep,
and the ayatollahs who rule Iran
cannot hide their horror at the
idea. Syria doesn't like it, and Turkey,
with about 17 million Kurds
within its own borders, has no desire
to see them playa key role in a
renascent Iraq. For all those who
see the Kurdish achievement as a
model, there are as many who
would like to see it disappear.
•••
on their computers. Foreign reporters
are welcome to visit prisoners
in the jails; military
commanders on the border .points
are also happy to answer questions.
''I'm not saying we're very good
in everything," said a modest
Fouad Baban, a professor in the
medical school in: Suleimaniya and
one of his nation's chief proponents
of a pluralistic society. "It's
only relative. People coming from
Baghdad see it as another country
- they have no satellite television,
no free newspapers or television or
organizations.
"We are just practising democracy,
but we are far, far better than
Iran, Baghdad, Syria,Jordan - our
neighbours with a long history of When the cartographers in Paris
statehooà. They are at least 80 and London sat .down early in the
years old, but tell me: In which last century to draw the boundaone
you can say something critical ries of the modem Middle East,
of the head of state?" they overlooked the Kurds, an
For the past 12 years, the Kurds Indo-European, non-Arab people
have laboured at their democratic whose distinct language most.
experiment, largely ignored by the closely resembles Farsi (the lanworld.
But suddenly the non-state guage of Iran). Most Kurds are
of Kurdistan is centre stage. The Sunni Muslims, though there are
Kurds and their many supporters. Assyrian and Chaldean Christians
hold up what they have achieved as well. But no Kurdistan was
in the self-rule area as a blueprint carved out of the remains of the
for a new Iraq - proof, they say, Ottoman Empire.