Kurds' separatist ambitions pose challenge to Iraq unity

SAID SADIQ, Iraq -- Brigadier Rahim Mohammed Shakur's allegiance to the Iraqi Army is about as solid as the faxed sheet of paper he received two weeks ago, announcing that his Kurdish peshmerga fighters were now regular Iraqi soldiers, under Baghdad's command.

"I am a Kurd," Shakur, 42, said cheerfully last week, as his tank battalion trained with 100 Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers that his fighters raided from Saddam Hussein's army in April 2003. "If we are ever attacked, I will stop being a regular Iraqi soldier and become a peshmerga again."

Iraqi Kurdistan's de facto independence from Baghdad -- and the popular desire in the three northern provinces to secede from Iraq -- could pose one of the thorniest problems over the coming year for the ethnic, religious, and political factions trying to craft a new Iraqi federal constitution.

The importance of the Kurds is not lost on US officials; on Monday, as American forces launched the attack on Fallujah, US Ambassador John Negroponte flew from Baghdad to Sulaymaniyah for a day to ask leaders from the PUK to commit to a smooth national election process.

As the sole oasis of stability and unwavering support for US policy in Iraq, the Kurds have made themselves an indispensable linchpin of Washington's hope to fashion a democratic Iraq. But the Kurds are wary allies, suspicious that the United States will barter Kurdish autonomy for the support of Iraq's Arab majority. And public opinion in the Kurdish provinces leans heavily toward declaring independence: about 1.7 million people signed a petition in April demanding a popular referendum on secession, and the independence movement has scheduled another conference for this week.

"I have no connection to Iraq," said Kharman Khasrow, 21, a history student at the University of Sulaymaniyah. She does not speak a word of Arabic.

"I've never been to Iraq. I wouldn't even want to go there," she said. When reminded that the Kurdish provinces are part of Iraq, she smiled and said: "I am in Kurdistan, not Iraq."

Separatist pushDepending on who is presenting the census figures, Kurds in Iraq number from 4 million to 7 million. Iraq's total population is about 25 million.

Kurds say 25 million to 40 million of their people live in territory divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, with the lion's share, about half, in Turkey. The separatist movement in Iraqi Kurdistan provokes great anxiety in the neighboring countries, where well-armed Kurdish independence movements have smoldered for decades.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders fear that separatists will provoke Turkey to send in troops, as it did in the 1990s when Iraqi Kurdish political parties started sheltering Kurdish guerrillas from Turkey.

Subjected to a genocidal campaign by Hussein's government, the three northernmost Kurdish provinces won independence after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when the US created a no-fly zone that kept the Iraqi Army away.

Now, many Kurds think any relation with a federal Iraqi government is too much, and are agitating for Kurdish leaders to annex, by politics or by force, a belt of cities historically considered part of Kurdistan -- including the flash point of Kirkuk; a series of smaller, Arab-majority cities running southward from Kirkuk to the Iranian border; and half of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city and a burgeoning resistance stronghold.

Tensions have flared over the issue before. The Kurdish parties threatened to withdraw from the new interim government in June because they felt Arab leaders did not respect Kurdish rights.

Such a move could prove disastrous, fragmenting the government along ethnic lines and provoking a fight over oil-rich Kirkuk, claimed by both Kurds and Arabs.

Kurdish politicians are eager to quell such concerns. "We won't occupy any place, and we won't oblige anyone to join Iraqi Kurdistan," said Nawshirwan Mustafa, a top official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, which controls the eastern half of the Kurdish provinces.

But, he said, Kurds insist that towns and cities be given free choice to join -- an expansion of the autonomous region that will exacerbate the concerns of Arab nationalists.

"We want our fair share," Mustafa said. "We want to create a new political tradition in Iraq, that Kurds are first class citizens."

North vs. south Sheik Sadoon Essa Yousif al-Qasimi, a Sunni Arab tribal leader from Salahuddin Province, which contains many towns claimed by the Kurds, thinks they are overrepresented in Baghdad. One of two vice presidents, the deputy prime minister, and the foreign minister are all Kurds.

"Kurds already control too much of the national government," he said.

Qasimi said he fears that Kurdish autonomy will prompt secession movements by Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis in central Iraq.

"We cannot allow such splits," he said. "We are one united Iraq."

But such debate in Baghdad ignores a reality obvious to anyone who travels to Iraqi Kurdistan, the official name for the three northernmost Kurdish provinces.

A de facto border, known as the Green Line, is guarded by peshmerga instead of Iraqi police or military. The US military presence, obvious throughout Iraq, vanishes northeast of the Green Line, where Kurdish forces have provided security since 1991.

Arabs who cross into Kurdistan must have permission letters or register with Kurdish security.

Most Kurds who went to school after 1991 never learned Arabic.

Instead of the Iraqi flag, most buildings fly a Kurdish flag, which replaces the three green stars representing Arab unity with a bright-yellow sun.

Until a few months ago, Kurdish phones shared England's international dial code -- a fluke of an underground phone system developed when Kurdistan was a rebel enclave in Hussein's Iraq.

US officials tiptoe around the issue, referring to the area as "the northern provinces." Even Hussein freely described the area as Kurdistan.

"People outside Iraq should know there's a huge difference between the north and south," said Omar Fattah, 52, prime minister of the PUK-controlled part of Kurdistan.

If violence forces a long postponement of national elections, Fattah said, the Kurdish provinces would consider holding their own vote for the Kurdistan Parliament, which was created in 1992.

"I am a Kurd, living within the frame of Iraq," Fattah said. "I live in Kurdistan. But the big Kurdistan was divided, and I'm in the part clinging to Iraq."

When Western powers redrew the Middle East's borders after World War I, territory inhabited by Kurds was split among Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria. Since then, Kurds have fought for autonomy and the idea of a united greater Kurdistan.

Turkey's bloody war with its Kurds, now in a state of cease-fire, has claimed about 40,000 lives over two decades. The Turkish government has vehemently opposed independence for Iraqi Kurds, fearful that formal secession would provoke more violence among Turkey's separatists.

Indeed, the fear of outside intervention by Turkey or even Iran puts the biggest damper on the Kurdish secession movement.

"It's only the threat of invasion by the neighboring countries that makes us willing to accept being part of a federal Iraq," said Karzan Karem, 21, another student at the University of Sulaymaniyah who supports independence.

A risky futureBasit Hama Gharib, a leader of the Kurdistan Referendum Movement, said the petition with its 1.7 million signatures would be presented to American, British, and United Nations officials within the next month at UN headquarters in New York.

"After the fall of Saddam, the people of Kurdistan became part of Iraq without being asked," Gharib said.

He acknowledged that a referendum almost certainly would provoke a political crisis and very likely a war.

"Without a doubt, it is risky," he said. "But you cannot tear the root of independence from the heart of the people where it is anchored."

At the base of the new Iraqi Army's First Mechanized Infantry, Shakur proudly presented his troops; they still consider themselves peshmerga, a Kurdish word that means "he who faces death."

His division actually captured their Russian-made tanks and armored personnel carriers from Hussein's retreating Army in April 2003.

In his office at the tank base, Shakur has hung two of the most popular images, visible in virtually every home or office in this part of Kurdistan. One shows PUK leader Jalal Talabani, standing before the Iraqi Governing Council last spring, brandishing an Ottoman-era map that shows the areas of Iraq that were historically part of Kurdistan, including Kirkuk.

The other is a modern-day map of greater Kurdistan, the nightmare of Ankara, Damascus, and Tehran: It stretches to include vast swaths of territory populated by Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq.

"We are 40 million, but we have no country," Shakur said. "Iraqi Kurdistan is small. We want a big country. This is just the beginning, God willing."

Globe correspondent Sa'ad al-Izzi contributed to this report from Baghdad. Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.