Kurds fear another American betrayal

ERBIL, Iraq – Here in Iraqi Kurdistan, where 14,000-foot peaks line the horizon and the people consider the United States their closest ally, Kurds are predicting darkly that America may betray them – again.

Ethnic Kurds – who are Sunni Muslim but not Arab and who make up a fifth of Iraq’s population – sent pesh merga guerrillas to fight alongside U.S. troops against Saddam Hussein. Today, fewer than 200 U.S. troops are based in Kurdistan, where the streets are safe and terrorist bombs are few.

Iraqi Kurdistan has elected its own regional governments for more than a decade under U.S. protection. The other major Kurdish city, Sulaimaniyah, boasts a gleaming new white public library, a new airport, lovely public parks and a building boom. U.S. officials tout Kurdistan as a model for the whole country.

But today the talk about America is bitter.

“Now we see the new fashion in an ally,” says Aso Harti, editor of the independent newspaper Hawlati, waving a fistful of letters from angry readers. “They knock you down because you are a friend.”

Why such outrage?

The Kurds fear U.S. officials may look the other way if the Arab majority takes away the precious autonomy they gained over the past decade. Their right to a regional government is protected by the Transitional Administrative Law (known as the TAL) that U.S. lawyers authored to guide Iraqis until they write their own constitution.

The Kurds wanted a reference to the TAL to be included in a recent U.N. resolution so it would have international backing. But the United States refused to mention the TAL after it was denounced by leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. He charged that the TAL had been written under occupation by unelected officials.

He is right, but that begs the issue. The Kurds need assurance they won’t wind up unprotected in a country ruled by Arabs with no experience of democracy.

“Kurds will never accept to be second-class citizens as in the past,” says Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of western Kurdistan and grandson of the legendary Kurdish leader Mulla Mustapha Barzani.

Sitting under a huge portrait of Mulla Mustapha, Barzani spoke intensely: “In the past, the Sunni Arab minority ruled Iraq. Now religious groups could take power and dictate. If every now and then a fatwa (religious decree) would be issued by Sistani or someone else, what would be the guarantee that Kurds can live?

“The Americans won’t stay forever, and what then?”

What then, indeed?

Kurds have good reason for paranoia. Denied a state after the breakup of the Ottoman empire, their lands were split among Iran, Turkey, Syria and the new state of Iraq. The Reagan administration looked the other way when they were gassed and slaughtered by Saddam Hussein. President Bush pere encouraged them to rebel in 1991 – only to let Saddam attack them.

Televised scenes of Kurdish suffering forced the first Bush administration to establish the protective no-fly zone. But all their gains could still be erased.

Ayatollah Sistani wants the Shiite majority to rule the entire country. Iraq’s Sunni Arab neighbors oppose Kurdish autonomy because they fear their Kurds may ask for the same. They are whipping up anti-Kurdish sentiment, accusing Kurds of being anti-Arab traitors.

“If we were not mature politicians, we would have every reason to have a civil war between Kurds and Arabs,” says Mohammed Ihsan, minister for human rights in the Kurdish regional government, as he unwraps cartons of CDs of a film about Kurdish mass graves.

Indeed, Kurdish leaders backed off their threat to withdraw from Baghdad over the Security Council issue. But the Kurdish issue remains crucial – for America and for Iraqis. It will test whether Iraqis can accept a federal formula that lets Kurds keep their autonomy and accepts a binational state. This would be a revolutionary concept in the Arab world. And it will test whether the Bush team keeps faith with allies.

“We want a pledge from the Americans,” says Barzani, “that you support a solution for the Kurdish people within a democratic, pluralistic Iraq.”

What he’d like most is a U.S. military base in Kurdistan.

Would Barzani use the word “betray” to describe current American behavior, I asked? “Not yet,” he replied.