Greetings from Kurdistan

The city of Arbil from a fortress on a hill (© 2002 Christo­pher Allbritton)

Last week I sent an email to Karzan Taher Aziz, a young Kurd I met in Arbil last sum­mer. He and I became friends, and he helped me with trans­la­tion when I didn’t want to deal with the KDP’s offi­cial min­der and trans­la­tor. I asked him about the mood in Iraqi Kur­dis­tan toward the Turks and the Amer­i­cans, con­sid­er­ing the alleged plans to have Turkey invade when war comes. Today he replied. The only changes I’ve made to this email were to remove his email address (for his pro­tec­tion) and cleaned up some punc­tu­a­tion and a touch of gram­mar here and there.

From: Karzan Aziz To: Christopher Allbritton Date: Mon Mar 10, 2003 01:23:24 PM EST Subject: Greetings from Kurdistan Dear Christopher: How are you dear friend? How are doing? I was thinking about you. I hope this e-mail finds you in a good health. thank you very much for your e-mail. How things are going in NY? I hope your country all the best. I'm so sorry that I could not reply [to] you soon, but I'm v. busy these days, but any way i tried to reply you the internet line was not working properly. dear friend, concerning your questions... regarding Turkey, we feel that we're betrayed by them. i think you know about the <a href="http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000263.php">demonstration against the Turks</a>, people have got very worried here because of Turkey. As far as i'm concerned i do believe that turkey will face problems if invaded Kurdistan, as i have met so many people they all repeat the same thing "as we have been fighting against Saddam from many decades, we are ready to fight Turkey some more other decades." i don't feel betrayed by America because you know the coming stage will decide whether we will be betrayed or not. though we, unfortunately, as kurds are used [to] wars but this time is entirely different from ever since -- people are scared here and they are afraid of chemical or biological war. if you are asking about me i'm just fine, thank you very much, and you asked me whether i have met any journalists or not!!!!! yes i have and i'm working as a translator with some scandinavian journalists and i'm going to be getting a translation-job with a German TV. And if you wanted to ask me any thing, any information, please just feel free to e-mail me. O.K.?? With The Best Of Wishes YOURS MOST FAITHFULLY KARZAN TAHER

Karzan’s a smart guy and he has a lot of con­nec­tions, and I believe him when he says the Kurds are will­ing to fight the Turks should they invade. Whether they win or not is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent ques­tion, but Karzan’s report meshes with talks I’ve had with oppo­si­tion mem­bers who say they will fight to pro­tect what they’ve built in the north. An inter­est­ing note, how­ever. The Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan, based in Suleimaniya in the south near the Iran­ian bor­der, has agreed in prin­ci­ple to a fed­eral Iraqi gov­ern­ment with the regions based on geog­ra­phy instead of eth­nic­ity. The Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party, how­ever, con­tin­ues to hold out for fed­er­ally pro­tected eth­nic divi­sions. (You can read the orig­i­nal pro­posed con­sti­tu­tions given to me by KDP Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Sami Abdul­rah­man here and here. The first is the fed­eral con­sti­tu­tion and the sec­ond is for the Kur­dish entity within a fed­eral Iraq.) The PUK’s sup­port for geo­graphic divi­sions is a neat diplo­matic sleight-of-hand, since the north­ern three gov­er­nances are pre­dom­i­nantly Kur­dish any­way with a pop­u­la­tion of between 4 mil­lion and 5 mil­lion. The KDP’s con­tin­ued sup­port for an ethnic-based con­sti­tu­tion isn’t sur­pris­ing. The KDP authored the con­sti­tu­tions, it’s older and more con­ser­v­a­tive than the Marxist-inspired PUK and has its roots in Kur­dish eth­nic­ity. The activ­i­ties of its founder, Mustafa Barzani, went a long way toward chang­ing Kurds’ loy­al­ties from the fam­ily and clan to the idea of a Kur­dish nation as a whole. To back down on eth­nic­ity as the defin­ing nature of the Kur­dish entity in the north would be to repu­di­ate every­thing Mustafa Barzani stood for. And the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the KDP, Masoud Barzani, Mustafa’s son, isn’t about to do that.
In other news, French Pres­i­dent Jacques Chirac made it plain that a French veto is forth­com­ing at tomorrow’s (?) vote/smackdown at the Secu­rity Coun­cil. This is not a big sur­prise, since France has been say­ing it wouldn’t “allow” a new res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing war, implic­itly or explic­itly, for a while now, but it is an attempt to avoid being the lone veto if the United States man­ages to round up nine votes on the coun­cil. France’s pub­lic voic­ing of its inten­tions is to buck up Rus­sia, which has also said it opposes any res­o­lu­tion that might be inter­preted as autho­riz­ing war, but com­mon wis­dom is that Rus­sia would abstain rather than veto a res­o­lu­tion. With France def­i­nitely in the “non” col­umn, Rus­sia will have more cover to say, “nyet.”
[UPDATE: Strat­for is report­ing that Pak­istan Prime Min­is­ter Zafarul­lah Khan Jamali said today that his coun­try will abstain on the vote. “We will do what is best for our coun­try,” Jamali said after a ses­sion of Par­lia­ment. “It is not best for my coun­try to sup­port war against Iraq.”]
This means, obvi­ously, the res­o­lu­tion is kaput, and the United States has no rea­son to wait until March 17. The world could be fac­ing war as early as this week, although it’s likely the United States will wait a few days to give inspec­tors and other for­eign nation­als time to flee Iraq and to attempt some sem­blance of tac­ti­cal sur­prise. The dark nights over Bagh­dad grow short and the heat of April is stalk­ing closer. The U.S. war machine won’t wait much longer, nor, from a tac­ti­cal stand­point, should it. Why give the Iraqis more time to posi­tion their forces or stage a pre­emp­tive strike of their own on Amer­i­can troops? That’s the dan­ger of ignor­ing the U.N. Not only does it free the hands of the U.S. mil­i­tary, but it removes any rea­son for the Iraqis to hold their fire, too. Sad­dam no doubt feels that war is com­ing regard­less of what the Secu­rity Coun­cil decides, so it might be bet­ter to strike first and inflict as much dam­age as pos­si­ble. Of course, he would then unite the Secu­rity Coun­cil behind against him, but if he plans on turn­ing Bagh­dad into Stal­in­grad on the Tigris, what does he have left to lose?

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