Category Archives: Post-War

Progress in Iraq?

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Recently, a list of Coali­tion accom­plish­ments were posted to the com­ments on B2I. Allegedly from “Karl Niel­son LT, CHC, USNR 13th Marine Expe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) Chap­lain,” the the poster said the list was cir­cu­lat­ing on GI mail­ing lists.
Now, I’ve not been able to make out if the list is gen­uine or not, but it’s cer­tainly been “picked up by the pro-war Web”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22Karl+Nielson+LT%2C+CHC%2C+USNR++13th+Marine+Expeditionary+Unit+%28MEU%29+Chaplain%22&sa=N&tab=nw. I’ll repro­duce it here, in its entirety, as posted, with a few com­ments in ital­ics.

Mak­ing the rounds of GI e-mail traf­fic in Iraq these days is the fol­low­ing inspir­ing mis­sive. It is repro­duced below in its entirety and exactly as writ­ten by Karl Niel­son LT, CHC, USNR 13th Marine Expe­di­tionary Unit (MEU) Chap­lain:
Since Pres­i­dent Bush declared an end to major com­bat on May 1:
The first bat­tal­ion of the new Iraqi Army has grad­u­ated and is on active duty (~60,000 Iraqis pro­vid­ing secu­rity to cit­i­zens). They will receive weapons by June 2004. How are they are on active duty and pro­vid­ing secu­rity with no weapons? Stern warn­ings?
Nearly all of Iraq’s 400 courts are func­tion­ing and 24 judges have passed the Amer­i­can bar.
The Coali­tion approved Iraqi judi­ciary is fully inde­pen­dent.
Power gen­er­a­tion hit 4,518 megawatts for one day in Octo­ber exceed­ing pre­war out­put. Accord­ing to River­bend, who I trust more than “Karl Niel­son,” said elec­tric­ity was on for 22 hours a day pre-war. Now, they get 10 hours a day — and she con­sid­ers her­self priv­i­leged. But don’t take her word for it. The CPA itself esti­mates that “Iraq needs 7,000MW/day”:http://cpa-iraq.org/essential_services/electricity.html, which is 2,600MW/day more than the pre-war level. The CPA itself doesn’t project meet­ing that demand until spring 2005. Infact, it will be sum­mer 2004 before they hit 6,000MW/day, a good 3,600MW below esti­mated demand. While 4,518MW is indeed higher than the 4,4000MW/day pre­war, it is still not enough.
All 22 Uni­ver­si­ties & 43 tech­ni­cal institutes/colleges are open and most of them have teach­ers.
Nearly all pri­mary and sec­ondary schools are open for at least ninety min­utes a day. Ninety min­utes! Wow. The pre-war sched­ule was 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. for pri­mary kids and 2 p.m. for sec­ondary stu­dents. Maybe if more than 30,000 teach­ers hadn’t been purged for Ba’ath mem­ber­ship — joined to get a job rather than a for true beliefs — the schools could stay open longer.
Coali­tion has ‘rehabbed’ 1,500+ schools (500 ahead of sched­ule) and many of them have roofs and elec­tric­ity.
Teach­ers earn from 12 – 25 times their for­mer salaries.
All 240 hos­pi­tals and more than 1200 clin­ics are open and 10% have run­ning water. Ten per­cent of the hos­pi­tals have run­ning water? This is progress?
Hoosiers has opened its first restau­rant in Bag­dad. I don’t even know what “Hoosiers” is and haven’t been able to find a thing on the Web about it. Does this chap­lain mean “Hoot­ers”? If so, I find it hard to believe a chap­lain would be talk­ing up a restau­rant like Hoot­ers in a Mus­lim country.
Doc­tors salaries are at least 8 times what they were under Sad­dam.
Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion has gone from almost zero to 12,000 tons and Prozac has been made avail­able for free. This is news to the Iraqis I know, both in the United States and in Iraq. Prozac for free? Does this guy know what unsu­per­vised Prozac sub­scrip­tions can do to some­one? Again, no news of this on Google or Nexis.
Five Wall­marts are set to go up in the main cities of Iraq. Leav­ing aside that it’s Wal-Mart, and not “Wall­mart,” a Wal-Mart spokes­woman told me there are no plans to expand to Iraq, as the mar­ket just isn’t there for the com­pany.
Coali­tion has cleared 14,000+km of Iraq’s 27,000km of weed-choked canals which now irri­gate tens of thou­sands of farms. This project has cre­ated 100,000+ jobs for Iraqi men & women.
Three golf courses have been built. I actu­ally kinda believe this one.
Coali­tion has restored over 3/4 of pre­war tele­phone ser­vices and 2/3+ of potable water pro­duc­tion. This is inter­est­ing. Accord­ing to the CIA world fact book, in 1997, there were “675,000 main tele­phone lines in use”:http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html#Comm. Two-thirds of that would be 450,000 lines oper­a­tional. How­ever, note this next “accom­plish­ment:“
4,900+ full-service tele­phone con­nec­tions (~50,000 by year-end). OK. Now you see the sloppy think­ing here and which leads me to think this whole list is bogus? One one hand, tele­phones are at 75 per­cent capac­ity. In the very next item, it’s a tiny frac­tion of that. And even 50,000 lines will still be a tiny frac­tion. If you believe that 4,900 work­ing lines is an accom­plish­ment, that’s pathetic. UPDATE 1÷23÷04 This list is bogus and a hoax, but this part about the tele­phone lines war­rants fur­ther expla­na­tion. See my “other post”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000657.php on this for a full expla­na­tion on what the hoax list was based on, but the 4,900 lines refers to Inter­net con­nec­tions, not tele­phones as the hoaxster men­tioned.
Com­merce is expand­ing rapidly (bicy­cles, satel­lite dishes, cars, RV vehi­cles, etc) in all major cities and towns. Ah, the favorite “life is com­ing back!” line that pro-war peo­ple seem to like. Well, here’s news for you. Life goes on, even in war time. Peo­ple don’t curl up into fetal posi­tions and give up on life when they’re occu­pied. They prob­a­bly do when bombs are falling near them, but that’s pretty rare. And hint, hint: Iraq was one of the most pros­per­ous states in the Gulf, pre-1991, and there were a lot of bicy­cles and cars — it’s a petroleum-producing state, after all.
95% of all pre­war bank cus­tomers have ser­vice and first-time cus­tomers are open­ing accounts daily and receiv­ing a free toaster. Free toaster?
Iraqi banks are mak­ing loans to finance busi­nesses.
Iraq has one of the world’s most growth-oriented invest­ment and bank­ing laws. The Bag­dad Stock Exchange opened stim­u­lat­ing a blos­som­ing busi­ness in spec­u­la­tion. Ah, no. The last men­tion of the Bagh­dad Stock Exchange was in a Wash­ing­ton Post “article”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A33237-2003Dec26&notFound=true and it says that efforts to get the Exchange open are still ongo­ing. The arti­cle dates from Dec. 27.
Iraq has a sin­gle, uni­fied cur­rency for the first time in 15 years. Despite many demands from mon­e­tory author­i­ties Vice-President Dick Cheney turned down requests to allow his pic­ture to be used on the cur­rency. You’re kid­ding, right? Dick Cheney?
Satel­lite TV dishes are legal. true
For­eign jour­nal­ists are not on ’10-day visas’ pay­ing manda­tory fees to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion for min­ders. There is no such Min­istry. But there is a Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion headed by Dr. Hay­dar al-Abadi. How­ever, this is a wel­come change.
There are 170+ news­pa­pers. The first issue of Play­boy was pub­lished. Yes on the num­ber of papers, nope on Play­boy. C’mon guys, this is a con­ser­v­a­tive soci­ety.
Plans have been approved to open 45 McDon­alds restau­rants. Nope. McDonald’s has no plans, accord­ing to spokes­woman Anna Rozenich.
Iraqi Cham­bers of com­merce, busi­nesses, schools and pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tions are elect­ing their lead­ers all over the coun­try.
Over 170,000 credit cards have been issued to qual­i­fied indi­vid­u­als.
For the first time in 35 years, in Kar­bala, thou­sands of Shi­ites cel­e­brate the pil­grim­age of the 12th Imam. Oy. It’s the 3rd Imam — “Imam Husain”:http://www.al-islam.org/short/martyrdom/, the grand­son of the prophet. Details, details… (Thanks to Ameer for this catch!)
Bloom­ing­dales has been signed as the anchor store in the new Metro Bag­dad Mall. Nope. Kelly Moro, a spokes­woman for Bloomingdale’s, wasn’t even sure there was a Metro Bagh­dad Mall, much less one with Bloomingdale’s as an anchor store.
The Coali­tion has com­pleted 13,000+ recon­struc­tion projects, large and small, as part of a strate­gic plan for the recon­struc­tion of Iraq. Sure, I’d buy this.
Amer­i­can busi­nesses are mak­ing tremen­dous prof­its from the recon­struc­tion to off­set the expense and loss the United States suf­fered in the war. And I’d really buy this. I’m sure all those “tremen­dous prof­its” are con­so­la­tion for the fam­i­lies of the 500+ Amer­i­can sol­diers who have died.
Uday and Queasy are dead, and no longer feed­ing Iraqis to the zoo lions, rap­ing the young daugh­ters of local lead­ers to force coop­er­a­tion, tor­tur­ing Iraq’s soc­cer play­ers for los­ing games, or mur­der­ing crit­ics. That’s “Qusay,” buddy. If you’re going to men­tion hor­ri­ble crimes, don’t dis­honor the vic­tims by mak­ing a joke out of their torturer’s name.
Chil­dren aren’t impris­oned or mur­dered when their par­ents dis­agree with the gov­ern­ment. Excel­lent.
Sesame Street and Bar­ney, pre­vi­ously for­bid­den in Iraq, is now aired daily. They weren’t banned before the war.
Polit­i­cal oppo­nents aren’t impris­oned, tor­tured, exe­cuted, maimed, or forced to watch their fam­i­lies die for dis­agree­ing with Sad­dam. This is true.
Mil­lions of long-suffering Iraqis no longer live in per­pet­ual ter­ror. This is a wash. Per­pet­ual, low-grade ter­ror has been replaced by flashes of manic vio­lence, either at the hands of insur­gents, ban­dits or wildly-shooting U.S. troops. The fact is the Iraqi peo­ple are not free from fear, because the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion is still very bad.
As a side effect, in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, (1) Saudis will hold munic­i­pal elec­tions, (2) Qatar will allow cit­i­zens to use credit cards which were for­merly for­bid­den under Islamic law, (3) Jor­dan has begun broad­cast­ing Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming; Friends, Sien­field, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, (4) through Coali­tion influ­ence the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded (first time) to an Iran­ian (Mus­lim woman) who speaks out for human rights/democracy & peace.
(1) Munic­i­pal elec­tions have been promised by have not yet hap­pened. (2) Accord­ing to Finan­cial Times (via Nexis), cit­i­zens of Qatar and Lebanon used credit cards for about $500 mil­lion in pur­chases — in 2002. Saudis alone spent $19 bil­lion with credit cards — again in 2002. “The total extent of credit card usage in the entire Arab Mid­dle East came to $40 bil­lion.” For­bid­den? Doesn’t sound like it. (3) Jor­dan has a “free-trade agreement”:http://www.sice.oas.org/Trade/us-jrd/usjrd.asp with the United States, as of “Sept. 28, 2001″:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010928 – 11.html. It’s stu­pid to think that Jor­dan wouldn’t show some Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion shows, since the agree­ment pre­dates the Iraq war by, oh, 18 months or so. (4) Shirin Ebadi, who won the Peace Prize in 2003, had “some choice words”:http://www.nobel.no/eng_lect_2003b.html for the sit­u­a­tion in Iraq:
More­over, a ques­tion which mil­lions of cit­i­zens in the inter­na­tional civil soci­ety have been ask­ing them­selves for the past few years, par­tic­u­larly in recent months, and con­tinue to ask, is this: why is it that some deci­sions and res­o­lu­tions of the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil are bind­ing, while some other res­o­lu­tions of the coun­cil have no bind­ing force? Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of UN res­o­lu­tions con­cern­ing the occu­pa­tion of the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries by the state of Israel have not been imple­mented promptly, yet, in the past 12 years, the state and peo­ple of Iraq, once on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Secu­rity Coun­cil, and the sec­ond time, in spite of UN Secu­rity Coun­cil oppo­si­tion, were sub­jected to attack, mil­i­tary assault, eco­nomic sanc­tions, and, ulti­mately, mil­i­tary occupation??

Sad­dam is gone. And in a pro­tected POW sta­tus so that he can’t spill the beans on the “U.S. involve­ment in his crimes.”:http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4168225
Iraq is free. An occu­pied coun­try is free?
Lit­tle or none of this infor­ma­tion has been pub­lished by the Press Corps that prides itself on bring­ing you all the news that’s impor­tant. Iraq, under US lead con­trol, has come fur­ther in six months than Ger­many did in seven years or Japan did in nine years fol­low­ing WWII. Mil­i­tary deaths from fanatic Nazi’s and Japan­ese num­bered in the thou­sands and con­tin­ued for over three years after WWII vic­tory was declared. It took the US over four months to clear away the twin tower debris, let alone attempt to build some­thing else in its place.
OK. First of all, lit­tle or none of this infor­ma­tion is accu­rate or even true. And the rest is spin. That’s why you’ve not seen it pub­lished. As for mil­i­tary deaths in the thou­sands after WWII, that’s an “out and out lie”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2087768/. The only mil­i­tary deaths in post-WWII Ger­many and Japan came from things like auto acci­dents and ill­ness. Don’t believe me? The post-war Ger­man resis­tance was “mostly a hoax”:http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/front2003/082903iraq_werewolves_2003.shtml.

Tom Schlesinger, a retired Army major and pro­fes­sor at Ply­mouth State Uni­ver­sity who served in Army intel­li­gence in occu­pied Ger­many, described the were­wolves as “almost a delib­er­ate urban myth.“
“I was in Ger­many all through the sur­ren­der and, although at lower rank, had access to all clas­si­fied intel­li­gence dis­tri­b­u­tion as part of the occu­pa­tion secu­rity force,” Schlesinger said. “The were­wolf story turned out to be mostly a hoax, per­haps some wish­ful think­ing of a few SS offi­cers, though it caused us a few incon­ve­niences due to the phony alerts.“
It’s pos­si­ble, Bid­dis­combe said, that some iso­lated were­wolf cells or offi­cers may have con­tin­ued to oper­ate for a few months after the war. Guerrilla-style attacks did take place against U.S. sol­diers — string­ing wires across roads to decap­i­tate sol­diers or pour­ing sand in gas tanks were two exam­ples — and there were sev­eral sus­pi­cious deaths of U.S.-appointed may­ors. In some towns, leaflets and posters threat­ened Ger­mans who coop­er­ated with the U.S. occu­piers. But none of that activ­ity can be directly attrib­uted to the were­wolves, his­to­ri­ans say.
“The Army put bars on jeeps to pre­vent decap­i­ta­tion by wires, but that was the only action taken by the Army,” said Far­rell of Fort Leav­en­worth. “There’s very lit­tle evi­dence of the were­wolves offer­ing effec­tive resis­tance.“
More­over, his­to­ri­ans say, the com­par­i­son between post­war Ger­many and post­war Iraq is ques­tion­able because of the scale of events tak­ing place now in Iraq. In par­tic­u­lar, the rate of attacks against U.S. occu­pa­tion forces in Ger­many was lower than is the case in Iraq.
There were about 1 mil­lion U.S. troops in occu­pied Ger­many — a ter­ri­tory slightly smaller than Iraq — com­pared with nearly 150,000 U.S. troops in occu­pied Iraq. For the first month or two after the Nazis’ sur­ren­der, there were about the same num­ber of sab­o­tage and sniper attacks in Ger­many as have taken place in post­war Iraq. But in Ger­many, such attacks dropped off after June 1945, a month after the sur­ren­der, and for the rest of that year deaths of U.S. troops sub­sided to “tens.“
“Cer­tainly, there weren’t Amer­i­can troops dying at the rate that they are in Iraq,” Bid­dis­combe said.

In Japan, it was the same. In fact, the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion showed that the post-World War II com­bat deaths in occu­pied Ger­many and Japan were “zero.”:http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1753/MR1753.ch9.pdf Car bombs were not being “exploded at the gates of the occupation’s HQ”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000652.php nine months after “major com­bat oper­a­tions are over.”
Now, take into account that many peo­ple in our gov­ern­ment and media con­tinue to claim on a daily basis on national TV that this con­flict has been a fail­ure. Tak­ing every­thing into con­sid­er­a­tion, even the unfor­tu­nate loss of our sons and daugh­ters in this con­flict, do you think any other coun­try in the world could have accom­plished as much as the United States and its coali­tion part­ners have in so short a period of time?
Go team. When you take into account that you have to resort to clumsy pro­pa­ganda to buck up morale, yeah, things aren’t going well. But hon­estly, this thing is prob­a­bly a hoax and has never been sent out.

The rea­son I spent so much time on this is that the right-wing sites like News­Max and FreeRe­pub­lic have been trum­pet­ing it and it will even­tu­ally make its way into the main­stream media, once Fox picks it up. Think of this post as a pre-buttal. Want to get some truth out of Iraq? Send me back. I’ll report what­ever I see as best I can.

Bomb hits entrance to Green Zone, 20 dead

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Amer­i­can troops stand amongst the flames and debris fol­low­ing a huge car bomb at the Assassin’s Gate in Bagh­dad. (Asso­ci­ated Press)

God. A pow­er­ful sui­cide car bomb was det­o­nated at the main gate of the Amer­i­can “green zone” in Bagh­dad, killing at least 20 and injur­ing 60 more. All of the dead were civil­ians.
This was the first attack on the Amer­i­can com­pound proper, and the Coali­tion Pro­vi­sional Author­ity says that because the car didn’t inside the gate, today’s explo­sion was a secu­rity “suc­cess.“
I hon­estly don’t know what it will take to end the vio­lence there. A com­plete Amer­i­can pull-out? Hello, civil war. Mar­tial law? Let’s not do the resistance’s recruit­ment for them, shall we? Turn the sit­u­a­tion over to the U.N.? Who’s going to sup­ply the troops, Bangladesh?
Can some­one please tell me how this ends?

Uh-oh…

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U.S. troops raided the KDP offices in Kirkuk Sat­ur­day night, seiz­ing AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The Amer­i­cans also arrested a senior KDP leader. A PUK office also was raided.
The raids are con­nected to the “recent eth­nic violence”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000637.php between Turk­men, Arabs and Kurds in Kirkuk that has left almost 20 peo­ple dead since “August”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000445.php#000445. Six have been killed since last week.
“We are dis­ap­pointed by this,” said Moham­mad Sabir, chief PUK rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Wash­ing­ton when I con­tacted him this after­noon. “We are very close to the U.S. but I don’t know [the rea­son for] the raid. Maybe some Turk­men or Arabs gave them infor­ma­tion that the PUK had many weapons. I don’t know, really.“
He added that the PUK was work­ing to clear up any mis­un­der­stand­ing.
The KDP rep­re­sen­ta­tive in D.C., Farhad Barzani, said he knew noth­ing about the raid and couldn’t com­ment.
The “Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party”:http://www.kdp.pp.se/ and the “Patri­otic Union of Kurdistan”:http://www.puk.org are the two main Kur­dish par­ties in Iraq and have been push­ing for a fed­eral sys­tem guar­an­tee­ing Kurds “sig­nif­i­cant autonomy”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000046.php#000046 since last year. Arabs, Turk­men and sur­round­ing coun­tries have all expressed alarm and dis­plea­sure over the idea of sig­nif­i­cant Kur­dish autonomy.

Turkomen to be trained by Egypt

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_TurkishPress.com_ reports that mem­bers of the Iraqi Turk­men Front will be trained by Egypt as part of the new Iraqi Army instead of Turkey.

Turk­men and Arabs have grown closer in the wake of the Kurds’ recent attempts to estab­lish an ethnic-based fed­er­a­tion in Iraq. The two eth­nic groups have assumed a com­mon stance, with both argu­ing that Kirkuk is an Iraqi city after the Kur­dish groups revealed their ambi­tion to include the oil-rich city within their ter­ri­to­ries.
The Turk­men are wait­ing for the sup­port of the Arab world. Last week Iraqi Turk­men Front (ITF) head Faruk Abdul­lah held a series of meet­ings with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Musa and Egypt­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ahmet Mahir. Sources say that Musa and Mahir’s stances were a relief to the ITF, and can be sum­ma­rized as fol­lows:
“Iraq’s ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity will be pro­tected. We can’t allow one group to dom­i­nate another. Kirkuk is an Iraqi city. It can’t be left to the dom­i­na­tion of one eth­nic group. Egypt will do its utmost to pro­tect both Iraq’s ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity and the rights of every eth­nic group in the country.”

While the Turks might seem an obvi­ous choice to train the Turk­men, thanks to their his­toric ties to the Turk­men, ITF spokesman Ahmed Muratli says that “Turkey is now out of the pic­ture. The U.S. signed train­ing agree­ments with Jor­dan and Egypt, not Turkey.” Kur­dish lead­ers Jalal Tal­a­bani and Mas­soud Barzani have also expressed oppo­si­tion to the Turks pro­vid­ing train­ing, despite (or per­haps because of) its prox­im­ity and its NATO ties.
A Turkmen-Arab alliance should be expected as the third largest eth­nic group in Iraq finds com­mon cause with the largest (Arabs) in the wake of Kur­dish attempts to add Kirkuk to their pos­ses­sions in the post-Saddam Iraq. Both Arabs and Turk­men have argued that Kirkuk is an Iraqi city and not Kur­dish. Vio­lence in that city last week left at least two peo­ple dead and more injured when _peshmergas_ fired into a demon­stra­tion of “Arabs and Turk­men protest­ing the Kurds’ pro­posed plans for Iraqi federalism.”:http://b2i2.thestonecutters.net/archives/000637.php

Kurds will Keep autonomy

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The Bush admin­is­tra­tion has decided the “Kurds can keep their spe­cial status”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/international/middleeast/05KURD.html in Iraq, because the accel­er­ated timetable for hand­ing over sov­er­eignty by June 30 is too quick to solve the prob­lem.

“Once we struck the Nov. 15 agree­ment, there was a real­iza­tion that it was best not to touch too heav­ily on the sta­tus quo,” said an admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial. “The big issue of fed­er­al­ism in the Kur­dish con­text will have to wait for the Iraqis to resolve. For us to try to resolve it in a month or two is sim­ply too much to attempt.”

Indeed, this will be a thorny issue. There is wide­spread fear that a loose fed­er­a­tion — what the Kurds are demand­ing — could lead to inde­pen­dence for Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, trig­ger­ing insta­bil­ity through­out the region. Turkey is con­stantly mak­ing growl­ing noises that the Iraqis Kurds should be kept on a tight leash in Bagh­dad through a cen­tral­ized gov­ern­ment.
This deci­sion basi­cally for­mal­izes the cur­rent sta­tus quo, with the Kurds hav­ing their own gov­ern­ment that is more or less inde­pen­dent of Bagh­dad. They cur­rently have con­trol over their bor­ders with Syria, Iran and Turkey, their own secu­rity forces with the _peshmergas_ and sub­stan­tial abil­ity to col­lect taxes and other rev­enues. Where Kirkuk fits into all this is unclear, but the Kurds want it. As Mas­soud Barzani, head of the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party “said:”:http://www.krg.org/docs/mb-federalism-kurdistan-dec03.asp

The exist­ing [self-rule] sit­u­a­tion of the Kurds is their legit­i­mate right and it is based on the right to self-determination, which is part of inter­na­tional law. After 12 years of self-rule, with­out the con­trol of the Bagh­dad gov­ern­ment, the Kurds will not accept less than their exist­ing sit­u­a­tion. They aspire for the inclu­sion of the other Kur­dish areas in the Kur­dis­tan region, which, before the lib­er­a­tion of Iraq, were sub­ject to the pol­icy of demo­graphic change by the [for­mer] cen­tral author­ity.
Those who are inter­ested in the issue of a united Iraq, should know very well that it would be dif­fi­cult for them to con­vince the Kur­dish peo­ple after all these tragedies, ordeals and dis­place­ment poli­cies to remain deprived from their rights in Iraq. This makes it essen­tial that the brother Arabs respect the Kur­dish deci­sion and would not be hes­i­tant regard­ing [the ful­fil­ment of] any right of the Kur­dish rights in Iraq. By this I mean that there are now some Iraqi and for­eign sides that, to some extent, point to the fed­er­al­ism of gov­er­norates, which is rejected by the Kurds, because the Kur­dish peo­ple have not been strug­gling through­out his­tory for sep­a­rat­ing the Kur­dish gov­er­norates from each other. They have strug­gled for the safe­guard­ing of Kurdistan’s his­tor­i­cal bor­ders and not dis­man­tling it. The Kurds’ achieve­ments in 1970 [when their polit­i­cal move­ment signed the 11 March 1970 agree­ment with the Iraqi gov­ern­ment, rec­og­niz­ing an autonomous sta­tus for the Kurds to be pro­claimed within four years], were far more than fed­er­al­ism of the gov­er­norates, which is called for now.
The Iraqi issue should not be set­tled sep­a­rately from the Kur­dish issue, because the Kur­dish peo­ple, who have a cause, con­sider that fed­er­al­ism is the best solu­tion for their issue. There­fore, all future [Iraqi] gov­ern­ments should avoid the fatal errors that suc­ces­sive Iraqi gov­ern­ments in Bagh­dad have com­mit­ted, and not neglect the will of the Kur­dish peo­ple, because it is a will which is gen­er­ated from an end­less strength. The Kur­dish peo­ple will not allow its will, which is insep­a­ra­ble from the will of the Kur­dis­tan par­lia­ment, to be neglected.

As for the Amer­i­cans to just kind of pass this issue off on the Iraqis, it’s wor­ri­some, but not really sur­pris­ing. The Amer­i­cans orig­i­nally planned to rapidly rein­te­grate Iraqi Kur­dis­tan into the new Iraq, but the post-war chaos and the CPA’s strug­gles to estab­lish itself quickly caused that plan to be jet­ti­soned. The _peshmergas_ were exempted from the gen­eral order to dis­arm Iraqi mili­tia. And after the CPA asked them to dis­man­tle check­points between their ter­ri­tory and the rest of Iraq, the Kurds were then asked to re-establish them when the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion failed to sta­bi­lize.
As Barzani said, this is _the_ issue that will lit­er­ally make or break a new Iraq, and the wrong moves made in the heat of the moment could lead to the splin­ter­ing of the coun­try, civil war or a regional con­flict involv­ing Turkey and Iran. It really needs to be han­dled del­i­cately, and the Amer­i­cans — as the dom­i­nant power in the region — need to be deeply involved. (In the same way the Amer­i­cans should be involved in the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict.) Nation­al­ism runs deep in Iraq, Kur­dish and oth­er­wise, and I’m not con­vinced that events and the pas­sions of a Kur­dish pop­u­lace won’t get out of hand, despite the best inten­tions of politi­cians.
Still, maybe this will work out OK. But don’t for­get the Turkomen and the Arabs of Kirkuk. They will protest loudly about this, and prob­a­bly vio­lently. The Kurds will have to be on their best behav­ior to prove to the Turks to the north and the Sunni Mus­lims to the south that they can be trusted to respect their rights in areas under Kur­dish con­trol. No, Kurds don’t have their rights respected in Turkey to the degree that “Turkomen are pro­tected in Iraq”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/000360.php#000360 — even now. Yes, it’s a dou­ble stan­dard. But it’s a stan­dard that has to be met if the Iraq is to stay uni­fied.
Boy, this just delayed my essay on the Kurds.