With my Kurdish friend Karzan Sherabayani, I shot a few more reports in Northern Iraq. He calls it ‘South Kurdistan’ and that is already the contentious issue. The vast majority of 30 to 40 million Kurds dream to have their own independent state. They form the largest nation without a country since their territory got divided into Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey after the First World War.
In 2003, I had expected the Americans to adopt the lessons from former Yugoslavia and divide Iraq into three parts along ethnic divisions: Kurds in the North, Sunnis around Baghdad and Shias in the South - effectively going back to the former provinces of the Ottoman empire. However, they missed the opportunity. Only recently, the Americans started talking about such an option because they cannot see an end to the ongoing sectarian mass slaughter. Why don’t we ever learn lessons from history?
Of course, the international community is always worried that redrawing borders would encourage separatist movements in their own countries. However, the carnage in former Yugoslavia and now in Iraq clearly shows that you cannot force people with different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds to trust each other. Why do we only recognise this after hundreds of thousands of people get killed and millions end up as refugees? It is all happening again right now in front of our eyes.
Interestingly, none of the Kurdish leaders in Northern Iraq is talking about independence. Only the man in the street is using that dangerous word. The politicians know that the word independence is highly explosive and would provoke fierce opposition in all surrounding countries, particularly in Turkey which has a Kurdish minority of nearly 20 million people. Anybody wondering whether Turkey should be integrated into the EU should not worry only about the clash of Islam and Western values but about the Kurdish issue, which needs to be resolved urgently.
Links of our reports on the PBS Frontline World website:
On patrol with Kirkuk’s police chief (July 2006)
The fight over Kirkuk’s oil (July 2006)
Return to Kirkuk (January 2005)
Sunday, 23 July 2006
