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Tuesday, November 3, 2009 10:34 PM
Iraq's Turkmen: A voice from the past
Kirkuk, Iraq – Most of the chairs at Abdullah's Restaurant still have the plastic wrappings on them.
The large popular eatery on the northern outskirts of the city of Kirkuk, capital of the ethnically mixed and oil-rich province of the same name, has been reopened for a few months, but people in these parts like to leave the wrappings on things – furniture, gearshifts – as long as they can.
The restaurant, famous for its enormous helpings and excellent grilled fish, closed abruptly last December when it was the target of a suicide bombing. Fifty-five people were killed and 120 injured in an attack that targeted a large private lunch between some officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (the movement of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani) and some prominent Arab tribal leaders.
I stopped by Abdullah's before leaving northern Iraq to meet with a leader of the area's Turkmen community. Riad Sari Kahya is the leader of the Turkmenli Party, one of several Turkmen parties in this province.
Mr. Riad served his people in Iraq's provisional government and helped draft the transitional authority's constitution (the precursor to Iraq's formal constitution).
“The Turkmen people [members of a central Asian race that moved west into Turkey and into what is now Iraq and Syria several hundred years ago] made up almost half the population of the province,” he told me, “before Saddam.”
“The Kurds were about 40 per cent of the population,” he said.
“And the Arabs?” I asked.
“Less than 10 per cent,” he replied. “They arrived here only very lately.”
Link to this postThursday, October 29, 2009 09:57 PM
Next year in Ankara
The Kurds of Northern Iraq have a love-hate relationship with Turkey.
On the one hand, they hate how a long line of Turkish governments denied Turkey’s own 12 million Kurds the right to use their Kurdish language, and compelled them to be like Turks. On the other hand, it was to Turkey that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds attempted to flee in 1991 when Saddam Hussein put down their uprising.
It has often been said that Turkey does not want to see an independent state of Kurdistan carved out of Iraq. Such a state, they say, might give an incentive to Turkey’s own Kurds to fight for independence.
To make sure the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) remains a part of a federal Iraq, Turkey has lobbied hard to make sure this oil-rich province of Kirkuk, does not fall into KRG hands, and provide economic viability to an independent state. Ankara insisted, for example, that U.S. forces, when defeating Saddam in 2003, be the ones to occupy both Kirkuk and nearby Mosul, not wanting either to fall under Kurdish administration.
While the main struggle in northern Iraq is between Arab and Kurd, for more than three centuries, tens of thousands of Turkomen (descendents of Ottoman Turks who moved here) also have resided in this area.
Wanting to ensure Turkomen interests also were safeguarded, and a Kurdish state avoided, Turkish President Abdullah Gul travelled to Baghdad in March, the first visit to Iraq by a Turkish leader in 33 years (even though the two states share a lengthy border).
There, he did two things of note: First, he argued for a special status for the province of Kirkuk, and not one within the Kurdish sphere; second, he used the term Kurdistan Regional Government when referring to that Kurdish sphere. The use of such a term crossed a “red line” in Turkish policy, being a form of recognition never before given. KRG President Masoud Barzani was quick to welcome the move, even though the argument for Kirkuk’s special status made the blood of many Kurds boil.
Lest anyone think the Gul remark was a slip of the tongue, this week it was announced that Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu would soon be visiting Erbil for meetings with KRG leaders including President Barzani.
I wanted to see whether Kurds here in Kirkuk love or hate Turkey more. I asked several of them the following: What if the government of Iraq became so pro-Iran in its policy that it became a satellite of Tehran (a scenario some envision because of Iraq’s Shia majority). Would you prefer to stay within Iran’s orbit, or would you prefer to become part of Turkey?
Everyone I asked said that, given the choice of Iran or Turkey, they would opt for Turkey.
Sherzad Adil, a Kurdish member of Kirkuk’s provincial council and an ardent Kurdish nationalist, said that “if Turkey were to offer all the basic rights to its Kurds, sure, I’d be happy to join Turkey.”
“In fact,” he added, “if Turkey became a member of the EU, I would RUN to join it.”
“ I’d like to be European,” he said.
Sunday, October 25, 2009 10:11 AM
Keeping safe in Mosul
Mideast bureau chief Patrick Martin returns to Iraq for his fourth visit – his first since 2004 – for a series of reports, blogs and audio diaries from a country emerging from war.
“We are safe now,” said Mirhan, the driver. “I can see our flag.”
Sighting the red, white and green bars with a bright yellow sun in the middle was a huge relief for my Kurdish driver and interpreter Sherzad.
Mosul, as they remind me all the time, is the most dangerous place in Iraq right now. And we had finally put it behind us.
Once the cultural and commercial centre of the entire region, Mosul was supposed to be part of modern-day Syria, until the British changed the map and took charge of the city in 1918 as part of their League of Nations mandate over Mesopotamia.
Today, its neighbourhoods of beautiful old homes are the scene of frequent bombings and assassinations.
As we neared the city from the east, the sheikh we were planning to visit dispatched a truck of Peshmerga (Kurdish guerrilla fighters) to escort us the rest of the way. Rocketing down the highway, with its siren wailing and lights flashing, it was to keep up with it, as the truck forced all other drivers to move to the right and let this important visitor and his powerful entourage pass.
Frankly, I thought we’d all get killed in a traffic accident instead of by a roadside bomb or shooting attack. But we did cover the 20 km to Mosul in record time. And we didn’t have to sit in long checkpoint lineups where one is a sitting duck.
I always hate driving with military or other armed guards, and avoid doing so whenever I can. In seeking to protect you, they unwittingly insulate you from the very people and places you are there to report on. Not only that, they often will serve as a beacon to the very people looking to kill or kidnap you.
In this case, however, there was no choice. My driver and interpreter, two trustworthy, experienced Kurds, said they wouldn’t take me to Mosul unless I followed the advice of the man we were going to meet.
Friday, October 23, 2009 07:46 PM
For Kurds, it has always been a question of land
SULAYMANIYA, Iraq
The Kurds of northern Iraq, are a bit like Palestinians: They are without a country of their own and they cling to the memories of glory days gone by.
One such glorious event is marked by a prominent monument in the mountain pass as you drive from Kirkuk to Sulaymania, in the eastern part of Kurdistan, not far from the Iranian border.
It was here that Sheikh Mahmoud Barzanji is reported to have held off for several days in 1919 British forces then seeking control of all of Mesopatamia.
Sheikh Mahmoud, who would briefly be recognized (from 1922-24) as king of an independent Kurdistan, was wounded in the battle at this place called Takya. He is said to have holed up under a giant boulder that, today, marks the spot.
Photographs of the great leader and other early Kurdish heroes adorn the lobby of the venerable Parezh Hotel in downtown Sulaymania.
But not all lessons of the past are ones the Kurds want to emulate.
Take the civil war that broke out between the two dominant Kurdish movements: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Masoud Barzani, now President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani, now President of Iraq.
Their intense rivalry turned into open and deadly conflict in 1994, just three years after a Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein that followed the first Gulf War, and resulted in the United States establishing a protective no-fly zone over the territory of this Kurdish enclave.
It happened, so I learned yesterday, that members of the extended Barzani family owned land east of here, near the Iranian border. However, in the 1970s, the government of Saddam Hussein confiscated the land and later sold it at auction.
The new owners were members of the Talabani family and they enjoyed quiet title until the 1991 Kurdish uprising. Once Kurdish control was exerted over most of Kurdistan, and the two movements were free to move beyond their respective territories (the KDP in the west and the PUK in the east) the former Barzani owners went back to claim their land.
They were greeted with hostility by the Talabanis who had held the land for most of two decades. In the battles that ensued members of each side were killed and others wounded.
That event triggered the civil war.
After two years of fighting, during which the PUK sought help from Iran and the KDP from Saddam Hussein, the two sides settled and, today, operate as partners in a coalition that has had several MPs elected to the national parliament, and that jointly administers the KRG.
The notion of one party reclaiming land that had been confiscated by Saddam Hussein and lived in by others, is exactly the kind of issue that today afflicts Kurds and Arabs along what is known as the Trigger Line in northern Iraq.
Kurdish owned land was taken from its owners during Saddam’s Arabization campaign in the 1970s. The vacated premises were occupied by Arab Iraqis, brought in from the south, and the Kurds fled north to other Kurdish communities.
In 2003, however, with the U.S. defeat of Saddam Hussein, Kurdish forces and, later, civilians, moved into this area and reclaimed it. These disputed territories are the nub of the dispute right now, triggering violence along that dividing line and threatening all-out conflict.
And the lesson of the Kurdish civil war? Well, despite their historic claim, the Barzanis did not regain title of the prized land; the Talabanis got to keep it.
This is not an outcome the Kurds hope to see repeated in the disputed territories.
Thursday, October 29, 2009 10:04 PM
On the streets of Baghdad, it's every man for himself
Mideast bureau chief Patrick Martin returns to Iraq for his fourth visit – his first since 2004 – for a series of reports, blogs and audio diaries from a country emerging from war.
Today he files an audio blog on major infrastructure issues in Iraq.
Monday, October 19, 2009 04:32 PM
A woman's story illustrates Iraq's recent history
What was I thinking? It was such a rookie mistake.
Walking into the office of Layla al-Khafaji, a Shia member of Iraq's parliament, I warmly extended my hand to shake hers. She didn't miss a beat.
Without a second's hesitation, the attractive 52-year-old woman, clad in a purple patterned hijab and solid purple robe, engaged me with a smile and held out her hand, not toward mine, but motioning me to take a seat in the chair to the left of her desk.
Red-faced, I took my seat, while she directed a staff member to bring us tea.
Layla al-Khafaji's story is a remarkable one, and she said she was thrilled to tell it to a fellow Canadian.
Hailing from a well-off farming family from southern Iraq, Ms. Al-Khafaji studied electrical engineering at Baghdad University, graduating in 1981. “I was the only woman in my class,” she says proudly.
While at university, she was pressured to join Saddam Hussein's governing Baath Party. She refused. “In 1976, they had poisoned my bother,” she said, believing he had been deliberately killed. “I was not going to join them.”
Eventually, she was forced to sign “an execution agreement,” which stated that if she ever joined an organization opposed to the government, she agreed to be executed. Only three months into a government-assigned job, she was arrested.
“It was International Women's Day,” she said: “March 8th, 1982.”
“I remember catching a glimpse of the [Tigris] river before they put a blindfold on me. I had heard the stories of what happened in prison; I thought it would be the last time I ever saw it.”
Today, her office at the headquarters of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) is on the corniche that overlooks that same river. But she had to endure a great deal before she saw it again.
“For six months I was held without charge and tortured,” she says calmly. “They used electrical shocks, they beat me. They did everything you can imagine.”
“Sometimes they hung me from the ceiling, and looked up...” she recalled, leaning her head to one side and slyly looking upwards. “They laughed.”
After six months, she was convicted of anti-government activity – visiting a woman whose brother was in prison – and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life-imprisonment.
When Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait led to his defeat in the First Gulf War, international pressure grew to have the regime release political prisoners. Ms. Al-Khafaji was among those let out near the end of 1991. She had spent almost 10 of her 34 years behind bars.
Still subjected to frequent harassment, she was spirited to Lebanon by her family who bribed the necessary Iraqi officials. There, along with a brother and his family who had fled earlier, she walked into the Canadian embassy and asked for asylum.
“The approval came much faster than I ever imagined,” she said.
Before she knew it, she had settled with her brother's family in a Toronto suburb near the corner of Lawrence and Victoria Park.
She upgraded her degree, went to work for Celestica, then a subsidiary of IBM, and received Canadian citizenship.
“I was very successful in my work,” she said. But after Saddam's fall in 2003, she didn't hesitate to get involved again in her native Iraq.
“I can tell you, I was inspired by what I saw in Canada – the freedom, the democracy, the way governments would be formed, the multiculturalism, the acceptance of ‘the other.' It was a wonder to me and I was determined to apply these things in Iraq.”
Ms. Al-Khafaji helped in drafting the new Iraqi constitution, worked on the 2005 transitional election and was elected herself in December, 2005.
Today, she is close to the party's new president Ammar al-Hakim, son of the late Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim, who died earlier this year.
Ms. Al-Khafaji says it was her faith that kept her going during her years in prison, and it's her faith that she wishes to bring to fruition in the next Iraqi government. But she insists that such a government would not be a narrow theocracy. “I learned the value of multiculturalism in Canada and I'm determined to apply it here.”
Still single, Layla al-Khafaji says she is not saddened by the way her life evolved.
“Being single gives me time to work on the things I love. I am very ambitious,” she says.
Then, in an unexpected admission, she adds: “I'm also very picky, and I'm still looking for Mr. Right.”
Sunday, October 18, 2009 09:47 PM
Iraq's Sunni-Shia split thrives
Baghdad – “How do you like the checkpoints?” asked the retired Iraqi diplomat as we drove together across part of Baghdad and stopped for the umpteenth time for a seemingly meaningless inspection.
“These people are so stupid,” he said, motioning toward the soldiers.
“They don't know what they're looking for. They don't even know their orders.”
The 60-something former official, was tall, about 185 cm, and cultured in his appearance. He wore a small neat mustache and, otherwise, was clean shaven. His clothes, though casual, were well made and carefully pressed. He somehow kept his expensive brown shoes shining even in this, a city of dust, debris and detritus.
He was the kind of man to whom guards and doormen naturally gravitated.
He exuded importance and they wanted to shake his hand, almost kiss his ring.
The diplomat, who had served in South and Southeast Asia, had retired to Damascus when things became particularly violent here in 2006. He returned to visit his married daughter who still was at university here.
He is a Sunni, a member of the class of Iraqis who had fought with the Turks against the British in the First World War, who rose up against the British administration here in the 1920s, and later were selected by those same British to be the new country's ruling class, just as their ancestors had been chosen by the Ottomans.
The soldiers to whom the diplomat referred so disparagingly were Shiites; as were many of the serving class who rushed to greet him or hold his door open.
Mostly from the South of the country, the Shiites constitute a majority in Iraq. Indeed, their branch of Islam was founded here 13 centuries ago, when descendents of the Prophet Mohammed were martyred. The faith later spread east to Iran and other countries.
As the former diplomat and I walked the final 200 meters or so to the walled home where he was staying, he told me he had heard that there was a conspiracy being planned by the leaders of the Shia community to convulse the country in a new civil war. “They work for Iran,” he said.
“You Westerners are always lecturing us about democracy, as if it's some magic cure,” he chided me.
“Well look what it's brought us: hundreds of political parties and rampant corruption.”
“The politicians lie to the people just to get elected, especially Hakim,” he said, referring to Ammar al-Hakim, leader of the country's largest Shia religious party.
“God help us,” he said. “What this country needs is another dictator.
That's the only way to keep those people in line.”
He bade me goodnight, and carefully locked his iron garden door behind him.
Friday, October 16, 2009 02:14 PM
Kerbala crowded and surprisingly calm
Kerbala, the holiest site of all Shia cities, was crowded and surprisingly calm today as thousands of people, including hundreds of pilgrims from around the world, attended Friday midday prayers.
I say “surprisingly calm” because less than 48 hours ago, a series of three bombs ripped through the city centre a block from the twin mosques of the historic martyrs Hussein and Abbass.
Most of those killed by the bombs (about 10) were eating in a crowded café on al-Abbass Street, just outside one of the Iraqi Army checkpoints that ring the central mosques.
This day, the site is cordoned off with plastic yellow tape that reads, in English, “Danger – Chemical Hazard.”
The small white plastic tables are strewn about what’s left of the little hole-in-the-wall eatery.
The people walking past, heading to the mosques for their most sacred weekly event, seem oblivious to what happened here. And the lengthy Friday sermon, delivered by a representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, refers only to “the incident” that happened this week.
He speaks not of the dead, but encourages the living to remain calm and careful.
“Many people don’t accept the new political situation in our country,” he explains, and calls on neighbouring countries to make sure they don’t allow any such people to slip into Iraq from across their borders.
It was a far cry from the sentiments expressed by many Shia Iraqis from 2004-2007 when bloody sectarian violence raged in the country, pitting Shia against Sunni.
Most people here seem to welcome the imam’s moderate approach, especially in view of the fact that just last Saturday a similar series of three bombs ripped through the Sunni town of Ramadi 100 km northwest of here. These Kerbala explosions seemed to be in response to that incident.
But perhaps the bomb stops here.
Thursday, October 15, 2009 04:50 PM
Iraqis safer, but restricted
Mideast bureau chief Patrick Martin returns to Iraq for his fourth visit – his first since 2004 – for a series of reports, blogs and audio diaries from a country emerging from war.
Today he files an audio blog on the security situation in Iraq.
Follow his journey here over the next 10 days.
The security question
Globe and Mail Middle East correspondent Patrick Martin's Oct. 15 audio blog on violence in Iraq
Thursday, October 15, 2009 04:32 PM
Erbil, Iraq welcomes a galaxy of characters
Mideast bureau chief Patrick Martin returns to Iraq for his fourth visit – his first since 2004 – for a series of reports, blogs and audio diaries from a country emerging from war.
Erbil, Iraq – The lobby of the Erbil International Hotel in the Kurdish capital of northern Iraq is a lot like the bar in the original Star Wars movie – a varied lot of interesting people pass through it all the time.
You have KRG (it stands for Kurdish Regional Government) officials in their sleek Western suits, the senior of which have their details of personal security guards hovering around them; the Western cowboy types here to discuss oil exploration; the rough-hewn Peshmerga (Kurdish militia men) in turbans and baggy pants (they checked their rifles at the door); a few diplomats (German) up from Baghdad; a handful of casual aid workers thirsty for a beer, and sometimes there's even some not-so-subtle Israeli tourists taking a peek at a predominantly Arab country that was long off-limits to them.
On this day the majority of folks are Western business people here for a trade show that has taken almost every hotel room in the entire city. (I believe I got the last one.) There may still be sporadic violence in parts of Iraq, including in the Kurdish/Arab North, and the central government's bureaucracy may resemble the labyrinthian Ottomans' (with even less efficiency) but the Kurdish Regional Government is open for business.
You don't even need an Iraqi visa to travel to the three provinces that fall under Kurdish control – they'll give you a visa at the airport. But beware: While it used to be possible to enter all of Iraq through the Kurdish back door, these days the central government officials are checking documents even on domestic flights and at checkpoints on the roads.
A KRG-issued visa will no longer be accepted for travel to the rest of Iraq governed by Baghdad.
It's just another indicator of growing differences between the two competing jurisdictions.
Of course, you won't find the Iraq-bound flights on the website of Royal Jordanian Airlines, but they exist. There's a daily morning flight from Amman to Baghdad, and nightly flights to Erbil.
You can't book seats on any of these flights online, however, only by cash to the airline directly.
At least Baghdad and Erbil have that much in common.
