By Raz Jabary
“Even after having spent millions on the matter of Kirkuk since 1963 we found that the Kurds still comprised a 49% majority.” These were the words of convicted Ali Hassan Al-Majid (or ‘Chemical Ali’) in 1989 from a recorded tape message played during the Anfal trial.
Now that the planned Iraqi national elections of January 16th are nearing Kurds have started to voice themselves fiercely about their rights over the matter of Kirkuk. But where have the voices of our MPs in the Iraqi Parliament been before? Why did no-one take it upon them to realize that our persisting silence had resulted into the issue of Kirkuk being incrementally pushed to the background?
With the numerous amounts of Kurdish satellite television channels reaching into the homes of millions of Kurds worldwide, why is there so much time devoted to broadcasts of various music and video clips as opposed to informative matters and callers programmes of panellists debating on important everyday matters such as Kirkuk? Why a very strict time limitation on the few of these rushing informative programmes which are being run?
If claims are made by the public that prominent experienced Kurdish politicians officially in service of all the Iraqi people such as President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Secretary Hoshyar Zebari cannot become indulged in the inter-ethnic dispute around Kirkuk, why have these prominent leading figures not instead set up a special group consisting of other politicians such as prominent MPs in service of the Kurdistan Alliance to deal with such controversial matters and report directly to influential international impartial observing bodies such as the United Nations?
If the claim is made that Kirkuk’s multi-ethnicity, in particular parts of the Arab and Turkmen populations, will not be fully co-operative with such a consensus to be carried out by an official and independent body, let alone by Kurdish authorities, then why has the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) not taken the responsibility upon itself to record important statistical data in a consensus on the number of Kurds originally from Kirkuk who have come to build up their lives in the more northern three Kurdish governorates of Duhok, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah that do fall under their official authority?
Only now, more than eighteen years after the establishment of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan has the KRG started to collect significant general statistical data from Kurdish households in terms of their places of residence and the number of people that they comprise.
Pointing out the Kurds’ elected power base in the new Iraq, we have been able to voice our dissatisfaction on the use of the former Iraqi flag widely associated to Saddam and printed on the war planes used to attack innocent Kurdish villagers and farmers and gas Kurdish towns such as Halabja, and instead get a new one implemented.
A further while back, just after the toppling of the former regime, the Kurds’ strong opposition to the intertwining of former Ba’ath Iraqi soldiers into the ‘new’ Iraqi army prevented Bremer as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to doing so.
Why then did we not recognize and utilize this power when the Maliki government was about to fall in 2007? Why did we express our immediate support to the continuation of the government? I am not claiming that we should not have, but we could have provided our support only after making clear of reminding the government in Baghdad and insisting on their support in turn for nonnegotiable conditions important to us to be met such as the implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution.
Moving away from putting all the blame on Baghdad, it is quite clear that leading Kurdish political parties have come to damage the process of Kirkuk by their strong emphasis on their parties’ continued existence. The parties seem to be reluctant in appointing new and promising recruits who they fear might not turn out to remain ‘loyal’ by insisting on remaining with the relevant party. In doing so, although they are not neglecting their dedication and effort to an important issue like Kirkuk, they are expressing their party’s preference over it, in some eyes justified by the perceived potential threat of a new rising party as demonstrated by the recent overwhelming support for the Goran (‘Change’) movement.
In all, it is considerably shocking when thinking of how long we have remained quiet on this matter or for how long negotiations have not resulted in anything. It is common knowledge that the Kurds have many political rivals, but so also do we have many friends among Kirkuk’s non-Kurdish population as part of the ‘Brotherhood’ movement.
By remaining quiet and allowing fierce opposition groups such as the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) commit themselves to lying lobbying or indeed anything necessary to ensure justifiable Kurdish gains in the matter are prevented we are gradually allowing these groups to convince the public that their views are the right ones and what they are claiming is the truth.
The actual truth however is that Iraq can never be the democracy it is envisaged to be by many if already constitutional laws are ignored and opposed by its own government, which ironically came into being on the basis of this constitution. Many non-Kurds in and around Kirkuk do support the return of the city to the Kurdistan Region where Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrians, Armenians, Chaldeans and many other already live in harmony together and enjoy the relative safety, peace and prosperity of the region as opposed to other parts if Iraq.
© Rudaw
