Arab Iraqis might not mind Kurdish independence as much as some expect. The Baghdad-based blogger Omar Fadhil wasn’t allowed to meet me in Erbil because he’s an Arab (more on that later), so he told me in an e-mail that maybe he could meet me someday when I “visit Iraq.” It isn’t just the Kurds who have come to internalize the border between this region and the rest of the country.
Schoolteacher Raz Rasool lived for a while in Baghdad before returning to Suleimaniya. She thinks that if the Kurds decide to secede most Arab Iraqis will shrug and say, “Fine then, get out”—at least as long as they don’t try to take Kirkuk’s oil fields with them. (Granted, that’s a big if.)
“Arab Iraqis don’t care about any of our problems in Kurdistan,” Rasool said. “They think of our problems as our problems, not theirs. They don’t care that the Turkish military has soldiers stationed in parts of northern Iraq. That’s because they don’t think about Kurdistan as part of Iraq. They only care about Kirkuk, and they only care about Kirkuk because of the oil.”
Many Arab Iraqis aren’t even aware that Saddam’s regime committed genocide against Kurds. “A gum-smacking teenage Arab girl from Baghdad recently visited the genocide museum here,” Rasool told me, referring to an old Ba’ath Party dungeon that has since been converted into a monument to the tortured and the dead. The girl had no idea hundreds of thousands were murdered. She had no idea 5,000 villages were completely annihilated. She didn’t know that thousands, including children, were tortured to death in the prison blocks.
“She broke down in tears,” Rasool said. “She only knew that Kurds were supposedly troublemakers. She said she was so sorry, that she was ashamed to be an Arab.”
A Tightly Guarded Utah
Some Middle Eastern countries—Egypt, for instance—are grim, depressing places that feel like they’re circling the drain. Iraqi Kurdistan is optimistic, full of hope, infused top to bottom with a go-go, build-build attitude. Vast tracts of lovely new housing developments are under construction all over the major cities. Suleimaniya, the region’s cultural capital, has doubled in population in the last three years. It’s up to around 800,000 now, although no one is sure how many people actually live there. Like all cities that undergo rapid urban migration, most of the newcomers live on the outskirts. Unlike most Third World cities that explode in population, the outskirts of Suleimaniya are more prosperous than the old inner city.
Urban beautification campaigns are under way everywhere. Freshly cut bricks are being laid into sidewalks. Enormous new parks, some so large you might need a car to get from one end to the other, can be found in both Erbil and Suleimaniya. Highways are well-signed and in perfect condition. Advertisements for DSL Internet connections line the road from Erbil to the resort town of Salahhadin. There are no statues of tyrants, dead or alive. Most of the statues I saw were of poets. It’s a different world from the shattered country below. It’s easy to imagine the place as a reasonably well-functioning conservative democracy, a moderately prosperous Utah of the Middle East.
The longer central Iraq burns, the more distant the Kurds feel from Baghdad. But while the Kurds may not feel like they belong to Iraq, they don’t pretend they aren’t still shackled to it.
Erbil’s faux Sheraton is surrounded on four sides by six-inch thick concrete bomb blast walls. It isn’t physically possible to drive anywhere near the front entrance, let alone park there. Well-armed soldiers at the far end of the driveway search every inch inside, outside, and underneath each car before manually lowering the saw-toothed tire-busting blockade. Security agents in a squat concrete building scrutinize everyone who walks toward the front door from behind one-way glass windows.
Erbil’s international airport likewise is built with one-way glass. Step outside, turn around, and you’ll find that you can’t see a thing inside the terminal.
Every time I walked into a government office in Suleimaniya, security guards asked if I had any guns. I didn’t, but there was always a pile of them on a table that others had dropped off before they were let inside.
I expected the Peshmerga to let me blow through the checkpoints with minimal hassle because I’m American. Instead, they scrutinized me just like everyone else. A couple of times I got pulled out of the line for even closer inspection. The soldiers were cold, serious professionals. The only people who have an easy time at these checkpoints are those who perfectly speak Kurdish with a local accent. That’s the one trait that can’t easily be faked, and it’s the only trait that can be trusted.
Kurds love freedom, but they love checkpoints too; in general, they see them as the barrier that holds back the horrors from the south. People don’t merely trust and appreciate the security. They feel it. A detached garden restaurant on the grounds of the “Sheraton” has all-glass walls on three sides. The only wall made of metal and stone is the one behind the well-stocked bar. Suburban Suleimaniya is a wonderland of brand-new modern shiny glass buildings. No one in their right mind in Baghdad would build brand-new structures like these.
During Beirut’s civil war the profits of window and glass companies perfectly tracked the rise and fall of the level of violence. When people felt safe from the chaos of war, they replaced the windows blown out from bullets, rockets, and car bombs. When they felt under siege and pessimistic, they didn’t bother. Iraqi Kurds are so optimistic they’re putting up new glass buildings for the first time in their history.
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