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NEWS & LETTERS, November 2002
Our Life and TimesKurdish autonomy
The rival Kurdish organizations, the Kurdish Democratic
Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) met for a National
Assembly in Arbil in northern Iraq, on Oct. 4. Their agenda was to propose a
federal Iraqi state divided between Kurds and Arabs once Saddam Hussein is
overthrown. Iraq's population of 22 million consists of nearly 4.4
million Kurds. The rest of the population consists of Arabs, Assyrians,
Turkomans, Armenians, Lurs, and Iranians. Shiite Muslim Arabs constitute 60% of
the population. In 1991, when Kurds and Shiites rose up against Saddam
after the Gulf War, the U.S. government refused to help them. Thousands were
killed by the Iraqi army and 1.5 million Kurds fled Iraq. Since then, Iraqi
Kurds have established a de facto autonomous region in northern Iraq under
the protection of the "No Fly Zones" and the UN which administers the
"food for oil" program imposed on Saddam Hussein. Kurds now study in
their own Kurdish language and Kurdish media have been thriving. The Bush administration has insisted that once Saddam is
overthrown, this Kurdish enclave must rejoin Iraq. It is opposed to an
independent Kurdistan and has not expressed any interest in aiding the 30,000
combined Kurdish troops to act as a ground force against Saddam Hussein. Turkey,
Iran and Syria which have a history of persecuting their Kurdish populations are
also opposed to Kurdish autonomy. On Oct. 3, Turkey lifted the death sentence on the Kurdish
rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan because they had been forced to abolish the death
sentence nationwide to meet European Union human rights standards. Turkey,
however, is using the hostility between Turkomans and Kurds in northern Iraq as
a pretext to attack any Kurdish autonomous region. Both Turkey and the U.S. are
interested in the oil-rich cities of Kirkuk (with a large Turkoman population)
and Mosul in northern Iraq. --Sheila Sahar |
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