Kwazy Kurds

In another show of messy democracy, the Kurds in northern Iraq are expanding their territory. Problem is, the territories that the Kurds are claiming as their rightful homeland areas are now populated by tens of thousands of Arab Iraqis.

A snippet:

[snip]...In Baghdad, American officials say they are struggling to keep the displaced Kurds on the north side of the Green Line, the boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region. The Americans agree that the Kurds deserve to return to their ancestral lands, but they want an orderly migration to avoid ethnic strife and political instability.

But thousands of Kurds appear to be ignoring the American orders. New Kurdish families show up every day at the camps that mark the landscape here, settling into tents and tumble-down homes as they wait to reclaim their former lands.

The Kurdish migration appears to be causing widespread misery, with Arabs complaining of expulsions and even murders at the hands of Kurdish returnees. Many of the Kurdish refugees themselves are gathered in crowded camps.

American officials say as many as 100,000 Arabs have fled their homes in north-central Iraq and are now scattered in squalid camps across the center of the country. With the anti-American insurgency raging across much of the same area, the Arab refugees appear to be receiving neither food nor shelter from the Iraqi government, relief organizations or American forces.

"The Kurds, they laughed at us, they threw tomatoes at us," said Karim Qadam, a 45-year-old father of three, now living amid the rubble of a blown-up building in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. "They told us to get out of our homes. They told us they would kill us. They told us, 'You don't own anything here anymore.'"...[/snip]

I suspect the most troubling aspects of the Kurdish activity are that:

• The activity of resettling into their former lands is accelerating as the 'transfer of authority' draws nearer.



• The Kurds are threatening to pull out of the Iraqi national government if they don't feel that they have 'sufficient autonomy.'



• The Kurdish 'up yours' to the U.S. plan of a gradual reclaiming of their homeland could spark civil war, and the issue of perhaps a hundred thousand new Arab Iraqis without adequate services isn't likely to win the Kurds friends amongst the Arabs not displaced.

As the Kurds are likely our only allies inside Iraq, there is little doubt that the U.S. is in a quandary as to what to do about them.

Why am I getting a sense of we've seen this sort of U.S. ambivalence between different populations inhabiting the same geography before? Yes. That is a rhetorical question.

Are the Kurds going to 'demand' that the lines of Iraqi statehood be redrawn? Two countries - one Kurd, one for the rest? If that occurs will the Shia and Sunni populations then demand the same, resulting in three new countries?

It's not unfathomable that this could happen, although I think it unlikely at this time.

Yes, democracy can be messy. The birth of the U.S. was plagued with many of these same questions.

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In keeping with the Kurdish theme, here's an AFP piece I found while article mining at NewsNow

From the AFP newswire:

Armed Kurds abduct 10 taxi drivers in revenge for murders

20/06/2004 AFP

KIRKUK, Iraq, June 19 (AFP) - 20h25 - Armed Kurds abducted here 10 taxi-drivers from Samarra to avenge the murders there last week of five Kurdish Iraqi army recruits, a police spokesman said Saturday.

"Armed Kurds abducted from Kirkuk bus station 10 taxi drivers from Samarra, where five Kurds were recently kidnapped, killed and their bodies burnt," the police officer said.

He said he did not know where the taxi drivers had been taken.

A Kurdish official here announced the deaths of the five Kurdish recruits on Monday.

Their car had broken down near Samarra, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Baghdad and they were heading to a garage for repairs when they were attacked, he said.

Kirkuk, 255 kilometres (157 miles) north of Baghdad, is known for tension among its Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab populations.

I have a feeling it's going to be a long summer.