A U.S. Ally Caught Between Two Goals in Iraq

BAGHDAD —  The iconic image of the Kurd is a man in billowy trousers with a rifle, a knife and a will to fight to the death. He has battled throughout the generations, and Kurds say he may be called upon again.

Kurds fear that Shiite and Sunni Muslim insurgencies against U.S. troops in Iraq could splinter the nation. If that happens, the Kurds -- who account for just 19% of the population but control the country’s largest ethnic army -- will be forced to choose between their risky dream of independence and the Bush administration’s goal of a unified Iraq.

With the June 30 deadline for Iraqis to regain sovereignty little more than a month away, a U.N. envoy is putting the finishing touches on an interim government representing all of the country’s main religious and ethnic groups. Kurds are expected to hold prominent positions in the government, but they are uneasy about whether Iraq’s disparate factions can hold the country together.

“The turmoil in south and central Iraq threatens us Kurds,” said Hewa Abdullah, a painter studying at Sulaymaniya University in the mountains of northern Iraq. “Islamic extremism has arrived in the south and is strong in the middle of the country. If we don’t go toward independence, we will lose all our achievements.”

A Kurdish push for independence is one of many troubling scenarios rippling from the Shiite and Sunni insurgencies. The unrest underscores Iraq’s perilous political map and how generations of ethnic and tribal animosities can flare with the ferocity of a desert sandstorm. It also illustrates how much of Iraq’s fate is tied not only to U.S. resolve, but also to radical clerics, terrorists and the agendas of neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran.

Kurds, the only long-standing U.S. allies in this ravaged land, are resented by Arab Iraqis for supporting the invasion of the country. It was pressure from Washington -- and threats by Turkey to crush an emerging Kurdish state -- that forced Kurds to abandon designs for independence as Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed. Kurds today know they are vulnerable if the U.S.-led forces can’t control Iraq’s increasingly defiant Arab majority, one reason they insist on retaining their army of about 55,000 peshmerga soldiers.

“How long is Kurdish patience for a new Iraq? That’s based on how long American patience is,” said Rosh Shawais, speaker of the Kurdish parliament and an official with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council. “Without the Americans there will be no democratic Iraq.”

Kurdish leaders say Hussein loyalists and foreign terrorists are driving wedges between Kurds and Arab Iraqis. The shift in attitude against Kurds is intensifying as more Iraqis express disdain for the U.S.-led occupation and those who foster it. Insurgents in Fallouja, for example, have stoked resentment by spreading rumors that U.S. forces helped Kurds seize Arab homes. Many Iraqis are also troubled when they see former peshmerga soldiers in the ranks of the new, U.S.-trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. “We are totally against these plots and conspiracies to divide Kurds and Arabs,” said Azad Jindyany, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern half of northern Iraq. Like many Kurdish officials, Jindyany was conciliatory when speaking of the new Iraq, but steely when it came to Kurdish interests.

“We are concerned about the possibility of civil war,” he said. “But the phase of marginalizing the Kurds is over.”

Kurds have growing misgivings about Arab Iraqis, especially Muqtada Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose militia is battling U.S. forces in Najaf. A recent article on the Kurdistan Observer website said that the “Iran-backed fanatic Sadr and his gang of black shirts [are] awaiting their chance to maim and kill and dismember Kurds.”

A mountain people who for centuries have withstood the elements and armies arrayed against them, the Kurds have learned to navigate Iraq’s terrain and political gambles. Hussein’s army killed 5,000 Kurds in Halabja with chemical weapons in 1988, and tens of thousands disappeared during Baath Party military assaults on Kurdish lands during the last 40 years.

Kurdish officials say they want to move beyond this troubled history and are embracing the idea of autonomy in a federated Iraq.

Yet many Arab Iraqis believe that the Kurds will use the chaos of occupation to secede.

“The other day on TV there were Kurdish students wearing badges of the Kurdish flag,” said Ayab Badri, a Sunni and former lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi army. “The teacher asked them, ‘Do you want to stay part of Iraq or be separate?’ The students answered, ‘Separate.’ ”

Bannai Jarala, a bookseller in downtown Baghdad, said the Kurds were seeking something more than autonomy.

“We feel the Kurds are like the Germans were before World War II,” Jarala said. “Their nationalist feelings are too strong. But will circumstances today allow such indulgences?”

From the Kurds’ point of view, the same question could be asked of radical Shiites and their aspirations for a theocratic state, and of Sunni Baath loyalists who want to return to the days of Hussein. Kurds, however, insist that they will hew to the American line.

“We have made a strategic choice,” said Barham Salih, prime minister of the Kurdistan regional government, in the east. “We are partners with the U.S. to bring about a democratic transformation of Iraq. We will not be on the fence. This is not gimmicking -- it is how we read our interests.”

He added: “But I am worried, as so often U.S. policy people tend to take their friends for granted while attempting to win over opponents. The thugs of Fallouja, who represent the same value system that gave rise to the tyranny of Saddam, cannot and will not like the Kurds. And most probably they will never forgive us for opposing Saddam and working with the U.S.-led coalition.”

The Kurds have limited places to turn. The 3.5 million of them in the mountains of northern Iraq were protected from Hussein’s forces after the 1991 Persian Gulf War by a “no-fly” zone patrolled by U.S. and British planes. They built a quasi-capitalist democracy and thrived compared with the rest of the country.

The Kurds contend that they are jeopardizing these gains to rejoin a vanquished nation in hopes the future will bring security and better economic opportunities.

The Kurdish leadership realizes that it is not the time to press for independence. Turkey, with an anxious Kurdish population of its own, has vowed to quash a separate Kurdish state. Such a crackdown would disrupt the fragile region -- possibly drawing in Syria and Iran -- and further roil Washington’s plan for postwar Iraq. The Kurds have also postponed attempts to immediately incorporate Kirkuk -- the city and its surrounding area account for 40% of Iraq’s oil reserves -- into their region.

Such concessions have angered Kurdish nationalists. They believe that the uncertainty in Iraq gives Kurds an ideal chance to break away.

“It is the duty of our political parties to go back to the people and to start to reorder the Kurdish house,” said Hallkawt Abdullah, a member of a nationalist group that seeks a referendum on the Kurds’ future. “We now have the best opportunity to achieve independence. Fraternity with the Arabs doesn’t necessarily mean coexistence. We can have two independent states and still have good relations.”

That desire is not what Kurdish leaders and their American allies want to hear now.

Despite having a miniature Kurdish national flag on his desk in Baghdad, Jindyany offered a more pragmatic approach: “We will never give up the dream for a free state, and we don’t consider that dream to be a crime. But we are sacrificing that dream for a unified Iraq.”

Special correspondent Azad Seddiq in Sulaymaniya contributed to this report.