Kurds and Kurdistan in an event at Valparaiso University

On October 4^th, 2012, my friend Rebaz Ahmed and I had the opportunity to speak to a group of about 80 retired American professionals at Valparaiso University.  These people were interested in knowing more about Kurds, Kurdistan and Iraq. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to educate people about our own people, history and cause.

An elderly lady who attended the event who was very happy to learn more about Kurds and Kurdistan. 

A summary of what we talked about:

v  Historical background: Kurds, numbering about 40 million, are a people with a homeland of their own which was divided between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran after the fall of the Ottoman Empire by the allied forces. In the Sevres Treaty of 1920, a popular referendum for the people of Kurdistan to decide whether they wanted to stick with Turkey or become an independent state was agreed upon. The Sevres Treaty, however, was soon replaced by the Lausanne Treaty in 1923 after the Turks fought back for their European territories around Istanbul and defeated the Greeks and gained control of the straits that connect the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. For a jointly commissioned control over the strait that linked the two seas, the British and the French abandoned their plans for Kurdistan.

v  Definition of Kurds: Kurds are a distinctive ethnic group with their own distinctive history, language, culture, traditions, clothes, food and ways of living. They have their own homeland but do not have a state. They are not related to Arabs, Turks or Persians by ethnicity, and they are not related to Turks and Arabs by language. Kurdish is an Indo-European Language as compared to Arabic which is a Semitic language, and Turkish which is a Turkic language. Kurdish language, however, is related to Persian language. They are both Indo-European languages from the family of Iranian languages.

v  Definition of Kurdistan Region: Iraqi Kurdistan is a semi-autonomous region that has been recognized as a federal region by the Iraqi Constitution with its own administrative borders, armed forces and Regional Government (KRG).

v  Minorities in Kurdistan: Apart from Kurds, other ethnics groups also live in the region. These include: Turkmen, Assyrians, Syriac and Chaldean, in addition to Arabs who mainly moved to the region in recent years to flee the violence in other parts of Iraq. In addition to Sunni Islam (which is the faith of the majority), there are followers of other faiths including Catholic and Orthodox Christianity (Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriac are Christians groups), Yazidees, Kakayis, and Shabaks (Shiite Muslims).

v  Education and representation of minorities: ethnic groups other than Kurds (who form about 5-7% of the region) have the right and option of sending their children to Kurdish schools, or schools that teach in their own native languages (as far as I know for sure there are Turkmen and Arabic schools as well. I am not sure about schools that teach in Assyrian, Chaldean or Syriac). And they have 11 seats in the 111 seat parliament.

v  Oppression of Kurds by the Iraqi regimes: The Iraqi Kurds were subjected to oppression by the successive Iraqi governments. Saddam Hussein most brutally cracked down on the Kurdish freedom movement in the 1980s where he killed as many as 200,000 civilian Kurds – most of them women, children and elderly people - in a series of military operations code-named Anfal and in a chemical weapons attack on the city of Halabja. The victims of Anfal were taken to southern Iraq, mass murdered and buried in mass graves of which many have been discovered since 2003 and remains of thousands of the victims have been exhumed and reburied in Kurdistan Region.

v  Issues between KRG and Baghdad: There are three main issues between the Kurdistan Regional; Government and Baghdad: Oil and gas deals, Peshmarga (Kurdish soldiers) forces, and disputed areas. The regional and central governments dispute over who has the right to sign oil deals with the energy companies that explore the oil fields. The Iraqi government wants to maintain the power to be the sole party to sign such deals while Kurdish leaders want for Kurdistan to have the right to sign such deals in order to manage their own oil fields. The two governments also disagree over who should pay for the Peshmarga forces. The Peshmarga forces have been recognized as part of the defense system of Iraq and on these rounds the Kurdish government wants Baghdad to pay their salaries while Baghdad argues that they need to be paid for by the regional government from its share of the general budget because they are regional forces. The Peshmarga are officially called the Regional Guard Forces. And the biggest issue is that of the disputed areas. Disputed areas refers to those areas – that span the provinces of Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk, Slahaddin and Diyala – which were subjected to Arabization policies by the former regime where the demographics of those territories were changed at the expense  of the indigenous Kurds for Arab settlers from central Iraq. The Arab settlers were urged to move to those territories in particular the oil rich province of Kirkuk in return they would be provided with facilities to settle there, agricultural land (that would be taken from Kurdish and Turkmen ethnics) and other incentives.

Conclusion: 

• The majority of Americans do not know anything about Kurds or Kurdistan. A very small percentage of them actually know a little about Kurds. For instance they know that Kurds helped the Americans in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. And they know that Kurds live not only in Iraq but also in Turkey and Iran. The majority of those who know this, however, do not know that there Kurds in Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, Russia and as far as Uzbekistan as well. 
• More importantly, the majority of them do not know anything about the atrocities and tragedies the Kurds went through under Saddam Hussein most notably the Anfal Operatinos and the Halabja Chemical Attack.

Majority of Iraqi Kurds support an independent Kurdistan: new poll

ERBIL, Sep. 26 (AKnews) – The majority of the Iraqi Kurds support the proclamation of independence from Iraq, a new poll shows.

The poll conducted by the Kurdistan Institute For Political Issues was released on Wednesday in a press conference in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.

The poll involved a 2500 people in the three provinces of Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Duhok where the majority of the respondents thought it is now time for the proclamation of independence to create an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.

According to the poll, 56.3% of the respondents said "yes" to the questions "Do you think it is not a good time for Kurdistan Region to proclaim independence?"

The level of support for the independence of Kurdistan varied from province to province, however. Sulaimaniyah respondents rejected the idea of an independent Kurdistan for the time being with only 46.42% of the 978 respondent saying "yes" to the same question. Duhok respondents by contrast threw heavy weight behind the cause with 81.21% of the 596 saying it was time for an independent Kurdistan.

Erbil poll takers' response was more in the middle with a small majority of 54.82% of 892 supporting an independent Kurdish state for the time being.

The poll also asked why the respondents thought it was not time for a Kurdish state if their responses were negative.

Of the 2,500 poll takers 23.10% thought the US and International community support was not guaranteed. 26.37% thought a newly proclaimed Kurdish state would be under the threat of regional attack while 49.28 believed that the Kurdish region had yet some way to go before being able to survive as a Kurdish state.

A small percentage of 1.25 did not respond to the question.

The majority of the respondents (by a small margin) also prefer a referendum to be held in order for the people of the Kurdish region to decide and proclaim independence instead of a Kurdish leader going ahead and announcing that Kurdistan is independent.

In response to this particular question of whom should announce the independence of Kurdistan only 27.49% said the President of Kurdistan Region, 20.79% said the Parliament of Kurdistan Region while the rest, 50.40% said the people of Kurdistan should do that in a referendum. 

Also 1.5% abstained from responding to that question.

Sources:

Mohammed, Fryad. "Majority of Kurds Are for Independence." AKnews. Ed. Raber Y. Aziz. N.p., 26 Sept. 2012. Web. 26 Sept. 2012. <http://www.aknews.com/en/aknews/4/327676/>. 

Minister of Natural Resources, Thank you for “saving national resources”

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)'s Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami made a rare interview with an Erbil-based newspaper, Rudaw, that was published on Aug. 29 in which he accused Nawshirwan Mustafa, the current leader of the main opposition party, Gorran, of signing oil contracts in 2006 – while he was a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party  – that would give large shares of revenues to an exploration company in Sulaimaniyah that would monopolize the exploration in the province. He said as of his appointment as Minister of Natural Resources he had revoked that contract and had signed five deals instead of one for exploration of the same area of land in Sulaimaniyah which together would bring Kurdistan 100 times more revenue and would encourage competition among the companies. He complained that instead of being thanked for saving so much money, he was attacked by Mr Mustafa's Gorran for corruption.

I am not surprised that Mr Hawrami wants to be thanked for what he is being paid for to do. It is just a syndrome in this country that affects officials' memories once they are in power they forget that they are there to serve people not to do them favors for which people normally show gratitude. However, on behalf of all my fellow citizens, I would like to thank Mr Hawrami for doing us the favor of saving so much money, but I would also like to make the following points regarding his remarks:

·         Gorran Party has rejects such claims that Mustafa has sisgned any contracts. They say Miustafa never had a government position in order to sign a contract, and the Minister say at very beginning of the interview that the contract was signed "at the request of Mustafa" and then later on he says it "was signed by Mustafa", I wonder which is it?

·         While Hawrami talks about a mysterious 5 percent share going to two people (whom I am sure are not from Mr Mustafa's party or Mr Hawrami would not have hesitated to revel their identities) secretly, the oil revenue despite all the improvement and money savings the Minister talks about is not transparent and nobody actually knows where does the money go to.

·         The claim that the previous contract would earn Kurdistan only $40 million instead of $5 billion under the current contracts sounds to me like pure propaganda because the two figures are just no close in any way so that someone can steal some extra money from the oil revenues and fool everyone. Besides, no one would be so fool as to sign a contract that is worth $500 million for only a $5 million bonus for the region knowing for sure that all secrets sooner or later would be disclosed.

·         The Minister is so desperately in need of some pats on the shoulder as he repeats the question: "Why he did not thanks us.." for this and that. If the minister really thinks that Mustafa was involved in money laundering and corruption, then it is so naïve to expect from him to offer any gratitude for someone who discloses his scandals. Wouldn't it?

·         Mr Hawrami also refers to other contracts signed between Mustafa and other companies in which 20 percent would go to unknown people. So much for such accusations! If there is any evidence please provide it so we can believe it and so corrupt officials can be tried!

·         Mr Hawrami claims that KRG's oil contracts were approved by the parliament and 111 MPs  "voted in favor of it" and among them "SOME"  Gorran MPs. Well, I don't know what to say about this statement! If there were SOME Gorran MPs who voted in favor NOT all (there are 25 Gorran MPs in parliament apart from other opposition MPs), then he is contradicting his previous statement where he said 111 MPs voted in favor of the contracts because the Kurdish parliament is formed of 111 seats not more.

·         Now look at this quote: "During my visit with Mr. Mustafa… I also asked him if he was suspicious about the transparency of oil revenues in Kurdistan and his answer was that I appeared honest and clean in performing my duty. I asked him why he didn't say the same thing on TV so people know the truth, but he said "why would I praise a government that I wish to overthrow?" how credible! Are we really supposed to buy that? It is nice to praise oneself by putting words into others' mouths, huh?

·         And this part is puzzling to me when the minister says $4.22 billion out of $5 billion in oil revenues will be used by the companies on projects? What projects? And are they public service projects? It seems that the KRG has only received about $730 million out of the $5 billion revenue an of which only $350 million as the minister says is obvious that was spent on water projects while the rest he has no idea about. However, it is not the rest of the $730 million that is a riddle to me, but the rest of the $5 billion. What exactly does that mean that about $4.22 billion of the revenues will be used by the companies on projects? I am assuming they mean more oil exploration projects and in which case all the $5 billion revenue Mr Hawrami claimed that would go to the KRG is not actually correct and that the companies still keep about 80 percent of the revenues.

Note: I read this interview with Ashti Hawrami on EKURD.NET which had reposted it from Rudaw Newspaper's website. I tried to find the original page on Rudaw but it seems that it has been removed or there was something wrong with the website that did not show the page. When you search the headline you can still find the link to the page on Rudaw newspaper's website, but when you click on it you will get an error message saying the page is not found. The article however was re-posted by a many websites before the original article disappeared on Rudaw's website.

For the full interview on EKURD.NET click the link below: http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2012/8/state6450.htm

A photo that says a lot more than words about the peaceful nature of Kurds

I saw this photo on Facebook of a village Kurdish woman using the remains of a chemical bomb used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds in the 1980s as a vase to plant flowers in. It is really inspirational!

The photo reminds the world that Kurds are peaceful and want the world to be a better place. I was really inspired by the creativity of the woman. Who in the world would think that a bomb can actually be useful one day to plants flowers in?

The photos sends some very strong messages to the world that:

• "We are peaceful"
• "we can make the world a better place if we turn our weapons down and celebrate the beauty of coexistence"
• "We are not after revenge even though we were oppressed"
• "We value brotherhood with our fellow Iraqis. As long as we are left in peace we will not harass anyone,"

I especially liked the irony that Saddam Hussein's chemical bombs were supposed to terminate life, not only of Kurds, but also of animals, trees and wild life, but this woman has used that same bomb shell to create life. 

This photo appeared on a Facebook account by the name Fariba Mimmi

Housing prices in Kurdistan higher than prices in California: repoft

A very impressive report about the incredible housing prices in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq by my friend and former colleague Mohammed Salih. 

Some highlights:

• In some areas, housing and property prices are higher than housing prices in California.  
• In some areas, prices have increased by 80 percent
• The increase has mainly been caused by foreign investment
• Kurdistan has attracted more than $20 billion in foreign investment since 2007 
• Over $10 billion of the $20 billion investment has been in the housing sector
• Over 140,000 housing units have been built in recent years yet prices keep going up