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Khanaqin
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KURDLAND
General Information
The main four governorates of
Arbil, Sulaimania, Dohuk and Kirkuk with parts of Dyala and Nineva covers
18% of the total land area of Iraq. In these governorates the five million
Kurdish population is dispersed, of which 2/3 inhabit the former three
provinces. This area which constitutes more than half of the total area of
Iraqi Kurdistan is now under the control of Kurdistan Regional Government.
The remaining population inhabits the areas under the control of Iraqi
government.
The mountainous nature of
Kurdistan, deep valleys and plains contributes to climate changes. Low
temperatures and heavy snowfalls in the winters and hot and dry summers are
common variations in the region’s weather conditions.
Kurdistan’s fauna includes the ibex, lynx,
gazelle, deer, wolf, fox, leopard, bear, wild boar, hare, squirrel,
hedgehog, snakes, frogs and lizards. Fish are abundant in all rivers. The
most common birds are grouse, snipe, goose, duck, crane, plover, pigeon,
partridge, stork and birds of prey.
 Map
Geographical Information
The area of Iraqi Kurdistan
is approximately 80.000-km sq. thus it forms 18 % of the total area of Iraq
(about 435.000-km sq.)
Iraqi Kurdistan is comprised
of the six governorates of Arbil, Sulaimania, Dokuk, Kirkuk, parts of Dyala
and Nineva.
Kurdistan is a mountainous
area with many fertile plains, of cold winters and moderate summers. Hard
won passes and narrow sloping valleys with hundreds of rivers and streams
flowing deep in the bottom. In summer, the heat is intense, especially in
the valleys and plains. In winter, the cold is penetrating and bitter.
Climate
The region and its climate as
a whole can be divided into the following:
- A subtropical area in the south, where
winters are temperate and summers intensely hot with temperatures around
40 °C.
- The high plains, where winters are
relatively severe and summers dry and hot. During the winter, snow and
heavy rains fall for three months with temperature barely above freezing
point.
- The mountainous area with extremely severe
winters. Snow falls to a depth of several feet and temperatures well
below zero. In springtime, it is still cold and snow is visible on the
peaks until August.
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Baghdad Report - From
Occupation to Liberation in Kurdistan
by Andréa Schmidt, KurdishMedia.com
May 4th, 2004
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It isn’t
just the fact that Suleymania, a university town in the eastern part
of the region governed by the PUK, is surrounded by green mountains
and lakes and coniferous trees, and looks like a different country
than the one I’ve lived in for the past two months. Or the fact that
the amount of Kurdish spoken makes it sound like a different
country. Or even the fact that the distinctly Kurdish culture,
evident to a first-time visitor in dress and in a propensity for
lavish Friday picnics, makes it feel like a different country.
It isn’t the fact that the Kurdish flag flies proudly next to the
Iraqi flag. (The old one – the new one hasn’t caught on any better
here than it has in the rest of Iraq.) It isn’t even that the US
Occupation Forces who are posted in the area are strangely
invisible, or that there is unanimity among the cab drivers polled
by my travel companion that Suleymania is good and completely safe
these days. "Suleymania is heaven," says one man emphatically. You
don’t get that very often in Baghdad.
No. It is a head wreck because it becomes very easy to understand
why the Kurdish majority in this region -- who some in the
anti-occupation movement have found it so easy to disparage, dismiss
and ignore for collaborating with the US-led occupation -- has
decided that it is a worthwhile bargain to accept US intervention in
order to preserve space in which to determine their future as a
self-governed nation. It is a space they fought for in the 1991
uprisings, and a space that they have been able to develop over the
past thirteen years of relative autonomy from Saddam and the
Ba’athist regime in Baghdad that brutalized them for years before.
We go to visit the Women’s Information and Culture Center, one of
the many women’s centers that have emerged in that space. They
publish a newspaper and do media and awareness work around women’s
issues, including honor killings and forced marriages. But Runak
Faraj, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, is less interested in
discussing the Center’s activities than in setting things straight
for the two anti-war activists sitting in her office. "We would have
liked to explain to the people who were against the war and the
sanctions that they should try to live the way we lived. The
majority of Kurds would be happy to have the US forces stay. ...
Because of many years of war and struggle, we were all alone. The
only force stronger [than the regime in Baghdad] is the US force, so
we wanted them to stay and help us." Referring to the US invasion
and occupation of Iraq in 2003, she says, "This is the first chance
for the Kurdish people to be free."
The unfortunately-named Civilization Development Organization, one
of a proliferating number of local NGOs based in the city, has
relationships with a number of international organizations and
funding agencies. The staff at CDO receive us graciously and take us
to visit their newest project, the renovation of a building formerly
used by the Ba’athist Intelligence Service to house a ‘Democracy
Training Center.’ "After the liberation of Iraq, many new groups
were established. In Kurdistan, we had 12 years of experience in
democratization" [after the 1991 uprisings and the establishment of
the US-enforced no-fly zone], says Atta Mohamed Ahmal, General
Director of CDO. "We saw that it was necessary to [use our
experience to] help the rest of Iraq."
So in July, the completed training center will host forty delegates
who have been recruited from Iraqi NGOs all over the country who
attend lectures given by Kurdish, Iraqi and international lecturers
on the principles of human rights and democracy, while living in old
mukhabarat jail cells that have been converted into dormitories. "We
had to put in the windows ourselves," says Ahmal, "because before
there were only walls – very strong walls." For Ahmal, the
transformation of the location is a sign of hope for a new era of
democracy in Kurdistan and for the rest of Iraq. I swallow my
skepticism, partly a reaction to the fact that project is funded by
the Research Triangle Institute International, under the civil
society development program they are carrying out across Iraq as a
contractor for the CPA and USAID. Isn’t this engineering of ‘civil
society’ by foreign funders just a form of soft imperialism, the
prettification of occupation?
The nearby National Museum is also housed symbolically in the
converted Security Headquarters of the old regime. Photos of what
our Kurdish guides refer to as the period "when we were under
occupation" in the late 80s line wall after wall. Not much
prettifying here. There are pictures of Kurdish martyrs handcuffed
to poles, murdered publicly by the Ba’athist regime in order to
intimidate the rest of the population. The photos display the faces
of the many disappeared, and of house demolitions in some of the
5000 Kurdish villages destroyed by the regime. The ugly face of
occupation, so similar in different places, at different times.
There is a picture of a decapitated man, handcuffed to a pole. He is
flanked by three smiling Ba’athist soldiers, one of whom is flashing
a victory sign. It is the day after the pictures of US reservists
torturing and humiliating detainees at Abu Ghraib prison have
started circulating in the media. Occupation – the attempt to
completely dehumanize the people whose land you occupy.
The Ba’athist occupation of Kurdistan and dehumanization of the
Kurds involved the forced displacement in Kirkuk and other strategic
areas, detention, torture, the destruction of over 5,000 towns and
villages and ultimately, the genocidal Anfal campaign during the
final stages of the Iran-Iraq war that systematically killed over
100,000 Kurds and included the deployment of chemical weapons on the
Kurdish population. During the March 16th 1988 attack on the town of
Halabja, only the most famous of the Anfal offensives, over 5,000
people were massacred and 11,000 injured by the gas.
Maybe all uprisings are similar too, I think as our guides proudly
point out the peshmerga in a series of photos taken on the first
days of the Kurdish uprising in 1991. There is a picture of kids
dancing on an abandoned and burnt out Ba’athist tank, and I think of
the kids I saw dancing on a burnt out US humvee in Sadr City three
and a half weeks ago. There is also a series of pictures taken
several weeks into the uprising, when the Ba’athists sent in heavily
armed troops in an attempt to put it down. They show thousands of
people fleeing into the mountains toward the Iranian border, where
many sought refuge. I think of the long line of families that fled
Falluja for Baghdad last month, when the uprising began and US
marines began slaughtering.
In Baghdad recently, I have sensed a growing fear among average
people – a fear not only induced by the terror spread by Occupation
Forces in the prisons and in the neighborhoods, but also by the
uncertainty about who will ultimately take power in the capital. In
Suleymania, there is less fear – again, product of thirteen years of
relative autonomy from Baghdad and a year of what people univocally
refer to as liberation. But there is a clear undercurrent of anxiety
that a government based in Baghdad will again seek to control this
region and that genocidal policies will be implemented to decimate
the Kurdish population once again. On a week in which an
ex-Republican Guard general is sent into Falluja to pacify the
resistance, it is a difficult anxiety to dismiss.
The Kurds are determined that this anxiety will not become reality.
Their determination is perhaps one reason that the Referendum
Movement has proven to have such strong grass-roots support here.
Founded last July, the Referendum Movement has collected over
1,850,000 signatures in favor of a referendum on whether Kurdistan
should secede, or remain a part of a federalist Iraq. The vast
majority of the people we have spoken to here say they would prefer
to remain a part of Iraq in the sort of federalist arrangement
provided for in the transitional constitution – but only if that
arrangement is genuinely accepted and respected by the rest of the
country. For the leaders of the Referendum Movement, what is
important is that the people of Kurdistan are able to choose
democratically the route that will best allow them to pursue their
goals as a society.
Perhaps it is easy for the anti-occupation movement to scoff at the
Kurdish political parties for joining the US-picked IGC. Perhaps as
anti-imperialists we believe that the Kurdish people in Iraq – who
seem to genuinely support their PUK and KDP leaders on the IGC –
have made a deal with the devil, and that it is almost inconceivable
that the devil won’t sell them out when it suits him. I admit that I
almost choked when our guide at the Halabja memorial told us "In
those days of the attack, the mountains were our only friends. Now
we have a very powerful friend in the United States." Perhaps none
of this addresses how Arab-Kurdish tensions could be addressed
constructively in a future Iraqi state, federalist or otherwise.
But if we are going to oppose the injustice that is the US
occupation of Iraq by appealing to the right to self-determination
of Iraqi people, we also have to actively support the right to
self-determination of the Kurdish people in Iraq – even if we don’t
much like how they’re going about achieving it. And that is why
visiting Kurdistan is a head wreck. |
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