Kurds in a New Iraq Must Find an Identity FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Washington post
• Main Author: Karl Vick and Daniel Williams
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, D.C WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post 22.04.2003
• Subjects: Iraq War-2003; Kurdish people; SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq
• ISSN: 0190-8286

As Iraqis gather to form a transitional authority under U.S. supervision, however, Kurds emphasize the word "federated." Kurds say that if [Saddam Hussein]'s rule is replaced by a democratic model that seeks to accommodate rather than suppress Iraq's component populations, totaling 24 million, they will be able to preserve the hard-earned gains of the last decade. Such accommodation is considered essential to regional stability, given Turkey's strong opposition to greater autonomy for Kurds south of their border with Iraq. Since the final days of the war, the collapse of Iraqi authority has allowed Kurds to move beyond their enclave and into territory that had been under Baghdad's control. With U.S. help, they are now attempting to establish a functioning government in Mosul and Kirkuk, the region's two main cities. In the process, tensions between Kurds and Arabs have erupted into episodic but often vicious fighting. The worst has been in the villages south of Kirkuk and Mosul, where Kurdish vigilantes have evicted thousands of Arabs from villages the Kurds claim. Other violence followed the widespread looting that accompanied the Kurds' dash outside their zone. Shortly after 1991, Kurdish politicians began coaching Kurds to leverage their autonomy into a position of strength in a unified Iraq. The goal became a kind of mantra, repeated endlessly on the public and private television stations and newspapers Kurds started in major cities, on the satellite channels beamed to Kurds in Europe and on the Web sites that became a point of pride here because Baghdad controls the Internet in the rest of Iraq.