[Go here to read Part I.]
Just outside the destroyed Halabja monument, we came across this PUK propaganda poster on the ground. We’d see it a lot in the next day or two. Above a picture of the monument in flames, the poster proclaims: “Yes, Halabja needs more services, but the people who burned the monument are not from Halabja and are not Kurds.” Our fixer scoffed at this, as well as a green PUK banner comparing the rioters to Baathists. (“But opening fire on people, that’s not like the Baathists, that’s totally different,” he said sarcastically.) We asked the soldiers standing guard who they thought instigated the riot, but they wouldn’t comment.
Our fixer arranged for us to speak with the PUK security chief for the area, Brigadier Akram Ahmad. Ahmad’s predecessor, Anwar Osman, was killed last June in a targeted suicide attack. (We passed by the spot where it happened, just down the main road from Ahmad’s office.) At the gate of the headquarters, a guard checked under our car with an angled mirror, then pointed us toward a second checkpoint. We got through, pulled up and parked. The peshmerga were milling about with their guns, awaiting the signal to send us in. Finally, one of the sentries patted us down and showed us the way inside. We stepped into an antechamber full of armed men who shook our hands. Another door swung open to a small and modest office where Ahmad sat. He dressed casually and looked professional but rugged, with greying hair and a day or two of stubble. I put him in his mid to late 40s. He is 37.
Ahmad was at pains to validate the grievances of “99 percent” of the protestors. “We have taken this demonstration very easy, because we’re not afraid of their demands,” he said. He agreed that the demonstration was a “wake-up call,” that the regional government should rise to the challenge voiced by the people. He condemned the violence, which he said was the work of a relative few, but he asked us: “Do you know why the security forces were unable to protect the monument? So that people would not be killed. That’s why we are a government of the people.” Someone was in fact killed, but Ahmad had a point about PUK restraint. Imagine what Turkish troops would have done in similar circumstances. (My colleague Yigal Schleifer has a Christian Science Monitor piece on the southeast Turkey troubles here.)
Responding to corruption questions, Ahmad maintained that “corruption exists in every country.” He added: “The slogans say that it’s been 18 years with no services, but it’s only been two years since the Kurds have fully controlled this area. It’s a slow process.” Asos Hardi, the editor of Awene, has little patience for this argument: “Whether it’s been two years or 18, there’s still no transparency in government. That’s not an excuse.”
Ahmad also articulated the government line that Islamist parties fomented the violence on March 16. We pressed him for specifics, to no avail. A day later, we asked a few people at the smoke-filled Café Shab in downtown Suleimaniya about the Islamist role in the riot. “They always blame the Islamists,” said one man. “It’s not true.” This was the consensus, even among secular people.
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Our fixer estimated that 50 percent of the Kurdish population is secular. In Istanbul I heard the call to prayer every day, five times a day. In Suleimaniya I remember hearing it once in four days. But Islamic parties are a political factor, and the KDP/PUK establishment wants to keep them marginalized. The Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) split from the united KDP/PUK slate, the Kurdish Alliance, in the last Iraqi national election. It won five parliamentary seats. KDP agitators attacked the KIU’s offices in Dohuk in December 2005. (Assyrian Christians have also complained of KDP harassment.) According to Asos Hardi, the KIU is a civil party (as opposed to a militia), with no record of violence. However, it does have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
A smaller party, the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK), began as an anti-Saddam militia in the late 1980s. It exercised significant power in Halabja from 1994 to 2003. For a time it was loosely aligned with Ansar al-Islam, a Qaedaist group that used to occupy smaller towns to the east and has since been neutralized. I asked Asos Hardi whether he would now characterize the IMK as moderate. “No,” he said, emphatically. But the party treads water by espousing peace and trying to maintain good relations with the PUK. Our fixer told me, “You have more influence in Kurdistan than the IMK.” By “you” he didn’t mean Americans; he meant me personally.
While in Halabja we happened to drive past the local office of the IMK. With the OK of our fixer, we decided to go in. A man in secular dress was washing his car. He offered to call someone who’d be able to talk to us. We pulled up chairs, sat and waited.
This was the only time during the entire trip that I felt concerned about safety. A man had just called a senior member of an Islamist party with the news that two American journalists were on hand. Visions of Daniel Pearl ran through my head. But I had to trust our fixer, who lives in this town, works with foreign journalists all the time and knows the political terrain like his backyard.
Objectively, too, it made little sense to fear the IMK. The power equation in Kurdistan is totally different than the rest of Iraq. The Islamists farther south operate in a power vacuum. IMK people know that if they harm a soul, they’ll be crushed by the PUK. In fact, this makes the PUK’s accusations regarding the March 16 riot harder to believe. The IMK has everything to lose by acting out.
After a few minutes, an IMK official named Osman Said Ahmad entered the courtyard. He was probably in his 30s, with a head wrap and loose-fitting clothes in the Kurdish style. First he approached our fixer rather gravely and asked about the nature of our questions. Then he had his aides bring chairs around to a grassy patch covered by a structure of branches and greenery. It reminded me of a Jewish sukkah. We were served Swiss Rolls and cans of 7-Up (with straws).
Ahmad’s demeanor was relaxed but serious. (Ironically, he had the same last name as our PUK contact.) He said that the IMK plans to sue Radio Nawa for alleging that the party was behind the March 16 violence. “Our party is peaceful,” he insisted. “We condemned the riot, which hurt all the people of Halabja. The people’s demands should be voiced in a democratic and civil way.” Ahmad also claimed that “university students” were behind the violence (the best explanation I’d heard, in fact). “We’d prefer that our own party headquarters be destroyed rather than the monument,” he said, adding that he lost relatives in the ’88 attack.
For the KDP/PUK establishment, scapegoating a party like the IMK is convenient on a few levels. It weakens the opposition and puts them on the defensive. It paints the popular discontent of March 16 as something other than what it is. And it helps the authorities justify their increasingly draconian record on civil liberties.
Asos Hardi believes the Islamic parties may capitalize on the unrest in Kurdistan, which he predicts will spread. He likened the KIU to the current ruling party in Turkey, AKP, which, despite its Islamist roots, rose to power in a staunchly secular state. He also mentioned the victory of Hamas in recent Palestinian elections. Viewed this way, KDP/PUK is analogous to Arafat’s ruling clique in the Palestinian Authority, which grew corrupt and complacent and was ultimately ejected from power by Islamic militants. “The KDP and PUK must review themselves,” said Hardi, “or they’re in a very dangerous situation.”
[Go here to read the next item in my Iraqi Kurdistan series.]
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