W Post
In Iraq, growing gap sets Kurdistan apart
By Ernesto Londoño, Updated: Saturday, March 10, 2012
IRBIL, Iraq — To land at the gleaming new airport in this booming regional
capital is to glimpse what the United States hoped a decade ago that all of
Iraq might become.
Cranes swivel across a skyline whose glittering high-rises and five-star
hotels bring an air of Dubai grandeur. Modern malls with brightly lit
boutiques do a brisk business. Modern, wide highways include pedestrian
bridges,
some with escalators.
This is Iraqi Kurdistan, a region that was semiautonomous even under Saddam
Hussein, but one that has been transformed in remarkable ways since the
American invasion of 2003. While the rest of Iraq _remains saddled _
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/more-than-50-killed-in-wave-of-bombi
ngs-across-iraq/2012/02/23/gIQAEI6zUR_story.html) by scars and trauma from
the conflicts the U.S. invasion unleashed, the Kurdistan region
increasingly _stands apart_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/kurdistan-the-other-iraq/2011/05/24/AGSJAnCH_story.html)
, with its own fractious, impo
verished past mostly a distant memory.
But Kurdistan can only be held up as a success story with significant
caveats. Security has come at the expense of the repressive features of a
police
state. Two ruling political parties have held on to power through a vast
network of patronage that has given the opposition little breathing room.
Perhaps most alarmingly, its historically acrimonious relationship with
Baghdad has become _downright poisonous_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/maliki-tells-kurdistan-to-hand-over-iraqi-vp-hashimi/2011/12/21/g
IQA5z4w8O_story.html) since the last U.S. soldiers left the country last
December — casting a pall over the sustainability of its aspirations.
“If the other Iraq cannot lift itself you will have a gap, and that gap
will lead to conflict,’’ Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to Kurdistan’s
president, Massoud Barzani, said in an interview in his office in Irbil.
Under Hussein, Kurdistan sat on vast oil reserves, but there were no
commercial flights into the region. The gray, drab architecture spoke of a
bygone era. Roads were rudimentary. Kurdish politics were infused with mistrust
and the deeply entrenched grudges of a civil war.
Today, a combination of security, investor-friendly policies and the allure
of unexplored energy reserves have attracted an increasing number of oil
companies, including the world’s largest, Exxon Mobil, which last year
signed a landmark deal with Kurdish officials.
At the same time, the social, cultural and political gaps between Kurdistan
and the rest of Iraq have widened in recent years as the northern region,
which was largely insulated from the insurgency and had virtually no U.S.
military presence during the war, continues to prosper while the rest of the
country remains beset by violence.
“The Kurdistan region, in terms of development and economic growth, has the
potential to become the Iraq the U.S. had hoped for the entire country,”
said Denise Natali, a National Defense University professor who has studied
the Kurds for decades.
‘The other Iraq’
Irbil’s new airport, completed in 2010, offers direct flights to Vienna,
Dubai, Istanbul and Cairo, and it has been expanding steadily. Most
foreigners can enter Kurdistan without a visa or may obtain one at the
airport,
unlike in Baghdad, which manages a cumbersome and expensive visa system that
has long bedeviled prospective foreign investors.
The construction boom in virtually every corner of Irbil stands in sharp
contrast to the dilapidated city of Mosul, just 50 miles east, where vast
sections lie in ruins as a result of years of bombings by al-Qaeda in Iraq. To
enter Kurdistan from the parts of Iraq controlled by Baghdad, Arab Iraqis
must apply for special permission from Kurdish authorities, then navigate a
series of checkpoints manned by Kurdish soldiers who often make little
attempt to hide their contempt for Arabs.
Kurdistan now markets itself as “the other Iraq,” with a revenue base that
had grown to more than $10 billion this year, mostly from oil exports and
Turkish investment, from just $100 million in 2003. Its battles with the
rest of the country revolve around how to distribute oil wealth and whether
the Kurds should be allowed to formally incorporate vast new areas into the
region.
The growing schism has fueled the hopes for statehood that Kurds have _long
held_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/daily/feb99/kurdprofile.htm) .
Zhenar Bakhtiar, 21, a salesman at a perfume shop in a sleek mall in
Kurdistan’s second largest city, Sulaymaniyah, said he dreams of the day
when he will no longer bear an Iraqi passport.
“Five years from now, the Kurds will have their own state,” he said on a
recent afternoon. He identifies himself as Iraqi only when he travels abroad
and must present his passport. “I’m a Kurd.”
Competing visions on oil
At first glance, the prospect of Kurdish statehood might seem plausible, if
not inevitable. But the two regions remain intrinsically linked in two
vital ways: Kurdistan gets its budget from Baghdad and must export the bulk of
its oil through a pipeline the central government controls.
Baghdad and Irbil have laid out competing visions for how Iraq’s vast oil
reserves should be explored. In the absence of an agreement, the two
administrations have signed separate contracts with international oil companies
in recent years. Officials in Baghdad are particularly irked by the nature of
the Kurdistan region’s contracts, which give the oil companies a direct
stake in the reserves.
The deals Baghdad has signed offer a flat rate per barrel of oil to
international companies running the field, a less attractive type of deal. The
dispute has prevented Iraqi lawmakers from producing a new hydrocarbons law.
The recent Exxon deal was particularly jarring to Baghdad because it
includes _fields in disputed territories_
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091203584.html)
.
“Right now there are no negotiations, no process whatsoever,” between
Baghdad and Irbil over the oil law, said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at
the International Crisis Group. “This can only go on for so long. Once these
fields start producing, Baghdad may draw a line and if the Kurds ignore
that you can end up with a conflict.”
During its final years in Iraq, the U.S. military came to view the disputed
territories along Kurdistan as one of the country’s most potentially
destabilizing problems. American officials drew up plans to maintain large
diplomatic missions in the provinces that border Kurdistan, in large part to
act
as honest brokers. Those plans were later scaled down as it became
apparent that the United States would not be able to leave behind a small
number
of troops in Iraq.
As oil production soars, and more money is at stake, anger among Arabs who
live in the disputed territories is likely to flare up, said Abdullah
Humaid Alyawar, the leader of the influential Shammar tribe. “When citizens
see
their political officials disappointed them, we will see them rely on
themselves and their tribes,” he said.
Left to their own devices, Iraqis are unlikely to reach a solution, said
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker.
“It needs an influential broker,” he said. “Between political blocs
themselves we can’t solve it. The issue will stay as it is.”
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
