Talabani to Arabic paper: Establishment of Kurdish state is an impossible dream

London (KurdishMedia.com) 03 February 2007: Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq and the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, recently stated, “The Establishment of Kurdish state is an impossible dream.” Talabani was interviewed in Arabic by the Arabic paper Dar al-Khaleej, on 22 January 2007.

“The establishment of a Kurdish state is a dream of some Kurdish patriotic and of some Kurdish poets and perhaps of some Kurdish youths who see 190 flags on top of the United Nations building. But I think that the realistic Kurdish politicians know that this is a dream and they regarded this way. A man does not run after a dream to lose its achievement and what he has gained on the ground.”

Nearly 100 percent of voters in southern Kurdistan voted for accession in an unofficial referendum, which ran parallel to the Iraqi election.

This is not the first time Talabani steps over Kurds. On two occasions, once in Australia and once in the USA, Talabani refused to speak his native language, Kurdish, because he stated, “Kurdish is not an official language of Iraq.”

According to the Iraqi Constitution of Saddam Hussein and that of Talabani’s governemnt, Kurdish is one of the two official languages of Iraq.

KDP and PUK leaderships responsible for chaos and uncertain future of Kirkuk

2/3/2007 KurdishMedia.com - By Dr Kamal Miarwdeli
Translated by Dr Kamal Miarwdeli

This translation of the full text of member of Kurdistan parliament Dr Nuri Talabani’ paper presented to the one-day seminar on Kirkuk in London on 26 December 2006 and published in Kurdish in the independent weekly paper Awene, Sulaymaniyah, south Kurdistan.

NO serious work has been done yet to implement clause 140 of the Iraqi Constitution which addresses the solution of the issue of Kirkuk and other areas taken away from Kurdistan by the previous regime. The clause 58 of the Iraqi Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) which was devised for the same purpose was also neglected by both governments of Ayad A'lawi and Dr Nuri Al-Ja’fari although they made several verbal and written promises to the Kurdish leadership.

Some time after the formation of the government of Nuri al-Maliki and the publication of the programme of his government, the “higher commission for the implementation of clause 140” was established. But the work of this commission too proceeds very slowly. Meanwhile a number of seminars and conferences have been convened to support the population of those [Arabised] areas to return to their homes and to work for the return of these areas to the administration remit of Kurdistan region. But the only result of these conferences was to raise awareness about the terrible conditions of these displaced families. Otherwise there have been no other results.

The Ba’ath regime used all its massive military, economic and political resources to implement according to a well-designed strict plan the Arabization of these areas and was demonstrating strong iron will in doing so. This should suggest that there should be definite plans and will to reverse these unjust practices and erase their terrible effects. The lack of any plan and the spirit of co-operation among dominant Kurdish forces in the time of the liberation of Kirkuk and other Arabised areas is the reason behind the unsatisfactory condition which we still suffer from their consequences and have made the solution more difficult to achieve.

The Americans in the beginning of 2003 asked some of their centres of [strategic] studies to elaborate ideas and plans for dealing with the specific issue of Kirkuk and possible solutions for its problems. Some months before the fall of [Saddam’s] regime I asked some people close to the leaderships of the two dominant parties in London about their plans and co-ordinated steps to deal with the issue of Kirkuk and facing up to the expected problems after liberating Kirkuk. Their answer was that they were both co-operating together and would face any challenges together and that there were no problems and differences between them in relation to dealing with the issues of Anfal, Kirkuk and Halabja.

Unfortunately this was not the case on the ground. They had no co-ordination and co-operation. This made Kirkuk and all the area go through a very unpleasant phase. The conflict that emerged in the areas under the control of the two parties [Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)] after 1991, remerged in the same way in Kirkuk and other newly-liberated areas. Ten days after the liberation of Kirkuk, together with some patriotic people from Kirkuk, I presented a memorandum to Kurdish political leadership, in which we suggested the setting up of a joint committee from the representatives of the two parties and expert people from the area so that they work as one team for the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk. We also suggested that the committee would do its work secretly and we informed them (Kurdish leadership) that we were prepared to go back to Kurdistan immediately when they approved the setting up of such a committee. One party gave us a positive response but the other one did not respond at all.

In the beginning of September 2003, I returned to Kurdistan to stay there permanently. I visited Kirkuk and saw some good patriotic people. Also I had a two-hour meeting with the officials of CPI in charge of Kirkuk. They were an American officer and a British lady. I found pout that they did not have much information about the area and its problems and they were not thinking about the necessity of normalization of the area. They were concerned about some small matters. On the contrary they were blaming the Kurds for raising the Kurdish flag everywhere and this would make a problem for them.

Those people whom I met in Kirkuk all supported the setting up of such a committee [mentioned above]. They all knew that the affairs inside the city and its surrounding were managed in a bad way. At the time some people had already started to build unlicensed houses in a very ugly and irregular way on the lands belonging to the municipality and the state.

There was also a danger that transgression would escalate. That is why I again submitted another memorandum to Kurdish leadership and repeated my suggestion for the establishment of the committee to deal with the increasing problems of Kirkuk. In that memorandum I referred to the phenomenon of transgression by some people who had not been displaced or among deportees but they claim to be deportees and unjustly appropriate the property and land of others and build houses on them in a very disorganized away each according to his wish and without seeking license from the municipality, without having water and electricity supplies established for these areas. I told them that if these problems were not solved urgently it would create massive problems in the future in the same way that we had witnessed in other Kurdish cities and towns. In the memorandum I proposed that the municipality (council) of Kirkuk would at the start allocate 2000 to 3000 plots of land to the displaced people of Kirkuk and then both [Kurdish] administrations [of PUK and KDP} would give them financial support and then the houses would be built under the supervision of the municipality and in a proper planned way including the provision of water and electricity, transport, education, health and social services. In the memorandum I also suggested that the two administrations could allocate a special budget to build houses in Kirkuk for the deportees and homeless people in the way that [Iraqi republican Prime Minister] Abd-al-Karim al-Qassim built [in 1959] in the neighbourhood of al-Thawra. The displaced people who would receive these houses should not be able to sell it or rent it out for ten years. The implementation of any of the two above proposals would by now have had very positive outcomes:

1. The implementation of any of the two proposals would preclude challenges to the legitimacy of building these houses by both internal and external authorities the way is happening now.

2. This committee would in fact have become a good support for the Governing Council and the Kurdish members of the local council of Kirkuk governorate to enable them to achieve their tasks in a more effective way especially in their dealing with the American and Iraqi officials.

We all know that what could be achieved and done at the beginning of the liberation of Kirkuk, cannot be done now at least without facing new problems. In terms of security the situation of Kirkuk and those regions is getting worse day by day. Problems and obstacles are made to prevent the return and resettlement of the displaced people. Explosions and bombs in Kirkuk were non-existent or rare in Kirkuk before now they have become daily occurrences. The director of joint activities in Kirkuk says: Kirkuk has now become a stumbling stone between Baghdad and Kurdistan regional government. Neither Kurdistan regional government pays attention to the security of this city nor does Iraqi government increase its security forces for us. In 2006, 2153 people were killed or wounded. Most of them belong to police and security forces and the army or they are just ordinary officials and people.

3. The lack of services has made Kirkuk a very backward city. The surprising thing in this respect is that the American consulate in Kirkuk says that they have spent so far (until the end of 2006) 800 million dollars for Kirkuk!

4. Before their unification, both [separate PUK and KDP] administrations spent money in Kirkuk and other areas but for their own specific [partisan] purposes without any plan or any cooperation with the administrations.

Today both internally and internationally there is talk about the future of Kirkuk and the implementation of clause 140 of the Iraqi constitution.

A lot of propaganda has been and is being made that the implementation of this clause would cause tension and explosion in Iraq and the whole region.

In the Baker-Hamilton report there is a negative clause in relation to Kirkuk and this is the recommendation to postpone the implementation of clause 140 to an undefined future.

Now for three years the Kurdish political leadership looks to Baghdad to allocate some money to deal with the problems of Kirkuk and other Arabised areas of Kurdistan. All the three Prime Ministers of Iraq after the fall of the regime belonged to two groups: Al-Da’awa party which is an Arabist and sectarian party and the Iraqi Consensus Group most of whose members are former Ba’ath members. The position of both the groups towards Kirkuk is clear and it is not hidden.

5. If these two groups were even as part of the Iraqi opposition before the fall of Saddam had this anti-Kurd position on Kirkuk, then how could it be expected that they would change their attitude after gaining power in Iraq? They have tried and are trying in every possible way to delay the implementation of this clause indefinitely or until a point in future when the stability in Iraq is established then they would deal with the issue of Kirkuk in their own way. There is no difference between their and regional governments’ agendas in relation to Kirkuk.

On the other hand, the Kurdish leadership has so far failed to convince the US and its allies that the delaying of the implementation of clause would further destabilize the area and would take the security situation in Iraq and the region to a very dangerous level indeed.

Kurdish adversaries have been trying for long to delay the implementation of clause 140 and have been working to influence the Baker-Hamilton report. Several conferences were organized inside and outside Iraq for this purpose. Also some NGOs that visit Kurdistan have been working for this purpose for a long time.

6. Since the clause 119 of Iraqi constitution allowed the creation of regions from just one single province or governorate, this governorate is meant to be Kirkuk. Kurdish adversaries, those who are enemies of Kurds or those who pretend to be their’ friends’, are trying to prevent the integration of Kirkuk into Kurdistan. A short while after the approval of the new Iraqi constitution [ in a national referendum] the leader of the Islamic Union of the Turkomans of Iraq Mr Abbas al-Bayati, who pretends to be a friend of the Kurds, said: the clause 119 of the Iraqi constitution concerns the city of Kirkuk alone.

Other Iraqi political groups, especially Iraqi Coalition group [of the Shiites] have worked in a planned way and thus have achieved successes.
The carrying out of election in Iraq before the stabilization of the security situation in Iraq was a big achievement for them. A Fatwa by [the Shiite authority] Ayatullah al-Sistani forced the Americans to carry out elections in Iraq. This achievement by the Shias is in contrast to the Kurdish groups who have been loyal allies to the US and never made any problem for them either in Kurdistan or in Iraq. But the lack of strategy and definite plans has made the Kurds always follow the events and make a stand after the event.

The publication of the Baker-Hamilton report in the way it happened and without consulting or informing the Kurdish leadership proves this bitter reality.

The implementation of clause 140 of Iraqi constitution within the time limit defined for it in the constitution is another test for the \Kurdish leadership. This time they need to work both internally and internationally according to a well-defined strategic plan.

So far, the Kurds have lost many good opportunities. But still there are other opportunities that the Kurdish leadership can use. Still the Kurds have a heavy weight at the level of Iraqi and regional politics. No problem in Iraq can be solved without the participation of the Kurds. The identification of the future of Kirkuk and other [Arabised] areas depends on how the Kurdish leadership will deal with the events in the context of Iraq and the region. This can be successful if it is done according to a plan in which all Kurdistan political groups participate in all parts of Kurdistan. Contrary to this, failure to implement clause 140 within its defined time scale means losing these areas. The responsibility for this falls on everyone but especially the political parties that have power in Kurdistan.

Notes:

1. The full text of the memorandum I presented to KDP and PUK leaderships is published in Kurdish in the independent Kurdish weekly paper Hawlati on 29 November 2003.

2. Kirkuk governor visited the US in 2004. He told me that American authorities enquired with him about the way the new houses in Kirkuk were built and why they were only built in Kurdish areas.

3. About the position of the Iraqi groups on Kirkuk, I presented a paper to a conference held in Berlin in July 2002. It is published (in Kurdish) in Basra, issue 17, August 2003.
4. This article was presented to the conference on Kirkuk organized in London by Kirkuk Support Group on 26 December 2006.

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=13999

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