25 June 2004

1. "Prime Ministry answers Ocalan petition", a petition calling for the release of Ocalan and an apology for failing to allow Kurdish broadcasts was duly processed.

2. "Dutch presidency vows EU will be fair to Turkey", the European Union's incoming Dutch presidency promised Wednesday the 25-nation bloc would act fairly when it decides in December whether to launch EU membership talks with Turkey.

3. "If civil war erupts after handover, Kirkuk may be its starting point", the children at the Shorja middle school in Kirkuk raise the flag and sing the anthem every morning - the Kurdistan flag and the Kurdish national anthem. There's not an Iraqi flag in sight.

4. "Kurds Still Hopeful Autonomy Claims Will Be Respected", for Iraqi Kurds, one question remains more important than any other: will their goal of political autonomy be realized in a new federal Iraq?

5. "The Wrong Way For The Kurds", with the end of the 14-month period of occupation, Iraq is likely to be faced, once again, with some of the problems it has had ever since it was put on the map as a nation-state in 1921.

6. "The Kurdish Future", a patient people approach July 1.

Dear reader,

Our office is currently moving to another building. Therefore, we will not be able to publish our Flash Bulletin until July 1, 2004.
We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

Regards, the editors

1. - Turkish Daily News - "Prime Ministry answers Ocalan petition":

A petition calling for the release of Ocalan and an apology for failing to allow Kurdish broadcasts was duly processed

ANKARA / 25 June 2004

The Prime Ministry has sent a reply to a petition sent by the supporters of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan for his release. Ocalan's petition was sent to the Parliament Petition Commission.

According to reports, the reply sent to the parliamentary commission was written by Prime Ministry deputy Under-Secretary Ruhi Ozbilgic, which read, "The said petitions are part of the of the groups' efforts to converse with the state and to conduct a propaganda campaign for the rebel leader. The prime ministry is currently not undertaking any studies related to the petition."

Parliament Petition Commission Chairman Yahya Akman said that the right to submit a petition was protected by law, and that the commission aimed to work on each application and send the reply to interested parties as soon as possible.

He noted that in the past the petitions went unanswered for months. He said currently such petitions would receive a reply within five to six days. He emphasized the importance of a speedy reply by relevant institutions, noting that it was normal for some petitions to receive a negative answer. He said. "You can't satisfy everyone's demands."

The "Ocalan" petition sent to the commission had asked for the release of Ocalan, a constitutional and legal guarantee for the protection of Kurdish identity, an apology for the failure to allow Kurdish broadcasts until now, the state coming to terms with its past and the investigation of incidents that happened during the conflict.

2. - AFP - "Dutch presidency vows EU will be fair to Turkey":

BRUSSELS / 23 June 2004

The European Union's incoming Dutch presidency promised Wednesday the 25-nation bloc would act fairly when it decides in December whether to launch EU membership talks with Turkey.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said EU leaders at a summit last week had been "crystal clear" in their conclusions on Turkey, by promising to open accession talks "without delay" if the conditions are in place.

"We have still six months ahead of us to evaluate the situation. Then we will see whether Turkey is ready or not," Bot told reporters in unveiling his government's plans for its six-month stint in the EU chair starting next month.

He said it was "premature" to say the EU itself was not ready to take the potentially far-reaching step of opening entry talks with Ankara, "the more so since Turkey has made considerable progress in a relatively short time-span".

"I am confident that further progress will be made in the coming six months," the Dutch minister said.

On the basis of a European Commission appraisal in October of Turkey's long-running bid to join the EU, leaders of the 25-nation bloc will decide at a December summit whether to begin accession negotiations.

The run-up to the December decision has been marked by a fierce debate among EU members on whether the vast and relatively poor country, with an overwhelmingly Muslim population, has a place in Europe.

But Bot said the EU's "Copenhagen criteria", a strict set of standards on whether a country is in shape to open accession talks, "are the sole measuring stick that should be applied" to Turkey.

"I have the feeling (after last week's summit) that that is what we are going to do," he said, promising that EU leaders would decide "in a fair and independent and transparent way".

3. - Knight Ridder Newspapers - "If civil war erupts after handover, Kirkuk may be its starting point":

KIRKUK / 24 June 2004 / by Mark McDonald

The children at the Shorja middle school in Kirkuk raise the flag and sing the anthem every morning - the Kurdistan flag and the Kurdish national anthem. There's not an Iraqi flag in sight.

"Look at our past, how red it is with blood," they sing. "Let no one say the Kurds are no more. They are here, and their flag never falls."

The Kurdish anthem, like the Kurdish past, is blood-soaked and dramatic, and many people in northern Iraq expect more bloodletting very soon. If there's going to be a civil war in Iraq - and many believe that's inevitable - the first cut, and the deepest, could well come in Kirkuk.

The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority yields control of the Iraqi government on June 30, and the stability of the country, perhaps even the region, could be determined by what happens in oil-rich Kirkuk.

"The worry is that when we go, the political vacuum will get filled in a cataclysmic way," said Paul Harvey, the Kirkuk coordinator for the CPA.

The violence has already started. A spate of unsolved political murders has hit Kirkuk in recent weeks, and coalition officials now use bodyguards and armored cars at all times. The U.S. airbase has been taking light but regular mortar attacks, especially after Friday afternoon prayers.

Saboteurs also have blown up two pipelines in the last month, one of them an important export pipeline.

Kirkuk is a sprawling, dust-choked city of nearly 1 million people. It's made up of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and Assyrian Christians. The size of each community is a matter of hot debate. All but the Assyrians claim to be predominant.

The Kurds are Muslims, but they're neither Arab nor Persian. They're a separate ethnic group with their own language and customs. Most of the estimated 4.5 million Iraqi Kurds live in the north.

The Turkmens are an ethnic group with linguistic and cultural ties to Turkey, and they practice a moderate form of Shiite Islam. Assyrians have lived in the region for centuries.

"There's so little trust among the different groups that it's hard to see how civil war can be avoided," said Ismael Shukir, a professor of modern Kurdish history at the University of Salahaddin. "Kirkuk could be the flashpoint for all of Iraq. All the nationalities are preparing for a big fight."

The ultimate prize is the oil, and Kirkuk sits atop an ocean of it. The Kirkuk fields hold an estimated 40 percent of all the oil in Iraq.

The state-owned Northern Oil Co. controls the Kirkuk crude, which is pumped north to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Exports have been halted for pipeline repairs, but outflows reportedly have never reached more than one-fourth capacity since liberation.

Harvey, a career British diplomat who'd never been to the Middle East before, thinks a war in Kirkuk isn't inevitable, although he admits that there are "huge challenges ahead . . . and every problem here has an ethnic dimension to it."

Foreign powers and various Baghdad regimes have been fiddling with the ethnic makeup of Kirkuk for the better part of a century. Now it's the locals who are doing the tampering.

Kirkuk and its outlying farming villages are being flooded with Kurdish refugees, many of whom Saddam Hussein brutally displaced 20 years ago.

When Saddam kicked out the Kurds, he moved in Arabs. Since liberation, the returning Kurds have been reclaiming their homes and farms, sometimes ejecting the Arab tenants at gunpoint. Arab-Kurd tension is unmistakable and nasty.

Meanwhile, Kurdish political parties have been paying Kurds to move to Kirkuk before elections and a census.

After liberation last year, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party quickly seized the city's broadcast center and set up their own TV stations.

They transferred squads of Kurdish police officers to Kirkuk. And the Kurdish president of the university in the city of Irbil exhorted his Kurdish professors to move to Kirkuk to claim teaching posts there.

Turkmen political agents, meanwhile, have been conducting covert censuses of their people in the city. And the Arabs, like the other groups, cite dusty historical tracts to substantiate their claims that Kirkuk is traditionally theirs.

If things do turn cataclysmic, the Kurds could mobilize 70,000 armed men, most of them well-trained guerrilla fighters. These Kurdish peshmerga, "those who face death," fought alongside U.S. Special Forces teams against Saddam's troops.

Turkmen parties also claim to have a military force in ready reserve. Turkey continues to make baleful statements about coming to the aid of its Iraqi brethren.

Sunni insurgents and Shiite volunteers could intervene on behalf of Kirkuk's Arabs.

There are reports of thousands of armed Shiite volunteers mustering across the border in Iran, and the Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr also seems to be anticipating a fight in Kirkuk. He's been busing some of his followers into the city.

"They come on Fridays, they pray at the mosque, then they create chaos in the streets," said Mudhafer Obed, whose TV and appliance shop is around the corner from the mosque.

There are other new faces, as well.

"All the intelligence services are here making problems: the Mossad (Israel), the CIA, (the Russian) FSB, the (Turkish) MIT. It only takes one of these agencies to make a lot of mischief," said Mahmoud Chalabi, a Turkmen political analyst.

Tahssin Kahya, the chief of the Kirkuk city council, believes al-Qaida and Ansar al Islam terror cells are operating in the city. Muhammad Ihsan, the minister for human rights in the Kurdistan regional government, also blames "ex-Baathists, Iran, Saudi fundamentalists and Syrian agents" for inciting ethnic hatred.

The 40-member Kirkuk city council, which will take over from the CPA, is composed of 13 Kurds, 10 Arabs, 10 Turkmen and seven Assyrians. The council has been fractious, dithering and ineffective.

"Every council member comes to meetings representing only his own nationality," said Kahya, a Turkmen. "It's like all these uneducated policemen we had to hire. They're out there representing only their own nationality, not the law."

The immediate future of Kirkuk will have a direct bearing on the possible creation of an independent Kurdistan. There are some 25 million Kurds spread across eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria, Iran and Azerbaijan. They're a distinct nationality, but they've never had their own nation.

"We have the right to have our own country. It's the dream of every Kurd," said Jabar Abdullah, a senior Kurdish leader in Irbil. "But for the time being, our future is with Iraq."

And with the United States. The Kurdish leadership is hoping that a new airport being built outside Irbil will double as a permanent base for the U.S. military.

"Kurds represent the nucleus of a democratic, pluralistic system, and our values match those of the Americans," said Abdullah. "Until now, the U.S. has had only one democratic ally in the Middle East - Israel. Now it has two."

But even with U.S. backing, Kurdistan would have no direct access to the sea, complicating its oil exports, trade relations and economic viability.

What's more, Kurdistan would find itself in a tough neighborhood: Iran, Turkey, Syria and a new, Arab-dominated Iraq aren't likely to tolerate an independent, oil-rich Kurdish nation in their backyards.

If nationhood is the Kurds' No. 1 goal, then having Kirkuk as their capital runs a close second. Future petro-billions from Kirkuk's oil fields are critical to Kurdish independence.

"This Kurdish compulsion to join Kirkuk to Kurdistan is a major problem," said Kahya. "The Kurds believe that unless they achieve this goal, they'll have achieved nothing."

4. - Radio Free Europe - "Kurds Still Hopeful Autonomy Claims Will Be Respected":

BAGHDAD / 24 June 2004 / by Valentinas Mite

For Iraqi Kurds, one question remains more important than any other: will their goal of political autonomy be realized in a new federal Iraq?

Their hopes were dealt a blow earlier this month when a United Nations resolution failed to address the Kurdish issue, but Kurds remain optimistic that negotiations with Iraq’s new interim government will bear fruit.

Iraqi Kurds are continuing to look for ways to guarantee that the autonomous status granted Kurdish areas in Iraq’s interim constitution is upheld.

That document, called the Transitional Administrative Law, recognizes the continued right of the country’s Kurds to autonomy. But it postpones decisions on the region’s final status.

The autonomy question appeared to receive a setback when the UN failed to mention the interim constitution in its latest resolution on Iraq sovereignty.

The omission sparked an uproar among Iraqi Kurdish parties that has yet to be resolved, despite promises by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to respect the Transitional Administrative Law."Americans and their allies inside Iraq did nothing for us, for the Kurdish people, and they ignored us totally." -- PUK spokesman

Omar Aziz Kader, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told RFE/RL his party is worried that Allawi is giving empty promises.

"[We’ve heard] only words, we haven’t got anything written about that matter. We hoped [before] that the United Nations would mention at least something about the Kurdish people [in its resolution,] but unfortunately there is nothing," Kader said.

"We just say that what has happened are only verbal promises, but we don’t plan to take any actions against the new Iraq, which is building democracy."

Kader said the PUK is still trying to resolve the issue of autonomy peacefully, through negotiations, and that the party has no intention of walking away from the political process.

There is a suggestion, however, that Kurds -- and the 75,000 peshmerga fighters they employ -- are prepared to go beyond negotiations to secure their goal of autonomy.

"There is an administrative law," said Faraj al-Haydari, an official with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). "This law should be implemented. If it is implemented, we will have achieved what we want. If it is not implemented, if it is canceled, we will take different measures than we are taking now."

The Kurds face a powerful challenger in Iraq’s Shi’a Muslim majority, including leaders like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who strongly opposes the Kurdish rights guaranteed in the interim constitution -- including veto power over political decisions.

Kurdish leaders also express disappointment in the United States. Kader said many Kurds say they expected support from Washington in return for their help in ousting Saddam Hussein, but instead have received nothing.

"Up to now [we have received] nothing [from the United States], but we hope. We hope they will understand our point [of view]," Kader said. "We hope they will understand our position in this area. We are a nation that has always liked peace, liked something good for the whole world -- not just for Iraqi people."

However, not everybody in Iraq agrees. The potential borders of a Kurdish autonomous region have yet to be settled. The Kurds continue to demand oil-rich Kirkuk, which holds some 30 percent of Iraq’s oil reserves. Though the Kurds make up a substantial part of Kirkuk’s residents, the Arabs and Turkomans also living in Kirkuk do not accept their territorial claim.

Kader said the transfer of power on 30 June should help to resolve the problem -- and hopefully to the benefit of Kurdish people.

"The Kirkuk question is still on the table. We are still talking about it. The allied forces -- that is, the Americans and their allies inside Iraq -- did nothing for us, for the Kurdish people, and they ignored us totally," Kader said. "But we hope that the new government is going to [act on the behalf of] the Kurdish people in Kirkuk."

He said the Kurds who were expelled from Kurdistan during Saddam Hussein’s Arabization campaign should be allowed to go back and that a referendum should be held on the future of Kirkuk.

But this suggestion will be difficult to swallow, not only for Shi’a politicians, but also for Iraqi Sunnis and Turkomans. Iraq’s neighbors have a stake in the issue as well -- primarily Turkey, which continues to grapple with its own issues of Kurdish autonomy.

5. - The New York Post - "The Wrong Way For The Kurds":

25 June 2004 / by Amir Taheri

WITH the end of the 14-month period of occupation, Iraq is likely to be faced, once again, with some of the problems it has had ever since it was put on the map as a nation-state in 1921.

The most complex of these concerns the Kurds, whose leaders are playing a game of bluff and counterbluff in the hope of exacting maximum advantage in a period of uncertainty.

Both Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the two most prominent leaders of the Iraqi Kurds, have hinted that they might decide to "part ways" if their demand for a Kurdish veto on some key national decisions is not included in the new constitution.

This may be a bluff. But the threat of Kurdish secession has already met with two different reactions from Iraq's non-Kurdish leaders,

Some Arabs are horrified at the thought of the Kurdish problem dominating the nation's agenda once again. They are prepared to do all they reasonably can to satisfy Kurdish demands within a multiethnic pluralistic system.

Others manifest frustration: "The Kurds have been the source of all our national miseries from the start," one Iraqi Arab leader told me, on condition of anonymity. "We became involved in several wars because of them. We also had to submit to dictators because we believed they would prevent the Kurds from secession. But now that Iraq is free, why should we return to the failed policies of the past just to keep the Kurds under our flag?"

Many Iraqis, and some policymakers in Washington, see Kurdish secession as the worst-case scenario for the newly liberated nation. Barzani and Talabani, arguably the most experienced politicians in Iraq today, know this and try to exploit such fears.

In fact, there is little chance for a breakaway Kurdish state in northern Iraq, for several reasons.

To start with, Iraqi Kurds don't constitute a single ethnic entity, let alone a "nation" in the accepted sense of the term. They speak two different (though mutually intelligible) languages, with each divided into several sub-dialects, with distinct literary and cultural traditions.

Iraqi Kurds are also divided into half a dozen religious communities, including different brands of Sunni and Shiite Islam, Zoroastrianism and a number of heterodox creeds. Some of the people labeled "Kurdish" are, in fact ethnic Lurs and Elamites, with their distinct languages, cultures and histories.

And the predominantly Kurdish area is also home to some non-Kurdish communities, including ethnic Arabs, Turcomans, Assyrians and Armenians. To make matters more complex, at least a third of Iraqi Kurds live outside the area that might one day become an independent Kurdish state. (E.g: There are more than a million Kurds in greater Baghdad.)

So the creation of a breakaway Kurdish state could trigger a process of ethnic cleansing, population exchanges and displacements that could plunge the whole region into years of conflict.

A Kurdish mini-state in northeastern Iraq might not even be viable. It would be landlocked and will have few natural resources. Almost all of Iraq's major oilfields fall outside the area under discussion — and its water resources would be vulnerable to manipulation from Turkey and Iran, where the principal rivers originate.

What about a greater Kurdistan? After All, there are millions of people who, despite the objective diversity of their languages, histories and ways of life, feel themselves to be Kurds. Such a state, including parts of Syria, Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as Iraq, would have a population of 30 million in an area the size of France.

But to create this greater Kurdistan, one would have to reorganize a good part of the Middle East and re-draw the borders of six states, including the region's largest: Turkey and Iran. And the greater nation would still be a weak landlocked state with few natural resources, and surrounded by powers that, if not hostile, would not go out of their way to help it.

Such a greater Kurdistan would face numerous internal problems also. Which of the four alphabets in use for writing the various Kurdish languages would it adopt as the national one? Turkish, since almost half of all Kurds live in Turkey? But the bulk of Kurdish historic and cultural texts are written in the Persian alphabet, itself an expanded version of the Arabic.

What would be the capital? The city with the largest number of Kurdish inhabitants is Istanbul — Turkey's cultural and business capital is home to more than 1.6 million ethnic Kurds.

In a greater Kurdistan, the intellectual elite would come from Iran, the business elite from Turkey. It's hardly likely they'd allow Iraqi Kurds to provide the political elite. Barzani and Talabani, now big fish in the Iraqi pond, could end up as small fish in a much bigger pond.

So Barzani and Talabani have no interest in the disintegration of Iraq. Nor do a majority of Iraqi Kurds have an interest in leaving Iraq, now that it has, for the first time, a real opportunity to build a state in which Kurds can enjoy full autonomy plus a leading position in national power structures.

The experience of the 3.5 million Iraqi Kurds who have lived a life of full autonomy thanks to U.S.-led protection since 1991 is a mixed one. The area was divided into two halves, one led by Barzani, the other by Talabani, showing that even limited unity was hard to achieve in a corner of Iraq, let alone throughout the vast region where the Kurds live.

The two mini-states developed a complex pattern of shifting alliances in which, at times, one allied itself with Saddam Hussein against the other. They even became involved in numerous battles, including a full-scale war that was stopped, thanks to U.S. pressure.

Like pan-Arabism, Kurdish unification is easy to talk about, but hard to implement even on a small scale.

Barzani and Talabani should stop bluffing about "walking away." Other Iraqis, meanwhile, should realize that a shrunken Iraq, that is to say minus its Kurds, would be a vulnerable mini-state in a dangerous neighborhood. The preservation of Iraq's unity is in the interests of both Kurds and Arabs. It is also in the best interest of regional peace.

At the start of the 21st century, the Kurds cannot pursue their legitimate aspirations through the prism of 19th-century romantic nationalism, which has mothered so many wars and tragedies all over the world.

The Kurds, wherever they live, must be able to speak their languages, develop their culture, practice their religions and generally run their own affairs as they deem fit. These are inalienable human rights, and the newly liberated Iraq may be the only place, at least for now, where Kurds can exercise those rights.

In other words, this is not the time for the Kurds to think of leaving Iraq — nor for other Iraqis to deny the legitimate rights of their Kurdish brethren.

6. - National Review - "The Kurdish Future":

A patient people approach July 1.

MOSUL / 24 June 2004 / by Bilal Ahmad

"America has no better friend than the people of Iraqi Kurdistan," wrote Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani in a June 1 joint letter to President Bush. The Kurdish leaders had two demands: to take one of the top two positions and to incorporate the Transitional Administration Law (TAL) in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546. Neither demand was granted. "The Kurds returned from the feast with no beans," mocked Muammar Qaddafi. Surrounded by ill-wishers, Kurds must first overcome the antagonism within.

U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Iraq last April to oversee the formation of the new Iraqi interim government, which will be sovereign by July 1. "The CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) told us that the plans and arrangements of Brahimi are more than consultative," said Mawlud Bawamrad, deputy of Iraqi Governing Council member Salahaddin Bahaddin. Kurdish fears came true. Brahimi, with Bremer's approval, endorsed communalism, with Iraqi de facto divided among Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Kurdistan was a safe haven for Iraqi opposition parties and groups before the liberation. Many of opposition politicians returned the favor by standing against Kurdish interests. Many Arab members of the former IGC now oppose the TAL articles which guarantee federation for Kurdistan and the right of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region to veto the permanent constitution. Challenging the Talabani and Barzani's joint letter, Grand Ayatollah 'Ali Sistani demanded that the new U.N. resolution not reaffirm the TAL. Faced with a Sophie's Choice, U.S. diplomats sided with their adversaries rather than with their Kurdish allies. The Kurdish leadership says it is "bitterly disappointed."

To win international assurance, the Kurds would even welcome the United Nations, despite the mixed regard with which many Iraqi Kurds hold the international body. Back in Erbil, the United Nations' failure to guarantee even the Kurds' basic rights is reminiscent of the U.N.'s practice prior to liberation of undermining or slow rolling oil-for-food projects in Iraqi Kurdistan so as not to antagonize the Baathist government upset with the unfavorable comparison made by a successful, even if sanctions-ridden, Kurdistan.

The Kurdish loss threatens stability. Despite differences between Kurdish and Arab leaders, the two communities have remained friendly. But, because of their alliance with the U.S., there is growing Arab antipathy toward Kurds, both inside and outside Iraq. Kurds fear traveling to Mosul or Baghdad, let alone Fallujah, if they have license plates from Sulaymaniyah, Erbil, or Duhok, the three governorates of Iraqi Kurdistan. Many Arabic media stations fuel ethnic hatred. Kurds now occupy the top of al Qaeda activist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's enemy list. On June 14, terrorists ambushed, murdered, and burned five Kurdish members of the Iraq Civil Defense Corp in Samarra.

The Kurdish leadership has played the political game badly. While Sistani throws one card at a time while holding his cards close, the Kurdish leaders shows theirs. The U.S. and U.N. reward insurgencies in Fallujah and Najaf, while ignoring peaceful protests in Iraqi Kurdistan. How many Western journalists have reported on the 1.5 million signatures collected by Iraqi Kurdistan's Referendum Movement? One year ago Iraq's neighbors were alarmed that the U.S. might grant the Kurds an independent state. Now, it is unclear if the Kurds will have any guarantee of self-government.

While Kurds blame both the U.S. and U.N., they reserve some for the traditional Kurdish parties. The Kurdistan Democratic party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) seldom place Kurdish interests over partisan gain. Despite rhetoric of unification, Iraqi Kurdistan remains divided between two rival administrations, one based in Erbil and the other in Sulaymani. When the two leaders refused to listen to local voices calling for peace, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called them to Washington and had them shake hands. Handshakes and imagery are enough for Western diplomats; the Kurdish people care more about results.

The Kurdish leadership threatened to boycott the interim government if its demands are not granted. The threat was empty. The KDP and PUK political bureaus both backed down, but had the decision be pronounced in the Kurdish parliament. The Kurdish parliament, elected eleven years ago to a four year term decided to accept the U.N. resolution so long as it mentioned federalism. In the independent Kurdish weekly Hawlati, Umar Ali observed the two parties only consult the parliament at times of loss to share the blame.

Both Bremer and Brahimi encouraged division in the Kurdish house. In redistributing interim government ministries, "they treated the KDP and PUK not as representatives of Kurds but as two major Iraqi groups," observed Bawamrad. The CPA allocated separate budgets for the two administrations.

Nevertheless, the sky is not falling on the Kurds. Free and fair elections will correct many mistakes. We still have good friends. But patience does not last forever.