’The Constitution and Equality’
The conference on ’The Constitution and Equality’ took place in the regional capital of Hewler (Erbil) on August 8th 2005, under the auspices of Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and under the banner ’Equality in the Constitution is the best guarantee of democracy’.
The conference was held in a public forum in the building of the Council of Ministers. It was chaired by the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s equality adviser, and supported by the Organization for the Empowerment of Women. Fifty womens and NGO organizations sent representatives from all cities and districts of the region. The conference discussed the blueprint of Iraq’s constitution released in late July, particularly the paragraphs that are strongly antagonistic to Kurdish rights, human rights in general, and women’s rights in particular.
The Conference resolved by the acclamation that:
1. In Iraq’s constitution the borders of Kurdistan must be recognized according to historical and geographical facts, as proposed by the Kurdistan National Assembly, the democratic and sovereign body that expresses the will of the people of Kurdistan;
2. The right of the people of Kurdistan to self-determination, both now and in the future, must be recognized and protected in Iraq’s constitution;
3. The benefits of the natural resources of Iraq must be fairly distributed across Iraq, but Kurdistan and other regions shall own their natural resources, especially currently unexploited oil and gas fields;
4. Kurdish shall be an official and equal language of the Iraqi federation, both in word and practice, as promised but not implemented in the Transitional Administrative Law. Kurdish must be used in all of Iraq’s relevant official insignia, documentation, and diplomacy in any agreed federal anthem, and in Iraq’s currency and in any shared federal services.
5. Kurdistan as a federal region shall have its own constitution that is passed by the Kurdistan National Assembly and approved by its people in a referendum.
6. No federal laws shall be imposed on Kurdistan without the approval of the Kurdistan National Assembly.
7. Fundamental human rights and freedoms as recognized in international conventions shall be the sole basis of individual rights and shall not be over-ridden by any religious or other sources of legislation or belief.
8. There shall be a clear constitutional separation of religious and political matters within Iraq’s federation and within the Kurdistan Region in particular.
9. Men and women shall have full equal and effective rights in Iraq’s federal constitution, and in Kurdistan’s constitution. No recognition of religious rights or minority rights shall qualify this fundamental protection of the equality of men and women. There shall be an Equality Commission in Kurdistan tasked to ensure the full and effective implementation of equality of men and women in public and private life.
10. The constitution of Iraq and the constitution of Kurdistan shall respect the full equality of all nationalities and all religious communities in Iraq, and no religion shall be a source or the source of legislation in Kurdistan or in the federal government of Iraq.
For further information please contact:
Mahabad Qaradaghi Adviser of Prime Minister in Women Issues
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Kurdistan - Arbil
Homepage: www.krg.org
E-mail: mahabado3@hotmail.com or qmahabad@hotmail.com
For Kurds, a united Iraq means settling for less
As the August 15 deadline for a draft constitution approaches, Iraq’s Kurds are locked in an uneasy power struggle with the Shiite majority that could be the precursor to a Kurdish falling out with the Iraqi political process. The influence of the United States over the constitutional drafting process, which has been considerable, despite American and Iraqi government rhetoric suggesting the contrary, has thus far been unfavorable to the Kurds.
One of the chief demands of Kurdish negotiators has been that there should be regional rather than national control over natural resources. This would give Kurds authority over oil-rich Kirkuk, the so-called "heart" of Kurdistan.
This is seen as essential by the Kurds, mainly because of their unwillingness to be beholden again to the Iraqi central government for funds. Kurdish supremacy in Kirkuk is also an essential contingency in case Iraq’s current instability worsens. The Americans, on the other hand, are worried that integrating acceptance of regional control over resources into the constitution will encourage those who want to secede in the north, and those who want to ally themselves with Iran in the south.
Iran-leaning Iraqi Shiites, like the Sunni Arabs, continue to be unfavorably disposed to American influence over the Iraqi political process, while the U.S. fears that allowing some form of regional autonomy in the south will be to its disadvantage as it seeks to turn Iraq into a stable source of oil. While the U.S. has made its preference clear on oil-related issues, it has also, much to the dismay of the Kurds, decided to steer clear of other social and political complexities that could plague the nascent Iraqi constitution.
Both Kurds and non-Shiite Arabs are alarmed by the supposed desire of the majority to include Iranian-style Islamic features in the constitution. There has even been talk of including a (mostly ceremonial) post of "supreme guide," an idea which makes Iraq’s non-Shiites cringe.
While it is debatable whether or not the Kurds genuinely have a problem with an Islamic civil code, they do have more difficulties with the use of Islam in the constitution than do the other parties, and this puts them at a disadvantage. The Kurds have also put forth highly controversial demands.
Many of these can be interpreted as part of a Kurdish bargaining technique to secure things such as veto power over legislation.
The Kurds, for example, have suggested that they be entitled to a regional referendum in eight years’ time to determine whether or not they approve of independence. While this is unlikely to be allowed by any Iraqi government, even if it is written into the constitution, it would be a justification for Kurdish independence down the road if things turned sour in the rest of the country.
Understandably, the "I" word is not being taken well by the other parties at the table, who are already suspicious of Kurdish intentions. The current negotiations are tough and complicated, and the Kurds are also the only ones who seem to be going at them alone. Kurdish leaders were the most ardent Iraqi supporters of the U.S. invasion, and Kurdistan is still the only part of Iraq considered safe for American troops.
The Kurds put their Peshmerga militia at the service of the U.S. to secure a number of key areas near the north, and almost everyone suspects that the Kurds were the real captors of Saddam Hussein, at least in terms of providing the intelligence that led to his discovery. Yet despite all of this, the U.S. is concerned about the image a strong U.S.-Kurdish alliance sends to the Arab world, and has failed to provide rewards for Kurdish cooperation.
Complicating the issue further is the fact that Turkey remains very uneasy with Kurdish moves. The Sunni Arabs on the other hand - many of whose active representatives today were once aligned with Baath - have been courted incessantly by the U.S. Their very place in the Iraqi constitutional drafting process is a direct result of this American desire to be accommodating: the parties at the table, at the firm request of the Bush administration, were asked to ignore the fact that very few Sunni Arabs turned out to vote in the Iraqi elections, hence ensuring far fewer representatives in the constitutional negotiations. The Americans have also sought to appease the majority Shiites.
However, conspicuously less talk is heard about the integral advisory role that Iran is playing in support of the Iraqi Shiites. Tehran has behaved as a sophisticated big brother to the Shiites, and seeks to ultimately ensure that the community gets all that the constitutional drafting process can offer them. In all likelihood, the Kurds will be the party forced to settle for less.
Their minimal package of demands does not square with the maximal concessions the other Iraqi communities are willing to offer. The constitution itself will be drafted shortly, but its repercussions will be more evident in about a year’s time, when the Kurds will have had time to work within a structure they find problematic.
A Kurdish backlash, requesting revisions to the constitution or something more serious, will be very likely then.
Ali Ezzatyar is a doctoral candidate in law at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star
With the rest of Iraq descending into civil war, Kurds hard-sell their state within a state by David Axe December 20th, 2005 11:44 AM Erbil, Iraq—For days leading up to the December 15 federal elections, this northern city hosts what is probably the world's biggest round-the-clock outdoor party. Kurds in traditional dress—the men in drab trousers and tunics, the women in colorful sequined dresses—join Chaldean Christians, Muslim Arab refugees, and even a small but growing contingent of formerly expatriate Iraqi Jews on Erbil's wide laneless streets.
In parks and at the base of the city's 10,000-year-old citadel, there is dancing, pickup soccer matches, and appearances by local celebrities and politicians. Iraqi and foreign journalists move through the crowds with TV cameras and notepads, their interpreters and producers in tow. At night, with the moon illuminating the ancient, towering citadel, phalanxes of young men driving compact cars adorned with Kurdistan's red, white, and green flag honk their horns as they speed past hotels crowded with reporters and election observers.
It's either the shared joy of liberated peoples or some kind of spontaneous popular marketing campaign for the region—or both. Kurdistan is a strange place, an essentially independent, albeit unofficial, state inside the borders of another country—a country that for decades did everything in its power to displace, kill, and oppress Kurdistan's peoples. Kurdish freedom fighters, the peshmerga, had fought for independence since Iraq's inception in the wake of World War I. But it wasn't until the U.S.-led coalition gutted Saddam Hussein's army in 1991 that the peshmerga managed to permanently hold any territory, the northern quarter of Iraq surrounding the cities of Erbil in the west and Sulaymaniyah in the east.
With U.S. and British fighter jets patrolling overhead, the Kurds spent the next decade establishing a democratically elected national assembly, an army and police force, and two rival political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), based in Erbil, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, based in Sulaymaniyah. In 1994, squabbles over regional finances sparked war between the KDP and PUK.
It took the personal intervention of Bill Clinton's secretary of state Madeleine Albright in 1997 to stop the fighting. When U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, the two parties saw an opportunity. In January 2005, they fielded a single slate of candidates for Iraq's constitutional assembly. Despite Kurds' representing just 15 percent of Iraq's population, the coalition managed to win a quarter of the seats, not to mention the presidency for charismatic PUK frontman Jalal Talabani.
Now the KDP and PUK function as one (from two comfortably distant headquarters), commanding the loyalty of all but a sliver of Kurdistan's 5 million people and lobbying hard for Kurdish causes. While Sunni Arab central Iraq suffers through its third year of war and Shiite southern Iraq increasingly becomes an adjunct of Islamic Iran, Kurdistan moves from strength to strength. Its streets are made safe by Kurdish soldiers and policemen, its population swells with refugees and returning expatriates, its economy booms with small businesses and two new international airports, and its leverage in Baghdad is increasing. Kurdistan's unity has paid dividends. But there are splits in the seams.
A scramble for investment and resurgent political strife could spell an end to Kurdistan's relative peace and prosperity. Gnawing at the edges of Kurdistan's prosperity is a dearth of resources. While rich in land and labor, Kurdistan lacks access to Iraq's oil and has never received the kind of investment that might jump-start a service economy. More immediately foreboding is the prospect of another Kurdish schism like that between the KDP and PUK before 1997.
Alongside radical Islamic political parties all over the Middle East, the Islamic League of Kurdistan, or ILK, has been gaining in power and popularity lately, sparking lethal riots in cities across Kurdistan and threatening to upset the carefully modulated multiculturalism that is one of the region's major selling points. In an effort to thwart the ILK, the KDP and PUK reinvigorated their electoral alliance, forging a slate of candidates that locals call "730." All over KDP- controlled Erbil this month, 730's slogans and posters were, unsurprisingly, the only ones in evidence.
Erbil anti-corruption agent Luqman Khedir, despite railing at the KDP's apparent violation of campaigning laws, stressed that the ILK must not gain inroads on election day: "We cannot give the future to Islamists." But ILK isn't the region's only foe, and even if 730 sweeps the Kurdish vote, as seemed likely late last week, KDP and PUK supporters know they must work quickly to safeguard Kurdistan's progress. To this end, Kurds have become relentless self-promoters, pitching for aid and recognition with characteristic unity.
At the Frankfurt airport awaiting a $1,000, five-hour red-eye flight to Erbil in early December is a bewildering cast of characters: wealthy British-educated Kurdish expats, a sleazy Kurdish American bachelor from Virginia, Kurdish families with three or more screaming kids and hundreds of pounds of plastic-wrapped luggage, a gruff Canadian oil explorer, a liquored-up Dutch human rights activist, and a gaggle of journalists. The non-Kurds are a stoic bunch, but even their long stares can't deter the Kurds from making their usual pitch, the one that begins with "Kurdistan is a beautiful place . . . " and often ends with the question "Why doesn't the U.S. invest more in us?"
It's a pitch you're bound to hear if you ever meet an Iraqi Kurd. And if for some reason you ever visit their indeed beautiful land, you'll hear it every day. It's hard to fathom at times, but most Kurds are on the same sheet of music when it comes to promoting their country. And what music it is. "We're Kurds, but we're never against anyone," Kurdish general Anwar Dolani said in Sulaymaniyah in March. "Our goal is every human on earth considering every other human equal." Eight months later, in Erbil, Kurdistan director of archaeology Kanan Mufti sings the same tune. "The Kurdish people is the only people in the Middle East with respect for other nations," he says over tea and cigarettes. "We used to cohabitate in a brotherly fashion with Jews.
Now we have the district of Ankawa populated by Christians. Kurds have been oppressed, but they oppress no one." Mufti is a brother of PUK bigwig Adnan Mufti, currently speaker of the regional assembly. Kanan Mufti is also an unofficial ambassador of Kurdistan. He receives journalists, academics, and foreign dignitaries in his well-appointed two-story home. He's not the only one. In only his first three days in Erbil, this reporter accepts dozens of invitations to share tea, cigarettes, and meals with gregarious Kurds, some of them party officials, others just everyday joes. The ensuing conversations are almost always the same.
Shrzad Farmin Jacob, a Christian who spent 10 years in Abu Ghraib back when it was one of Saddam's dreaded prisons, and who assisted American forces during the 2003 invasion, asks point-blank why the U.S. doesn't invest more in local industry suffering from a lack of financing—a problem that sparked the 1994 Kurdish civil war. Adnan Mufti doesn't beg. Taking a break from a press conference with local journalists, he expresses similar desires in more diplomatic language. He says the December 15 elections are important because they will mean a new government and new laws that will reinvigorate the U.S.-Iraqi partnership: "To struggle together against terrorists and terrorism and to have a new Iraq federation respecting human rights . . . that's why our people suffered, to have this one day."
In this reporter's experience, "human rights" is Kurdish code for "Kurdish rights." Adnan Mufti is too clever not to couch his regional patriotism—and his desire for more U.S. involvement in Kurdistan—in federal Iraqi terms. By contrast, city health official Ali Abdula Maloud, 55, isn't afraid to be blunt. "It's obvious that the goal of the American government is to build democracy in the entire Middle East," he says. "And as Kurds, we consider ourselves strategic allies to the U.S. government." But there's a catch, isn't there? Yes, according to 43-year-old teacher Bayan Mohammed Salah. She laments that the Kurds have been oppressed and suggests that the U.S. could right this wrong by pressuring the Iraqi government to extend Kurdistan's autonomy south past Kirkuk, which commands a quarter of Iraq's oil reserves.
The Kirkuk problem has long tainted the otherwise congenial U.S.-Kurdish alliance. Kurdish dominion over Kirkuk might solve the financing problem that caused a war and hamstrings regional industry. But it would also cost Baghdad billions annually in oil revenue and likely instigate major fighting between Kirkuk's evenly divided Sunni Arab, Shiite, and Kurdish communities. According to U.S. Army officers, keeping the Kurdish regional government away from Kirkuk is an American objective. So is keeping Kurdistan part of Iraq. Kanan Mufti wonders why Kurds don't get more respect—and why they don't have independence, saying,
"We are doing better than most peoples with their own states." In a sense, Kurdistan is a victim of its own success. It's the most stable and peaceful region of Iraq. Uncounted thousands of Arabs have fled other Iraqi cities to settle in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. Without Kurdistan, where would they go? So far cornered by U.S. refusal to sponsor either independence or a bold move on Kirkuk, the Kurds can only beg, plead, and lobby for investment and recognition.
In downtown Erbil, the pre-election celebrations and joyrides come to an abrupt halt at the stroke of midnight on December 15, when a citywide curfew comes into effect. Widespread fears of terrorist attacks underline the region's usual paranoia. Police and military patrols replace colorful crowds. No cars are on the streets but those registered to elections workers, the police, the army, or journalists. It's a rare quiet night. In the morning, first in trickles, then in droves, many of Erbil's 1.2 million residents head on foot to their nearest polling places, running gauntlets of uniformed, heavily armed security forces to mark paper ballots, dip their fingers in red ink, and wave at banks of TV cameras on their way out.
As polls start to close, with 730 favored to sweep, the jubilation defies even the curfew and the armed men occupying every street corner. With the ILK's Islamist advance apparently staved off for an election cycle and another peaceful election broadcast for all the world to see, the Kurds have at least held the line, and maybe had some success selling themselves to the world.
At the base of the ancient citadel, where Kurdish fighters have resisted their enemies for millennia, hundreds of young men dance to loud cheery music that's a catchy mix of traditional and modern, like the Kurds themselves.
Producer...
Dan Hare
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Up-dated on December 23, 2005