By Sabrina Tavernise
New York Times
01 July 2003
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — Shortly after the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, the newly semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq held a rare democratic election. The region-wide election, however, provoked a civil war. There has not been another since.
The war broke the region, which calls itself Kurdistan, into two zones, each dominated by a single political party. Neither party tolerates political pluralism. Both have used torture, killings and kidnappings to achieve their political goals, many people here say.
As American authorities consider how to build democracy in Iraq, they have repeatedly held up this region as a model. In a message to the Kurdish parliament, L. Paul Bremer III, the American in charge of administration in Iraq, said, "I am confident that the example you set, with free elections, will be an inspiration for the rest of the country."
There is little doubt that the Kurdish political system has been less repressive than Saddam Hussein's. But a look at the Kurds' faltering experiment with democracy, where patronage and tribal allegiances crowd out the rule of law, shows how difficult it will be to establish a pluralistic political system in Iraq.
"Compared to the rest of Iraq, Kurdistan is fantastic," said David McDowall, author of "A Modern History of Kurds" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). "But it's a long way short of democracy as we know it in the Western world. It's incredibly important that Americans understand that democracy is in no way coming tomorrow."
Conditions in the Kurdish region were hardly ripe for building a democracy. It was under constant military pressure from Mr. Hussein, whose government killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds during the 1980's. The Iraqi Kurds are surrounded on the other sides by Iran, Turkey and Syria — countries intent on dividing and weakening the Kurds to keep their own Kurdish populations from making a move for independence.
The parties are not new. The revered Kurdish leader, Mustafa Barzani, formed the Kurdish Democratic Party in 1946. Thirty years later, a headstrong young Kurd, Jalal Talabani, quit the party and formed his own — the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. After a bitter war for power in the 1990's, the two parties agreed to an American-brokered peace in 1998, and recently began looking for ways to share power.
The region's main economic activity is trade, much of it only partly legal because of the unclear status of the region. It could not forge formal relations with other countries and was too unstable to attract foreign investors.
The Kurdish parties have cemented their power through a near-monopoly on the economy. The lack of clear laws for the region left much room for financial maneuvering. Politicians grew rich off the proceeds of sanction-busting trade with Baghdad, Iran and Turkey. Now political elites zoom around in shiny S.U.V.'s, the most conspicuously wealthy in a region where the average salary is $100 a month.
"Before 1991, senior leaders in both political parties were working in Iran picking apples," said Farhan Sharafani, a tribal leader here who ran the Kurdistan Democratic Party's office in London from 1978 to 1991 but quit in 1994 because of what he now says was corruption. "Now they are rich," he added. "They are hungry for money."
Political leaders bristle at questions about corruption. The party leader, Mr. Talabani, when interviewed, said angrily that "only enemies and propagandists" would raise questions about conflicts of interest in his party.
The ultimate instrument of party control over people's lives is a vast system of political patronage. Party control extends down to the lowest-level government jobs. A 33-year-old nurse in a Sulaimaniya hospital, who would identify himself only by his first name, Salih, was one of a very few health workers who refused to join the union sponsored by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the dominant party in this part of the Kurdish region. As a result, he said, his wages were cut by one-third.
Party supporters acknowledge that the Patriotic Union wields significant control because it is so popular. Heavy-handedness, they say, is simply a function of the fact that the area is new at democracy.
"We started as a resistance movement," Barham Salih, the prime minister of the part of this region controlled by this party, said in an interview. "We have developed more and more democratically, but there is still a lot more to do."
Some party officials privately acknowledge the parties' excesses, though.
"Saddam was the defining factor for all parties in Iraq, including for Kurds," one senior official said. "But the victim has acquired the characteristics of the tyrant."
Kurds who have come into conflict with one of the two governing parties describe often violent tactics.
In Erbil, the capital of the zone run by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, three journalists were arrested last August after writing articles that explored the lack of opportunities for local youth and raised questions about party finances. They were later released, but one, Nuradin Waisi, said he had received a death threat from a senior party official. He fled to Syria, where he remains.
Goran Salih, 31, another of the three, said party officials had made their position clear. "They said I will see much trouble in my life if I keep writing in that direction," he said in an interview.
Fawsi Hariri, a party spokesman, said he had no information about the incident.
Both sides seized hundreds of prisoners during the civil war. People who were jailed described being tortured. One former prisoner of war who gave only his first name, Sabir, said he was tortured with electric shocks and beaten with a heavy wire in a Kurdistan Democratic Party jail in 1996.
Mr. Hariri, the party spokesman, said, "We do not condone violence or torture in any of our correction facilities as we have suffered from it ourselves over many years."
Things have changed since the American-led war here. Kurdistan's revenues collapsed after allied forces banned the parties from levying their own duties. Facing an uncertain future, politicians in both parties have been trying to redefine their role. They have even made plans for a merger, which would have been unthinkable a year ago.
Ordinary Kurds, who still live in fear of offending the political parties, have gradually begun to talk about them.
"The parties had their historical role in preventing the destruction of the Kurdish people," said Faiq M. Golpy, a former member of parliament for the Patriotic Union. "But they did not make a democracy."
The real test, however, will be whether the parties are ready to concede defeat in a political race. Mr. McDowall, the author, contends that will not happen until Iraq has an independent middle class.
"Across Iraq, people who have bits of power are now working like crazy to create their own networks," he said. "It's happening invisibly. They will not surrender that power willingly. No one ever does."
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Citation: Sabrina Tavernise, "Trying to Set Up Democracy in a Divided Kurdish Region," New York Times, 1 July 2003.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/01/international/worldspecial/01KURD.html?pagewanted=print&position=
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