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Revue de Presse-Press Reviezv-Berhevoka ęape-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti

dom now," said the Rev. Mofid Toma Marcus, an Assyrian Christian monk who oversees the Monastery of the Virgin Mary in Al Qosh, a Christian village near the burial spot of the Old Testament prophet Nahum. "America has given new Life to Iraqi people."

In five years, he said, "Iraq will be better. Under Saddam, we had no celi phones, no Internet, no interviews with American joumalists. America took 200 years to get to where it is today."

Al Qosh is one of seven Christian villages stretching north from Mosul.

"We dorit give permission for Muslim families to live in Christian vil-lages," Mr. Marcus said, explaining that Muslims would gradually tum it into an Muslim-majority village, then institute Islamie law.

A half-mile down the road is Bozan, a village populated by Yezidi Kurds who worship a pre-Islamic peacock god linked to Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. The children play in the town square near a bombed-out school that the monastery is trying to refurbish.

They run to fetch Elias Khalaf, the headmaster, a dignified man in a Kurdish-style gray suit with baggy pants, who begs for Americans to come stay in some of the monastery s 200 rooms and help rebuild his school. Missing are all the basics: paint, Windows, water, doors, black-boards, electridty, desks and toilets.

Thirty teachers toil with 1,100 students, sometimes as many as 60 per dass.

"We need teachers," he begs. "We need everything."

The Yezidis were forced out of their villages 30 years ago by Arab Iraqis, gaining them back only sińce the overthrow of Saddam. On their way out, the Arabs cut the electric lines and poisoned the wells.

Kurdish cities are filled with unemployed men of all ages idling in cafes to escape the 111-degree heat. Despite the scorching temperaturę, many of the Muslim women cloak themselves in heavy, long-slee-ved jackets, ankle-length skirts and head scarves. Sulaymania, a dty about 80 mil es west of the Iranian border surrounded by hot, rocky, barren hills, has a reputation for free thinking and slightly morę liberał dress codes. It has become a center for experimental newspapers that operate on shoestring budgets. The London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting has an Office in Sulaymania, where it tri es to instill joumaiistic standards into eager but inexperienced reporters.

One student-run paper is in a tiny third-floor Office with no air condi-tioning. Cold sodas are brought for the guests, who are told that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which Controls the northwestem tier of Kurdistan, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which Controls the southeast, exercise Mafialike control over Kurds. Any newspaper that critidzes the parties, they say, finds itself banned from local newsstands. similar conversation the next day with an Islamie newspaper reveals how dissatisfaction with the slow pace of change is everywhere. At a quiet dinner with Kurdish businessmen in the tou-risty suburb of Sarchinar, the topie of conversation is the failure of Kurdish political leaders to encourage Western investment and the reluctance of American companies to take a chance on the Kurds.

"If you dorit move quickly here," one Computer technidan said, "the Chin esc and the Germans will fili your place."

The Iranians already have a consulate in Sulaymania, one is told, while the Americans only have plans for a consulate in Kirkuk, lea-ving most of northem lraq with no offidal American presence.

Meanwhile, the Kurds already have a functioning airport in Erbil and plans are to open another one soon in Sulaymania. Iraq has been on hołd for too many years, they say. Gas may be 3 cents a galion here but passports are impossible to come by, reducing many Kurds to leaming their English from BBC World telecasts. There is no postał service.

Plus, any Kurdish public figurę working with Westemers knows his life could be snuffed out at any time. A drive to a lunch interview with Salahaddin University President Mohammed Sadik in Erbil begins when two armed bodyguards jump into the passenger seat of his car and perch on the back bumper. Their caution stems from the Feb. 1 suidde bombings at the Erbil headquarters of the KDP and PUK during celebrations for an Islamie holiday. Morę than 56 Kurds, adults and children were killed. The Kurds at this lunch are distraught over U.N. Resolution 1546, which they hoped would support Kurds semi-independent status. But the resolution was vague, not even mentio-ning the regional govemment for which Kurds have long campai-gned. Furious Kurds now refer to L. Paul Brem er, who served as the United States’ Iraq administrator after the fali of Saddam, as "Lawrence of Arabia" for selling them short to Arab rulers who have little experience or taste for democracy.

"We feel Americans have bargained at the expense of the Kurds," Mr. Sadik said. 'The worst person they brought here was Mr. Bremer, who didrit want to take any advice from the Kurds but who was willing to bargain with everyone else."

All the lunch guests scoffed at the notion of "a new Iraq" touted by the Americans.

"We have nothing in common with the rest of Iraq," said Kirmanj Gundi, a Tennessee State professor visiting his homeland. "Why did Bremer always compromise on Kurdish interests in favor of the Shi ites and Sunnis who shoot at them?

"If America supports us, we’d be the most loyal friend in the region.”

Every Kurd in the room wanted independence. Why, they asked, was America so quick to recognize Israel 56 years ago but today raises objection after objection about Kurdish independence.

"When America decided to recognize Israel," one said, "America didrit care about how the 22 Arab countries would react or how the 56 Islamie countries would react. So why should the Kurds care what the Iraqi govemment thinks?"