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Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka ęape-Rivisła Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Ozeti

reguł ar patrols to prevent Husseins forces from venturing north of the 36th paraUel and into the 17,000-square-mile Kurdish-control-led zonę of northeastem Iraq. Left alone for the first time in gene-rations, Kurds constructed a flourishing quasi-state, with demo-cratic elections and institutions to underpin the traditional leader* ship of Ba rżani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party, and his rival to the east, Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Along the road north from Baghdad, what they built łs readily apparent. Northward from Kirkuk, the Iraqi flag has disappeared, replaced by the green, white and red colors of Kurdistan, with a blazing yellow sun in the center. The Arabie language has withe-red away, replaced by the Kurds' own tongue.

Security checkpoints to control traffic have been erected by Kurdish fighters, called pesh merga, only a few of whom wear uni-forms of the U.S.-trained Iraqi National Guard. Barzanis head-quarters, atop a steep bluff just outside Salahuddin, is guarded by his party's militia. "We will not agree to having the Iraqi army here," said Mohammed Sharif Ahmad, dean of the law and politi-cal science department at Salahuddin University. "We have our pesh merga. They are organized like an army."

Together, Ba rżani and Talabani field morę than 70,000 armed men, twice the planned strength of the lraqi national army and several times its current roster, according to a U.S. taiły. Each of the two Kurdish leaders has built his own military academy to tum out officers in two-year courses.

A decree issued by Iraq‘s interim govemment in Baghdad banning militias has had no noticeable effect here. For Kurds, making the pesh merga illegal would be like trying to reverse generations of history and undo the emergence of a new national entity over the last dozen years. 'This is my land," said Goran Nuri, who runs a bookstore in the shadow of a fortress built by Salahuddin, a Kurd, after his conquest of Jerusalem. Nuri has laid in stocks of dictiona-ries, English language courses and science texts, scattered hapha-zardly around his nanow little shop. But what his customers real-ly want and buy, Nuri said, are Kurdish-language modem novels, literaturo of their own.

The only Arabic-language tome that attracts buyers, he said, is the Koran, the Muslim holy book. Fearing the Futurę

lraqi Kurds Demonstrate

AFP July 24, 2004

SULEIMANIYA - Around 500 intellectuals and students marched through the city of Suleimaniya on Saturday to demand an independent Kurdistan, incorporating Iraq's main northem oil centre of Kirkuk. Holding aloft banners saying "Independence for Kurdistan," and "Kirkuk: Kurdish City," the protest flouted a ban issued by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which Controls the northeastem Iraqi province of Suleimaniya.

Delegates submitted a memorandum to the PUK s provincial admi-nistration.

The word that has come to dominate the debate over Kurdistan is federalism. Kurds and Arabs alike have suggested that reorgani-zing Iraq in an assodation of States could give Kurdistan room to retain self-rule while staying within a unified lraq. The Kurdish parliament has voted to forgo total independence in return for loose federalism.

But there is little agreement on how Kurdistan should be defined in the new constitution. Ahmad, the jurist, said putting off the debate is the best idea, to give the new Iraq time to jell. Meanwhile, he suggested, Kurdistan would retain its semi-independence.

But Barzani said the Kurds can wait only so long and that writing the new constitution will force a dedsion. "My approach is to put all these issues on the table and solve them as much as possible," he said. Much will depend on how the United States comes down when the crunch arrives, probably next year, he said. Two recent decisions by the Bush ad ministration have inspired doubts.

The first was rejection of a Kurdish demand for the post of either president or prime minister in the interim govemment, reflecting the Kurdish contention that Iraqi society is divided into Arabs and Kurds. The second was refusal to put into the Security Council resolution underpinning the new Iraqi govemment a condition that any important dedsion must be agreed on by consensus among Lraq's political and ethnic factions.

At the Kurds’ insistence, U.S. occupation authorities induded such a proviso in the Temporary Administrative Law goveming Iraq pending its new constitution. But Shiite leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, objected that this amounted to a Kurdish veto, frustrating majority rule. Eager for votes at the United Nations, the Bush administration dropped the language from the resolution. Kurdish leaders repeatedly said they would never for-get U.S. help in setting up the quasi-independent Kurdistan they have had sińce 1991. But they also have not forgotten what happe-ned in 1975, when the United States, along with Iran and Israel, withdrew support for an earlier secessionist revolt and stood by while Iraqi troops crushed the pesh merga, who were then com-manded by Barzanis late father, Mustafa Barzani.

'We have every right to have fears about the futurę," Barzani said.

Independent Kurdistan

The document, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, called for Kurdistans independence from Iraq and for former strongman Saddam Hussein to be tried by an intemational court in which Kurds have a voice. It also rejected the former regimes policy of "arabisation," in which Kurds say thousands of their people were forced to flee the country s oil-rich areas to make way for a Saddam-inspired Arab resettlement policy.

Demonstrations calling for an independent Kurdistan are rare in

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