The gates of Kirkuk will be made of gold … or so they were told
▶ Campbell MacDiarmid reports from Erbil on the fate of Iraq’s Kurds in the years since Saddam’s demise
Invading US troops were cheered on by Iraqi Kurds when they toppled the statue of former strongman Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003, as they held high hopes for a brighter future.
“I don’t remember anyone talking about an independent Kurdistan then,” says Khogir Wirya, a research fellow specialising in conflict resolution at the Middle East Research Institute in Erbil. “A prosperous, rich, powerful Iraq was what was in the minds of people.”
Fifteen years later, Kurds want independence. But after a thwarted referendum last September, their statehood aspirations have been set back a generation.
Ordinary Kurds are less optimistic about the future, even as leaders insist an opportunity exists to reset relations with Baghdad.
A Kurd from the disputed oil-producing city of Kirkuk, Mr Wirya was a teenager in 2003 and recalls watching the US invasion on staticky television from illegal satellite channels.
“After the war the famous expression was that ‘the gates of Kirkuk will be made of gold’,” he says.
Instead, he found himself growing up in a city filled with sectarian tension and recalls watching from his window as militants fired rockets.
Today Mr Wirya is having lunch outside at an organic cafe in an area of the Kurdish capital surrounded by modern, high-rise apartments. It is an unfamiliar scene in much of Iraq and a reflection of the autonomous Kurdish region’s enviable security situation.
After the invasion the Kurds, long persecuted by Saddam, were eager to form a partnership with US forces. They remain proud that until the war against ISIL, no American serviceman had been killed in Kurdish territory.
For years this security attracted investors while the rest of Iraq remained mired in violence.
The Kurds also took part in Iraq’s post-Saddam government, negotiating shrewdly to enshrine their autonomy in the 2005 constitution. But insecurity and entrenched political sectarianism made the Kurdistan Regional Government consider independence.
“When the security situation deteriorated and the rivalry between Baghdad and Erbil in the disputed territories began, Kurdish people realised that loads of the insurgency was coming from Arab areas,” Mr Wirya says.
“That’s when people started talking about secession.”
You don’t declare a state, you build a state. That involves a diversified economy and a military that can defend its borders HOSHYAR ALI Gorran official
The largest of the insurgent groups was ISIL, which in 2014 came within 30 kilometres of Erbil.
Long-standing Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani hoped the Kurds’ role as a stalwart ally against ISIL would attract support for a referendum on independence.
“We would prefer to die of starvation than to live under the oppression and occupation of others,” said Mr Barzani, who was president at the time.
But the referendum, which was opposed by federal Iraq, its regional neighbours and the US, backfired spectacularly.
Baghdad moved to reclaim disputed territories including crucial oilfields on which the economic feasibility of a Kurdish secession was set to rest.
In October the Iraq Civil Aviation Authority closed Kurdish airspace, a humiliating measure for the Kurds and an inconvenience for international companies, charities and the 34 countries with a diplomatic presence in the enclave.
The failure of the referendum set back independence aspirations at least two decades, the Kurdish opposition party Gorran Movement says.
“After 2003, the balance of power was in our favour,” says Hoshyar Ali, head of diplomatic relations for Gorran.
But Mr Ali says the fallout from the referendum has weakened the Kurdish government’s relations with Baghdad, its neighbours and its allies.
Gorran opposed the timing of the referendum, arguing that the Kurdish region was not ready for independence.
“In our view you don’t declare a state, you build a state,” Mr Ali says. “That involves building institutions, a diversified economy and a military that can defend its borders.”
Mr Ali says the referendum was a distraction from pressing economic issues.
“The priority for the people was the fight against ISIL, so they remained silent even though they faced very difficult conditions,” he says.
But now, ordinary Kurds are less reticent about expressing frustration with a government that has failed to deliver independence or economic prosperity.
“The government is stealing our salaries,” says Sohail Ismail, a teacher, who was part of a recent protest in Erbil.
It is a common refrain among Kurds who believe that government corruption is endemic.
“My salary is $250 (Dh918) and I’ve been a teacher for 15 years,” Ms Ismail says. “At Nawroz [Kurdish new year in March] they paid us for November. And they tell us we must be patient. We don’t need this loser authority.”
The two dominant parties in the government appear to be in disarray.
Mr Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, stepped down last year after 12 years as the Kurdish president. Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Iraq’s first post-2003 invasion president, died last year.
Credit is due to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi for making some attempts at statesmanship, Gorran says. In talks with other groups in Iraq, Mr Ali says there is an understanding that “we cannot go on like the old days”.
“There are opportunities right now to undertake political and economic reforms,” he says. “That’s what the people of Iraq and the people of Kurdistan deserve.”