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Comparing the Iraqi Kurdistan of today with what she saw when she last visited in 2002, Robin Wright views the Kurdish push for independence as the culmination of a longstanding effort:
[E]ven in 2002 the Kurds were drifting into an autonomous statelet. The Kurdish language was making a comeback in government offices and workplaces, displacing Arabic. The school curriculum was Kurdicized; the younger generation barely identified with Iraq. Levies from smuggling and illicit trade produced revenues of a million dollars a day; even trucks exporting goods from Saddam-land to Turkey had to pay bribes to win passage. The Kurds had their own flag, too—a big sun emblazoned over red, white, and green stripes.
So, a dozen years later, it isn’t surprising that the Kurds now increasingly appear to be decoupling from Iraq, whether formally or de facto. When I returned, four months ago, this time on a direct flight from Istanbul to Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan had evolved from the least developed part of Iraq to its most stable and prosperous region. I stayed at a new five-star hotel and attended a conference at the new American University of Sulaymaniyah, which brought together panellists from around the world. The Kurds also have a new pipeline for transporting oil to Turkey, which could result in exports of up to four hundred thousand barrels a year, with an estimated forty-five billion barrels of crude in reserve.
Luke Harding also observes how oil has transformed Kurdistan’s fortunes over the past decade. All is not rosy, however:
Some worry that this oil-fuelled boom is pushing Kurdistan in the wrong direction.
Kamaran Subhan, a writer based in Sulaimaniyah, wonders if it is becoming not Norway but a rentier Gulf state. A friendly Bangladeshi waiter – there were no Bangladeshis here in 2003 – brings my coffee. “We are becoming lazy,” he says. Subhan worries that culture in Kurdistan has scarcely improved, despite the consumer splurge visible in the shiny new Land Cruisers on the roads.
The town still has only one art gallery, founded in the 1990s, with a mulberry tree in the courtyard and works by Kurdish artists hanging in a bright upstairs floor. “The government has little interest in art,” owner Dilshad Bahadin says. Nearby is a small cafe where Kurdish men discuss ideas and play backgammon. Subhan’s books enjoy a print run of 500-1,000 copies, he adds – not much in a country, or near-country, of 4.5 million people.
Meanwhile, Kurdistan’s two tribal families, the Barzanis and the Talibanis, continue to dominate politics – as well as the economy and employment. The Barzanis run Irbil, while the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), headed by Iraq’s former president Jalal Talibani, controls Sulaimaniyah. Critics accuse both of corruption, nepotism and patronage politics, keeping thousands of party workers on the public payroll. In 2007, a breakaway faction of the PUK formed a new, pro-transparency party, the Change Movement or Gorran.
Previous Dish on the prospect of an independent Kurdistan here.
The Dish 