Kurdistan: The Other Iraq

Bob Simon On How The Kurds Are Reshaping Northeastern Iraq

(CBS)  The Kurds may have to wait a long time because for the U.S. military there is another overwhelming reason to keep the Kurds inside Iraq: oil.

One of Iraq’s largest oil fields sits just across Kurdistan’s de facto border in an ethnically mixed city called Kirkuk. It is crucial to the future economic health of Iraq. The trouble is the Kurds say Kirkuk historically belongs to them. And this year there will be a referendum asking Kirkuk’s citizens if they want to join Kurdistan.

Asked why Kirkuk is so important, Prime Minister Barzani says, "It’s Kurdistan. If you go back to history, any fight between Kurds and Baghdad is over Kirkuk."

If the Kurds win the referendum, and they are favored to do so, many fear Iraqi Arabs could turn Kirkuk into an inferno.

"They will not be happy of course. They will create problems by bombing at cars. And, the usual things which they do every day. They blow up mosques. Why not ordinary people?" Dr. Mohammed remarks.

The Kurds are all too familiar with violence, Iraqi style. They have a tradition of tragedy, none more brutal than the blow that came down in a matter of minutes one bloody Friday in 1988.

Some 5,000 Kurds were gassed by Saddam’s army at a place called Halabja; those images are remembered today on murals. Many Kurds say you’ll never understand Kurdish yearnings for the future if you haven’t seen the brutality of its past.

Ahmed Gilani, who returned to Kurdistan from Texas, knows first-hand: his father was executed. "By Saddam’s regime…till today they never told us what the reason was. Thankfully unlike some of the people, we got his body back," he tells Simon.

Gilani was six years old when his father was murdered. Two months after the execution, his family was told to come and pick up the body.

"Just like that. And they charge you for the bullets," he remembers.

It is memories like that which provide the motor for a giant security trench which the Kurds are building along their border.

"We don’t trust the Arabs. The same tragedies might happen again. And that’s why I say the Kurds should have their free state," explains Dr. Mohammed.

Free state? Not yet. Free market? Right here. While in the rest of Iraq they’re counting bodies, the Kurds are counting their money. Gleaming shopping centers are sprouting up from the sand. One sports an escalator, the first in Kurdistan.

There are plans for an American University, not surprising since there is a strong desire to have it the American way.

Well, almost. During Simon's visit, what seemed ordinary was hailed as a momentous event: an Austrian Airlines flight arrived in Erbil, the first landing by a Western carrier in any part of Iraq since the start of the war.

"Can you imagine having an American airline flying directly from New York to Erbil?" Simon asks Barzani.

"Why not? Yeah, why not?" the prime minister replies.

Asked if he thinks this could happen in the near future, Barzani says, "I mean I don’t know near future. But, I’m sure it will happen."

And Kurds are starting to believe the same could be said for their hopes of an independent Kurdistan. History’s perennial losers could turn out to be the winners of this war.

"Do you ever feel like you’re dreaming?" Simon asks Dr. Mohammed.

"Well, sometimes dreams come true," he replies. "I hope my dream will come true. Will be a reality. Why not?"

---

Kurdistan, however, is not completely immune from the violence that has rocked the rest of Iraq. In May, a car bomb killed 19 people in Erbil. It was the first attack inside Kurdistan in two years.

[jimmykatter]

Oprah Winfrey, Lesley stahl, Mary Hart, etc. ,etc. all fell into the very smart racist, segregationist newspaper people's trap. Do I think they're intelligent now ?

[jimmykatter]

Do research on Michael H Hart, and his plans for the purefied segregation of the United States. Then look at purefied, segregated Kurdistan, and see the smilarity.

[jimmykatter]

Jimmy Pattisson, and his thug leader, President Bush, had no trouble adding Oprah Winfrey's black face, along with Condoleezza Rice, as a front for the American Fourth Reich. It was nice of him to use his yacht to show her Canada's segregated, purefied aboriginals. Their nations remind me of Kurdistan.

[jimmykatter]

Remember, George Bernard Shaw was a eugenecist, and I have already proven that the cable companies monitor our TV watching for the government. When I was young, I noticed some students weren't allowed to watch TV at all; perhaps, for this reason.

[cocotteblue]

Representing Kurdistan as a peaceful region with a peaceful population does not take into account their decades long of fighting with Turkey. Kurd extremists have committed acts of terrorism in Turkey and their attempts to obtain their independance from that country are far from "peaceful". However, it is true that the Kurdish population is non agressive in general, but a documentary such as the one broadcasted last Sunday should present both aspect of the Kurdish society. They fight for oil just like anyone else.

[jimmykatter]

Afghanistan has produced another record opium crop with President Bush in charge.It certainly looks like Bush, the Prescotts, the Howells, and the Mathesons have duped everyone into believing they're against opium ( after their roles in the opium wars ). During the Vietnam war, the military drug smugglers used to smuggle the opium back to the U.S. in the caskets ( or bodies ) of the dead American soldiers.

[saiyanthan]

Your comment that Kurds, 30 million people, are the largest nation without a state is factually incorrect. Tamils are a 70 million strong nation without a state(50 million in India alone). The 3.5 million strong Tamils in Sri Lanka are fighting for their independent state.

[juwboy]

jimmykatter:

Thank you for defeating your own argument and strengthening mine.

[jimmykatter]

Patriotic Union of Kurdistan President of Iraq is an oxymoron.

[jimmykatter]

The American Nazis proved to the German Nazis that they were the superior Nazis in both WW1 and WW2.

[jimmykatter]

I'm very afraid an American Nazi is monitoring what I'm saying on here.

[prinzowhales]

The great difference between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq is that there are no occupying troops in the region. If you want the Sunnis to appreciate the opportunities of post Saddam Iraq, then get the devil out of the country and let them be! The Sunnis and Shia will reach an accommodation.

[srowitt]

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Prime Minister of Kurdistan correcting Bob Simon's characterization of the American 'invasion' of Iraq as the American 'liberation' of Iraq.

It is ironic that someone who actually understands the truth about our presence in Iraq correcting a supposedly unbiased media insider like Simon. The mainstream media has been lying to the American people for years and painting the United States in the worst way possible.

As far as I can tell, the murder of hundreds of thousands Iraqis means very little to a majority of liberals today. Where is their compassion for their fellow man? The cut and runners thought nothing of the mass murder that followed our defeat in Viet Nam. No wonder they are so apt to leave the Iraqis to the barbaric Isalmo fascists. I don't really believe they truly care.

The real heroes of this conflict will be those who brave coalition troops who have been risking their lives for the freedom of the Iraqi people. Anyone who has politicized this war for political gain should be ashamed of themselves. Who in the right mind would have stood against FDR during WWII? That generation understood the need for unity against a common enemy. Half of our country today has been duped into believing that our duly elected President is the enemy while the democratic presidential wannabees are pandering to those very same anti-American bloggers at the Daily KOS.

[jimmykatter]

The German eugenecists, who learned all they knew from the Americans, actually began with sterilizations, rather than killing, like the Americans. Nine categories of defectives were identified for sterilization; at the top of the list; the feebleminded, followed by schizophrenia, manic depression, Huntington's chorea, epilepsy, hereditary body deformities, deafness, hereditary blindness, and alcoholism.
The outright killing began after the forced sterilizations.
Hitler's insanity was financed by American jewish eugenecist banker james loeb.

[jimmykatter]

Actually, truthfully, Hitler eliminated his pacifist generals first, and replaced them with hawk generals.
Anyone who labels people, like Hitler did, must be a sympathizer.

[juwboy]

jimmykatter:

When Hitler came to power, the first groups he eliminated were his political opponents: socialists, communists, Marxists, labor leaders and other left-wingers.

Next, he turned his attention to the category he considered the greatest threat to the purity of his glorious German master race.

It wasn't the Jews.

Or homosexuals.

Or gypsies.

No, the groups that Hitler wanted exterminated with the greatest urgency were the mentally-retarded and feeble-minded:

Inbreeds, idiots, imbeciles, half-wits, simpletons, morons and cretins.

People just like you, jimmykatter!

[colonieny]

Jimmy : You are an idiot.

[jimmykatter]

It should also be remembered that the German jews sided with Adolf Hitler,the Austrians, the Ottoman Turks, and the Kurds to slaughter the Assyrian Christians in northern Iraq.

[jimmykatter]

The kurds aren't perennial underdogs. They helped the Ottoman Turks to slaughter the Assyrian christians around mosul in iraq.
The reason kurdistan is secure is because it's a purefied kurd country; any country can be secure if it's purefied; ask adolf hitler.
The Austrians sided with the Ottoman Turks, and Kurds during WW1; it's not surprizing they're the first airline to show up there.
The kurds are backing Al Qaeda, no wonder there's no terrorists there.

[karatirpan]

TRY TO MAKE KURDISTAN AND SEE...THIS IS RIDICILOUS HE IS MAKING UP A NEWS LIKE THAT...WE WILL INVADE IT NEXT MINUTE...MANY KURDS ARE PKK TERRORISTS. KERKUK AND MUSUL BELONGS TO TURKEY. TURKEY WILL INVADE NEXT MINUTE IF THEY TRY TO MAKE INDEPENDECE OF A TERRORIST COUNTRY. TURKS WILL DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT. SHAME ON CBS NEWS, SHAME ON THE REPORTER. THEY DONT SHOW THE OTHER SIDE OF IT KILLING BABIES AND WOMAN AND ELDER IN TURKEY THOS TERRORISTS IN THE MOUNTAINS. WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY INDEPENDENT KURDISH *** PLACE.