Kurdish leaders back US, UN moves to delay elections

Shut your eyes when talking to Iraqi Kurdish officials about elections, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you were in the United Nations building in New York, or the Baghdad office of Iraq's US administrator, Paul Bremer. "With Iraq in its present state, are free and fair elections possible?" asks Safeen Dizayee, foreign affairs spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party that has controlled half of northern Iraq since 1991. "Categorically, no. There is neither stability nor security. There are no laws on political parties and thresholds. Voter registration systems are in tatters, or non-existent," he told IRIN in Arbil. His remarks are almost a carbon copy of statements made, last Thursday and Friday respectively, by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Bremer. With the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'ite majority Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani lobbying hard for elections "as soon as possible", both said polls would be unfeasible before the US handover of power to Iraqis planned to take place on 30 June. The consonance of Kurdish and international views should come as no surprise. Kurds supported the coalition campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime from the outset. While central and southern Iraq continue to be riven by violence, the Kurdish heartlands remain largely peaceful, with only a skeleton US military presence. It's not difficult to find Kurds in the streets of Arbil willing to describe a future Iraq under Shi'ite domination as a recipe for tyranny worse than Saddam's. But despite Shia opposition to Kurdish demands for federalism, Kurdish politicians insist their opposition to early polls has nothing to do with antipathy for Al-Sistani and his followers. "If Shi'ite Iraqis all decide to vote for Al-Sistani, a difference of a year or two will make no difference - they will win power," Shafiq Azaz, minister for humanitarian affairs in Arbil, told IRIN. "Preventing that is a waste of time, and not our concern anyway. Our concern is ensuring that our demands are met by Baghdad." Annan's decision to back Mr Bremer's decision to rule out elections this summer could not have come at a more crucial time in the slow transformation of Iraq from occupied country to sovereign state. The temporary administrative laws due to be drafted by the end of February by the Iraqi Governing Council may not sound like much. In effect, though, they are what governor of the northwestern Kurdish city of Dahuk, Nichirwan Ahmed, called "a blueprint for the future of Iraq". "If we leave our fight to guard the autonomy we have consolidated since 1991 until the drafting of Iraq's final constitution two or three years down the line, it will be too late," he told IRIN. By far the most important of their demands, and the reason for their opposition to early elections, is the explosive question of the ethnic identity of oil-rich Kirkuk. Originally a majority Turkoman town at the heart of a Kurdish region, Kirkuk has been progressively Arabised by Baghdad since 1958. The expulsion of Kurds and Turkoman from the area peaked following the collapse of an autonomy agreement signed in March 1970 by Saddam Hussein and then Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani. Seen by many Kurds as their Jerusalem, Kirkuk's Kurdishness has never been accepted by Baghdad. It currently sits 40 km to the south of the green line dividing the Kurdish-administered region from the rest of Iraq. "If you were to have parliamentary elections today in Kirkuk, would the candidates be representing the real population," Dizayee said. "No, the people voting for them would be newcomers. Elections can only take place when Saddam's Arabisation programme has been reversed." "What we need first is a return of all internally displaced people to the Kirkuk region, followed by a census backed up by cast iron US guarantees that they will uphold the results," Shafiq Azaz said. "Elections can come after that." Following the deterioration of security in the north, culminating in the 1 February suicide attacks that killed 109 people in Arbil, the Kurds have hardened their tone. For many, the thousands who have signed street petitions for federalism since the end of January, federalism is almost indistinguishable from independence. With Kurdish leaders privately admitting they have been borne along by the rising tide of public anxiety over reunification with the rest of Iraq, some suspect last week's statements by Annan and Bremer may be an effort to reach a compromise. "There was no common ground until now between Shia and Kurdish demands," Muhaydin Hasan, director of the Arbil-based radio affiliated to the small Kurdish Communist Party, told IRIN. In effect, Annan and Bremer are now telling the Shia to cool down. I suspect they will privately be doing the same to the Kurds," he added.