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Iraqi Kurdish city looks to neighboring
Kurdistan for funds, identity
30.7.2008
By James Warden
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July
30, 2008
KHANIQIN, Iraq, — This is an Iraqi
city, but in name only.
Kurdish flags fly over public buildings and adorn
store walls and taxi cabs, while Iraqi flags are all
but invisible. Pictures of Kurdish leaders are in
every government office. Naturally, Kurdish is the
lingua franca.
Such trappings aren’t unusual in the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG), as Iraq’s autonomous
Kurdish provinces are called. But Khaniqin isn’t in
Kurdistan. It’s ostensibly part of the
Arab-dominated Diyala province. Residents here make
no secret of their desire to join Kurdistan,
prompting Diyala authorities to cut off its support
until they know for sure whether the outlying city
will stay in the province.
"I’ve been hired for four years, and Baqouba never
supported me for one penny," said Khaniqin Mayor
Mohammad Mullah Hussein. "The Iraqi government is
rich. They have the money, [but] nobody supports
us."
Khaniqin is one of about a dozen "disputed internal
boundaries" that are up for grabs while Arabs and
Kurds try to nail down the so-called green line that
divides their parts of Iraq. Kirkuk is the most well
known of these areas. But that oil-rich city has its
own provincial authorities to ensure money continues
to flow into its coffers while the issue is
negotiated. Khaniqin is at the mercy of Diyala
officials,www.ekurd.net
many of whom see no need
to invest in a place that is on its way out.
Deciding that boundary could take years, though. A
State Department official previously estimated that
Iraq could be three years from formalizing it.
The issue figured prominently in last week’s
discussion of an Iraqi elections law. President
Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, vetoed the election law
because the Kurdish parties didn’t like the way it
addressed the boundary issue.
Experts now think elections will be pushed into
2009, and no one knows when the boundary referendum
will go to voters.
Meanwhile, Khaniqin leaders continue to skirmish
with Diyala province officials over money, even
though the province has already figured the city
into its budget.
"If they’re not going to Kurdistan now, we need to
get Diyala to support Khaniqin," said Staff Sgt.
Dave Schlicher, a soldier with 407th Civil Affairs
Battalion and the head of the team responsible for
Khaniqin.
The situation isn’t helped by the refusal of
Khaniqin officials to talk with Diyala. American
civil affairs soldiers are pushing city leaders to
travel down to Baqouba to discuss the problems with
the provincial council.
"Without at least playing a little bit with Diyala,
we can’t make that happen," Schlicher said.
But Hussein, the mayor, has so far been unmoved:
"You have to go to Baqouba for the meetings, and I’m
not going."
Residents from the mayor on down complain constantly
about Diyala’s neglect, but the city is actually
better off than most of its southern neighbors
thanks to Kurdish money. The Kurdish provinces and
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan,www.ekurd.net
Talabani’s political
party, pay many of Khaniqin’s bills. The PUK even
has a large office building in the city.
Kurdish money paid for dozens of new two-story homes
for Kurds returning to the area after they were
evicted during the previous regime’s "Arabization"
campaign. Streets are clean and wide. And workers
are building a shopping center the length of a city
block.
"Pretty much, they get all their support from
Kurdistan," Schlicher said. "That’s how the mayor’s
been able to do so much with so little."
By contrast, Balad Ruz, southwest of Khaniqin, is
happy just to have its market going. That city has
also been the victim of Baqouba’s neglect even
though it is predominantly Arab. Government money in
Iraq is funneled through the larger cities, and it
is common across the country for large cities to
ignore their outlying villages.
"Everyone’s in the same boat," Schlicher said.
"Everything stops at Diyala and nothing comes out."
Khaniqin’s estrangement from Diyala doesn’t end with
funding issues.
Civil affairs officers visited the city’s jail
Wednesday to check on a deputy oil minister whom the
Kurds had arrested, perhaps illegally. The man
insisted that the local judge was acting improperly
and asked for the case to be reviewed by the head
judge in the neighboring Kurdish province of
Sulaimaniyah. The U.S. officers patiently explained
that the case would actually be heard by Diyala’s
judge because Khaniqin is in that province.
One of the officers visited Khaniqin’s judge,
though, and the jurist said he, too, thought the
Sulaimaniyah court should hear the case — and then
added almost innocently that Khaniqin’s court
doesn’t actually recognize Iraqi law. The officers
concluded that this was a discussion better suited
for the State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction
Team.
Residents say it’s natural to look to Kurdistan for
governance, mostly because the population has
historically been Kurdish. Achmet Mohammad Hussein,
a cigarette salesman, noted that Kurdish forces
already provide security for the area. Diyala’s
neglect is pushing them even further in that
direction.
"The people in Khaniqin, 99.9 percent want to go to
Kurdistan because they’ve gotten a lot of support
from the Kurdistan government, not Diyala," said
Jassim Mohammad Rahman, a general store owner in one
of Khaniqin’s markets. "We don’t hate the Iraqi
flag; we like it. But we like the Kurdish government
better than the Iraqi government."
The city is about 85 percent Kurdish, according to a
2008 census. But the city council has a mix of
Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Turkmen, Islamists, women
and even a communist. Meetings are lively but
peaceful, and the council members have no problem
sitting down to eat together afterward.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, stripes
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