Revenge of the Kurds

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There's little dispute that the results of the Jan. 30 election have given Kurdish nationalism fresh momentum. Although they are predominantly Muslim, the Kurds of Iraq have long favored a more secular form of government than most Shi'ites do. The Kurdistan Referendum Movement, a grass-roots organization of intellectuals and junior political officials, says that of the 2 million who took part in an informal Election Day referendum on independence, 99% voted in favor. Kurds control their peshmerga militia soldiers and their own borders and are determined to preserve their sanctuary. Officially, Kurdistan exists only north of the "green line," the area where U.S. forces halted the Iraqi army's advance when Saddam moved to crush yet another Kurdish uprising in 1991. But since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the size of Kurdish-held territory has expanded 20%, according to coalition officials in northern Iraq.

Kurdish leaders are pushing to gain control of Kirkuk--known as the Jerusalem of Kurdistan--the capital of one of Iraq's most productive oil regions. Under Saddam, Kirkuk was subjected to a massive demographic reordering, as Saddam moved large numbers of Arabs into the city and tossed many Kurds out. The interim Iraqi government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi agreed that Kirkuk should be normalized--meaning displaced Kurds would be allowed to return while the so-called new Arabs would be moved out and compensated. But though some 100,000 Kurdish refugees returned to Kirkuk in time to vote in the election, the Iraqi government has yet to begin deporting the new Arabs.

For U.S. commanders in Iraq, an even more pressing concern is the status of the 80,000-strong peshmerga. In insurgent hot spots like Mosul, U.S. commanders have praised Kurdish troops for their willingness to stand and fight. But the peshmerga's continued assaults on insurgents run the risk of exacerbating tribal rivalries and sparking an anti-Kurdish backlash by Iraq's Arabs. The U.S. hopes to defuse the potential for conflict by folding the peshmerga into a new, unified Iraqi army. But the Kurds have so far refused to place their soldiers under the command of Baghdad. "The peshmerga must remain a force of the regional government," says Talabani, a former peshmerga commander. "The Kurdish people need them as protection against terrorism and to secure the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan."

The Kurds may be willing to cede control of their militia in exchange for assurances that they will be given a large role in the new government and a share of oil revenues from the south. "The more they participate in the central government, the less fear they'll have that they're going to be attacked," says Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Some Iraqis hope that Talabani's ascent to the presidency will be seen as an important first step toward Kurds and Arabs living peacefully with each other. "For years, we've been told that Kurds are Iraqis and not a separate people," says Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd who is Iraq's interim Foreign Minister. "Well, this is a chance to prove that--a chance to show that no position in the new Iraq, not even the presidency, is denied to a Kurd." --With reporting by Aparisim Ghosh/ Baghdad and Timothy J. Burger and Mark Thompson/ Washington