For Iraq's Kurds, chance of independence an 'indescribable feeling'

In Erbil, less than 40 miles from Iraq’s front lines, the streets and markets are packed with people. Men relax in cafés for hours and watch the World Cup on TV, safe from the suicide bombings and mass executions that have kept Iraqis in other parts of the country fearing for their lives.

A mostly secure and thriving city in the northern part of the country, Erbil is the capital of a semi-autonomous region of Iraq that people here call Kurdistan, which has its own local government, military force and pseudo-border. Kurdistan is also the name of a larger, loosely-defined region that's home to most Kurds, which encompasses parts of Syria, Turkey, western Iran and Armenia, plus embattled northern Iraq.

Brutally repressed through the decades, Iraq's Kurds have long dreamed of a truly independent state. And the sectarian violence now fracturing their country has created one of the best opportunities yet to achieve it.

The Kurds had a historic victory last month, when Peshmerga fighters took the disputed city of Kirkuk. The Kurds have always believed the city was rightfully theirs, but the Iraqi government wasn’t keen to surrender a region that provides 20 percent of the country’s oil. When the Iraqi soldiers fled the advancing Sunni rebels, the Peshmerga quickly stepped in to secure the city for themselves.

Now, more than two weeks since that victory, what appeared to be part of an Iraqi Army uniform was still lying in the streets, stripped off by a soldier fleeing the Islamic State. Next to it was a burned-out Humvee, one of many given by the Americans to the Iraqi Army, now destroyed lest it fell into the hands of Sunni militants.

South of Kirkuk, a few hundred meters down the road from an Islamic State checkpoint, the Peshmerga have made their stand. Sitting in a tent under the security wall, Maj. Muhammad Rafik recalled how the Islamic State tried to break the front lines, only to be turned away by Kurdish forces.

The fighting is calmer now, he said, as the Islamic State decided it was unwise to face the Peshmerga head on. More likely, the Islamic State recognized the difficulty of holding a city like Kirkuk, where the majority of the population is Kurdish.

Unlike their Iraqi Army counterparts, Rafik said the Peshmerga would not desert the area.

“The Kurdish Peshmerga, we are different from them,” Rafik said of the Iraqi Army. “We are faithful army that is prepared to die for the Kurdish cause. We are not fighting for a salary, but for a cause and we are ready to defend this land by all means.”

The Iraqi government has lost most of the territory just south of Erbil to Sunni rebels, but Kurdish forces spokesman Jabar Yawar is careful to acknowledge that, for now at least, the Kurdish North is still technically a part of Iraq. But like most of the officials here, his criticism of the Iraqi government and its armed forces is growing by the day.

“There is huge administrative and financial corruptions. There are sectarian divisions between the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds, which affects the strength of the army,” said Yawar, also a lieutenant general. “The Iraqi Army has also become used to surrendering. It’s been happening since the first and second Gulf War. It’s like it’s part of the culture now.”

Yawar added: “I’m a Kurd. And we have the right to independence!”

The possibility of Kurdish independence is an “indescribable feeling” for an older guard of Kurds who’ve lived for decades in the shadows of Arabs, Persians and Turks, said one older Kurdish man, who asked to remain anonymous.

“Our economy is independent, and the Iraqi sectarian problems have started to explode, so it’s the right time to claim our freedom,” the man said. “The tragedies of some work to [the] benefits of others. This is just a political reality.”