Montrealer Ehab Lotayef writes from Baghdad of his impressions of the strikingly different perspectives and conditions in the Kurdish north of the country, over a decade governed independently of the rest of Iraq.

Baghdad, December 26, 2003. I spent three days out of Baghdad, or maybe I should say, out of Iraq. Kurdistan, which has enjoyed self-rule for over ten years, is very different from the rest of the country, which remained under Saddam's rule and was affected by the sanctions, embargo, and lately the war. The instability and danger that are felt in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbalaa (I made short, one-day trips to each of the two latter, south-western Shia'a cities), disappeared as soon as we crossed the Karkuk-Sulaimania border.

Kurdistan is not a clearly defined or unanimously agreed upon territory. Still, beyond controversy, it includes parts of northern Iraq, eastern Syria, north-western Iran and south-eastern Turkey. The Iraqi Kurdistan, which we partially visited, is also not clearly defined. The five northern governorates of Iraq: Mousoul, Karkuk, Sulaimania, Arbil and Duhuk, all have, or till a recent past had, Kurdish majorities. The three latter ones have enjoyed self-rule from shortly after the 1991 Gulf war.

Self-governance was not offered to Kurds on a plate of gold. When the 1991 war ended and the two no-fly zones were established in the north and south of the country, two uprisings took place against Saddam Hussein: The Shia'a in the south and the Kurds in the north. Both were brutally put down, while the Americans, who had, in more than one way, encouraged the population to revolt, did nothing and offered no support. The Kurds, who had more organized militias, tried again. Their second uprising, within the same year, was more successful than the first and, although they did not end up controlling all that they consider Kurdish land, they established their local government in Sulaimania, Arbil and Duhuk.

A few years earlier Saddam had launched an operation he named Anfaal (cheaply borrowing a word from the Quran which translates loosely to 'spoils of war') to "Arabize" the Kurdish territories by moving Kurds en-masse out of their towns and villages by force and moving Arabs to replace them. There was no room for objection under Saddam's rule. Anyone, of any ethnicity, who showed opposition to any order, was brutally punished. Many Kurdish villages were massacred for opposing 'Anfalization' (the word has become a verb used by everyone in Iraq), while other Kurds were massacred for other reasons, such as suspecting a village of harboring freedom fighters. The most famous of such massacres was what happened in Halabja using chemical weapons in March of 1988.

The outcome of these tragic events can be seen everywhere in Kurdistan. In Karkuk (which remained under Saddam's rule till early 2003) we visited camps that house Kurds who returned to the area after the fall of the regime in May to reclaim their property. Some of them had lived as refugees in the self- governed Kurdish areas over the past twelve years, after fleeing to Iran for a short period, while others where Anfalized and lived in other parts of the country. Some of the houses they used to own in Karkuk were demolished and the areas turned into military camps, some were put on sale by the government and now have new owners and some exist but are totally uninhabitable. They are waiting to see what the new Iraqi government will offer them.

In Sulaimania, where the prosperity and security of over ten years of stable self-rule is clearly apparent in the streets, buildings and on the faces of people, we met Kurdish refugees who fled Saddam's Iraq and took refuge here. They plan to return to their homes, wherever they were in Iraq as soon as the situation permits. Some of them are from Baghdad (which had a sizeable Kurdish population) and had to flee for various reasons, while some are from the non-self-governed Kurdish areas. They are also waiting to see what the new government in Baghdad will offer them.

Kurds, like other Iraqis, differ in the way they analyze the war and the events that followed. A school teacher from Baghdad, living in the refugee camp in Sulaimania and hoping to return home to Baghdad soon, requsted that we thank 'Uncle Bush', for getting rid of Saddam. She was not naive; she said she knows that he wants a price and that she is ready to offer him her share of Iraqi oil for two years. Let him even take it for the rest of my lifetime, she said.

But, don't be fooled, some Kurds say, Iraq will not be under occupation forever. If occupation doesn't end soon, the day will come when we, and all Iraqis, will carry arms.

(Photo: Ehab Lotayef. Mother of a martyr who disappeared in 1977 but only got the body back this summer with the photo of her son.)

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Ehab Lotayef, a Montreal poet and a computer engineer at McGill University was in Iraq with the Iraq Solidarity Project during the month of December. The Iraq Solidarity Project (ISP) is a Montreal-based grassroots initiative to help provide international monitoring of occupation forces and the corporate reconstruction of Iraq and protective accompaniment to Iraqis under the occupation. To join ISP listserv, send a blank email to psi-...@lists.riseup.net. For more about ISP, p...@riseup.net.