read the article on northern
Iraq with a refugee friend
who has just left there. He agreed with its analysis, but added some observations about people's everyday lives and attitudes to the threat of war.
He was sure that since the last war of 1991 there has been an overall improvement in living conditions and the fear of repression from Baghdad has been removed for most of the time.
However, the economy of the region has been artificially kept afloat by several factors. Firstly the north was exempted from war reparations imposed on central Irag after 1991.
A huge influx of aid agencies has also brought money and jobs. As a result, destroyed villages have been rebuilt in the countryside, and investment, especially in infrastructure, transport and communications has greatly helped new businesses in the towns.
In addition, UN coupons for basics such as rice, flour, oil and sugar are still available to those in need.
A second important factor is the large amount of money sent back home by refugees who have fled abroad. Last, but not least are the largely unrestricted and highly remunerative trading between north and south. Kurdish wholesalers cheap consumer goods in Turkey and elsewhere and sell them straight on to Baghdad, which pays for them in illicit oil money.
A proportion of these goods are kept for sale at home, so that wellstocked supermarkets opened up in the towns.
As to security, many Kurds see the US/UK-imposed zones" as protecting them from Baathist troops. " However, they are also well aware that both the main Kurdish nationalist parties who now rule the north, the KDP and PUK have collaborated at various times with Baghdad.
In 1996 KDP leader Barzani - actually - invited Hussein's army to assist him in a feud with the PUK. recently the PUK obtained military assistance from Baghdad to suppress Political Islamists.
Although tenuous and contradictory the relative betterment in their everyday lives explains why many Kurds in the north have supported aspects of US. policy. However, many see a second war on Iraq as dangerous and unpredictable in outcome. Dependency
In fact it could upset the whole applecart. The kind of economic dependency. I have described has a sheff-life anyway - the young men are leaving precisely because they see no future in northern Iraq in the long term, and prefer to get out if they can. But George Bush's new war could very well result in the collapse of this unstable entity. altogether.
There is also the question of political status in the future. During the 1990s the KDP and PUK divided up and ruled the north with
••••••• routes procure White and Paul Wilcox. DESIGN: Pete McGreal and John Lister have "no-fly www.socialistresistance.net.
support from the West. But both are now believed by most Kurds to have given up their aspirations to independence and accepted the
Saddam US policy of a post-war Federation
of Iraq, with some degree of And only Kurdish autonomy.
In retur these leaders will get a seat in the new government and no doubt an oil well each. But the economy of the north will be firmly and subserviently locked into that of both the Federation and the foreign multinationals, which will straightaway move in to reprivatise Iraq's oil. In such a carve-up will these nationalist leaders be able to continue to deliver? Or will their reliance on the good will of imperialism prove to have been misguided, once they are no longer needed as an ally to crush Baghdad? What is certain is that unless they come up with alternative economic policies to the old colonialist ones, then the familiar problems of dependency - skewed development, inequalities and corruption - will beset both north and south. In which case, an opposition may develop which challenges both them and their imperialist masters. EDITORS: John Bulaitis, Terry Conway, John Lister Taversham, Bill Walton, Roger Welch, and James White. Published by SOCIALIST RESISTANCE, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU. with disabilities. and movements in Europe and beyond. But we need your involvement.
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