Author: James Brandon
Publication: The Christian Science Monitor
Date: July 6, 2006
URL: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0706/p07s02-woiq.html
Largely secular, the Kurds view Islamic groups
as an alternative to entrenched parties, seen as corrupt.
The creation of a new constitution for Iraq's
autonomous Kurdish region was meant to be relatively straightforward. But
instead, Kurdish Islamic parties have courted controversy by calling a greater
role for sharia, or Islamic law.
"The Kurds are a Muslim nation and we
have to follow Islam," says Mohammed Ahmed, a member of parliament for
the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), the largest Kurdish Islamic party in the
regional parliament, the Kurdistan National Assembly.
Such calls may well go unheeded by secular
parties which hold 80 percent of seats in the parliament, where a cross-party
committee is now drawing up a draft constitution.
However, the demands for Islamic law reflect
the growing popularity of Islamic parties like the KIU and its smaller, more
radical rival Komala, which was once allied with the Al-Qaeda's Kurdish offshoot
Ansar Al-Islam. While unlikely to change the political power balance in Kurdistan
any time soon, the Islamic parties may cultivate the ground for more radical
ideas to take root.
"The KIU could become an organization
that germinates radicals," says Joost Hiltermann, Middle East Project
Director at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG). "People
will join it and then later feel that it doesn't go far enough and then go
on to join other more radical groups."
Such radicalization could pose problems for
the US, which relies heavily on the Iraq's Kurds' long-standing opposition
to radical Islamic groups to gather intelligence against Arab and Islamic
insurgents. The US now plans to build a network of long-term military bases
in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq - known as Kurdistan.
Iraq's Kurds are ethnically distinct from
Iraq's Arabs, with a separate language, culture, and history. Unlike Iraq's
Arabs, Kurds have traditionally seen Islam as a personal issue.
"[Kurds] are ... unlikely to respond
to the calls of a fundamentalist notion of Muslim brotherhood," Sarah
Keeler, a lecturer and specialist in Kurdish issues at the University of Kent
in England.
Rather than advocating loyalty to Islam over
nationalism, Kurdish Islamic parties are seizing the moral high ground against
Kurdistan's ruling secular parties, whom they accuse of corruption and economic
mismanagement.
"People know that our followers and members
are not corrupt," says Mr. Ahmed, whose KIU party more than doubled its
vote in last December's national election, winning five seats out of 275.
Analysts largely agree, pointing out that even secular Kurds are disenchanted
with the two ruling Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)
and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and are ready to give other parties
a chance.
"For devout Kurds the Islamic parties
are the obvious choice ... as well as for those who want an alternative to
the ruling Kurdish coalition," says the ICG's Dr. Hiltermann. "I
don't think this is a one-off protest vote," he says. "The KIU is
being seen as a viable alternative."
Iraqi Kurdistan's secular parties admit that
corruption is a problem, but point out that neither they nor the KIU can solve
high unemployment or attract foreign investment as long as Iraq remains a
war zone.
"It is difficult for the government to
meet the demands of everyone," says Azad Jundiani, spokesman for the
PUK.
"There are problems of petrol, jobs,
electricity, and education that we need to solve, but we haven't got the money,"
says Mr. Jundiani.
But if the Kurdish parties' economic promises
are not always realistic, they have a parallel strategy to build broader long-term
support among Kurds. In Arbil, Iraq, the Kurdistan Islamic Union is building
a large, hi-tech television studio to run a 24-hour satellite television station
that they say should be operational by the end of 2006. Its programs will
all have an Islamic flavor and aim to build a Kurdish Islamic identity, which
the party hopes will help consolidate its recent electoral gains.
Rebwar Adoo - a young, program manager for
the party's private television network - is typical of those who are attracted
to the Kurdish Islamic Parties. Always politically minded and concerned about
the welfare of his people, he initially worked for socialist parties and then
the KDP.
"Neither party was what I was looking
for," says Mr. Adoo. "But the Islamic parties seemed to be the only
ones that were going straight and actually cared about the Kurdish people.
So after two years of thinking about it I joined this party."
But experts say that throughout Kurdish history,
ethnic identity, rather than religion, has been the main unifying force.
"Kurdish populations throughout the region
have never, in past centuries or today, shared religion as a unifying force,"
says Ms. Keeler. "The Kurds have, generally speaking, subordinated their
religious identity to first an ethnic, and now a national identity."
