"God’s wisdom is with His Kurds"

ERBIL, Iraq - 18 September 2017: “God’s wisdom is with his Kurds.” Days before the referendum on secession, Iraq is torn between Kurds, Turks and Arabs. Politicians and citizens each live in different worlds. The citizens presume that their separation is doomed to fail and will cause them to be isolated from the world; such was Mohammed Mohsen Abo El-Nour’s message.

With the landing of your aircraft at Erbil International Airport, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, you find yourself in Arab territory, with a visible Kurdish identity. Everything is written in both languages Arabic and Kurdish, all airport staff - starting with the Passport officer - even the baggage workers, speak Arabic. Nevertheless, they cling to their Kurdish identity and speak only Kurdish in their inter-related conversations.

On the way from Erbil airport to downtown, one notices how the crowd is working hard to push citizens forward towards voting "yes" in the referendum on secession (the Kurdish government and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) prefer to use the term independence rather than secession), which is to be held next Monday; September 25. This seems to be happening through the huge quantum of publicity that is sweeping both sides of the main roads and streets of the city.

This is how the grand picture appears, but there is another aspect that may not be visible except by approaching the Kurdish citizens on their various orientations.

On the plane, which was almost completely filled with Egyptians working in Erbil – engineers, teachers and staff – there was a large number of Kurds who were visiting Egypt and returning to their country.

Indifference to the referendum

Fatima, the daughter of the Kurdish woman whose Arab father, descendant of the Iraqi capital Baghdad has chosen an Arab name for, is indifferent to the voting she’s entitled to from the beginning. From their point of view, secession may bring untold problems to the Kurds, especially given unfavorable regional and international circumstances; particularly, as Iraq has ended it its war against terrorism.

Khaled, a taxi driver who studied political science at the University of Baghdad and who we spoke to, confirmed that he would not vote in the first place, as he does not believe that any benefit will come from the whole thing.

He thinks that it is important for him as a young man who studied the most sophisticated of the humanities, to find a decent job opportunity that would suit his qualifications, which he did not achieve despite the fact that the Kurdish government in Erbil has the autonomy to be completely independent of the central government in Baghdad.

In response to our question on why some politicians wanted to go for it, since the Kurdistan Parliament voted to hold the referendum on time, even after discussions between the delegates of the International Alliance (USA, United Kingdom and France) and after the President of the Territory, Massoud Barzani, offered them an alternative project as well, Khaled contented himself with a smile and one phrase: “God has his wisdom with his Kurds."

The Wealth of Kurdistan

On the road from Erbil to Kirkuk, the landmarks of Kurdish wealth are obvious. The smell of minerals extracted from the mines located near the road are quite odorous in the air, especially the aromatic phosphate metal. However, the most significant thing I’ve seen, where the wealth of the territory is concerned, is the floating oil on the surface of the earth which does not need digging or drilling.

On the site, oil is brought to the surface of the earth with the power of geology in its subsoil, without giant oil companies, drilling rigs, etc.

This site represents the reason for disagreement over separation; because this immense oil wealth that was going to the central government in Baghdad, is spent on all Iraqis, Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other components of the Republic. Hence, all this would become solely the Kurds’ property. It would provide them with an enormous wealth to enable them to establish the state the founders’ generation dreamt of.

However, the facts on the ground reflect different calculations. By talking to people on the streets, vendors in shops, and even employees in the hotel sector, they were either divided between completely dismissing the referendum, believing that it would harm the Kurds over the near and middle future, or indifferent to the political scene. They were introverts in the management of daily living and the costs of life that have become higher with the financial crisis that the territory has been undergoing for several months.

Kurds, Turks and Arabs

In a health club bathtub, two young brothers, Mansour (10 years old) and his older brother Mohammed (11 years old), are studying in one of the schools of the famous Turkish opposition, Abdullah Colin, which includes some 13,000 Kurdish students, and which the territorial government has placed under the supervision of the Ministry of "Education" in Erbil about a year ago.

Mansour and Mohammed do not speak Arabic, but they are fluent in English and Turkish, as well as, their mother tongue Kurdish. We asked them: Do you like Arabs? They said, "No." With the innocence of children, they continued to talk, asserting that Kurdistan is closer to Turkey than Arabs, and that Erbil should make friends with Turkey and not with Iraq.

This means that a potential new generation in Kurdistan has become eligible to the idea of abandoning its Arabian surroundings and culture, and might instead love belonging to the Turks.
They see them as role models, Muhammad and Mansour, so much so that when they go to the barber, they ask for a haircut similar to that of the Turkish star, Murad Bashoglu.

Egyptian culture

It is clear that the Kurdistan Regional Government, in its present constitutional form, or even in the event of a formal declaration of secession, will be confronted with a major problem. That is its potential identity in its external surroundings: Turkish, Arab or Kurdish only. Although all institutions have two-way signs, one in Kurdish and the other in Arabic, and not Turkish. But still, who knows? History has its special ways and its events are always full of surprises.

However, the influence of the Arab culture, especially the Egyptian one, on the generation of young men and adults seems to be unmistakable. Hoshyar is a receptionist at the hotel, who told us that he loves Amr Diab and Adel Imam and Yusra, watches Egyptian films regularly, knows Naguib Mahfouz, and listens a lot to Umm Kalthoum and Abd el Halim Hafez. Among his life’s wishes, is to take a selfie with his mobile by the Sphinx and the pyramids.

The same thing was almost confirmed by Mohammed, the young man in his twenties who works as a salesman at a garment store. He left his family in Anbar province (western Iraq) and came to Kurdistan to work with a Kurdish relative of his mother’s.

In any case, the gap between what is happening among politicians, and what the simple citizens think of in the Kurdish region of Iraq is wide. And this is all about a week before going to the box; people sit here on the edges of their seats.

They are anticipating the drama that the coming days may bring, which holds repercussions that they cannot anticipate. They wish for no negative influence on relations and trade with their Arab brethren in their homeland, in the other regions of Iraq.