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Pride, prejudice, petroleum stir Iraq's Kurdistan
Reuters - Thursday, June 4
By Mohammed Abbas
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ARBIL, Iraq - Brutally oppressed by Saddam Hussein and mocked by other Iraqis as backward, Iraq's ethnic Kurds hope oil exports from their homeland will mark an end to what they say is repression by Iraq's Arab majority.
The Shi'ite Arab-led government in Baghdad and Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish Regional Government have feuded bitterly over oil deals the Kurds have struck with companies.
Baghdad, facing budget shortfalls due to flagging oil output, has allowed exports from two Kurdish fields. Kurdish officials said this marks a breakthrough in Kurd-Arab ties, but other Iraqis point to a rockier path ahead.
"We are witnessing the end of decades of discrimination," said KRG natural resources minister Ashti Hawrami, hailing the start of crude exports at a glitzy ceremony this week.
"For the first time in Iraq's history, the people of Kurdistan are making decisions on the region's natural resources."
His speech was preceded by a video showing the horrors of Saddam's campaigns against Kurds. Scenes included a weeping woman pointing out graves to her infant son: "These are your uncles," she said.
FUTURE LAND MINES
"Revenue sharing will bind us together more than any other political slogan. We strongly believe that the era of threats and slogans are over," KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said.
Yet the government in Baghdad was conspicuous by its absence at the ceremony in the Kurdish capital Arbil.
Political analyst Hazim al-Nuami said the Kurds might be reading too much into Baghdad's agreement to allow oil to flow.
"How these oil revenues and contracts will be handled isn't clear ... The reason exports were allowed was because of pressure on the government, but it is obvious it is not comfortable and disagrees," he said.
"This lays political and economic landmines for the future."
Who is going to pay the foreign companies that developed the Kurdish oil fields is still unclear, as is the fate of oil fields in areas disputed by Kurds, Arabs and ethnic Turkmen, such as those around the hotly contested city of Kirkuk.
U.S. officials see tensions between Kurds and Arabs as a potential trigger for Iraq's next major conflict, just as the sectarian war unleashed by the 2003 invasion begins to fade.
KURDISH VS IRAQI NATIONALISM
Complicating matters are long-held prejudices.
"Thank God I wasn't born Kurdish," said one Arab journalist on a trip to Arbil, cracking jokes about supposed Kurdish backwardness to peals of laughter from other Arab reporters.
But Arbil is anything but backward -- one of the first signs from the airport to the city centre is for a liposuction clinic -- and its clean, wide streets and fountains contrast with Baghdad's ugly blast walls and barbed wire.
Northern Iraq's Kurdish region has had de facto independence from Baghdad since 1991, when Western powers imposed a no-fly zone to protect it from Saddam's forces.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has started to promote Iraqi nationalism as a route to bind Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds, but Kurdish nationalism is already in full bloom.
The Kurdish, not Iraqi, flag flutters from most buildings.
Kurdish is the language of choice, not Arabic.
Kurds say they want good ties with Arab Iraq, but after years of sacrifice, relations must respect Kurdish independence.
"In the Iraqi army Arabs wouldn't sit with me because I'm Kurdish, even though I was fighting for Iraq," said Majid Mohammed, 55. "Kurds and Arabs are never going to stew in the same pot."
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