The Guardian , The kebab stalls and tea shops huddled at the foot of the limestone cliffs at the gorge of Gali Ali Beg in Iraqi Kurdistan are doing good business as Arabs from Baghdad and Basra picnic alongside local Kurdish families by the cool, frothy waterfalls.
The tourism boom in the largely tranquil north has been one of the most tangible benefits of regime change for the Kurds. To some it offers rare hope that the country's deep sectarian divisions, exacerbated by 35 years of Ba'athist rule, can finally be overcome.
But as the US and British authorities dither over Iraq's post-war political settlement, growing numbers among the strongly pro-western Kurds here worry that their fundamental political concerns are being swallowed by the ethnic, religious and political problems in post-Saddam Iraq. Their demands for a federal state appear to be falling on deaf ears.
“Kurds are realising that their special status in Iraq is no longer a given,” said a European diplomat visiting the regional capital ofIrbil.
“Unless they believe that their position within a future Iraq will… consolidate their hard-won autonomy, it is uncertain that a majority would opt to remain within the current boundaries, despite what their more pragmatic leaders may tell them.”
For most Iraqis, travel to the Kurdish autonomous zone had been almost impossible since it was established in 1991. Now Arabs and Kurds are seizing the chance to reacquaint themselves.
To visitors from the flat sun-baked south, the mountains and valleys of Iraqi Kurdistan seem like a different country. The red, green and white of the Kurdish flag flutters alongside the (pre-Saddam) Iraqi flag on public buildings. Streets in the cities of Irbil, Sulaimaniya, and Dohuk look neater and more prosperous than in other Iraqi cities. There are no glowering US military patrols, and electricity, fresh water and food are plentiful.
“We didn't know what to expect, we had grown so far apart,” said Abdelsallam Majid, a civil engineer from Baghdad who had brought his wife and three children to Kurdistan for a holiday. “I thought the Kurds would want revenge on Iraq Arabs for the things Saddam did to them. In fact most of them blame the Ba'athists, not the Arabs themselves, and here every Kurd has welcomed us.”
Another visitor, a Shia Arab businessmen from Basra, said: “We understand too well how our Kurdish brothers suffered under Saddam, and that means we can all work together for the good of all the Iraqi people.”
Despite the optimism of Kurdistan's Arab visitors, US officials and Iraq's leaders know that reconnecting the region to the rest of the country will be difficult. Over the past 12 years Kurds, along with the Turkoman and Assyrian minorities living in the self-rule area, enjoyed a period of unprecedented autonomy – their safety assured by US and British air forces.
Post-Saddam
Younger Kurds who have grown up free from the shadow of Saddam, now wonder what benefits there are from being a part of the tortuous political process currently taking place in “foreign” Baghdad.
Assad Nejmeddin, an English student at the university of Arbil, said: “I don't know why we're bothering with Baghdad. I and my friends don't even speak Arabic. We have done very well on our own for the past 12 years. Let's continue.”
Another student, Dalia Hamida, complained about the US decision to request Turkish troops to come to Iraq: “We fought alongside the Americans. We didn't declare independence as the Turks said we would. And this is our reward.”
The pressure is thus on Kurdish political leaders such as Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, both members of the Iraqi governing council, to deliver.
“The dictatorship that planned genocide against us, and practised ethnic cleansing has finished,” said Jalal Talabani in an interview. “The Iraqi army and all other agents of repression like the security and intelligence services are also finished. We can sleep soundly.”
Mr Talabani said other gains for the Kurds included a substantial political presence in the Iraqi capital – with five members on the Iraqi governing council and four ministers, including Hoshyar Zebari, the new Iraqi foreign minister.
Top of the agenda is a federal state, based on geography rather than ethnicity. They also want to see a reversal of the effects of Saddam's Arabisation campaign which involved ethnic cleansing from the oil-rich lands in and around Kirkuk and Mosul.
“Of the various groups who opposed Saddam Hussein [the Kurds] are the only ones with a large and easily defined constituency,” said the European diplomat. “Compare that to the exiles on the governing council, many who have little domestic support, or the Shia who are confused and divided.” The Kurds, he said, are “by some way the most organised and most coherent of the various groups bidding for a stake in the future Iraq.”
Kurdish demands for one large federal unit may clash with Iraqi Arab nationalists, who want to keep Kurdish nationalism in check with a strong central government, as well as with Shia elements hoping for an Islamic state. Meanwhile, Iraq's neighbours, Turkey, Iran and Syria, are looking on with deep suspicion of the Kurds' new-found confidence.
Other sceptics point to the contradictions of asking for one large federal state while the Kurdish regional administrations are still divided – the result of a bloody civil war in the 1990s. Mr Talabani admits that the Kurds' many gains have still to be to “set in stone”.
He said: “The borders of Kurdistan will be drawn as the Kurdish people like. Some may want to divide us, but we won't have it. After years of fighting for our freedom, everything depends on our ability to convince our Arab brothers and the international community finally to recognise our rights, within a democratic and federal system. We are all united on that.”
