I'm wondering if I shouldn't start up a regular feature called "It's Worse" as in "No matter how bad you thought it was, It's Worse".
Everyone else has a regular gig. I want one, too. And it's not like I'd run out of stuff.
But in any case, here's some bad news about Kurdish-Iraqi relations.
Think Kurds were just reluctant to submit to a central Iraqi government?
It's Worse.
Read on . . .
According to the
Middle East Times, Kurdish President Massud Barzani has picked up a trick or two from American politics. He's wrapping himself in the flag. Not the Iraqi one - that would be
good sign. No, he actually
banned flying the Iraqi flag on official buildings in what we now may as well just call Kurdistan.
In fact, Barzani does:
"All government sites that used to raise the Baathist flag must lower it and hoist the flag of Kurdistan in its place."
"Kurdistan", their own flag . . . hmmm.
You would guess that Baghdad wouldn't be happy with that. You'd be right. Or, as Prime Minister Maliki said:
"The Iraqi flag is the only flag that should be raised over any square inch of Iraq, until parliament makes a decision as laid down in the constitution."
Barzani has made an appeal for the parliament to design a new national flag, one everyone could run up the flagpole and salute. Problem is, Arab Iraqis seem to like the old flag. Really like it. Really like it to the point that Kurdish cab drivers that travel south freely admit that, if they didn't display the Iraqi flag on their cabs, they'd risk being killed. Arab cabbies that drive north, on the other hand, report having the flags torn from their cabs.
Think this is a petty issue being blown out of proportion by all involved, that could undermine the kind of national unity crucial to build a stable Iraq?
Well, It's Worse.
"If we want to separate, we will do it, without hesitation or fears."
-Barzani
Yup. Barzani has brought up the "S" word. Secession, which pretty much everyone has feared since we got a good look at how autonomous the Kurdish region was going to be, has now been put on the table.
This is not just political posturing. This is in the streets. This is a reflection of a basic schism in national identity.
Any flag the parliament could design would be an Iraqi flag. Presumably it would have some historical/cultural significance vis-à-vis Baghdad and the south, or the Arabs wouldn't accept it - but that would make it toxic in those "square inches of Iraq" that like to be called Kurdistan.
The best deal Baghdad would get is that Kurds would fly the new flag along with the Kurdish flag, which would make Kurdistan a part of Iraq in the same sense that Six Flags Over Texas is a part of Mexico.
Kurds are not Iraqis, and vice versa. They think "independent". They talk "independent". Barzani displays more willingness to defer to the Boy Scout oath than the Iraqi constitution, and that's only going to get worse as Kurdistan's economy and prospets go up while southern Iraq (oh, let's just say "Iraq") keeps sliding into Sunni-Shia warfare.