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Translations Can Lose Meaning

September 9th, 2008 by dk
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Published (in abbreviated form) Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008 in The Register-Guard.

SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ – Words and concepts sometimes defy direct translation. “Hot,” for example, means something very different here. Anything under 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) is purposely called “warm.” August temps average 120°F and above here, so the meaning of “hot” would evaporate if it also meant “below average.”

Adjusting the scale upwards for “warm” to “hot” to “scorching” to “walking-barefoot-on-the-sun” is simple enough. Other words don’t translate for cultural reasons. Kurds are mystified by our term “selfish.” It’s a novel concept to them. It might mean noble defense of family, or some sort of sociopathic delusion. Usually all I get is a blank stare. “Self” describes a physical being, but “selfish” as a metaphor for overvaluing that physical being doesn’t match up. Was I talking about “oysters”? Even in a landlocked country, “shellfish” was an easier connection.

Kurds think of themselves as part of a family unit first and foremost, so the idea of focusing on an individual isn’t easy to grasp. I didn’t ask about “self-esteem,” but I expect I would have heard about poaching oysters. “Shell in steam” — mmm, tasty!

I didn’t expect “journalist” to be a term that doesn’t translate easily, but it was. The role of the journalist for a society in transition is a hot topic right now. We talk easily about how journalists aim to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” but young Iraqi journalists are doing it, at great personal peril.

On July 22, Soran Hama was murdered in front of his house in Kirkuk. The 23-year-old journalist had written a story about prostitution in Kirkuk. In the article, Hama claimed that he had collected the names of “police brigadiers, lieutenants, colonels, and many police and security officers” who were clients. Death threats followed.

Witnesses saw him shot at 9 PM from a black BMW trolling his neighborhood. Latif Fatih Faraj, the local head of the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate, called Hama “a courageous and adventurous journalist.” The Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org) counts at least 129 other journalists who have been killed since the U.S. invasion. Other estimates approach 300.

Three young journalist have agreed to meet us inside the Christian Peacemaker Teams office. There’s no electricity right now, but it’s our best option. They assume their own offices are being watched, and meeting in a public place could put everyone at risk. The windows can’t be left open, in spite of the heat. The fans are readied, in case power returns.

Amanj Khalil speaks first, with the urgency that comes naturally when you’ve been shot at twice in the past week. “Today is my first day out,” he says as he spins his cell phone on the table. Threats come often from both political parties. This was his fifth.

Ako Khalil is Amani’s little brother. He considers himself an activist, but wrote about a recent protest after Hama’s assassination. They see no distinction between an activist and a journalist. Both are committed to learning things and changing them.

Amanj continues, “Our mother worries. After I was shot at, she went into shock. She had to go to the hospital. But our father defends us. He says it’s honorable work. He tells her, ‘at least they’re not stealing.’ He drives a taxi, so he knows what’s going on.”

Abdullah Goran was in Kirkuk when Hama was murdered. He worked for an independent newspaper, but he wanted even more independence, so now he free-lances. “The government authorities are threatening the free pen,” he says. I don’t know whether he means “press” and I don’t care — “pen” is so much more immediate and individual. I’m convinced “free pen” conveys exactly what he means.

The free pen. Maybe the machinery behind the press has made fewer of us “courageous and adventurous.” Maybe the freedom of the press and the protections we enjoy in the west have softened us. Have we become more willing to repeat conventional wisdom than take the risks that come with telling readers what we learn?

I know I feel soft, listening to these young men. I’m taking notes, but mostly I’m hoping the electricity will come back on, allowing the fans to circulate the stifling air. I’m roasting in the heat, wondering if I’ve become a little shellfish.

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) has returned to Eugene from Iraqi Kurdistan this week. All his postings are archived, and readers can leave comments, right here. Kahle will recap his experience at the City Club of Eugene’s Friday Forum on Sept. 19.

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An Impromptu History Lesson

September 5th, 2008 by dk
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Published Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2008 in The Register-Guard.

(SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ) Dana Hassan’s hobby is history, but his work is very focused on the here-and-now. Hassan welcomes us into his office. He’s program coordinator for R.E.A.C.H. (Rehabilitation, Education, and Community Health), which grew out of earlier efforts by Oxfam International.

The conversation begins with disconcertingly American-style pleasantries, but we don’t mind. The room is refreshingly cool. The first topic is traffic, how long it took us to find his office, how busy this city has become. Suleimaniya was home to 200,000 when Hassan came in 1978. Now its population is 1.2 million. Too big, too fast. Very familiar.

Hassan steers us toward the next small-talk standard, the weather. “How do like this weather? Yesterday a friend came in from the heat. He was dripping with sweat. ‘They say there’s a drought,’ he joked, ‘so why have I no drought?’”

Making people feel welcome or relaxed helps Hassan do his work. REACH thinks long-term about peacemaking and the first step is always gaining or rebuilding trust. Their teams come to a community and begin rebuilding not the physical structures, but the human networks that make a community grow and strengthen over time. “We bring an entire package, from A to Zed.”

Skeptics scoff that they aren’t giving food or electricity, but others are tending to these needs. REACH teaches conflict resolution. Hassan insists his group’s work is not secondary to meeting physical needs. “Since the fall of Saddam, people are lost,” he observes. “Saddam’s regime made it very simple. Join the military and we will take care of you. Don’t think. We come to people’s homes. Often their first question is ‘Could you tell us what we need?’”

“It’s slow work, changing how people think. We teach them they have rights. That gives them hope.” He pauses to reflect. It’s the same everywhere. “Peace is peace,” Hassan says, “It’s a gift from the god.” His statement sounds intentionally singular.

“What about peace between nations, across borders?” I ask.

Hassan pushes back from his desk, stands and smiles. “Ahh! It’s a big question.” Here his hobby helps his work.

He strides to a small wipe-off board and draws a Rorschach blot that represents Iraq. Two horizontal lines near the center divide the blot into uneven thirds. We’re about to receive a history lesson that explains in a few minutes why Iraq has been such a contentious nation since it was formed in 1920. You can’t blame the Iraqis.

“The Sunni are the smallest third, filling the middle stripe. The Kurds dominate north and the Shiites south. The south is bordered by Jordan to the west and Iran to the east, with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in between. Jordan is mostly Sunni, and so is neighboring Saudi Arabia. But the Saudi ruling families are Wahhabi, separate from the leaders of Jordan. Iran is mostly Shiite, but Iraqi Sunnis keep Iraqi Shiites from getting too close. Kuwait is mostly Chaldean, connecting with Baghdad, where most Iraqi Chaldeans live.”

Lines and arrows are filling the board. He’s drawing straight lines, squiggly lines, and dotted lines — trying to map the dynamics between the groups. He wishes he had a larger board and more colored markers.

“The northern borders are just as confusing. Syria’s population is mostly Sunni, but the leaders are Shiite. These Shiite leaders want to work with the Iranian leaders, but Iraqi Kurdistan is in between. Turkey is to the north, but they fear the Kurds. They use the Assyrians to keep the Kurds on both sides of their border apart. Christians are used the same way on the border between Iraq and Syria.”

The details of all these connections, contentions and convolutions spilled quickly out of Hassan, and I’m not sure I kept them straight, but Hassan’s point is clear. When the victors of World War I carved the Middle East into nation states, they made one too many or three too few.

Hassan’s resulting diagram spoke volumes. The borders of Iraq were barely visible beneath all the other lines of interest.

No wonder community identity can’t thrive here without teaching conflict resolution first.

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is writing from Iraqi Kurdistan this week. All entries are posted and readers can leave comments at www.dksez.com.

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Women Burdened in Iraq

September 4th, 2008 by dk
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Published Sunday, Sept. 7, 2008 in The Register-Guard.

(SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ) After receiving five cups of tea from homeless families in Zharawa, I returned to Suleimaniya ready to believe that hospitality offered a recognizable path to peace. For a full day, it seemed it could be easy. Then I received this advice from Joe Mueller, a Ohioan who has lived in Iraq, off and on, for many years: “Notice the women.” He could have said, “notice how easily you don’t notice the women.”

Hospitality naturally forms a circle, around a table or a campfire, a project or a topic. But women orbit outside it, shuttling to the kitchen, serving liquids hot and cold. We focus on the men. A rigid division of labor doesn’t betray chauvinism or misogyny. A strong patriarchy can work well for men and women both. But Mueller gave me a clue. Then we met Thomas Uwer.

Uwer is the chairman of the board for Wadi, one of the most enterprising and inventive NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) we’ve encountered in Iraq. Wadi’s work is impressively varied, but also shrewdly focused.

“In less than a generation, 80 percent of Iraq’s villages have been emptied,” Uwer starts with statistics. “After thirty years of violence and war, 60 percent of Iraq’s population is female. These women do 70 percent of the work.”

Most of the former villagers gravitated toward cities, where the central government can more easily count and control its people. But some went the opposite way, hunkering down or heading for the hills. If cosmopolitan city life has a tendency to moderate or liberalize family systems, the survivalist lifestyle can breed extremism. If only patriarchy provides social order, it strengthens over time. This trend can be invisible to NGOs and news organizations, because they rely on the infrastructure that cities can provide.

Wadi seeks to make the invisible visible. The clear-glass table in the center of the room has a laptop and a phone. Uwer’s work for the day spread beside it. Nothing is hidden.

Uwer gets specific with us. Some of the villages operate “Feudally.” It’s not a metaphor. The land is controlled by one man, who metes out justice as he sees fit. Women fare poorly. Wadi has seen it first-hand.

Wadi sent field teams into the mountains — pairing one female doctor with one female social worker. The teams fanned out and covered 40 villages. They talked to women and school-age girls. What they learned was alarming. Sixty percent of the women had been victims of so-called “female circumcision.” In some villages, female genital mutilation was universal. By Wadi’s count, FGM is occurring in 84 percent of the rural villages. UNICEF and the World Health Organization don’t list Iraq in their worldwide campaign to end FGM, because surveys and self-reporting didn’t uncover its prevalence in rural Iraq.

Efforts to end the practice in Iraq are now mobilizing. The Iraqi Parliament is expected to pass a law. Educational flyers are being distributed. A website gathers news of the effort (www.stopfgmkurdistan.org) in three languages: Kurdish, English and German. A petition signed by a few dozen prominent citizens was published in the newspaper.

Traditionalists asked Wadi not to publish the names or promote the issue. “If you publish this, you’ll make Kurdistan look bad,” they warned. The response was overwhelming. They gathered 14,000 signatures in a single month. Openness is gaining ground.

Wadi refuses to be lured by the lurid. Ending FGM is not their single focus, no matter how heinous the practice. Women are the invisible victims of many forms of violence, and this culture relies on women to carry a large load. Helping women helps Iraq.

Wadi has funded schools for women to learn hairdressing, but also literacy. They built a shelter for women fleeing violence. They opened the first women-only coffee house in Kurdistan, where women can talk to one another.

Halabjah now has a Women’s Center, offering counseling, legal advice, literacy training, or just a sympathetic ear and a cup of tea. Serving tea is good, but being served tea is also good.

Success on the ground is measured one family at a time. Statistics will take care of themselves.

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is writing from Iraqi Kurdistan this week. All entries are posted and readers can leave comments at www.dksez.com.

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Look along the right column!

September 3rd, 2008 by dk
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People are asking me more often than usual whose voices I notice when I’m surveying the news of the day. So I’ve improved the blogroll to the right (scroll down) to include most of the voices I try to keep in my head, and the choirs for which they sing. You may not be familiar with some of the names. Click on them and read what they’re thinking about these days. As an early warning, I’ve stuck (up to) two bullets beside each name — on the left or the right, depending on how they lean. Two bullets on one side mean they don’t lean; they’ve fallen over and lying down reliably in that direction. A bullet on both sides mean you can never tell which direction they may go.

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… how to drink chai tea …

September 3rd, 2008 by dk
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We drank so much chai tea while we were in Iraq, we got quite good at it, if I do say so myself. Here’s a quick lesson. (T/K)

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Hospitality

September 3rd, 2008 by dk
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Published Friday, Sept. 5, 2008 in The Register-Guard.

(ZHARAWA, IRAQ) I’ve never experienced such hospitality as the Kurds extend to anyone who will accept. Taxi drivers often thump their open hand to their chest and refuse to accept payment, preferring that the ride be accepted as a “gift from the heart.” (This gesture must be acknowledged but refused, unless they insist three times.) Our group picnicked in a park one day last week, and every family we passed asked us to join them for a bite. Meetings follow a staccato rhythm, interrupted with servings of bottled water, chai tea, and Fanta Orange soda.

These gestures are unrelated to the host’s economic standing, social status, or life circumstance. Nothing has brought this realization home more poignantly than our visit with some homeless Kurds.

Many Americans are reading “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. It’s been on the New York Times’ best seller list for 82 weeks, and it describes a tradition of hospitality in nearby Afghanistan. Everyone is offered a first cup of tea. If you’re offered a second cup, your host is willing to do business. A third cup being offered means you’ve become like family.

We were offered five cups of tea today at this homeless camp. But that’s the end of the story, not the beginning.

Our trucks arrive at Zharawa, a remote camp for Internally Displaced Persons near Iraq’s mountainous border with Turkey, after almost four hours of navigating the politics and pavement that have led to this place. Children greet us. Their mothers remind them to behave.

The patriarch for the clan then arrives to welcome us. His name is Amin, but everyone calls him “Uncle.” He’s the tallest and heartiest father among the five families who have clustered their tents at this portion of the river’s edge.

Amin is wearing a western-style shirt, which clashes with his traditional baggy pants and wide sash belt. The mismatch of styles doesn’t strike me as odd. I remember John Kitzhaber touring Oregon as governor, dressed in a suit and tie from the podium up, but jeans and cowboy boots from the belt buckle down.

What I can’t help but notice are the slight creases in Amin’s shirt, dividing its design with subtle right angles. Amin is wearing a brand new shirt, fresh from its folded packaging. Somewhere nearby there must be a small pile of pins.

This shows the depth and degree of his gesture of generosity, but he doesn’t know I can see it.

This shows the depth and degree of his gesture of generosity, but he doesn’t know I can see it. And we’re not the first to come.

The International Council of the Red Crescent has been bringing fresh water. Although there’s a river flowing beside the camp, the water is used by livestock and people for sanitation purposes, making it unsafe to drink.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has provided tents, but the tents aren’t winterized. Snow will blanket this mountainous area soon. Besides, everybody knows where they’ve set up their camps will be completely flooded in three months once the winter rains arrive.

Both ICRC and UNHCR are committed to helping refugees, but if they can’t safely return to their homes, the solutions they offer are necessarily temporary. They are involved to help the homeless, but not to build them new homes. It’s the government’s responsibility to make people feel at home in their homes.

We’ve come to hear their stories and they share gladly. But they insist first we drink, then eat, then watch the children play. A full meal is spread on the carpeted tent floor, with food enough for everyone, including the guards who were sent to watch us. Chai tea is served before the meal, then the dishes are washed by the older daughters while we eat, so more tea can be served afterwards.

Amin tells us proudly, “Since 1991, we’ve rebuilt our villages and asked for nothing. All we want is to return to our homes and sit safely there. In our village, we’re more than free.” But the bombing started in March, first in the mountains all around, then in their village of Ruzga. The bombing continues even now.

When asked what motive Turkey and Iran may have, an older man shrugs and mutters, “To wipe out the Kurds.”

Amin says it differently, even if he sees it the same. “They know we’re preparing a new nation. They want to stop it.”

We walk downriver and meet more families. The stories they tell are much the same. More tea. We gather the children and ask them to decorate a banner, reading “Bombing Hurts. Please Stop.” We hope to be allowed to take the banner to one of the nearby villages.

The children make a mess and love it, no different than any other children anywhere. One of the guards leans his gun on a chair while he helps decorate the banner with the children.

The Asaish guards refuse to allow us to walk back to the villages, because the shellings and bombings have come too regularly over the past week. It’s too unsafe. Any casualty to a foreigner could set off an unfortunate chain of events.

We agree. We wish things were different, but understand we could accidentally make things worse. So we fold our legs, sit again in the tent, and prepare for another round of tea. Our hosts smile.

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is writing this week from the Middle East. All his essays and a photo of the soldier playing with the children are posted and readers can leave comments right here at www.dksez.com.

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… Peshmurga …

September 2nd, 2008 by dk
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As we were driving to the IDP camp, the topic of the Peshmurga came up. Our driver was not only familiar with their history, he was a card-carrying member. Literally. He pulled from his shirt pocket his laminated Peshmurga veteran card. It entitles him to certain benefits.

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Road Trip

September 2nd, 2008 by dk
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Published Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008 in The Register-Guard.

(BEYOND SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ) Two million Americans have fled their homes this week to get out of the way of Hurricane Gustav. Every news account leads with photos of empty roads in one direction and a steady migration away from coastal lands in the other. Windbreaker sales are up, just to clothe all the television reporters.

Imagine the same scene if America had a tenth its population and was a twentieth its size. If two million displaced people had to find new homes, all inside the boundaries of a country the size of California, for years on end, with no hope in sight — that would be Iraq’s situation with its Internally Displaced Peoples.

Many Iraqis are openly skeptical of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s recent claim that it is now safe for expatriated Iraqis to return. If that’s true, they wonder, why are there still two million Iraqis inside the country who cannot return safely to their homes? We wonder too.

Iraq and Oregon are alike in at least one way. If all you see is city life, you haven’t seen it all. To learn how life looks across Iraqi Kurdistan, we have to leave the city of Suleimaniya and meet people managing their lives in rural areas.

Road trip!

We’ve hired two men with four-wheel-drive trucks to take us to Zharawa, a camp for Internally Displaced Persons ten miles south of Turkey. What we saw when we reached our destination will be a separate essay. The getting there is a story all its own.

The trip is more than three hours in each direction, but some areas are so rough, there is literally no road — only a line of vehicles, snaking from the unannounced end of one road to the unmarked beginning of another.

Roads themselves are nothing but ribbons of asphalt here. No lines, no lanes, no rules. Drivers regularly misjudge speed and distance while passing slow-moving trucks, forcing another driver to leave the pavement for the dirt beside it. Tires on dirt make clouds of dust. When the cloud clears, you’re surprised you’re still alive. No, it’s worse than an “Indiana Jones” chase scene. It’s a Roadrunner cartoon.

Several hundred Kurds have settled in Zharawa for now — nine nearby villages have been evacuated. Turkish planes have been bombing their villages regularly since the spring, and Iran has also been shelling the area with truck-mounted missiles. Border areas are notoriously unstable, especially in mountainous regions like this one. Without flat land as a canvas, the dotted lines between nation-states can become very confusing on the ground.

Many in Kurdistan believe rumors that Turkey and Iran are both receiving intelligence from the United States to pinpoint their attacks. Some even worry that the United States is goading the Iranians into shelling these Kurdish villages, so that U.S. forces can then turn against Iran, starting another war to “protect the Kurds.”

If all that intrigue doesn’t make your head hurt, you may want to consider a career opportunity as a diplomat or an arms dealer. All we know for sure is that homeless children hear explosions in the distance many nights while they try to sleep. We’d like that to stop, so we’ve made a plan.

Christian Peacemaker Teams often engage in “direct action” to disrupt violence, and this is part of this trip’s agenda. We’ve made a large banner that reads “Bombing Hurts. Please Stop.” We hope to walk with some Zharawa residents back to their villages to take pictures of the destruction, with our bannered commentary in view. If U.S. satellites are watching, they’ll be able to read the message.

The Kurdish Asaish (secret police) insist on sending two guards with us “for our own protection” before we’re allowed to pass the final check-point. To make room for the soldiers and their guns, two of us offer to ride in the back of one truck for the final 20 miles to the camp. We’re in the middle of nowhere now, so our drivers have the terrain to deal with, but not other drivers. Good thing. The terrain is challenging enough — it’s a path more than a road, winding around the craggy mountainside.

What we see beyond each cliffside turn is breathtaking, and beautiful — vistas with as many browns as Oregon has greens. What I would see at the camp was more surprising still.

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is writing this week from the Middle East. All his essays are posted and readers can leave comments at www.dksez.com.

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Talk Radio in Iraqi Kurdistan

August 30th, 2008 by dk
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Published Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008 in The Register-Guard.

(SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ) The taxi driver is listening to talk radio and Azad has had enough. Azad Ali Mohammad points and shakes his head. “They are debating how to interpret the constitution. Hakim Sheik Latif is telling listeners they don’t understand Iraq’s new constitution. He says they are interpreting the words with too much flexibility. Words may be elastic, he says, but the ideas are not.”

Azad graduated two months ago from the University of Suleimaniya with a degree in English. He can get translation work easily, but it’s mostly computer manuals. He’d rather become an interpreter, helping people understand each other. Language skills are only the beginning. Empathy is the extra measure for a good interpreter. If you translate well, but lose the shape of what was said, important parts of the communication can be lost. Urgency is conveyed when words are short and close together. Sympathy sounds more like the song a mother might sing. Interpreting is harder work and there’s less of it, but it’s more rewarding.

Azad’s senior thesis addressed the theme of alienation in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” How long can a people wait before hope gives way to despair?

Iraq’s constitution is not yet three years old, and already there are originalist and activist interpretations. The originalists insist the document be viewed only through the discerned intent of its framers. Others insist those framers never could have anticipated the changes the country has seen since, and that the constitution must be seen as a “living” document, adapting to current conditions.

It all sounds eerily familiar.

In Iraq, the “strict constructionists” lean to the left politically. It is the religious and cultural conservatives here who are labeled “activist judges.” And talk radio’s role seems exactly the same.

“People don’t understand the principles of discussion,” Azad complains. “Everybody wants there to be only one voice. But an arrangement needs many voices.”

“Arrangement” — it’s such a good word; and better than “compromise.” More active, less automatic.

I wish I could tell Azad that three years is not enough time for people to learn how to live with “many voices,” but 220 years doesn’t seem to be enough time either, based on the American experience.

The hot-button issue Iraqi Kurdistan concerns Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution. It guarantees a referendum for Kirkuk. This cosmopolitan city can choose to align itself with the three Kurdish provinces that surround it on three sides. Or it can remain aligned with Baghdad and the central government to the south.

Kirkuk represents a microcosm of Iraq. It’s home to a mixed bag of traditions and ethnicities. Many sorts of people have lived side-by-side there, peaceably and for generations. But this sort of diversity has fallen on hard times in Iraq. People prefer “one voice.”

The so-called “Surge” has succeeded in large part because of a unified effort between military, police, and tribal authorities to move people into safer neighborhoods. That has meant moving them to areas already dominated by their own tribe or sect. Neighborhoods have been “cleansed” of minority voices. Baghdad has become more civil as it has been made into less of a society. Kirkuk resists this strategy, and hopes to reverse it.

Does talk radio help or hurt? I can’t tell.

Kurds want Kirkuk to show the way to a truly democratic city and eventually an independent democratic state. But then, Baghdad could lose 40 percent of its oil revenues. Neighboring countries worry what expansive visions might take hold in Kurdistan if it became suddenly wealthy. Ethnic cleansing as payback by the Kurds is an international concern.

The taxi passes a line of cars, snaking onto the road and backed up for half a mile or more. “Petrol,” Azad mutters. “The state sells gas, and it’s cheaper but there’s not enough. People wait half a day to fill their tank. Or you can buy at a higher price from middlemen.” They line the road like lemonade stands, one chair under an umbrella beside rows of five-gallon containers, each filled with yellowish liquid. “The dealers come mostly from Iran, and the quality is not always good. You have to taste it first if you buy on the street.”

Iraq has more than enough oil, but lacks the refineries to make it into gasoline. What gas it does produce is not distributed in an orderly way. Cronyism, corruption, and competence are unknown variables that shape people’s lives. It’s shaping the lives of a hundred drivers, pulled over and waiting on this street, right now.

“The oil is more trouble than it’s worth,” Azad asserts. “If Kurds could have Kirkuk, but not the oil, that would be better. Everybody worries about the oil, but not the Kurdish people. We would rather be left alone. Freedom is all we really want. The oil will get us too much attention. If we could be either independent or wealthy, no Kurd would choose wealth. But now it looks like we can be only neither or both. It’s sad.”

An “arrangement” has been sought, but troubles have emerged. How much flexibility does the constitution require? The Kirkuk referendum was originally scheduled for November 15, 2007, then delayed six weeks, and then delayed again for six months. The last official deadline for the vote was June 30, 2008, but no extension was passed. So now, is the vote moot, because the deadline has not been met?

And what exactly is a vote, anyway? Must it be a vote of the people? Wouldn’t a Parliamentary vote, weighted to reflect the population, suffice? It surely would be easier, and it might avert violence in the streets. After all, Americans use an Electoral College, and their current president got the job without winning the popular vote.

These were the lines of the debate in early August. Then the Parliament went on vacation, without making a decision. Now, as before, the people of Kirkuk, Kurds longing for freedom, and drivers needing gasoline, wait.

==

Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is writing this week from Iraqi Kurdistan, where he has been part of a delegation for the Christian Peacemaker Teams. All the stories he’s collected are archived at www.dksez.com.

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Sazan’s Prescription for Iraq

August 29th, 2008 by dk
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Published Sunday, August 31, 2008 in The Register-Guard.

(SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ) “I think every Iraqi needs a psychiatrist,” says Sazan Sallah. Sazan is 21, a second year medical studies student. She hopes to someday practice psychiatry in a nation that has been through enough to make anyone crazy.

“For my whole life, we have known only war,” Sazan continues. She’s right. Iraq’s war with Iran began in 1979, followed immediately by Desert Storm, then economic sanctions until the second Gulf War, and now an occupation and ample internal strife.

Yet life goes on.

Sazan’s mother is bringing to the garden huge platters of food. She and others have spent all day preparing. Tonight there will be a feast for Sazan’s sister, Shadan. Shadan is 29 today. An evening feast falls into a familiar rhythm. Abundance is offered every Friday evening, finishing their Sabbath. Everyone has a role to play.

Sazan’s mother has extra help today. Sazan can relax and chat.

Iraqi students take a comprehensive final exam when they finish high school. How they do on this one test determines their future. “It’s very, very important, because it is not only for your grade. It is for your life.” It’s how life would be in America if every job and every promotion for your entire career was based first on your S.A.T. score.

Sazan knew she wanted to go to medical school, but she also knew she wouldn’t be able to go unless she scored at least 95 percent on this single test.

“For almost a whole year, I did nothing but study. My mother wouldn’t let me help in the kitchen. She told me to go back to my books. My father was building this orchard, but they both told me the work I was doing was studying.” Sazan scored a 97.

The food is now spread before us, and more relatives and friends have shown up. Two dozen gather around the tables as the sun sets. There is more than enough food.

“When we came here, there was nothing. My father has made it all,” Sazan beams. There must be 100 fruit trees on these few acres off a busy road that leads to the airport. The fruit is harvested, but never sold. Instead, it is shared with family and friends.

“But this year, there is not much fruit. There is no water. The drought is very bad this year,” Sazan is apologizing for a lack while the table shows nothing but bounty. Shadan said she’s never seen the well and cistern so empty. Winter rains are still several months away.

Even when they come, the rains may do no good. Parched land repels water. Likewise, a war-torn psyche may resist help.

Mental illness carries a powerful stigma in this culture. It extends beyond the patient to all those around them, including the caregivers. By one count, Iraq has only 20 practicing psychiatrists to serve 26 million possible patients.

Sazan doesn’t hesitate when asked where she will practice. “Kirkuk. That is my family’s home.” When asked about her family’s roots in that area, she sounds confused. “You ask how many generations has my family lived in Kirkuk? All of them.”

Westerners forget that civilization literally began on this land. Some families never moved to get here. As long as there were recorded families, they were here. One city nearby has been continuously inhabited for 7,000 years.

In 1997, Sazan’s family moved from Kirkuk, east to Suleimaniya. “I’ll never forget that day,” she says as her eyes scan downward. Her bright smile dims. “Saddam’s men came to the door. They told us we had to leave.”

She doesn’t talk of any struggle. Saddam’s regime carried out a sustained campaign to move Kurds out of oil-rich Kirkuk, and replace them with less independent-minded Arabs. “Arabization,” it was called. Saddam offered loyal Arabs the equivalent of $30,000 to settle in Kirkuk, in addition to a free house — a house seized from a Kurdish family.

One of the friends at the table tonight is a widow. Her husband was killed by Saddam’s soldiers. She never remarried. She has worn black for twenty years. She knows she is welcome with this family, but there is no confusion between this place and her home — not for her and not for her hosts. They want to return to Kirkuk.

“I will go back,” Sazan says with no doubt in her voice. “Kirkuk is our home.”

Sazan

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is sharing with readers of The Register-Guard the stories he’s gathering from people he’s met in Iraqi Kurdistan. All the stories are collected at www.dksez.com.

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