Kurds emerge as power brokers

There was no part of Iraq more joyous than Kurdistan on Sunday. Election results confirmed the Kurds as the second most powerful, and probably most cohesive, faction in the new assembly that will shape Iraq's future.

The rise of the Kurds, who suffered under Saddam Hussein, not only makes them important power brokers in the new Iraq but is likely to add to the strains on Iraqi unity as the country's experiment in democracy rolls forward.

In the short term, their political position could secure the presidency for Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and should provide a secular counterbalance to the Shiite groups that will form the largest bloc in parliament. But as Iraq's political debate evolves, particularly over the writing of the constitution, there are also many stumbling blocks.

Senior Kurdish leaders say they're committed to remaining part of Iraq. "Independence is impractical,'' Mr. Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who fought for independence for much of the last 20 years, told Reuters on Sunday.

But the independence yearnings of his followers, and the demands they are making for expanded territory and more of Iraq's oil revenues, could bring them into conflict with the demands of the country's now dominant Arab Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs, particularly over the flashpoint city of Kirkuk.

That was brought home by the celebrations in the cities of autonomous Kurdistan and in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Sunday, where Kurds poured into the streets and waved not Iraq's flag but their own, a symbol of an 80-year struggle for independence.

The Kurdish rise also emphasizes the weak position of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, who ruled the country since its creation in the 1920s, and who mostly boycotted the election. Sunni Arab fighters have been at the heart of Iraq's raging war, and their exclusion from government means it's unlikely they'll stop fighting any time soon.

"I think most Sunnis are extremely frustrated and I think there's a lot of support among them for the insurgency,'' says Kenneth Katzman, an expert on Iraq and Iran for the Congressional Research Service in Washington. "Not only are they no longer No. 1 in Iraq, they're not even No. 2."

Mr. Katzman says the Kurdish rise, given their overt independence sentiments and desire to incorporate Kirkuk into their autonomous region, could end up opening another front in Iraq's war.

"I think it's very problematic,'' he says, adding that a Kurdish push for Kirkuk is probably "just a matter of time. And that could draw in other communities and could be a spark that sets this whole thing off."

The Kurdish position could also build an essential weakness into Iraq's interim arrangements, since it establishes a group that has traditionally been hostile to the Iraqi state as major player in shaping that state's new order.

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