Ten years after the US invasion of Iraq, Kurds look to Europe, eye independence
At an elite private school in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, children learn Turkish and English before Arabic. Kurdish university students dream of landing jobs in Europe, not Baghdad. And a local entrepreneur says he doesn't like doing business beyond the self-rule zone because the area outside Kurdish control is still too unstable.
In the decade since U.S.-led forces toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, Kurds have trained their sights toward Turkey and the West, at the expense of ties with the still largely dysfunctional rest of the country.
Aided by an oil-fueled economic boom, Kurds have consolidated their autonomy, increased their leverage against the central government in Baghdad and are pursuing an independent foreign policy often at odds with that of Iraq.
Kurdish leaders say they want to remain part of Iraq for now, but that increasingly acrimonious disputes with Baghdad over oil and territory might just push them toward separation. "This is not a holy marriage that has to remain together," Falah Bakir, the top foreign policy official in the Kurdistan Regional Government, said of the Kurdish region's link to Iraq.
A direct oil export pipeline to Turkey, which officials say could be built by next year, would lay the economic base for independence. For now, the Kurds still can't survive without Baghdad; their region is eligible for 17 percent of the national budget of more than US$100 billion (approximately NT$3 trillion), overwhelmingly funded by oil exports controlled by the central government.
Since the war, the Kurds have mostly benefited from being part of Iraq. At U.S. prodding, majority Shiites made major concessions in the 2005 constitution, recognizing Kurdish autonomy and allowing the Kurds to keep their own security force. Shiites also accepted a Kurd as president of predominantly Arab Iraq.
Still, for younger Kurds, who never experienced direct rule by Baghdad, cutting ties cannot come soon enough. More than half of the region's 5.3 million people were born after 1991, when a Western-enforced no-fly zone made Kurdish self-rule possible for the first time by shielding the region against Saddam. In the preceding years, Saddam's forces had destroyed most Kurdish villages, killing tens of thousands of people.
Students at the private Cihan University say they feel Kurdish, not Iraqi, and see their future as an independent nation with strong ties to Turkey and Western Europe. "I want to see an independent Kurdistan, and I don't want to be part of Iraq," said Bilend Azad, 20, an architectural engineering student. "Kurdistan is better than other parts of Iraq. If we stay with them, we will be bad like them and we won't be free."
美國攻打伊拉克十年後，庫德族人寄望歐洲，心繫獨立
在伊拉克庫族德自治區內一所菁英私校裡，學童會先學土耳其語和英語，然後才學習阿拉伯語。庫德族大學生的夢想是在歐洲 ── 而不是巴格達 ── 找到工作。一名當地的企業家說，他不喜歡跑到自治區以外的地區做生意，因為在不受庫德族人控制的地區，情況還是很不穩定的。
自美國為首的盟軍發動推翻前獨裁者海珊政權軍事行動的十年後，庫德族人已學會放眼土耳其和西方國家，自治區和仍大致百廢待舉的其他地區之間的關係因此受損。
石油帶來的經濟繁榮提供了助力，使庫德族人得以鞏固其自治，提高他們對巴格達中央政府的影響力。庫德族人現在遵行的獨立自主外交政策，往往是和伊拉克的外交政策相左的。
庫德族領袖宣稱，他們目前希望庫德族自治區繼續是伊拉克的一部分，但因為石油和領土問題和巴格達發生的嚴重爭端可能把他們推向脫離伊拉克一途。庫德族自治區政府主管外交政策的最高階官員法拉巴凱爾談到自治區和伊拉克的關係時說：「這不是要人相守不渝的神聖的婚姻。」
官員說，直接向土耳其輸出石油的管線可能在明年之前完工，這條石油管線將為庫德族脫離伊拉克獨立奠定經濟基礎。目前，假如沒有巴格達的中央政府，庫德族人是無法生存的。伊拉克一千多億美元（約新台幣三兆元）的國家預算，百分之十七歸庫德族人地區，這國家預算收入來源主要靠中央政府控制的石油出口。
自從伊拉克戰爭爆發以來，庫德族人作為伊拉克國民，大致上是好處多於吃虧的。草擬二○○五年憲法時，在美國敦促下，佔多數的什葉派回教徒做了大讓步，承認庫德族自治，同時容許庫德族人保留安全部隊。什葉派回教徒也接受一名庫德族人在人口以阿拉伯人佔多數的伊拉克出任總統。
然而，對從未經歷巴格達直接統治的年輕一輩的庫德族人來說，愈快切斷關係愈好。這個地區的五百卅萬人口，約有半數是一九九一年之後出生的。那一年，西方實行禁航區，使庫德族人聚居地區受到保護，免遭海珊毒手，於是庫德族人才有可能實行史無前例的自治。在此之前，海珊的軍隊摧毀了大部分的庫德族村落，殺人數以萬計。
私立吉漢大學的學生說，他們覺得自己是庫德人，而不是伊拉克人，而他們的前途在於作為一個和土耳其及西方國家關係密切的獨立國家。現年廿歲的建築工程系學生比倫特阿札德說：「我希望看到一個獨立的庫德斯坦，我不要作為伊拉克的一部分。庫德斯坦比伊拉克其餘地區都好。假如我們繼續跟他們在一起，我們會像他們那樣慘，而且不會享有自由。」
全通翻譯引用 http://chinapost.com.tw/guidepost/topics/default.asp?id=3355&pre=1&sub=7
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