Erbil Remedy

ON CHRISTMAS DAY in Erbil--the semi-official capital of the semi-official entity known as Iraqi Kurdistan--over 100 delegates from across northern Iraq gathered in a meeting hall that resembled nothing so much as an inner city high school auditorium, complete with rows of battered faux-leather chairs and dim fluorescent lighting. An improbably huge Kurdish flag was draped across the rear of the stage--three stripes of red, white, and green, with a golden sun at the center.

The assembly was a cross-section of Iraqi society: a bespectacled professor of law from Sulaimaniya in a prim three-piece suit; a Yezidi doctor from Sinjar; a turbaned cleric; representatives of the Turkmen and Chaldean parties from Erbil and Dohuk, respectively; even a lone, octogenarian Arab who had driven up from Kirkuk. Their stated purpose in coming together? To advocate a referendum on the political status of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Such a vote would grasp the nettle of two contentious questions: the terms on which the region, which has been de facto independent since 1991, should be reintegrated with the rest of the country, if at all; and where the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan, which many Kurds insist must include territory outside their present control--most notably, Kirkuk--should be established.

On the former question, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) initially embraced a vision for a federal Iraq divided into the 18 traditional governorates. Of these, 3 would partition the territory now under Kurdish administration. Kurdish politicians unanimously rejected this approach, pressing instead for "ethnic" federalism, with a single, unified Kurdish government distinct from "Arab" Iraq. For the majority of delegates assembled in Erbil, however, this too was insufficient; they saw the referendum as a means to pull even further from Baghdad's orbit.