KALAK, Iraq \u2014 \u201cFor the sake of the sacrifices and blood of the martyrs, let\u2019s all say yes for Kurdistan independence,\u201d reads a large billboard in the center of Kalak, a small town in Iraq\u2019s northern Kurdish region. \u201cIndependence is not given, it\u2019s taken!\u201d reads another banner hanging below a cluster of red, green, yellow and white Kurdish flags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iraq\u2019s Kurds are set to vote Monday in a referendum on support for independence that has stirred fears of instability across the region as the war against the Islamic State group winds down. The Kurds are likely to approve the referendum, but the non-binding vote is not expected to result in any formal declaration of independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United Sates and the United Nations have condemned the referendum. Turkey, which is battling its own Kurdish insurgency, has threatened to use military force to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdish state, and Baghdad has warned it will respond militarily to any violence resulting from the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Initial results from the poll are expected on Tuesday, with the official results announced later in the week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Denied independence when colonial powers drew the map of the Middle East after World War I, the Kurds form a sizable minority in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. They have long been at odds with the Baghdad government over the sharing of oil revenues and the fate of disputed territories like the city of Kirkuk, which are expected to take part in the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are pressures on us to postpone, to engage in dialogue with Baghdad, but we will not go back to a failed experiment,\u201d Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish regional president, said to roars of applause at a rally of tens of thousands in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region, on Friday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But beneath the sea of flag-waving, the Kurdish region continues to be plagued by endemic corruption and economic decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the portraits on Kalak\u2019s main street is that of Amen Jadr Mahmoud\u2019s 18-year-old son, Gaylan, one of the more than 1,500 Kurdish fighters, known as the peshmerga, killed in the fight against the Islamic State group. \u201cHis death was noble, he died fighting for Kurdistan,\u201d Mahmoud said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But even Mahmoud, a die-hard nationalist who lost four other relatives to fighting with Iraqi government forces decades earlier, has misgivings about the Kurdish region\u2019s political leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we have a state then we will build institutions that will let us change the faces of the main parties,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce we have a state we can get rid of them or at least prevent them from stealing so much.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Kurds have been a close American ally for decades, and the first U.S. airstrikes in the campaign against ISIS were launched to protect Irbil. Kurdish forces later regrouped and played a major role in driving the extremists from much of northern Iraq, including Mosul, the country\u2019s second largest city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Kurdish contribution to the ISIS fight, it can\u2019t be overstated,\u201d said U.S. Army Col. Charles Costanza, a commander at a coalition base just outside Irbil, using another acronym for the extremist group. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t have done Mosul without the Kurds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the U.S. has long been opposed to Kurdish moves toward independence, fearing it could lead to the breakup of Iraq and bring even more instability to an already volatile Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mahmoud and other Kurds who support independence view the international opposition as a betrayal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy son was fighting Daesh on behalf of the entire world,\u201d said Mahmoud, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS. \u201cAnd now the international community is ignoring us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Kurds\u2019 sense of sacrifice and betrayal is rooted in decades of war and oppression, in which they repeatedly rose up against the Baghdad government and were often brutally repressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the Kurds sided with Iran against Saddam Hussein, who punished them with a scorched-earth campaign involving chemical weapons that killed an estimated 50,000 people. A no-fly zone imposed by the U.S. in the early 1990s largely halted the killings, and allowed the Kurds to develop de facto autonomy, which was formalized after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the years after the American invasion, the Kurdish region emerged as a rare success story. The peshmerga insulated the region from the insurgency and sectarian killings that plagued much of the rest Iraq, and oil revenues fueled an economic boom, leading to talk of a new Dubai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That all changed in 2014, when ISIS rampaged across northern Iraq, at one point approaching within a few miles of Irbil. The collapse in global oil prices later that year led to a severe economic downturn, exposing a government riddled with corruption and an economy dominated by a bloated public sector. Barzani, whose term expired in 2015, has prevented parliament from meeting for two years, and many opponents of the referendum see it as a cynical attempt to hold onto power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, as the peshmerga halted the ISIS advance and then began to push back with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes, they seized territory equivalent to 50 percent of their autonomous region, further raising tensions with Baghdad. The oil-rich city of Kirkuk, with large Kurdish, Arab, Turkmen and Christian communities, is divided over the referendum and has seen low-level clashes in the days leading up to Monday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hoshyar Zebari, a longtime Kurdish political figure and former Iraqi foreign minister, acknowledges that the referendum is partly an attempt by Kurdish leaders to cement their legacy, but says it is also rooted in Baghdad\u2019s failings and in Iran\u2019s growing influence over the central government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe new Iraq is broken,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we miss this opportunity for independence, it will never happen again in our lifetimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Associated Press writer Salar Salim contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cFor the sake of the sacrifices and blood of the martyrs, let\u2019s all say yes for Kurdistan independence,\u201d reads a large billboard in the center of Kalak, a small town in Iraq\u2019s northern Kurdish region. \u201cIndependence is not given, it\u2019s taken!\u201d reads another banner hanging below a cluster of red, green, yellow and white Kurdish flags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":47323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":8,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1185],"class_list":["post-21702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flashpoints","category-news"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"7Z7KSMBOWVCDXJTQZGZTIM4CVQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/2017\/09\/24\/iraqs-kurds-to-vote-on-independence-amid-fears-of-unrest\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n