Kurds remain biggest winners from US-led invasion of Iraq

Complexes of McMansions, fast food restaurants, real estate offices and half-constructed high-rises line wide highways in Irbil, the seat of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Many members of the political and business elite live in a suburban gated community dubbed the American Village, where homes sell for as much as $5 million, with lush gardens consuming more than a million liters of water a day in the summer.

The visible opulence is a far cry from 20 years ago. Back then, Irbil was a backwater provincial capital without even an airport.

That rapidly changed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. Analysts say that Iraqi Kurds — and particularly the Kurdish political class — were the biggest beneficiaries in a conflict that had few winners.

That's despite the fact that for ordinary Kurds, the benefits of the new order have been tempered by corruption and power struggles between the two major Kurdish parties and between Irbil and Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

In the wake of the invasion, much of Iraq fell into chaos, as occupying American forces fought an insurgency and as multiple political and sectarian communities vied to fill the power vacuum left in Baghdad. But the Kurds, seen as staunch allies of the Americans, strengthened their political position and courted foreign investments.

Irbil quickly grew into an oil-fueled boom town. Two years later, in 2005, the city opened a new commercial airport, constructed with Turkish funds, and followed a few years after that by an expanded international airport.

Traditionally, the "Kurdish narrative is one of victimhood and one of grievances," said Bilal Wahab, a fellow at the Washington Institute think tank. But in Iraq since 2003, "that is not the Kurdish story. The story is one of power and empowerment."

With the Ottoman Empire's collapse after World War I, the Kurds were promised an independent homeland in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. But the treaty was never ratified, and "Kurdistan" was carved up. Since then, there have been Kurdish rebellions in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, while in Syria, Kurds have clashed with Turkish-backed forces.

In Iraq, the Kurdish region won de facto self-rule in 1991, when the United States imposed a no-fly zone over it in response to Saddam's brutal repression of Kurdish uprisings.

"We had built our own institutions, the parliament, the government," said Hoshyar Zebari, a top official with the Kurdistan Democratic Party who served as foreign minister in Iraq's first post-Saddam government. "Also, we had our own civil war. But we overcame that," he said, referring to fighting between rival Kurdish factions in the mid-1990s.

Speaking in an interview at his palatial home in Masif, a former resort town in the mountains above Irbil that is now home to much of the KDP leadership, Zabari added, "The regime change in Baghdad has brought a lot of benefits to this region."

Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, also gave a glowing assessment of the post-2003 developments. The Kurds, he said, had aimed for "a democratic Iraq, and at the same time some sort of … self-determination for the Kurdish people."

With the U.S. overthrow of Saddam, he said, "We achieved that ... We became a strong group in Baghdad."

The post-invasion constitution codified the Kurdish region's semi-independent status, while an informal power-sharing arrangement now stipulates that Iraq's president is always a Kurd, the prime minister a Shiite and the parliament speaker a Sunni.

But even in the Kurdish region, the legacy of the invasion is complicated. The two major Kurdish parties have jockeyed for power, while Irbil and Baghdad have been at odds over territory and the sharing of oil revenues.

Meanwhile, Arabs in the Kurdish region and minorities, including the Turkmen and Yazidis, feel sidelined in the new order, as do Kurds without ties to one of the two key parties that serve as gatekeepers to opportunities in the Kurdish region.

As the economic boom has stagnated in recent years, due to both domestic issues and global economic trends, an increasing number of Kurdish youths are leaving the country in search of better opportunities. According to the International Labor Organization, 19.2% of men and 38% of women aged 15-24 were unemployed and out of school in Irbil province in 2021.

Wahab said Irbil's post-2003 economic success has also been qualified by widespread waste and patronage in the public sector.

"The corruption in the system is really undermining the potential," he said.

In Kirkuk, an oil-rich city inhabited by a mixed population of Kurds, Turkmen and Sunni Arabs where Baghdad and Irbil have vied for control, Kahtan Vendavi, local head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front party, complained that the American forces' "support was very clear for the Kurdish parties" after the 2003 invasion.

Turkmen are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, with an estimated 3 million people, but hold no high government positions and only a handful of parliamentary seats.

In Kirkuk, the Americans "appointed a governor of Kurdish nationality to manage the province. Important departments and security agencies were handed over to Kurdish parties," Vendavi said.

Some Kurdish groups also lost out in the post-2003 order, which consolidated the power of the two major parties.

Ali Bapir, head of the Kurdistan Justice Group, a Kurdish Islamist party, said the two ruling parties "treat people who do not belong to (them) as third- and fourth-class citizens."

Bapir has other reasons to resent the U.S. incursion. Although he had fought against the rule of Saddam's Baath Party, the U.S. forces who arrived in 2003 accused him and his party of ties to extremist groups. Soon after the invasion, the U.S. bombed his party's compound and then arrested Bapir and imprisoned him for two years.

Kurds not involved in the political sphere have other, mainly economic, concerns.

Picnicking with her mother and sister and a pair of friends at the sprawling Sami Abdul Rahman Park, built on what was once a military base under Saddam, 40-year-old Tara Chalabi acknowledged that the "security and safety situation is excellent here."

But she ticked off a list of other grievances, including high unemployment, the end of subsidies from the regional government for heating fuel and frequent delays and cuts in the salaries of public employees like her.

"Now there is uncertainty if they will pay this month," she said.

Nearby, a group of university students said they are hoping to emigrate.

"Working hard, before, was enough for you to succeed in life," said a 22-year-old who gave only her first name, Gala. "If you studied well and you got good grades … you would have a good opportunity, a good job. But now it's very different. You must have connections."

In 2021, hundreds of Iraqi Kurds rushed to Belarus in hopes of crossing into Poland or other neighboring EU countries. Belarus at the time was readily handing out tourist visas in an apparent attempt to pressure the European Union by creating a wave of migrants.

Those who went, Wahab said, were from the middle class, able to afford plane tickets and smuggler fees.

"To me, it's a sign that it's not about poverty," he said. "It's basically about the younger generation of Kurds who don't really see a future for themselves in this region anymore."