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Article: Elderly scraps of paper. (failure of past attempts to establish autonomy for Kurds)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- April 27, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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TWICE before the Kurds have been offered generous deals by Iraq's Baathist government-only to find them snatched away. It was not just the Iraqis' perfidy that did them down.
In March 1970 Saddam Hussein (the Iraqi regime's strong man, but not yet president) negotiated a deal with the late Mullah Mustafa Barzani that stated: "The people of Iraq are made up of two principal nationalities, the Arab nationality and the Kurdish nationality." The deal stipulated that Kurdish, along with Arabic, should be a national language. A Kurdish autonomous area would be established after four years; a Kurd appointed vice-president of Iraq; only Kurdish-speaking officials should ...