Islamic Penetration Of Kurdistan.

A new constitution for Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region was meant to be relatively straight-forward. But instead, Kurdish Islamic parties have courted controversy by calling a greater role for shari'a (Islamic law). "The Kurds are a Muslim nation and we have to follow Islam", says Muhammad Ahmad, MP for the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), the largest Kurdish Islamic party in the Kurdistan National Assembly. Such calls may well go unheeded by secular parties which hold 80% of seats in the parliament, where a cross-party committee is now drawing up a draft constitution.

However, the demands for Islamic law reflect the growing popularity of Islamic parties such as the KIU and its smaller, more radical rival Komala, which is Neo-Salafi and was once allied with the al-Qaeda's Kurdish offshoot Ansar al-Islam. While unlikely to change the political power balance in Kurdistan any time soon, the Islamic parties may cultivate the ground for more radical ideas to take root. The Christian Science Monitor on July 7 quoted Joost Hiltermann, Middle East Project Director at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG), as saying: "The KIU could become an organization that germinates radicals. People will join it and then later feel that it doesn't go far enough and then go on to join other more radical groups".

Such radicalisation could pose problems for the US, which relies heavily on the long-standing opposition of Iraq's Kurds to radical Islamic groups to gather intelligence against Neo-Salafi insurgents. The US is to build long-term military bases in Kurdistan.

Iraq's Kurds are ethnically distinct from Iraq's Arabs, with a separate language, culture and history. Unlike Iraq's Arabs, Kurds have traditionally seen Islam as a personal issue. The Monitor quoted Sarah Keeler, a lecturer and specialist in Kurdish issues at the University of Kent in England, as saying: "[Kurds] are...unlikely to respond to the calls of a fundamentalist notion of Muslim brotherhood". Rather than advocating loyalty to Islam over nationalism, Kurdish Islamic parties are seizing the moral high ground against Kurdistan's ruling secular parties, whom they accuse of corruption and economic mismanagement.

Ahmad of the KIU says: "People know that our followers and members are not corrupt". The KIU more than doubled its vote in last December's national election, winning five seats out of 275. Analysts largely agree, pointing out that even secular Kurds are disenchanted with the two ruling Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and are ready to give other parties a chance. The ICG's Dr Hiltermann said: "For devout Kurds the Islamic parties are the obvious choice...as well as for those who want an alternative to the ruling Kurdish coalition. I don't think this is a one-off protest vote. The KIU is being seen as a viable alternative". And Kurdistan's secular parties admit that corruption is a problem, but point out that neither they nor the KIU can solve high unemployment or attract foreign investment as long as Iraq remains a war zone.

Azad Jundiani, spokesman for the PUK, says: "It is difficult for the [local] government to meet the demands of everyone. There are problems of petrol, jobs, electricity, and education that we need to solve, but we haven't got the money". But if the Kurdish parties' economic promises are not always realistic, they have a parallel strategy to build broader long-term support among Kurds.

In Arbil, the KIU is building a large, hi-tech TV studio to run a 24-hour satellite TV station which they say should be operational most likely by the end of 2006. Its programmes will all have an Islamic flavour and aim to build a Kurdish Islamic identity, which the party hopes will help consolidate its recent electoral gains. But experts say that throughout Kurdish history, ethnic identity, rather than religion, has been the main unifying force. Ms Keeler said: "Kurdish populations throughout the region have never, in past centuries or today, shared religion as a unifying force. The Kurds have, generally speaking, subordinated their religious identity to first an ethnic, and now a national identity".