The ballots in Iraq have been counted, and the biggest winners are not necessarily the Shi’ia Arabs: the real winners are the Kurds, who won 26 percent of the vote. The Shi’ia must form a coalition with the Kurdish Alliance in order to form the two-thirds coalition of the National Assembly required in order to select the new head of Iraq. Without the Kurds, the newly elected National Assembly may fall apart even before convening.

The Kurds are using this to their advantage. Kurdish leaders are making demands for even more self-rule over the internal affairs of their semi-autonomous territory, which comprises the three northern governates. Kurdish demands include control over taxation and a redrawing of their border to include oil-rich Kirkuk, which suffered the most from Arabization (ethnic cleansing of Kurds). If the Kurds get all of their demands from the new National Assembly, it will be difficult to discern between an autonomous region of Iraq and an independent Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Kurds — as well as the Shi’ia and some Sunni Arabs — suffered terribly under the oppression of the former regime. The basis of many of Saddam Hussein’s war crimes stem from his mistreatment of the Kurds, including using chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians after the Iran-Iraq War. The Kurds and the Shi’ia do deserve the seats that they won in the election, but what will be the consequences of creating a boundary between the Kurds and the rest of “Arab” Iraq?

The boundary between the Kurds and the Arabs in Iraq already exists. Traveling from Mosul, a mixed Arab-Kurd city, to Dihok in Kurdistan is like traveling from the United States to Mexico. Before Operation Iraqi Freedom, there was little contact between Kurdistan and Arab Iraq except for the smuggling of oil to Turkey and Syria under the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program, the basis of Kurdistan’s economy. Many Kurds in the autonomous governates no longer speak Arabic, and until October 2003, Kurds used a currency based on a different standard.

Creating a border between two peoples, whether physical (such as the Berlin Wall or the barrier wall in the West Bank) or on a map (such as in Bosnia-Herzegovina or the Iron Curtain), create more problems than they solve. While Israelis claim that the wall has slowed terrorist attacks inside Israel, the wall is creating a major barrier in the Middle East Peace Process. In Bosnia, despite the drawing of the borders between Republika Srbska and the Muslim-Croat Federation, all sides even a decade later still claim that they will resume fighting after European troops leave.

Even in our country, a divide between groups only led to violence and intolerance. February is Black History Month, a month to celebrate the struggle for equal rights in our country for all people. Starting in elementary school, we learn about the consequences of a “separate but equal” society and how our society works only through equal opportunity for all citizens.

While the Kurdish situation differs greatly from these examples, we can learn from the lessons that history has taught us. Division — whether between ethnicities, ideologies, or groups of people within a nation — does not work. Whether in Palestine, the Balkans or even our own country, history has proven that barriers and boundaries fail.

We cannot turn back the privileges for which the Kurds fought after Desert Storm, but allowing Iraqi Kurdistan to solidify and expand its border will only lead to bigger problems. Ethnic fighting will erupt between Kurds and Arabs, and ethnic tensions are already on the rise. The Shi’ia and Sunni Arabs may see the Kurds as a privileged group, and this may fuel resentment and result in a possible breakdown of the fragile Iraqi society into a civil war.

We must encourage the Iraqi people to be inclusive of all people and not exclude some groups while giving others special rights. In order for the fledgling Iraqi democracy to succeed, the Iraqis must guarantee the rights of all citizens as equally as possible. Giving the rights of near independence to one group, no matter how oppressed in the past, may result in the collapse of Iraqi democracy even before the new National Assembly convenes.

Jeff Carnes ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in linguistics.