Culture Minister Falakaddin Kakeyi in Finland

I (left) and Culture Minister Falakaddin Kakeyi.

Falakaddin Kakeyi, Culture Minister of Kurdistan Regional Government, is now in Finland. I met him on Wednesday the 29th July 2008 in Helsinki.

Pashay Gawra, a music team of sixteen members, is expected to come Finland from Rawanduz, South Kurdistan. They should play on Saturday the 2st August on Faces Etnofestival in Karjaa. But due to problems and delays in getting visa it is not yet sure whether they will come here.

Lack of buses in Stockholm and in Hawler

An uncommon view in Hawler: a bus.

I was some time ago in Stockholm, Sweden. Local buses were on strike. Lack of buses remainded me about my stay in Hawler last spring. For me the biggest surprise there was the lack of public transport. The problems in travelling was in Stockholm an exception which makes people angry. In Hawler a situation, which is much more difficult, is a normal thing.

Metro train in Fittja, a suburb in Stockholm.

Stockholm has effective underground system. It is very quick and in most stations there are buses going to different directions. Fortunately underground drivers were not on strike. But the system was half paralyzed because there were no connecting buses. What people did? They walked. I walked in the mornings 45 minutes to from my friend's home to an underground station. Fortunately the weather was good.

In Hawler I saw almost no people to walk. This surprised me. How the poor people travel who do not have a car? And no one was driving bicycle. In European cities bicycling is very popular. There are roads which are used only by bicycles. In Helsinki I bicycle every day in the summer. Hawler would be good place to bicycle because there are no hills.

In Stockholm underground stations there are persons who control that passengers have tickets. Most of them are immigrants. They do their work but they also keep an eye on people of their own nationality, especially the women and teenagers. The Kurdish ticket controllers are a network of spies who know what time Kurdish youth travel and with whom. If a girl travels with a stranger whole the Kurdish community knows about it and her parents are the first ones to get the information. So the girls avoid this.

There are already now bad traffic jams in Hawler. And I suppose the situation will be much more difficult after some years. When people get money there will be more and more cars on the streets.

In every European city with one million people there is underground, local trains or trams. Public transport is better by them than by buses. They are faster as the traffic jams do not affect them. If the public transport system is fast and comfortable, even car owners use it. This means less cars on the streets so that every one benefits, also those who travel by their own cars because they do not waste time by waiting in traffic jams.

Now the re-construction of Hawler is going on and the decision makers decide the travelling policy of the future. There is a need for good public transport system.

But maybe the lack of public transport is a secret plan of the men to keep their women at home. I do not speak only about the work of studies of women - not even to mention feminist activities. They are depended of their fathers and husbands when they want to do just some ordinary shopping in the bazaar.

Finnish and Kurdish demilitarized zones

In Turkey people have been made to believe that the country is surrounded by enemies. And because of this the army must be strong. But Turkey has never had a war against its neighbour countries during the 85 years of independence. Turkish army has been fighting only against its own people. Even in North Iraq army's target has been Kurds who are Turkish citizens.
Looking from an European perspective Turkey's neighbours are not too aggressive. But Turkey has the fifth biggest army in the world.

The situation of Kurdish Autonomous Area is opposite to that. It is really surrounded by enemies. And the situation is opposite to Turkey even so that peshmergas do not have other weapons than kalashnikovs, and some old panzers taken from the escaping Saddam soldiers in 1991.

This lack of heavy arms surprised me when I visited North Iraq in spring. In Turkey I have got used of seeing panzers and hearing the sound of military airplanes and helicopters all the time. Kurdish autonomous area has became a demilitarized zone without any one planning is purposefully.

Maybe the Kurdish leaders hope to buy F 16 -aeroplanes and Cobra helicopters and put peshmergas to pilot school as soon as possible. I am not a military expert but my suggestion is that why not keep North Iraq a demilitarized zone also in the future? And make it a real demilitarized area where security is not based even on kalashnikovs. At least it would be cheaper than buying expensive military technology. With the exemption that a good radar system is a necessity.

This came to my mind because my country, Finland, has a demilitarized zone, Aland Islands. They are located between Finland and Sweden. Aland is nearer to Sweden.
30 000 people, who live there, speak Swedish. There was a referendum in 1921 where the people could decide whether they want to be part of Sweden or Finland. They choose autonomy in Finland.

One part of the autonomy plan made by the League of Nations in was that the islands are a demilitarized zone. The area was strategically important especially at those days when St. Petersburg was the Russian capital. It lies by the Baltic Sea. Aland Islands lie in the same sea and who controls them has good possibility to control all boat traffic to St. Petersburg. The decision made whole the sea more peaceful.

Despite times are now different than during the days of the first world war, Kurds should study the autonomy of Aland islands. Maybe there are aspects which are useful for them. Also in other issues Kurds look now at decisions made at those days.

The autonomy and demilitarization of Aland has been successful because it was guaranteed by the international community. An area without arms can live in peace only if demilitarization is made with strong enough international quarantine. When Western countries now desperately want to remove their troops from Iraq maybe a demilitarized buffer zone in the north would be a acceptable solution even for them. International agreements would only legalize the situation which de facto already exists.

This text is published in Gulan, it is in Kurdish here.