Culture After Saddam: Video Artists Restore a Country's Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan

(This story appeared in High Performance #65, Spring 1994.)

A Kurdish family in Northern Iraq watching television.

Tenacious mountain fighters, victims of mass genocide, a people enduring a life of uncertaintyóthese are images of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan now familiar in the west as a result of worldwide press coverage over the past few years. Thanks to foreign journalists, the western public has a significantly increased awareness of the Kurds living in liberated areas of northern Iraq, still vulnerable to Saddam Hussein's revenge. Few people outside the Kurdish homeland, however, are aware of the work of Iraqi Kurdish artists, writers and filmmakers. Their commentary provides an insightful, first-hand perspective on life in northern Iraq after the Gulf War of 1991.

With a total population estimated at more than 20 million, the Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East. (See "The Kurds: A Long Struggle To Survive.") Their heritage as a tribal people includes an Aryan-based language and a rich history of resistance to outside rule. Throughout a homeland divided by five countries, the three-to-four million Kurds living in the liberated zone of northern Iraq are among the few able to freely express their ethnic identity. Both Iran and Turkey (home for the largest populations of Kurds) have minimized or denied such uniqueness within their boundaries. Fearing the potential of cultural difference as a unifying force for separatism, the Turkish parliament refers to the Kurds as "Mountain Turks." In Iran, Kurdish language, performance, radio and printed matter is tolerated to the degree that it supports Iran's theocratic state politics. (Most Kurds follow moderate schools within the Sunni sect of Islam rather than the Iranian government's fundamentalist Shi'ite Islam.)

Iraq, on the other hand, simply rewrote the histories of "national minorities" such as the Kurds to support its struggle for Arab supremacy under Saddam. This was enforced at great cost to Iraq's intellectual communities. By the early '80s, all work by artists and journalists was under direct control of the government. Formerly independent groups were banished and replaced by government unions. Private commissions were declared illegal. Thousands of artists and journalists endured torture and incarceration. Others disappeared or were forced into exile.

While these policies affected all Iraqi citizens, the predominantly Kurdish north is the only part of the country to offer an example of life beyond the Baghdad regime. Since Kurdish opposition factions inherited the region de facto in 1991, urban centers under their control support a flourishing of writers' guilds and visual/performing arts centers. Mass-media products representing an unprecedented diversity of viewpoints (including the Iraqi government's) are widely circulated.

One of the most prevalent outlets for local commentary is through television: the Iraqi Kurdish opposition operates three Kurdish-language television channels. Throughout the liberated zone these new urban-based broadcasts are important statements of Iraqi Kurdish identity. This becomes most clear when they are compared to the Iraqi government's Kurdish-language channel. As an opposition station manager explained, "When Saddam allowed the Kurdish television station, he did this to destroy Kurdish identity. Now we are repairing what he tried to destroy." (See "Saddam's Crimes")

The opposition's channels are monitored by Saddam's intelligence. Some northerners refrain from appearing on them due to concern for relatives still living in regions under government control. Program presenters therefore represent those who have been able to cut all ties with the government. Within their communities, they enjoy status as local celebrities. Most of them produce their own shows. Each station supports local artists, public commentary and special interest representatives that were previously censured by the Ba'th regime.

Televised performances by formerly censured actors reflects a sense of humor that has survived hard times. One skit, for example, portrays westernized Kurds now able to visit their homeland after decades in exile: In contrast to the traditional baggy trousers and head wraps worn by most Kurds in Iraq, the visitors are easily recognizable by their sunglasses, cameras, walkmans and spandex leggings. Another drama addresses the Iraqi government's efforts to destabilize the Kurdish-controlled region's economy: Two actors dressed as cavemen in animal furs fight for each other's possessions until one of them realizes the other is carrying counterfeit money manufactured in Baghdad and walks away in disgust. A play by Assyrian Christians (members of the second largest minority in the region after the Kurds) makes reference to the internal embargo imposed on the north by Baghdad: Santa Claus loaded with toys for Kurdistan is unable to get through the Iraqi checkpoints. A Kermit the Frog-like puppet dressed in traditional Kurdish clothing and toting a rifle is scolded by a finger puppet clearly upset over the number of guns readily available in the local black market. Comedies make fun of Saddam-like caricatures, often clad in military uniform and surrounded by servile flatterers.

Filmmaker, photographer and writer Abbas Video (alias) is among formerly exiled Kurdish artists now contributing to the new channels. In the early '80s, he fled to the mountains of Iraq and Iran, traveling with the Kurdish resistance. While his companions carried guns, he used a video camera to document his world, including the government's mass destruction of Kurdish villages. With the exception of the notorious footage from the village of Halapja revealing the death of 5,000 Kurds by chemical bombings, journalists from the outside were unable to document these events.

For years Abbas stored videotapes in caves, sending them to Europe through contacts in Tehran. The filmmaker thought he would never see some of the footage again and was surprised when familiar segments appeared in western-made documentaries now circulating in the north. The lack of international recognition for his work does not seem to bother him. Instead, he has been pleased to discover its use by those with access to western audiences. His concerns remain with the people he knows best. During his exile, Abbas used a donkey to carry a TV set and VHS video deck to Kurdish villages in order to share his work. As station manager for the first of the new stations, he now enjoys a larger indigenous audience.

The new channels cannot be compared to western or national Middle Eastern broadcast standards. With a double embargo imposed on the previously government-subsidized north, station staff are working with limited resources. (Baghdad's internal restrictions on the Kurds are in response to the international embargo on Iraq.) One station, for example, uses army blankets and cardboard boxes for its studio soundproofing. Another has recycled an anti-aircraft tripod to steady precious antenna equipment. (A few stations have been forced to stop broadcasting altogether since August of 1993, when Saddam began preventing electrical power sources under his control from supplying approximately 25% of the Kurdish controlled north.) The broadcasts become most significant, however, when compared to the government's compulsive quarter-century stronghold on Iraqi society and repressive conditions throughout the rest of the Kurdish homeland.

Elsewhere on the globe, Allied/UN peace keepers are enmeshed in conflicts among the people they were assigned to protect. But what happens when their presence encourages enough stability to allow controversial statements of self-definition that could not otherwise exist? While western powers did not establish Iraq's first security zone to support Kurdish rights to freedom of expression, they are now key players in determining the future of such developments. Meanwhile, Kurdish artists in the liberated zone continue to work under conditions of uncertainty.

Ann Zimmerman worked with a U.S. relief assistance program serving Kurdish controlled areas of northern Iraq. She first visited the region in 1992, where she worked with the Kurdish TV stations and local artists to produce health education programs and gathered material for the bulk of this article.

Original CAN/API publication: December 1999