ShareThisSULAMANIYAH, Iraq - Construction cranes, dozens upon dozens of them, stand over this city in defiance of the past, stretching across the skyline as if reaching for the future.
And here, in the mountains of northern Iraq, that future seems as bright as the golden sun emblazoned on the ubiquitous flag of Kurdistan.
Cement trucks rumble over crowded freeways. Hip-hop music thumps from cars and clubs in the city's secular heart. In nearby Erbil, a diverse government rules over a region that is safe, stable and increasingly prosperous.
On the map, of course, this is all part of Iraq -- a nation entrenched in sectarian violence, stymied by corruption and mired in political impasse.
But as the United States withdraws its forces from the country it invaded in 2003, those seeking validation of President George W. Bush's vision for the Middle East might well look to this 15,000-square-mile region bordering Syria, Turkey and Iran. The mostly autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government has many of the characteristics Bush coveted for all of Iraq when he ordered the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime:
It is a functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East. It is a secular government in a majority Muslim nation. And it is an anti-terror ally in a region plagued by religious extremism.
The future of greater Iraq may be an open question, but from the Kurdish north, one thing seems clear: This is the war America won-- inadvertent as that victory may have been.
As the world watched " The wood-framed photographs lining the walls of the Monument of Halabja Martyrs are hung at an angle, as though someone lifted the 100-foot-tall cenotaph and shook it sharply to the right.
It's overkill: The crooked images are offsetting enough. Mutilated faces. Blisters and pus. Peeling skin, rotting flesh. Children -- so many dead children.
This is what Saddam Hussein did to crush a Kurdish rebellion. As many as 5,000 people were killed in the March 16, 1988, massacre, the largest-ever chemical weapons attack against a civilian population.
"I returned home the day after the attack," remembered Halabja carpenter Fateh Abdul. "My father, my mother, my sister --hey were all dead. All I could do to help was to bury them."
Bush later cited Halabja in justifying the overthrow of Saddam's Baathist regime. But immediately after the massacre, the U.S. --hich had supported Saddam during his eight-year war against Iran --stood by. State Department officials even suggested Iran shared responsibility for the slaughter, a contention that was never backed by evidence.
During the following months, Saddam would take the indifference of his most powerful ally for a sadistic joyride. By the end of 1988, thousands of Kurdish villages had been destroyed and more than 100,000 people had been killed.
*"We saw the photographers, the people with the television cameras," said Runa Ahmed, whose son died in the Halabja attack. "We believed that the rest of the world would come to save us. We waited and waited."
From indifference to independence " America's political leaders would come to rue the relationship they'd long maintained with Iraq's murderous dictator.
By the time Saddam ordered the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush had completed a 180-degree turn on the man he'd once backed. After a swift victory in Kuwait, Bush took to the airwaves calling for the people of Iraq to rise up against their leader.
The Kurds did just that -- taking control of many of northern Iraq's largest cities. Once again, Saddam responded with brute force.
Millions of Kurds fled north, sparking a humanitarian crisis along Turkey's southern border. Finally, acting on a U.N. resolution that called for Saddam to end the repression of those in his nation, the U.S. stepped in, establishing a no-fly zone at the 36th Parallel to defend the Kurds.
Saddam's forces made one more incursion into Kurdistan, in 1996 -- an action swiftly answered by an American bombing campaign that further decimated Iraq's military.
By the time Saddam was deposed in 2003, the Kurds had been self-governing for years.
Today, there are few if any places in the Middle East in which Americans will receive a warmer reception than in Iraqi Kurdistan.
"If not for the support of the United States, I would still be fighting in those mountains over there," said Gen. Salah Adin as he gestured toward the rugged Zagros range, where he spent several decades of his life as part of a guerilla movement aimed at Kurdish independence.
Still, he noted, gazing across the foothills with a look of exhaustion on his face, "it was a very long fight."
Long marginalized and victimized, the Kurds now stand to become political kingmakers in a parliamentary stalemate that has left Iraq without a functioning government for the past seven months. If the nation survives, the Kurds may surface with a favorable share of the contested oil resources near the northern city of Kirkuk. And even if Iraq were to crumble, the Kurds would be well-positioned to claim an independent state.
That's as close to a no-lose situation as you'll find anywhere in the Middle East -- and it's all thanks to a level of security unmatched in the rest of Iraq.
"The terrorists do not attack here," said Mala Baxtiar, a key leader in the powerful Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "They try, but they do not succeed."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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