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PREFACE
The issue of national diasporas is a most important, but frequently overlooked, element of international security in today’s complex world. The issue can take on many aspects, singularly or in combination. A diaspora can carry with it when it leaves the homeland a large proportion of the high quality intellectual and economic capital of the country, having an impoverishing effect. A diaspora can channel wealth which it earns abroad back to its parent country, making a significant contribution to the economy. A diaspora can also carry the flame of national consciousness, to keep it burning in exile. A diaspora can form a microcosm of the parent country’s social system in a foreign land, hindering its integration into its new host country, or a diaspora can act to improve relations between host and parent country. A diaspora can also develop very different attitudes in its host country from those evolving in the parent country, which can create tensions when members of the diaspora return ‘home’.
These are just a few aspects of the diaspora issue – there are many more. But these make it clear how diasporas can have either a positive or negative influence on the international security scene, depending on circumstances and, in particular, depending on how the qualities they embody are exploited, for better or for worse. For example, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the return of diasporas from the USA to Armenia had a most unsettling and negative effect on the local political situation, contributing to a significant increase in local tensions in this very sensitive area of the Caucasus. Russians leaving their homeland during the decade of the USSR’s demise took with them a significant proportion of the country’s wealth, and now have a very large impact on the European states in which they settled. The North African diasporas in France and the diasporas in the UK coming from the Indian subcontinent now form cohesive ethnic communities in their host countries which are frequently separated from mainstream society a fact which complicates the societal development of the host countries, at times even posing a potential security challenge.
Given the widespread and large-scale nature of the global social phenomenon, and the impact it has on modern national and international security, it is amazing that so little attention has been devoted to it. The potential for harnessing the economic power, skills and goodwill of diasporas, either to rebuild a homeland shattered by war, or to develop economic and political ties between human-and-host-country, is enormous. Equally, the negative effects of a coherent diaspora which imports into the host country the problems, prejudices and social pathologies of the parent country also have a huge potential to cause major problems.
These considerations, therefore, make this study a contribution to understanding the nature of a diaspora and how to exploit diasporas for positive benefit to aid post-conflict reconstruction. The author uses the Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq as her case study, but many of the conclusions drawn and recommendations made are applicable to a great many other countries and regions. This work would make an excellent starting point for a wider exploration of the diaspora issue in all its complexity. It is of particular relevance to Foreign Ministries and agencies for international development, as well as for the defence establishment tasked with overseeing security and reconstruction in post-conflict societies.£
Part I
"Shall we return, stay or circulate?” Political changes in
Kurdistan and transnational dynamics in Kurdish refugee
families in Sweden
1. Introduction
The termination of the political institutions of Baathist Iraq in spring 2003 filled most Kurds with new hope for democratic processes in the aftermath of human rights violations and war. The political and economic limbo, imposed on the Kurdistan Region in 1991, has also finally been broken. As far as the Kurdish diaspora is concerned, these changes have refreshed the dream of returning for many Iraqi Kurds. Following the establishment of Kurdish de facto self-rule in 1991, many Kurds returned to socialise with families and friends, get married or engage in the reconstruction process. Expectations for a secure and stable future in Kurdistan were high, but many hopes were scattered as a consequence of the deteriorating situation in the middle of the decade, triggering internal strife, increasing refugee movements, ‘import marriages’1 and chain migration of relatives. Although many Iraqi Kurds in the diaspora again took a sceptical position with regard to real political changes in the Middle East and continued to strive towards social and economic integration in their host countries, they kept alive renewed contacts with the homeland, cultivated the Kurdish language and culture as well as the dream to return (cf. Wahlbeck 1999:106-109,186-190; Berruti 2002:56-57; Alinia 2004:329).
Increased understanding in the field of international migration research of how migrants maintain and develop relations, livelihood strategies and identities across boundaries of nation states has laid the ground for a transnational perspective that highlights earlier dichotomies and linear simplifications of the lives of migrating people. Within the rationality of nation states, the imagined and ideal scenario for migrants could be summarised as ‘feet become roots’. However, the fact that immigrant businessmen in the US are often also American citizens is only one example of how regular contact with countries of origin does not stand in a diametrical relationship to the process of integration (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004:1011). Levitt and Glick Schiller, anthropologists who initiated the transnational perspective in the beginning of the 1990s, conclude that the way of life of migrants will be understood as a pivot between a new country and transnational incorporation. The median point is not full incorporation but simultaneity of connection. The challenge for researchers is to understand the variation in the way that migrants manage that pivot in relation to political, economic and social changes (ibid:1011-1013).
Similarly, researchers focusing on refugees question the conventional political perspective in which integration and return are treated as distinct phenomena (van Hear 2003:1-4). Whilst it is true that the dream to return is linked to political changes in the homeland, refugees may still prefer not to return for ever. The issue of return may not be regarded as ‘natural’, problem-free or viable. Simultaneously, however, the interest and possibility among refugees to develop regular but temporary contacts and exchange with relatives and others in their homeland may increase (cf. Black and Koser 1999; Koser and van Hear 2003; Black et al 2006).
Research shows that for example Bosnian refugees in Sweden return to Bosnia on a temporary basis or at least spend their holidays in Bosnia regularly to reconcile …
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