This article deals with the authenticity of educational credentials from the Kurdish autonomous zone in Northern Iraq. First published in Dutch, in the Newsletter of the Department for International Credential Evaluation of Nuffic (the Netherlands Organisation for International Cooperation in Higher Education), it was originally concerned mainly with findings and procedures in the Netherlands. Since then, the author got access to a number of websites connected with the Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq. The information from these websites has been worked into this English translation which is thus an updated, expanded version of the original Dutch text.

From 1992 onwards, credentials start to appear from the Kurdish autonomous zone that are issued by bodies such as the ‘Kurdestan Ministerial Council’. Due to the unstable political situation in the area, it is impossible to know how reliable the organisations and the documents that they issue are. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the control over the educational system appears to be very fluid. For our purpose, the main question to be answered is where the right to grant degrees is vested. Going by the credentials themselves, one gets the impression that degrees are not only awarded by the ‘Kurdestan Ministerial Council’ but also by the institutions themselves and even by the central Iraqi government – which lost control over the system since 1992.

What follows here is a short overview of the recent history of the area in order to gain a better understanding of the situation, followed by a discussion of the problem of the authenticity of credentials from the area.

Since the operation ‘Desert Storm’, the Iraqi central government lost control over Northern Iraq (as it did over Southern Iraq). The Northern area, that is, the area above the 36^th Northern latitude serves since 1992 as ‘safe haven’ for the Kurdish population. The safe haven is a ‘no fly zone’ which is controlled by the British and US Air Forces from the air base Incirlik in South Eastern Turkey.

This area is here indicated as the Kurdish autonomous zone in Northern Iraq. Since the creation of the safe haven, the area enjoys a certain measure of de facto autonomy.

The first step towards that autonomy were the parliamentary elections in May 1992. These elections ended more or less in a stalemate, since the two biggest Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) came out of these elections with more or less equal votes. They dominated the 105 seat parliament, where KDP and PUK held 51 and 49 seats. As none of the parties could accept a one party government, the only workable alternative seemed to be a coalition, by which each minister from one party was to be flanked by a vice-minister from the other party. This balance of power frustrated the working of the first two cabinets. The first cabinet was installed in July 1992 but did not live long. A new cabinet was formed already in April 1993. Like its predecessor, the second cabinet stumbled over the rivalries between the 2 biggest parties. The Kurdish Regional Government summarizes this period as follows: ‘An unworkable formula for sharing power between the KDP and PUK, party politics, and internecine fighting disrupted and ultimately incapacitated these two cabinets’. Armed conflict broke out in 1994. In September 1996, the third cabinet, the so-called ‘Service Offering Cabinet’ was installed. This label is somehow indicative of the functions allotted to the government, which do not seem to have gone much beyond the rendering of public services, with PUK and KDP holding on to their administrative units within their powerbases. In 1997, PUK and KDP agreed to a cease fire, followed by a peace agreement under the aegis of the United States. Since then, the situation seems to have stabilized. Elections are due since 1999 but so far have not been held.

At this moment, the KDP roughly controls the northern part of the autonomous zone (governorates Dohuk and Erbil) running up to the frontier with Iran, with Erbil (in Kurdish: Hawlir) as capital.

The PUK controls the southern part of the autonomous zone (governorate Sulaimaniyya plus part of the governorate of Kirkuk), with Sulaimaniyya as capital.

Despite the gradual normalization of the situation in the Kurdish autonomous zone, Iraqi Kurds still turn up in great numbers as refugees in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. This mass emigration poses problems, both in the Kurdish autonomous zone and in the guest countries. The web site of the PUK contains a document ‘Kurdish Migration from Iraqi Kurdistan – Reasons and Solutions’ in which the PUK expresses its great concern about this situation as follows: ‘Neither the nations of Europe nor the Kurdish regional authority derives any benefit from this often illegal human traffic. Europe must bear an inordinate financial and social cost for the corrupt governance of the government in Baghdad. The Kurdish leadership recognizes that the conditions under which many of its people live are not ideal but the drain of talented human resources from Iraqi Kurdistan is detrimental to the current and future generations of Kurds.’

The document then proceeds to offer a number of solutions. One of these is offering scholarships to Kurdish students. In the words of the PUK document, this would create a legal channel through which Kurds can realize some of their objectives.’ It is evident that European or US initiatives in this direction would be warmly welcomed by Kurdish students, but for the time being, many if not most Iraqi Kurdish refugees lack the legal channels to realize their objectives. We’ll now focus our attention on the educational administration in the area.

The educational system of course also felt the impact of the events of the last two decades. First of all, a ministry of education had to be established. This happened in 1992. The first cabinet consisted of 15 ministers, among which a Minister of Education, not including higher education. According to article 10 of Law no. 3 of 1992, higher education and research would be addressed by a ‘special corporation associated with the board of the presidency’.

As appears from a presidential decree of 1998, this special corporation for higher education and research forms the fourth department of the ‘Divan of the Cabinet Presidency’. The fourth department deals with the general administration of higher education, which is divided in two administrations: the Central Admission Administration and the Higher Education & Educational Relations Administration. The inspection of higher education is carried out by the Inspection Committee, a subdivision of the ‘Department for the General Administration of Planning’ which likewise falls under the ‘Divan of the Cabinet Presidency’

This meant a break with the former system of the central Iraqi government, which always had 2 separate Ministries, one for Education, the other for Higher Education and Research. The Technical Institutes, which used to fall under the control of the central Iraqi ‘Foundation of Technical Institutes’ now fall under the ‘Commission of Technical Institutes’

On paper, the situation seems clear enough. Actual practice, however, does not seem to reflect the system delineated in the presidential decrees and legislation cited above. Educational credentials from the region show a sometimes bewildering variety in the make-up and lay out of stationery. Worse still is the confusion surrounding the responsibility for the issuing of credentials. Thus, documents granted since 1992 may have been issued by either the institution itself, by the Ministry of Education of the Kurdish Regional Government, by the Ministers’ Council of the Kurdish Regional Government, by the Ministry of Education of the Central Iraqi government or its Ministry of Higher Education and Research – notwithstanding the fact that the latter two might effectively have lost already the power to issue credentials from the Kurdish autonomous zone.

The problems one encounters with educational credentials resemble the problems one encounters with ID cards, passports etc. from the area. A recent country update of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs is quite outspoken on this topic:

‘In Northern Iraq, the issuing of official documents, including passports, is problematic and not controlled by the central government. Every passport, falsified or authentic, has therefore a limited value. If a person from the area uses a non-authentic document, this does not mean that the identity of the bearer is not correct. As falsified and authentic documents can both be easily procured in Northern Iraq, authentic documents from the area therefore do not guarantee the identity of the bearer. It is virtually impossible to have passports from the area verified or even legalized.’

What is clear from the foregoing is that passports and other documents from Northern Iraq can not be safely used to establish the identity of refugees from the area. This point was discussed at length in the 1999 news letter of the Netherlands association for assistance to refugees (the Vereniging Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland). In this article, the findings of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs are acknowledged, that is, passports and other official documents from Northern Iraq are also questionable documents in the opinion of the Vereniging Vluchtelingwerk Nederland. The article then continues by arguing that since the identity of Iraqi Kurdish refugees can not be established by means of passports or similar official documents, it is impossible to establish their identity at all –which is required from the Ministry of Justice as it can only start procedures against persons when the identity is established.

In the same article, a second country update from the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs is cited. That country update contains a passage on the wide spread practice of selling falsified or authentic documents in Central Iraq, by government officials. This passage can be easily applied to Northern Iraq as well:

‘Bribery is the usual way to obtain documents from civil administration officials. Any document can be had at the right price, complete with authentic data such as reference numbers etc. and photographs. Persons that have no legal right to such documents find no difficulty in obtaining them. It is also perfectly possible to obtain blank official stationery by bribing officials. Such documents, obtained by bribery, with or without authentic data and photographs can not be distinguished from real, authentic documents that have been legally obtained.’

The country update continues by pointing out that documents are not only sold inside Iraq but outside the country as well, particularly in Turkey, Syria and Jordan. In Amman, police is said to have arrested several traders in fraudulent documents (including, e.g., UN-identity cards) recently in a number of raids. These traders apparently carried out their trade in the immediate neighborhood of the Hashmet square in Amman.

Assuming no real difference between the conditions under which educational credentials can be obtained and the way passports are obtained, the value and authenticity of educational credentials may be just as limited as the value and authenticity of passports. Besides, verification of educational credentials is virtually impossible, as is the case with passports. One is confronted here with the same problems as the problem of establishing the identity on the basis of Iraqi passports, that is, authentic passports may be carried be persons that have no legal right to the documents, while false documents can be carried by persons that do have a right but have no other proof than a falsification. Interestingly, the fingerprints of Iraqi asylum seekers in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have recently been subject to a comparative research. According to this research, the fingerprints of some 30 to 40% of the Iraqi asylum seekers that applied for asylum in the Nordic countries were already on file in the Netherlands (and vice versa) – meaning there had been an earlier application in one of the other countries, under different names . The impression one gets from the credentials that were offered for evaluation over the last 2, 3 years in the Netherlands is one of a considerable growth in the number of falsifications. Incidentally, many Iraqi’s actually acknowledge the existence of the trade in false documents, invariably adding of course that it’s other Iraqi’s that do use them.

Given all the considerations of the foregoing, it is extremely hard to decide how to proceed when documents seem false. The least one can do is pay more than fleeting attention to the files that are presented by applicants, never accept anything other than originals (no photocopies, even if the be legalized copies), and make sure to invite each applicant for an [intensive] interview prior to taking decisions.

For the sake of completeness, we add a list of the universities and technical institutes in Iraqi Kurdistan:

University of Salahaddin in Erbil (Hawlir)
University of Sulaimaniyya in Sulaimaniyya
University of Dohuk, in Dohuk
Institutes of Arts and Technical Institutes in Aski-Kelek, Erbil, Namrud and Sulaimaniyya