ERBIL (Kurdistan Chronicle) – Kurdistan celebrated on Saturday the 53rd anniversary of the "March 11 Agreement," which secured autonomy and basic rights for the Kurdish people in 1970.

After nearly a decade of armed struggle between the Kurdish people and the Iraqi government, the latter finally agreed to grant the Kurds some degree of autonomy. This significant achievement was marked by the signing of the agreement on March 11, 1970, between the Iraqi government and the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani.

Marking the 53rd anniversary of the agreement, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) President Masoud Barzani stressed that the Kurdish determination to obtain its legitimate rights grew stronger after March 11, 1970, despite the agreement being violated by Iraq.

In a separate statement, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani described the March 11 Agreement as a significant achievement that took the legitimacy of the Kurdish struggle for freedom to an international level.

“The March 11 Agreement was an exemplary solution that could take Iraq and its people towards a more prosperous future and turn it into one of the developed countries in the region and the world. However, the retreat of the Iraqi authorities and their choice of the logic of power instead of the power of logic only brought war, misery, and devastation to Iraq. That is the mistake that Iraq continues to pay the price for until this moment,” reads the statement by the Kurdish president.

In nearly five years, the Iraqi government renounced the deal and refused to grant autonomy to the Kurds. In the same year, Iraq signed the '1975 Algiers Agreement' with Iran, which resulted in Iraq giving up some of the disputed land on the Iran-Iraq border. In exchange, Iran agreed to cease its support for the Iraqi Kurds.

Masrour Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region, also marked the anniversary in a statement and reaffirmed his government’s determination to defend the rights of the people of Kurdistan and seek a solution to the ongoing disputes between Erbil and Baghdad based on the Constitution of Iraq.

Despite its brief duration, the agreement is considered an important milestone in the Kurdish struggle for freedom.

This period in the history of the Kurdish people serves as a reminder of their ongoing struggle for autonomy and basic rights. The 1970 agreement may have been broken, but the Kurdish people have continued to fight for their rights through peaceful means, and the struggle for the right to self-determination remains a central theme in their history.