Will Iraq’s Crisis Lead to Kurdistan’s Independence? David Pollock featured, iraq, kurdistan, syria There is only one big winner, not by design but by default, from Iraq’s current existential crisis: the Kurds. Today, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) – which recently shortened its name to the Islamic State (IS) – and other Arab Sunni gangs, pitted against mostly Shiite Arab armies and hastily mobilized irregulars, are fighting each other to the death in much of western and central Iraq. In Syria, just across a suddenly very blurry and bloody border, Bashar al-Assad’s Arab regime and its Arab opposition – including ISIS contingents greatly reinforced by their spoils from Iraq – continue to slaughter each other with awful abandon. But those intra-Arab battles have the ironic and surely unintended effect of helping the ethnic Kurdish enclaves in both of those countries remain relatively safe, self-governed regions with de jure (in Iraq) or de facto (in Syria) autonomy. The depth and scope of Iraq’s crisis, with its many cross-border implications, raises the specter of moving from Kurdish autonomy to outright independence. For the first time in a century, it is now a real possibility. Yet in order to appreciate the complications this would entail, a bit of background and a brief consideration of three more ironies is required. First, by way of background, the nearly five million Kurds in Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have enjoyed and defended their autonomous status for over two decades, initially under U.S. airborne protection after the 1991 war over Kuwait, and then more or less on their own after . ddam’s ouster in 2003. In Syria, Kurdish autonomy is much more recent, and much less official. The roughly 3 million Kurds scattered around the country’s northeast have managed to stay largely neutral in the ongoing civil war, protected by their own Kurdish political party and its militia: the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the People’s Defense Units (YPG). In the current crisis, the most dramatic new Kurdish development on the ground is occurring on the edges of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, in a series of “disputed territories” bordering the embattled northern Iraqi provinces of Ninawa, Diyala, and especially Kirkuk. There, the Kurdish army, or the peshmerga, has achieved its long-standing territorial goals almost without firing a shot. As Iraq’s army melted away in the face of the ISIS onslaught, the peshmerga took over almost all of the Kurdish-populated districts in those areas, including some major prizes: most of the city of Kirkuk and its oil installations, a new strategic stretch of the Syrian border, and a string of towns further east where Kurds had long been at the mercy of rival Sunni, Shiite, and even Iranian power brokers. Now the Kurds are holding that line against all challengers, whether ISIS or any other Arab forces. In a further irony, however, the top Kurdish leaders in Iraq and Syria are also rivals. KRG president Masoud Barzani and PYD leader Saleh Muslim are barely on speaking terms, and cooperate only to the minimum extent absolutely necessary for their own security. Their very different practical situations, with Iraqi Kurdistan much more stable and secure than its Syrian counterpart, also militate against unity. As a result, it seems highly unlikely that the two would even try to join their respective territories together in some new, cross-border Kurdish entity – let alone a newly independent Kurdish country. But when it comes to Kurdistan in Iraq, Barzani is now abruptly talking very publicly about something that sounds a lot like independence, more seriously and explicitly than ever before. In a CNN interview last week, he mused that the time had come for Kurdish self-determination, about which “the people” would soon decide. And his influential national security advisor, Fuad Hussein, is in Washington this week for a series of meetings which one of his aides privately noted would broach the “I-word.” From the standpoint of economic viability, an independent Kurdistan could be an ongoing concern. Until now, it has depended largely on oil revenues from Baghdad’s central government. In the past few months, however, the KRG has started exporting its own oil through a new pipeline via Turkey, against Baghdad’s wishes. With the Iraqi government understandably obsessed with sheer survival right now, and seeking Kurdish help with basic security, it is hardly in a position to object meaningfully to this unilateral KRG energy initiative. Moreover, the KRG’s acquisition of Kirkuk and vicinity adds much more oil and more pipeline capacity to its potential. Iraqi Kurdistan is now in line to export as much as one million barrels daily in the near future, up hugely from a mere 150,000 or so barrels per day in the recent past. Nevertheless, if Baghdad is now unable to restrain Kurdish independence by either military or economic means, Kurdistan’s other neighbors, and its partners further afield, retain some influence on this fateful decision. In just the past few days, Iranian officials have spoken out against Kurdish independence. Iran shares a long border with the KRG, and the author has both witnessed and heard many chilling stories about its agents crossing that border to put great pressure on their much smaller, weaker neighbor. Similarly, U.S. officials, in another ironic new convergence of apparent interests with Iran, are reportedly counseling the Kurds against independence. U.S. secretary of state John Kerry reportedly delivered that message on a visit to Kurdistan’s capital of Erbil last week – the first such visit since former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in 2009 – and followed up with an urgent phone call to Barzani over the past weekend. The American argument seems to be that Iraq’s Kurds could and should realize most of their aspirations, short of independence, within a new, more “inclusive” Iraqi government – one whose creation they can crucially assist with in the current emergency. Backing this up, at least in a minor key, some fraction of the 300 new U.S. military advisors moving to Iraq will apparently operate out of Erbil – bolstering a bilateral security relationship that the Kurds have long desired. That leads to the fourth irony: the one major outside power most amenable to the Kurds’ independence today is Turkey, their historical nemesis. Ankara is already engaged in a cease-fire and political negotiations with its internal militant Kurdish opposition, the PKK; and it has maintained excellent political, security, and economic ties with the KRG all during the last five years. Turkey, which has no oil of its own, not only offers the landlocked KRG an oil export lifeline to the Mediterranean, but is now also sending refined petroleum products back to Kurdistan (one more small irony) to compensate for the lost production at Iraq’s Baiji refinery, under siege by ISIS. And the spokesman for Turkey’s ruling AKP party just declared that Kurdish independence is no longer something his country would fight to prevent. So, on this suddenly salient question of independence, should the United States side with the Kurds and Turkey, or with Baghdad and Tehran? The former option seems to make more moral and practical sense. Yet that brings us to the final irony: the KRG itself may well spare the U.S. that choice. President Barzani still seems to be using the threat of declaring independence as leverage to obtain the best possible terms for staying in Iraq – rather than rushing recklessly to realize his people’s enduring dream just yet. The terms would naturally include formal recognition of the KRG energy independence, newly acquired territory, and more. It is a deal the United States should support. Only if Iraq refuses to make this life-saving deal with its Kurdish citizens, or falls apart completely because of intra-Arab conflict, is the KRG likely to secede. Kurdish independence waits in the wings, not yet moving to center stage
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 09:42:24 +0000
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