28 September 2017
Kurdish Independence
Celebration and anxiety.
By Neil Tidmarsh
So the inhabitants of Iraq’s Kurdish Autonomous Region (KAR) have voted for independence from Baghdad. Who (outside the Middle East) wouldn’t give three cheers for this new country? Who wouldn’t wish the Kurds and their new state well? After all, it’s been over a century since they were left out in the cold by those who redrew the political map following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, abandoning them as the largest nation in the world without a state. And in that time, they’ve done and suffered much to justify that vote. In 1988, 5000 Kurds were killed by Sadam Hussein’s gas attack on Halabja. In recent years, the Peshmerga has proved itself to be the most effective force in the fight against Isis (and, in spite of that, was excluded from the Syrian peace-talks).
Nevertheless, the USA and the UK tried to dissuade Masoud Barzani (the president of the KAR and the leader of its governing KDP party) from going ahead with the vote, and they were sensible to do so. They suggested delaying it for two years so that negotiations with Baghdad could take place first, and in return they would give Kurdish independence their full support. The KAR’s second biggest party, the PUK, agreed to this compromise, suspecting that the vote was a tactic by the KDP to consolidate political power (Mr Barzani’s presidential term was due to end two years ago, but he insisted on an extension because of the war against Isis). The USA and the UK, however, had proposed the compromise for quite another reason – the stability of the region.
The independence of the KAR does indeed threaten further instability in a region which must have been hoping for quite the opposite with the demise of Isis.
The vote is intended to lead to negotiations with Baghdad rather than to an immediate unilateral declaration of independence, but the Baghdad government says that it will not negotiate. It would probably be prepared to recognise Kurdish independence within the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan; but Mr Barzani wants to incorporate areas outside those boundaries into his autonomous region, areas which were under Isis control but which are now under Kurdish control. They include the oil-rich city and district of Kirkuk; Sinjar in the north, which links up with Kurdish territory across the border in neighbouring Syria; Khanaqin in the south; and Makhmur near Mosul. Before the advent of Isis, these ‘disputed territories’ had been under central government control since 1991, and it’s unlikely that the government would agree to cede them to an independent Kurdish state. Quite apart from their strategic and economic importance, they are populated not just by Kurds but also by Arabs, Turkmen and Yazidis, and none of them are enthusiastic about Kurdish rule. Iraq’s Shia militias have said they are prepared to fight the Kurdish peshmerga in Kirkuk, and a face-off between the two is already taking shape there. The Baghdad government is sending troops there, too. Iraq is also expressing its disapproval of the vote by taking part in joint military exercises with Turkey along the border with the KAR.
Turkey has been the most vociferous opponent of Kurdish independence. It has a huge Kurdish population itself (14.5 million), and for years has been fighting a fierce Kurdish separatist insurrection by the PKK (which it calls a terrorist group and is recognised as such by the USA, the UK and the EU). An independent Kurdish state on its border is one of Turkey’s biggest fears; it suspects that such a state would try to incorporate Turkish Kurdistan into its own territory. President Erdogan has sent tanks to the border, has begun bombing PKK posts inside the KAR and has threatened to suffocate the nascent state economically by cutting off its oil pipeline, which passes through Turkey on its way to the rest of the world.
Ethnic Kurdish territory occupies parts of Iran and Syria as well as Iraq and Turkey (30 million Kurds live outside the KAR). Iran is just as hostile as Turkey to Kurdish statehood, for the same reasons. Iran is fighting its own Kurdish separatists, and has closed its borders and airspace to traffic from the KAR.
In the extensive territories of Syrian Kurdistan, the YPG (an affiliate of Turkey’s PKK which has effectively established independence there) is to hold its first elections this week. The Syrian Kurds have largely co-operated with Syria’s Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran since the start of the civil war. They have fought alongside rebels only in the struggle against Isis, not in the struggle against Assad. But their success in taking territory off Isis (with the help of the US and other Western powers) now seems to be worrying the regime; the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have come under fire from Assad regime forces in recent months.
And so the KAR, or the new state of Kurdistan as it will no doubt soon be known, finds itself completely surrounded by hostile neighbours who threaten and feel threatened by its very existence.
The White House must be experiencing an eerie but familiar sense of deja-vu about Iraq and US involvement there. It might have expected its overthrow of Saddam Hussein to lead to stability – it led to anarchy. It might have expected its establishment of a new government in Baghdad to lead to stability – it led to Sunni/Shia conflict, an effective civil war. It might have expected its successful efforts to end the civil war to lead to stability – it led to the rise of Isis. It might have expected the demise of Isis, which it has done so much to bring about, to lead to stability – it has instead led to this crisis, with the KAR ignoring US pleas in spite of all that the US has done to help the Kurds.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Catalan regional authority’s referendum on independence from Madrid approaches, with similar ominous rumblings…
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