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| Masoud Barzani & Jalal Talabani |
This is the first in a series of posts on challenges facing Iraq, including authoritarian rule, youth and terrorism, women's rights, sectarian identities, building civil society and conservation of cultural heritage, among others.
What do the ISIS attacks and occupation of
northwestern Iraq mean for the territorial integrity of Iraq? The Iraqi army’s collapse in Mosul, Tikrit
and al-Anbar Province has provided the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional
Government (KRG) with the opportunity to occupy much of the so-called “disputed
lands” that it has been contesting with the central government in Baghdad. Of
the areas claimed by both the KRG and the central government in Baghdad, the
oil rich city of Kirkuk is the most significant.
With the chaos in the Arab northwest, many Kurds
have been expressing a desire for the KRG to declare independence from
Iraq. Should the KRG become an
independent state or remain within a federal Iraq? What would be the consequences if the Kurds would take such a step?
Iraq’s Kurds’ desire for an independent state is
understandable. The Kurds suffered brutal
treatment under Saddam Husayn’s Ba’thist regime during the notorious Anfal
campaign of the late 1980s that destroyed hundreds of Kurdish villages and the
Kurdish agricultural sector and killed hundreds of Kurdish men between the ages
of 15 and 55. The bombing of the Kurdish
city of Halabja in 1988 with chemical weapons was the most egregious of Saddam’s
attacks.
Under the current Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki, Kurds have not been treated with respect. Maliki’s rhetoric has indicated a lack of
desire to negotiate with the KRG. Instead, he has tried to coerce and
intimidate them to act in the way that he wants through bluster and even sending
Iraqi army units to towns such as Khanaqin near the so-called Green Line that
separates the KRG from Arab Iraq.
While Baghdad has struggled with developing its oil
sector, the Kurds have sought to modernize their facilities working with
assistance from foreign firms. In both
cases, there has been major corruption, but the KRG has been more effective in
attracting and working with foreign investment.
One of the main points of contention between Arbil and Baghdad has been
the Kurds’ desire to upgrade their oil industry without bureaucratic impediments
from the central government.
Nevertheless, I would argue that there are many
reasons why an Iraqi Kurdistan that enjoys significant autonomy in a truly federal
state should remain within Iraq. The
reasons I discuss below are are strategic, political, economic and cultural.
Strategic
considerations
As ISIS has advanced and seized more towns in the
Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, Peshmerga forces have begun noting the difficulty of
defending a 1000 km (600 mile border), the inferiority of their weaponry compared
to ISIS, and the fanaticism of ISIS fighters who were not afraid to die in
battle to achieve “martyrdom.” As long
gas lines have appeared in Arbil and other Kurdish cities and towns, the fact
that the KRG possesses no refinery and is dependent for gasoline on external
entities, especially Arab Iraq, began to sink in. The large number of Arab refugees that the
KRG allowed to enter its territory has become a serious economic burden.
Beyond the traditional antipathy of Turkey and Iran
to an independent Kurdish state in Iraq, and of course the hostility of Arab Iraq
to this idea, the KRG leadership seems to have realized that declaring outright
independence might entail too many costs. The US is likewise against the KRG becoming an independent state. During their June 24th meeting, US
Secretary of State John Kerry asked KRG President Masoud Barzani not to pursue
independence. Were the KRG to declare
independence, the US would no doubt be less inclined to supply the KRG with
advanced weaponry.
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| KRG Peshmerga forces |
Political
considerations
If the KRG were to declare independence, there would
be a number of political costs. First,
the new Kurdish state would become a dependency of Turkey. During a recent trip to Arbil and Dohuk, I
was struck by the extent to which Turkey dominates the KRG economy, from
consumer goods to large scale construction projects. As Turkey, under Prime Minister Recep Tayyib
Erdogan’s AK Party, becomes more authoritarian, and corruption scandals rock
his government, do the Kurds really want to tie their fate to Turkey?
Turkey’s Kurdish population is rapidly expanding (with
a much higher birth rate than the Turkish population) and demanding greater economic
investment in eastern Turkey and more political rights. Turkey still faces a powerful challenge from
the Turkish Worker’s Party (PKK) that uses the KRG as a refuge from the Turkish
army. There is also turmoil in northeastern
Syria where Kurds have broken away from Damascus’ control and are fighting ISIS
and other extremist groups.
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| PKK women commanders & fighters |
The KRG can more
effectively negotiate solutions to these problems if it remains part of Iraq
and continues to maintain strong international support, than as a vulnerable
land-locked nation with hostile neighbors.
Kurds themselves still face tensions between the
Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and
between the two major parties, the KDP and PUK, and the upstart Gorran (Change)
Movement that has strong support among the educated middle classes, as well as
the Kurdistan Islamic Union.
Closer to
Iran, the PUK has been more keen to fight ISIS than the KDP. We should not forget that the tensions that
still exist led to a civil war between the KDP and PUK from 1994 to 1998, with
the Iranians providing military aid to the PUK and Saddam Husayn’s army
preventing a KDP defeat by coming to its defense in 1996.
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| Lt. Gen. Babakir Zebari |
Finally, the Kurds would lose their control of important
political leadership positions in the Iraqi government. Despite being very ill, Iraq’s president,
Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd. Hoshyar
Zebari, its foreign minister, is a Kurd. Even though he has been ignored and marginalized by Nuri al-Maliki, Lt.
Gen. Babakir Zebari, the commander of the Iraqi army and an officer with
considerable military experience, is a Kurd. Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Lukman Faily, a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Islamic Call Party (Hizb al-Da'wa al-Islamiya), is also a Kurd
I would argue that the KRG can achieve more of its
goals if it continues to have strong political influence in Baghdad, influence
it would lose through declaring an independent state.
Economic
considerations
While many argue that the KRG’s oil and natural gas
reserves provide the basis for a stable, independent economy, this argument has
flaws. Visiting the KRG this past May, I
was told that the figures I cited of 40% of Iraq’s oil being in the Kurdish
majority provinces of Dohuk, Arbil and Sulaimaniya were actually exaggerated
and the figure is closer to 10%. (Other
oil analysts say the KRG has reserves of 45 billion representing 25% of Iraq’s
total). It is true that the Kurds now
control the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, but they certainly won’t be able to
control Kirkuk’s oil production without cooperation from the large non-Kurdish population
and the central government in Baghdad.
Further, the KRG still lacks significant human resources
that it needs to develop its economy and society. Declaring independence will make it much more
difficult to attract professionals and engineers from the Arab world. While there is a strong desire for higher
education in the KRG, Kurdish universities still do not have the science,
technology and professional academic units that they need to train young
Kurds. In fact, many Kurds still attend
Arab Iraqi universities, e.g., many Kurds are graduates of Mosul and Baghdad
universities.
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| SCF Altai oil tanker |
Despite shipping a tanker full of oil from the KRG
from the port of Ceyhan in Turkey in May, the KRG encountered resistance in selling
it. First, Morocco refused to allow the
offloading of the oil as the Iraqi federal government threatened international
legal action against any state that purchased the oil. Finally, the SCF Altai was able to deliver the
oil to Israeli port of Ashkelon. The key
question remains: will the KRG be able to sell its oil without constant threats
and legal challenges?
Cultural
considerations
Although it may not seem relevant to cite the long relationship
that exists between the Kurds and the rest of Iraq’s ethnic and confessional
groups, these relationships are, I would argue, very important, especially in
terms of historical cultural bonds. These
bonds can be used by political leaders who believe in Iraq’s need to develop a
political culture based on pluralism and tolerance. Put differently, there are a wide range of
cultural bonds between Arab and Kurdish Iraqis that would be disrupted by a
declaration of independence.
The term Kurd probably finds it origins in the
Sumerian, “Qardu.” Tablets from 3000 BCE
refer to a people known who lived in the “Land of the Kar-da.” Thus Kurds have as many cultural connections
to ancient Mesopotamia – the Land between the Two Rivers – as do Iraq’s Arabs
or any other ethnic or confessional group in Iraq.
Moving to the modern period, we find Kurds playing a
central role in Iraq’s nationalist movement and government and in its economic
and cultural life. The Guardians of Independence
(Haras al-Istiqlal) was a key player
in the June-October 192o Revolution that erupted after Britain reneged on its promise
to give Iraq complete independence (al-istiqlal
al-tamm) when it occupied the country in 1917. Jamal Baban, a Kurd, was a member of the Guardians’
board of directors and worked with other ethnic and confessional groups – Shi’a,
Sunni Arabs, Jews and Christians – to pressure the British to keep their
promise.
The commander-in-chief of the Iraqi Army in the
mid-1930s was Bakr Sidqi al-Askari, a Kurd who was related to the highly popular
military commander and Defense Minister Ja’far al-‘Askari. Lionized for putting down a purported uprising
by Iraq’s Assyrian community in 1933, one in which many Assyrians were killed,
Sidqi used his popularity to engineer the first military coup in the Arab world
in 1936.
Kurds played an important role in all ministries under
the Hashimite monarchy (1921-1958). Many
Kurds served as ministers, especially as Minister of Interior. In the last elected government that as
overthrown by the 1958 Revolution, the prime minister Ahmad Baban was a Kurd as
was the Interior Minister, Sayyid Qazzaz.
Kurds have played a central role in what was, historically,
Iraq’s most powerful political party, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). Widely popular, not because of its Marxist
origins, but because it emphasized social justice and was anti-sectarian, the
party attracted member from all sectors of Iraqi society, including the Kurds. Time and time again, the ICP stressed the unity
of Iraqis and the political irrelevance of their ethnic or confessional
backgrounds. Kurds, such as Baha al-Din
Nuri, headed the party and were consistently represented in the party’s
leadership.
Kurds joined Arabs, Jews, Christians, Turkmen and
others in the large number of strikes beginning in the 1930s - in the oil industry, oil pipeline construction
and the Iraqi national railways - to the 1958 Revolution to increase wages and
improve labor conditions during the nationalist struggle against the
British (See my, "History for the Many or History for the Few: The Historiography of the Iraqi Working Class http://fas-polisci.rutgers.edu/davis/ARTICLES/History_for_the_Many.pdf). Kurds have contributed to Iraq’s
cultural life through art, poetry and literature.
Kurds continue to contribute to the media. For example, Iraq’s best newspaper, al-Mada, and its Mada Publishing House,
have contributed enormously to Iraq’s cultural life, and to the promotion of democracy,
under its Kurdish owner and editor-in chief, Fakhri Karim. Both the KDP and PUK print daily Arabic editions of the newspapers, al-Ta'akhi and al-Ittihad, respectively.
Perhaps the strongest feelings of national unity were expressed during the Asia Cup match between Saudi Arabia and Iraq in 2007. Iraq won an unexpected victory with 3 goals being scored by the team's Kurdish striker, and one each by a Shi'i and a Sunni player, an outcome of which Iraqis were very proud. Shi'a, Sunnis and Kurds celebrated together in Baghdad as football (soccer) brought the entire country together.
The point to be made is that Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs
have a much longer history of ties with one another than Kurds do with its
other neighbors such as Turkey, Iran or Syria.
This doesn’t insure smooth relations but it does call attention to the
problems as being more at the level of competing political elites than at the
level of people.
Kurds and Arabs constantly tell me that they have no
problem interacting with each other.
When I conducted research in the KRG in 2007 and 2008, I learned some
Kurdish (which I’m still studying) so I could apologize that I wasn’t able to
hold a serious conversation in the local Sorani dialect.
Instead, we spoke in Arabic as Kurds indicated
that it didn’t matter to them whether we spoke Arabic or Kurdish. Indeed, I noticed many Arabic terms in the Sorani
dialect (as we see Persian influences on Iraq’s Arabic dialect).
There is a parallel to be made between the KRG and
Quebec. Many Québécois have sought to
develop an independent state for over two centuries. Nevertheless, in referendum after referendum,
they have decided that the economic and political costs out way independence. Instead,
Québec’s citizens have opted for a robust federalism that has given them equal
rights with English speaking Canadians. The same narrative can be applied to the Scots and
Welsh in the United Kingdom where economic imperatives continue to dampen
enthusiasm for independence.
In short, the Kurds are in a strong position to
pressure the central government in Baghdad to institutionalize a truly federal
system in which Kurds play a key decision-making role and in which a new unity
government begins to promote policies that will help bring Kurds and Arabs
closer together.
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| Kirkuk Governor Najmaldin Karim in his physician's garb |
In the areas that the KRG Peshmerga forces have
seized, especially in Kirkuk, the Kurds should follow a tolerant policy and one
that shares oil production in the city and its environs. The Governor of Kirkuk, Dr. Najmaldin Karim, an accomplished neurosurgeon, has
already won much support from the Arab, Turkmen and Christian populations. Indeed, the Kurds won 8 of the provinces 12 seats in last April's parliamentary elections (http://www.niqash.org/articles/?id=3469).
Speaking to Kirkuk residents in May, many
said that Arabs and other had voted for Najmaldin Karim because he had dramatically
improved city services and cut corruption.
Indeed, Kirkuk might become like Trieste after WWI, a city and
governorate shared by both the KRG and Arab Iraq.
An understanding that Kurds and Arabs have not been
engaged in continuous conflict based on so-called ‘ancient hatreds” is especially
important for the new generation since 70% of Iraq’s population is under the
age of 30.
School curriculum, religious education
by Kurdish and Arab clerics and priests working together to promote a
curriculum of tolerance, greater ties
between Kurdish and Arab democratic forces and civil society organizations, e.g.,
women’s rights organizations, and summer camps that bring Kurdish and Arab
youth together are just of the policies that could promote a new spirit of
national reconciliation, especially among Iraqi youth, Iraq’s “generation in
waiting” and future leaders.
