Kurdistan Looming

The problem of Kurdish seperatism and obstructionism still looms as the sleeper issue that could tear apart Iraq.





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I wrote here that the problem of Kurdistan promises to be the biggest problem facing the nation building process in Iraq. Michael O'Hanlon and Omer Taspinar write in the Washington Post today, highlighting this issue:

Increasingly, Iraq's Kurds appear to be interfering with efforts to foster political accommodation among their country's major sectarian groups. Since Iraq's future hinges on establishing such a spirit of compromise, this trend has potentially grave implications for Iraq, its neighbors and the United States.

Two key issues stand out. First, Kurds are beginning to develop oil fields on their territory with foreign investors but with no role for Baghdad, claiming cover under Iraq's 2005 constitution. But the relevant sections of the Iraqi constitution (articles 109 through 112, among others) state that future oil wells will be developed by Iraq's provinces and regions in conjunction with the central government.

Second, Kurds want to reclaim the city of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields, which may hold about 15 percent of Iraq's total reserves. Kurds claim, with considerable justification, that many properties in the city were taken from them under Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" programs. Kurds want the homes back. More broadly, they want to control the politics of Kirkuk and environs, up to and including the possibility of Kirkuk and its oil joining the region of Iraqi Kurdistan (which many Kurds hope will ultimately become independent). Because of these ambitions, it has been difficult to hold a referendum on Kirkuk's future; a referendum was supposed to have taken place by the end of 2007.

The Kurds are making a major mistake. They should rethink their approach both out of fairness to the United States, which has given them a chance to help build a post-Hussein Iraq, and in the interests of the Kurds and their neighbors. Baghdad needs a role in developing future oil fields and sharing revenue; Kirkuk needs to remain where it is in Iraq's political system, or perhaps attain a special status. It should not be muscled away into Kurdistan.

It is hard to be sure, but the Kurds seem to believe that if Iraq fails, they will be okay. Under this theory, even if the country splits apart, the United States will stand by its Kurdish friends, establish military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, and ultimately ease the way toward its independence. . . .

To be sure, many Americans admire the democratic, prosperous, resilient Kurds. Americans also feel a moral debt after allowing Hussein to oppress the Kurds so many times in the past. But after protecting the Kurds since 1991 and spending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of American lives in Iraq over the past five years, that moral debt has been partially repaid. If the Kurds will not now help the United States in stabilizing Iraq, is there really a sense of common purpose, and a set of shared interests, between the two peoples?

Instead of pursuing a maximalist agenda in Kirkuk and a dream of independence, the Kurds should opt for realism. This means recognizing that if Iraq falls apart, they will be on their own. It also means recognizing that Turkey, with its 15 million Kurds, is very nervous about Kurdish independence. Yet the Kurds of Iraq should also know that a Turkish-Kurdish war is not destiny. In fact, with visionary leadership in Ankara and Irbil, Turkish-Kurdish economic, political and military cooperation -- starting with joint operations against the terrorist Kurdish group, the PKK -- could lead to genuine friendship. After all, Turkey is the most democratic, secular and pro-Western of Iraq's neighbors, attributes that Iraqi Kurdistan shares.

Iraq's Kurds have a remarkable future almost within their grasp. But they face a crucial choice: They can attain that future by compromising with their fellow Iraqis, forming a partnership with Turkey and strengthening their bond with the United States. Or they can continue to pursue their own agenda in a way that ultimately shatters their country and destabilizes the broader region.

Read the article here.

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The Biggest Threat To Iraq

The biggest threat to Iraq in the long is not al Qaeda, and arguably, not Iran. It is the seperatism and adventurism of the Kurds that threatens to destroy the central government of Iraq and be the cause of a true civil war.




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As I have written previously:

Under our umbrella of protection after the first Gulf War, the Kurds became a separate country and, after the fall of Saddam, made clear that they had no desire to reintegrate into a larger Iraq. They have tried to stay out of the ambit of national laws, attempted to exercise control over oil assets in the north - including the passage of their own hydrocarbon laws in August in direct opposition to the Iraq central government - and manuevered to take control of Kirkuk and Mosul. They have played against our efforts over the past several years to create a united Iraq, . . .

See here.

With that in mind, there is this today from the NYT:

As a minority group in Iraq, the Kurds have enjoyed disproportionate influence in the country’s politics since the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But now their leverage appears to be declining as tensions rise with Iraqi Arabs, raising the specter of another fissure alongside the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites.

The Kurds, who are mostly Sunni but not Arab, have steadfastly backed the government, most recently helping to keep it afloat when Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lacked support from much of Parliament.

With their political acumen, close ties to the Americans and technical competence at running government agencies, the Kurds cemented a position of enormous strength. This allowed them to all but dictate terms in Iraq’s Constitution that gave them considerable regional autonomy and some significant rights in oil development.

But now the Kurds are pursuing policies that are antagonizing the other factions. The Kurds’ efforts to seize control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and to gain a more advantageous division of national revenues are uniting most Sunnis and many Shiites with Mr. Maliki’s government in opposition to the Kurdish demands.

For the United States, the diminution in Kurdish power is part of a larger problem of political divisiveness that has plagued its efforts to build a functioning government in Iraq. While several political parties can come together to address a particular issue, none can seem to form the lasting allegiances needed for actual governance.

The Kurds, with their pro-American outlook, were a natural ally. But now the Americans are increasingly placed in the uncomfortable position of choosing between the Kurds, whom they have long supported and protected, and the Iraqi Arabs, whose government the Americans helped create.

One major Shiite group, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, has not publicly taken sides, but powerful people within the party have been openly critical of the Kurds. Others expressing frustration are leading members of Parliament and Hussain al-Shahristani, the oil minister and a prominent Shiite politician, who calls Kurdish oil contracts with foreign companies illegal.

Humam Hamoudi, a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, said, “They are no longer the egg in the balance,” using an Arabic proverb that refers to the item that tips the scale. Mr. Hamoudi added, “The Kurds are not so powerful.”

Independent analysts largely back that assertion. “There’s a strong feeling that the Kurds have overreached,” said Joost Hiltermann, a senior analyst for the Middle East at the International Crisis Group who is based in Istanbul.

“The Kurds had their eye on independence in the long term, and they wanted to use the current window to increase the territory they hold and the powers they exercise within the territory,” he added. “They’ve done well on the powers, but not so well on the territory. They now face real restrictions.”

The jousting threatens to undermine much of what the Kurds have achieved in political influence and to supersede, at least temporarily, the far deeper divide between Sunnis and Shiites.

And by helping unite Sunnis and Shiites, the Kurds’ overreaching has strengthened the hand of Mr. Maliki despite widespread doubts about his ability to govern effectively. The tensions could even persuade the central government to further postpone an already delayed referendum on whether to make Kirkuk part of the Kurds’ semiautonomous region.

. . . In a signal of its displeasure, Parliament has refused to approve a new budget because it awards the Kurds 17 percent of the total revenues, which many representatives say is more than their share based on population. Because Iraq has not had a census in decades, it is impossible to know the true size of the Kurdish population. Some Kurdish leaders say it could be 23 percent; some Arabs say it is 13 percent.

The Kurds are also believed to collect millions of dollars in duties on goods coming into Iraq but they neither send the money to Baghdad nor share accounts of the income, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Parliament members are also angered that the Kurds want Baghdad to pay salaries of their militia, the pesh merga, from the Defense Ministry’s budget. The pesh merga operate primarily in Kurdistan rather than serving the country as a whole.

However, the Kurds contend that in the event of an invasion they would be on the front lines. Such a situation seems all too real to the Kurds, because Turkey has recently threatened to invade to rout the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party. The rebels have been mounting attacks over the border into Turkish territory.

Perhaps most grating for Iraqi Arabs, the Kurds have refused to back down on the oil exploration contracts they have signed with foreign companies. Arabs view the central government as the only entity empowered to approve contracts, albeit in consultation with the regions where the oil is located.

The Kurds argue that the central government has been dragging its feet on an oil law and that they cannot afford to defer oil exploration and development further, said Ros Shawees, a former vice president of Iraq and point man in Baghdad for Massoud Barzani, the president of the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government.

The Kurds acknowledge that they are worried by the opposition that has developed, although they are reluctant to concede that they may have overplayed their hand. “It is necessary to keep such feelings to a minimum,” Mr. Shawees said. “We have to work in different respects to show that the Kurdish region doesn’t just make demands and take things, but that the region is an example for all regions and it can benefit all Iraq.”

For now, however, the budget has yet to be approved, the oil law and revenue sharing laws are in limbo, and there is a new and visible fault line on the Iraqi political scene.

Read the article. The Kurds have in fact significantly overreached. There can be little doubt that the U.S. sent a message to the Kurds when it began providing actionable intelligence to Turkey about the location of PKK forces across the Iraqi border. The question is whether the Kurds are listening?

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Sending A Message To Kurdistan

One of the major hurdles to overcome in pacifying Iraq and creating a functioning democracy is to quell Kurdish seperatism and adventurism. LTG Barry McCaffery, in his most recent report, termed this the next likely cause for Iraqi civil war. And indeed, Kurdish insistence on setting up a seperate state could also bring Turkey into conflict as the Turks, rightly or wrongly, have long stated their refusal to countenance a seperate Kurdish state. There is little doubt that the U.S. decision to provide actionable intelligence to Turkey about PKK locations and the Turkish cross border raids taken in reliance on that intelligence are meant as a clear message to the Kurds. This today from al Jazeera:

Iraq's Kurdish regional leader has warned neighbouring Turkey that he is losing patience with the repeated bombing raids against rebel positions in the north of Iraq.

Massoud Barzani said on Monday that his people "cannot accept" the bombing raids and shelling, but acknowledged there was little he could do to stop them.

"We cannot accept this situation to continue," he said.

"We cannot accept our villages to be bombed and our people killed," he told reporters in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah, adding that the attacks violated Iraqi sovereignty.

On Sunday, Turkish fighter jets bombed Kurdish rebel targets inside Iraqi territory, in the fourth cross-border operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in one week.

Barzani refused to meet Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, when she made a surprise visit to Iraq on December 18.

However, George Bush, the US president, took the opportunity on Monday to promise Turkey his country would continue to help fight separatist Kurdish rebels.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, agreed with Bush to continue to share intelligence. Turkey maintains it has the right to pursue PKK fighters into Iraqi territory.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, said the leaders discussed the "importance of the United States, Turkey and Iraq working together to confront" the rebels.

Both Washington and Baghdad have asked Turkey to show restraint, fearing a large-scale Turkish offensive might destabilise northern Iraq.

Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president who is a Kurd, said Iraq's foreign minister had summoned the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad to complain, but said he did not want to exacerbate tensions between Iraq and its neighbour.

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