Kurds turn up the heat on Baghdad
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's recent visit to Iraqi
Kurdistan was aimed to test the waters on how loudly and aggressively the Kurds
are willing to push their claim for the oil-rich Kirkuk region.
Maliki received a uniform answer from all his interlocutors, that the Kurds
want to go until "the curtain falls", which makes dialogue, let alone
solutions, between the camps virtually impossible.
Maliki will now have to accustom himself to a confrontation - be it words or
bullets - with his compatriots in Iraq. Or he will have to cede Kirkuk. A third
option does not exist. And if the Kurds do decide to go full-on with their
demands, they will probably work on
dethroning the prime minister, by refusing to support his cabinet, or working
against him in the parliamentary elections scheduled for early 2010.
Maliki has two factors to consider. Either he appeases the Kurds, and upsets
countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Turkey - in addition to his own
countrymen. Or he pleases the Kurds, and upsets everybody else.
During Maliki's first visit to the Kurdistan Regional Government since coming
to power in 2006, he had talks with newly re-elected Kurdish President Masoud
Barzani and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, two veterans of the Kurdish
national movement,
Maliki arrived to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, approximately 330
kilometers north of the capital Baghdad. All reports of the visit said that
both sides "voiced commitment" to solving problems between Iraq and
semi-autonomous Kurdistan, through creating and breathing life into joint
security and political committees.
Maliki said, "Our meeting was positive and we have agreed to support national
unity and the federal system." Photos were all over the Internet, of a smiling
Maliki, Barzani and Talabani, seated before the flags of Iraq and Kurdistan. A
Kurdish delegation, headed by Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, will reportedly
soon be heading to Baghdad for follow up talks with the central government.
At first glance, this seems like a success story, not worthy of extensive
coverage. A closer look, however, proves the exact opposite.
Last week's elections in Kurdistan raised more than an eyebrow within official
Iraqi circles, although the victory of incumbent president Barzani was expected
by everybody. Barzani, 63, is the Yasser Arafat of Kurdish politics, a man who
mirrors the struggle of his people, and is widely respected, despite his
shortcomings and wide accusations of both corruption and nepotism, as the
vanguard of Kurdish ambition and independence.
He won the elections with nearly 70% of the vote. A joint list between his
Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of President
Talabani won nearly 60% of the entire ballots cast. This gave the two parties
around 55 seats in the 111-seat parliament. Barzani represents a generation of
Kurdish politicians that is fed up with taking orders from Baghdad and dreams
of full and unconditional Kurdish autonomy. High on his political agenda these
days is the issue of the oil-rich Kirkuk area, which he wants incorporated into
Iraqi Kurdistan, against the will of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria.
One of the reason why ordinary Kurds voted for him - although his age makes him
less attractive to a young generation of Kurdish voters - is that he has
repeatedly promised to bring Kirkuk to what he claims is its rightful owners.
Last June, the Kurdish parliament approved a draft constitution legalizing
their claims for Kirkuk, which sits on anywhere between 10-40 billion barrels
of oil, much to the horror of Maliki.
Barzani has promised his people that he will push for a referendum in Kirkuk,
which has been delayed since November 2007, to decide whether the city's
inhabitants want to remain part of Iraq, or join Iraqi Kurdistan. Maliki has
repeatedly lobbied to postpone the referendum, warning that it could ignite
civil war between Arabs and Kurds, and this measure has been supported by both
the United Nations and United States.
Heavyweights in the Iraqi political community, like Vice President Tarek
Hashemi, Shi'ite Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr and former prime minister
Iyad Allawi, are all categorically opposed to granting Kirkuk to the Kurds. One
week before Maliki went to Kurdistan, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was
in Baghdad and urged both Arabs and Kurds to solve their problems before US
troops withdrew by 2011.
Gates did not mention Kirkuk by name - but clearly it is the only real
bottleneck between both camps, since other pending issues, like the future of
the Peshmerga (the Kurdish militia) and relations with terrorist groups like
the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) are negotiable, from a Kurdish position.
They are actually the price Kurds are willing to pay to keep Kirkuk.
Barzani recently said that if it were not for US troops in Iraq, his men would
have clashed with troops from the Iraqi army long ago over the issue of Kirkuk.
In June, Kurdish militias close to Barzani clashed with the Iraqi army in
Makhmur, a predominantly Kurdish town between Mosul and Kirkuk. The president
made it clear that neither his men nor the Iraqi army had the unilateral right
to move into disputed areas claimed by the Kurds. His nephew, the prime
minister, explained the incident by claiming that Maliki's men still had "a
military style mentality of being the big brother and wanting to impose their
will [on Iraqi Kurds]".
Kurdish Iraq, for long considered a success story and a relative haven of calm
in the war-torn country, could yet provide Baghdad with its biggest problem.
Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.
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