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2 US,
Turkey and Iraqi Kurds join hands By M K Bhadrakumar
Indeed, Turkey is
encouraging Barzani to convene a national Kurdish
conference in Arbil in June with a view to pushing
Turkey's interests both with regard to collaring
the PKK, as well as encouraging Syria's Kurds to
give up their present ambivalence toward "regime
change" in Damascus and to decisively link up with
the opposition to Assad, which is based in Turkey.
Ankara knows well enough that Barzani is a
slippery customer. But what encourages the Turkish
leadership is that the United States has also
stepped in to ensure that Barzani delivers. The US
extended an invitation to Barzani to visit
Washington in early April, where President Barack
Obama received him.
Taking the cue from
Turkey, Washington is also catering to Barzani's
bazaar instincts. A US-Kurdistan Business Council has
been formed in
Washington to promote US "investments" in the
territories of northern Iraq under Barzani's
control. ExxonMobil's chief executive officer Rex
Tillerson met Barzani in Washington. (In November,
Barzani awarded lucrative contracts to ExxonMobil
to explore six oil fields in Kurdistan, ignoring
the loud protests by Maliki's federal government
that Baghdad reserves such powers to grant
concessions to foreign oil companies.)
While in Washington, Barzani also met
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Deputy
Secretary of State William Burns (during which
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped by to
greet him) and interacted with influential think
tankers. Vice President Joe Biden hosted a
"working lunch" for Barzani.
Interestingly, Barzani's tirades against
Maliki took a noticeably sharp turn after his
visit to Washington. He told al-Hayat, "Iraq is
moving toward a catastrophe, a return to
dictatorship", and that on his return to Arbil he
would call a meeting of Iraqi leaders to "save"
the country from Maliki and to seek "radical
solutions" (read Kurdistan's secession). Barzani
also declared that he wouldn't hand over Hashemi
to Baghdad. (Again, at the root of Maliki's
discord with Hashemi is the issue of the
distribution of Iraq's oil wealth.)
Maliki's spokesman in Baghdad Ali Mussawi
called Barzani's heightened rhetoric after the
Washington visit as "an incomprehensible
escalation." Significantly, Maliki's government
has since "blacklisted" ExxonMobil. The company
doesn't figure on the finalized list of 47
pre-qualified bidders for the next round of Ira's
energy exploration rights in 12 new blocks in
western and central Iraq, which would add a
whopping 29 trillion cubic feet of gas and 10
billion barrels of oil to Iraqi reserves. The
bidding is due to be held on May 30-31.
A card to play Be that as it
may, Barzani felt encouraged after his Washington
visit to take to a path of strategic defiance of
the federal government in Baghdad. The US extended
a warm greeting to him on a scale befitting a head
of state and it was heavily tinged with references
to Kurdistan's independence.
Conceivably,
Washington and Ankara are acting in tandem and
there is close coordination of the US and Turkish
policies toward Syrian and Iraqi Kurds. For both,
the ultimate objective is to weaken Iran's
regional influence. The Obama administration hopes
that Turkey's efforts against the PKK are
successful and is providing intelligence support
for the military operations.
Washington
also expects that under concerted pressure from
multiple quarters, Maliki would finally realize
what is good for him and loosen his ties with Iran
and Syria. Least of all, Washington would desire
that the Syrian Kurds cross over to join the
opposition groups based in Turkey so that the
agenda of forcing a "regime change" in Damascus
gets more cutting edge.
However, there are
several imponderables in the emergent scenario.
Pushed against the wall, Damascus may let the
Kurdish genie out of the bottle and the result
could well be a Syrian version of Iraq's Kurdistan
- a second autonomous Kurdish area along Turkey's
borders. That could in turn induce Turkish Kurds
also to seek similar autonomy. The best course for
Erdogan would have been to make progress toward a
political solution to Turkey's Kurdish problem as
he had been doing. But the pre-requisite for that
would be a return of "normalcy" in Turkey's ties
with Syria and a more stable Iraq.
Arguably, Erdogan is on a slippery path.
His acrimonious exchange with Maliki underscores
that Turkey's isolation is almost complete in its
immediate neighborhood. The weakest link in the
Turkish strategy is Barzani himself.
Ankara heavily depends on Barzani to
broker deals with the PKK as well as to finesse
the Syrian Kurds. True, Barzani has a vested
interest in working with Ankara since Iraq's
Kurdistan has developed extensive economic links
with Turkey and these ties are deepening by the
day. But Barzani has his limitations, too.
Everything hinges on his capacity to
harness Kurdish nationalism scattered across not
only Turkey, Iran and Syria but also Iran,
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Lebanon and to
convince them that their only realistic hope is to
seek increased autonomy within existing state
structures on the lines he has secured with
American support. That's a tall order. Whether the
Kurdish militants will be persuaded to put down
their guns and follow Barzani's footsteps remains
in serious doubt.
Barzani is a
controversial figure himself among the Kurds.
Essentially, he is a tribal warlord who uses
coercive methods, often very violent methods, to
keep his family on top of the heap of Iraqi
Kurdistan and his family exercises personal
control over the region's land, property,
resources and finances. Put plainly, he and his
family run a business cartel called "Kurdistan".
Kurds increasingly resent that they are being
treated as his tenants and serfs.
Barzani's patronage system is predicated
on his practice of treating the budget and
revenues from Kurdistan's oil and gas as his
family's private accounts with no real financial
control or accountability. This patronage system
is overwhelmingly based on clan rule and it may
run only so long as there is no rule of law, but
then, Iraq's democratization is spreading its
virus into the Kurdistan as well and educated
Kurds are beginning to resent the Barzani clan's
autocratic lifestyle.
For instance, the
'oil contracts' signed by the Turkish, American,
British and other foreign companies are going to
be the principal instruments for Ankara and
Washington to influence Barzani, while no one has
a clue as to what these 'contracts' are about, how
they were negotiated or where the money comes and
goes. To be sure, Barzani has extensive business
interests in Turkey, the US and several European
countries.
All said, the bankruptcy of the
US policy today is such that it made heavy
sacrifices in human lives and resources to remold
Iraq as a democratic country and, arguably, the
one signal success it had would be the
democratization of Iraq. Despite all the
aberrations of the Iraqi system, the country
enjoys a degree of representative rule, which is
an exception rater than the rule in the Muslim
Middle East. Now, in a curious twist, Washington
is propping up Barzani in order to realign Iraqi
political scene to suit its geopolitical
interests, completely overlooking his veal track
record.
Obama is literally taking a leaf
out of Henry Kissinger's monumental cynicism and
duplicity toward Iraq's Kurds - pampering their
national aspirations as part of a ruthless,
deceitful process to destabilize the regime in
Baghdad but all the while not wanting their
protegees to win their struggle because it could
be too disruptive for the entire region,
especially for the US's closest ally, Turkey.
Barzani has always been, historically speaking, "a
card to play" and even by the yardstick of covert
operations Obama and Erdogan are locked in a
cynical enterprise.
Kissinger, at least,
was forthright. Looking back at the US's sellout
of Kurds in Iraq in 1975, Kissinger commented,
"Covert action should not be confused with
missionary work." Obama would probably agree here,
but his crucial difference is that Erdogan has
showed him how dalliance with the Kurds can also
be made self-financing and put on cost-accounting
principles, an angle that always fascinates Obama
in these hard times.
In short, while
Kissinger was immersed in realpolitik, Obama also
makes sure American companies do some profitable
business in Kurdistan's fabulous oil fields so
that the US is sure to be in a "win-win" situation
no matter the trajectory of democracy in Iraq or
the longevity of the regime in Damascus.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His
assignments included the Soviet Union, South
Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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