The
dreams and dilemmas of Iraqi
Kurdistan By Giorgio Cafiero
Once strong and unified states on the
vanguard of Arab nationalism, Iraq and Syria are
on the verge of partition, fragmentation, and
dismemberment. In addition to the hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis and at least 60,000 Syrians
who have lost their lives, other victims of the
two nations' sectarian strife may include the
Iraqi and Syrian national identities themselves.
However, the victors of these two
conflicts are the Kurds. Today, Iraqi and Syrian
Kurds enjoy unprecedented autonomy from
Baghdad and Damascus, and the
prospects of an independent Kurdish state are
real. Despite the Kurds' gains, the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG), led by President
Massoud Barzani, finds its semi-autonomous state
in northern Iraq at several geopolitical fault
lines. Barzani must tread carefully in this
volatile region to safeguard the Iraqi Kurds'
interests while pursuing independence from central
Iraq.
The possibility of war with Baghdad
over territory and energy resources constitutes
Barzani's gravest security challenge, as
demonstrated by the recent violence in Iraq's
contested city of Kirkuk. Nonetheless, as Iraq's
Arab-Kurdish problems do not exist in a vacuum,
one cannot analyze Baghdad and Erbil's standoff
without factoring into account the role of
regional heavyweights.
Turkey To
Turkey's alarm, last summer the Syrian Kurds
gained de facto autonomy in certain
Kurdish-majority areas of northern Syria. Ankara
feared that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
would secure a safe haven just south of the
Turkish border, encouraging Turkey's own Kurdish
population to demand greater autonomy. Given that
a PKK-affiliate group - the Democratic Union Party
(PYD), the most heavily armed Syrian Kurdish
faction - appeared to control most of Syria's
Kurdish towns, Turkey's concerns were well
grounded.
For its part, the KRG in Iraq
began providing the Syrian Kurds with military
training shortly after their region became
autonomous, most likely to enable them to protect
their autonomy once the Syrian crisis winds down.
A semi-autonomous Kurdish state in neighboring
Syria can be expected to provide the KRG with
strategic depth during any future military
confrontation between Erbil and Baghdad.
Nonetheless, Barzani's pan-Kurdish
aspirations must be balanced with his interests in
maintaining ties with Turkey. As relations between
Erbil and Baghdad devolve from bad to worse,
Turkey's demand for the Kurds' oil and Turkish
investment in Iraqi Kurdistan will become
increasingly valuable to the KRG.
Therefore, if Turkey invades Syrian
Kurdistan to target PKK militants, as Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
threatened, Barzani will face a difficult dilemma.
The prospects for the KRG's independence from Iraq
largely depend on Erbil's partnership with Ankara.
However, Barzani's legitimacy within Kurdish
circles could be undermined if his actions are
perceived to be complicit with Turkey's
determination to destroy the Kurdish dream of
independence. Regardless of how the Turkey-PKK
conflict unfolds in Syria, both actors will
attempt to utilize their leverage over Barzani to
affect the outcome. If Turkey and the PKK's
current efforts to resolve their three-decade-old
conflict prove successful, Barzani would likely
find much relief.
Iran A report
in the Iraqi Kurdish media from last year claimed
that Iran had begun to establish military bases in
the Qandil Mountains, several miles into northern
Iraq. In the past, Iran's military has conducted
operations in northern Iraq to target militant
Kurdish groups that have waged attacks against the
Islamic Republic, primarily the Party for a Free
Life in Kurdistan (PJAK). However, Iran's
establishment of a permanent military presence in
Iraqi Kurdistan must be understood within the
context of Tehran's geostrategic rivalry with
Turkey and adversarial relationship with Israel.
As Turkey and Iran are geopolitical rivals
in the Arab world - a reality most highlighted by
their opposing stakes in Syria - Iraqi Kurdistan
factors into their rivalry. After the
Western-imposed no-fly zone was implemented during
the early 1990s, both Turkey and Iran were gravely
alarmed by the prospects of an independent Kurdish
state in northern Iraq. Ankara and Tehran engaged
each other cooperatively to secure their mutual
interest in weakening militant Kurdish
nationalists and protecting Iraq's territorial
integrity. However, as the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)
fought each other in the Iraqi Kurdish civil war
(1994-1997), Turkey (the KDP's sponsor) and Iran
(the PUK's sponsor) staked out their own
respective spheres of influence in Iraqi
Kurdistan.
Since Saddam Hussein's ouster
in 2003, Ankara and Tehran have accepted the Iraqi
Kurds' autonomy as a reality. Moreover, Turkey and
Iran have come to perceive Barzani as a Middle
Eastern partner. In recent years, Turkey, with its
growing energy demands and lack of indigenous
sources of energy, has become increasingly reliant
on the KRG for oil imports. In mid-January, Ali
Hussain Belu, the KRG Undersecretary of the Oil
and Natural Gas Ministry, stated that each day the
KRG exports 15,000 barrels of oil to Turkey, and
certain analysts forecast the KRG to become
Turkey's second largest trading partner in 2013.
While Iran's military incursions into Iraqi
Kurdistan have naturally created tensions with the
local Kurdish population, Iran-KRG trade increased
more than 25% during early 2012. As Iran seeks to
counter the impact of international economic
sanctions and Erbil pursues partners with leverage
over Baghdad, the KRG and Iran's expanded
political, commercial, and energy ties make sense
from a geostrategic standpoint.
Despite
the value that Iran places on Turkey as an
important energy and commercial partner, Iran's
leadership has lashed out at Turkey over the two
countries' differences on Syria. In this context,
Iran must view Turkey's heavy military presence in
northern Iraq (2,000 troops and several dozen
tanks) with the suspicion that Ankara's motives
extend beyond targeting the PKK to containing
Iran. Meanwhile, Iran's buildup in northern Iraq
is unlikely to be welcomed by the ruling
administration in Ankara, as evident by Interior
Minister Naim Sahin's accusation that Iran is
sponsoring the PKK in the Qandil Mountains - an
allegation Tehran denies.
Clearly, Barzani
is aware that threats to Turkish and Iranian
security interests, posed by the PKK and PJAK,
have prompted the two states to conduct military
operations in the KRG. However, the Kurdish leader
is surely also aware that Ankara and Tehran's
establishment of a more permanent military
presence in the KRG is driven by his neighbors'
rivalry. Erbil must balance these two powers off
one another to expand the KRG's energy ties and
improve its strategic posture vis-a-vis Baghdad.
Israel Israel and Iran have held
influence in northern Iraq for decades. Perceiving
a strong Iraq as a threat, the Israelis began
sponsoring Kurdish militants in northern Iraq
during the 1960s. By 1980, Prime Minister Menachem
Begin acknowledged to the public that his
government had sent weapons and military advisers
into northern Iraq. And Iran allied with certain
Kurdish factions during the Iran-Iraq war to
further drain Saddam Hussein's war machine.
Nonetheless, today the KRG has become a pawn in
Israel and Iran's standoff.
"It's
Realpolitik. By aligning with the Kurds Israel
gains eyes and ears in Iran," observed a former
Israeli intelligence officer. According to several
sources, the Mossad operates in the KRG to launch
covert operations inside Iran and acquire
intelligence on Iran's nuclear program. "Israeli
drones are said to be operating against Iran from
bases inside the KRG," wrote Patrick Seale, a
British expert on the Middle East. The
London-based Sunday Times reported that, according
to "Western intelligence sources," during early
2012 Israeli commandos and special forces members
carried out missions in Iran that were launched
from the KRG.
The Israeli commandos,
dressed in Iranian military uniforms, entered Iran
in modified Black Hawk helicopters and traveled to
Parchin, the site of an Iranian military complex
just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Tehran, and
Fordow, an Iranian military base with an
underground uranium enrichment facility. The
report claims that these forces utilized advanced
technology to monitor radioactivity levels and
record explosive tests carried out at the military
facilities.
In February 2012, NBC reported
that the Israeli secret service had "financed,
trained, and armed" the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK),
an Iranian dissident group that has been
responsible for killing Iranian nuclear scientists
since 2007 and has operated in northern Iraq for
many years. Israel has also provided PJAK with
"equipment and training" to carry out attacks
against targets within Iran, according to a
government consultant with ties to the Pentagon.
The military operations that Iran has
waged in Iraq to strike blows against the MEK and
PJAK highlight the extent to which Tehran
perceives these two organizations as a grave
security threat. As these groups collaborate with
Israel to undermine Iran's capacity to acquire
nuclear weapons capability, Iran will seek to
strengthen its geostrategic posture inside Iraq.
Therefore, the Iranian military's
establishment of bases inside the KRG is a
strategic action intended to thwart Tehran's
adversaries from cornering it. If Israel were to
pre-emptively strike Iran's nuclear facilities,
thus precipitating a grander Middle Eastern war,
Barzani may find his act of balancing cordial ties
with Israel and Iran incredibly difficult, if not
impossible.
The dispersed Kurds, who
constitute the modern world's largest stateless
ethnic group, have sought to play off their larger
neighbors' divisions to gain an upper hand against
their respective host governments for many
decades. The KRG recently achieved a major step
toward independence after it signed a contract
with Exxon Mobil to drill for oil in Kirkuk.
Furthermore, plans to transport Kurdish
non-renewable sources of energy to Turkey and
international markets may come to fruition. An
aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, Sami
Alaskary, warned that "if Exxon lays a finger on
this territory … we will go to war for oil and for
Iraqi sovereignty."
The KRG's alliances
with Iran, Turkey, and Israel will be most valued
if or when Iraq's two governments go to war with
each other. If Barzani can maintain his
cooperative ties with Tehran, Ankara, and Tel Aviv
and effectively balance their hostilities and
rivalries - while standing strong against Baghdad
with the KRG's 200,000 well-trained Peshmerga
fighters - there is reason to believe that amidst
the Middle East's ongoing conflicts and turmoil,
the Kurds of northern Iraq may come out on top
with an independent state.
Giorgio
Cafiero is an independent analyst and
contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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