[Mb-civic] There Will Be a Kurdistan

[Michael Butler]

Also see below:     
The Sarajevo of Iraq    €

     Go to Original

    There Will Be a Kurdistan!
    By Chris Kutschera
    Le Nouvel Observateur Hébdomadaire

     Week of 15 July 2004
 "We've accepted a roadmap."

    "If Iraq becomes fundamentalist, if it's dominated by terrorists, I'll
have a lot of trouble convincing my compatriots to be a part of it," asserts
the Baghdad government's - Kurdish - Vice-Prime Minister. "But if the
country becomes democratic, prosperous, federal..."

    Le Nouvel Observateur. - How are the Kurds responding to the violence
reigning in Iraq? 

    Berham Saleh. - Here, in Kurdistan, people are afraid of what's
happening in Iraq; they're worried. If the chaos were to degenerate and
affect us also, people will inevitably ask the question: do we want to be
part of such an Iraq? It's a legitimate question. My answer is simple: we've
said that we've decided to live in a democratic federal Iraq. We know why
and we are working in this direction. However, if Iraq becomes
fundamentalist, if it's dominated by terrorists or by a nationalist Arab
dictatorship, can I say to Halabja residents: let's be part of Iraq? It's
impossible.

     N. O. - Then...

    B. Saleh. - The truth is that in the depths of their hearts, the Kurds
would like to have their own state. And at the same time, they know
perfectly well why they can't have it. Most people here would accept, I
think - without joy, without excitement, without enthusiasm -, to be part of
Iraq. And I could convince them, if Iraq were to become a democratic
prosperous, federal country, that it's good for them. However, if Iraq is
chaotic, fundamentalist; if Iraq is like Fallujah, I could not. It's a
question that doesn't only concern us. It's been posed to the whole region,
to the international community, to the Americans, to the French, to the
Europeans, to the Turks, to the Iranians, to the Arabs...

     Historically, the Kurds have been considered the agents of division in
Iraq, secessionists. In fact, geopolitical realities are such that the Kurds
are the least of the threats to the Iraqi state. The Shi'ites and the Sunnis
may divide Iraq; the Arabs can divide Iraq if they don't accept a federal
democracy, if they reject peace and tolerance. The Kurds can't divide Iraq.

     Our neighbors must realize that instead of another Fallujah or
Souleimanye, it's better to have a prosperous, stable, and secure
environment. Our interest, that of the Turks, that of the Iranians, that of
the Arabs, is based on stability, security, and peace in the region. We know
it; we work against the current of an at least one century old inheritance.
It's a generational matter. In Europe, it's only fifty years since France
and Germany became good neighbors. Why couldn't we do as well? I need
schools; I need hospitals; and I can't build them alone. I need the
Iranians; I need the Turks; I need the Arabs.

     N. O. - You're in favor of federalism, but in what form? There are
three main projects for federalism today...

    B. Saleh. - I don't believe in ethnic federalism. Kurdistan is a region
of Iraq, not an ethnic entity. Why? Because Kurdistan is inhabited
principally by the Kurds, but also shelters Turkmen, Assyrians, Arabs.

     N. O. - But you use the word "Kurdistan" and there will be a federation
between Kurdistan, let's say, and Iraqi Arabistan...

    B. Saleh. - I don't know. It depends on my Arab compatriots whether Iraq
becomes a democratic and federal country and whether we manage to live in
partnership. In that case, it's clear that we'll have everything we want.
We'll have that which we can agree about. There's a discussion today about
whether Iraq will be divided into three or five regions. I know only one
thing: there will be a Kurdistan.

     N. O. - With what frontiers?

    B. Saleh. - With the frontiers defined by history, geography,
demography, that is the Hamrin mountains. From the Tigris all the way to the
end in the east, everything is Kurdish - that's Kurdistan.

     N. O. - Including Kirkuk?

    B. Saleh. - Of course!

     N. O. - And what is the Americans' position on this point?

    B. Saleh. - They say the decision is up to Iraqis.

     N. O. - In other words, they wash their hands of it!

    B. Saleh. - No. We've accepted a road map to settle the problem of
contested regions in the framework of the "transition law". It's very clear.
The road map is not exactly what I wanted, but it's very clear and precise.
The question now is to know whether we must continue to fight for every
piece of territory or whether we must accept a political settlement.

     N. O. - What do your Arab partners say?

    B. Saleh. - They don't believe Kirkuk is part of Kurdistan...

     N. O. - Bad start...

    B. Saleh. - The formula we've agreed to allows us a year and a half to
come to an agreement. During that period, we give refugees money to return
home and to settlers so that they leave. If we reach an understanding with
the Arabs and the Iraqis on these questions and on the new line for the
administrative borders: perfect. If not, we ask the United Nations General
Secretary to establish an arbitration mechanism as the transition law
anticipates.

     N. O. - Are you optimistic about the outcome of this arbitration?

    B. Saleh. - I must be optimistic. What was our situation a year and a
half ago? Saddam Hussein was in power; we were threatened with chemical
attack or genocide. We were victims of three kinds of sanctions: the United
Nations', Saddam's, and the region's. Today, we're free in a new
environment. Yes, there's chaos; yes, the future is uncertain, but the
certainty of the terror has been replaced...by numerous uncertainties. And
there are things we can do. Nothing prevents us from ordering our own house,
from having a unified government, a single peshmerga [fighter] force, a
single Kurdish government.

     N. O. - Where are you with the creation of this single government?

    B. Saleh. - Three months ago, I thought that could be done very easily.
I still think so, but I observe that there is a lack of political will. It's
a question of culture, the inheritance of thirty years of conflict and
rivalry between the two main parties which have dominated two areas...That's
not the Turks' fault, nor the Arabs', nor the Americans'. We're the ones who
have to change. That's my wish, my desire...but I don't know whether we will
do it...

      Born in 1960 in Iraqi Kurdistan, Berham Saleh, who lived in exile from
1979, has just been confirmed in his functions as Vice-Prime Minister of the
new Iraqi government, which has lead him to abandon his portfolio as Prime
Minister of Northern Kurdistan.

    Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie
Thatcher. 

  

    Go to Original 

    The Sarajevo of Iraq
    By Dilip Hiro 
    TomDispatch

     Thursday 22 July 2004
 Worsening Kurdish-Arab friction threatens the region.

    The week before the early surprise "transition of power" in Iraq, the
New Yorker magazine published a disturbing piece by Seymour Hersh that
contained news probably far more dangerous than any coming out of Baghdad.
His report, Plan B, revealed how top Israeli officials reached the
conclusion by last August that "the Bush Administration would not be able to
bring stability or democracy to Iraq." Fearing the consequences, Ariel
Sharon's government began freelancing a new divide-and-conquer strategy
meant, among other things, to help ensure the fragmentation of the Iraqi
state and potentially destabilize further an already destabilized region.
They decided "to minimize the damage that the war was causing to Israel's
strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship with Iraq's
Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the ground in the
semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan... Israeli intelligence and military
operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for
Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel's view, running covert
operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria."

     This (in Hersh's phrase) "politically reckless" move - an example of
tactically brilliant short-term thinking almost guaranteed to prove a
long-term strategic blunder and sure to blowback on the Israelis - is likely
to be especially harmful to the Kurds themselves. Now, like the Americans,
they will be ever more closely identified in the region with the defense of
Sharon's Israel. The training of Kurdish militiamen may, in the short run,
aid Israel's policies in the region and bolster Kurdish dreams of an
independent state, but it will, in the end, likely prove yet another
disaster for the Kurds. Their militias are not serious fighting forces, if
you're thinking, say, of the Turkish military (which ruthlessly crushed its
own Kurdish population's desire for autonomy), or even perhaps future Iraqi
armies. The Kurds, a people scattered across the region, have put their
faith and fate in the hands of states (and their intelligence agencies) that
have always betrayed them - including the Shah's Iran, Saddam's Iraq, the
United States more than once, and now the Israelis.

     If the Israeli link is dangerous for the Kurds, it may prove hardly
less so for the Americans in Iraq. Paul Rogers, the sober and thoughtful
geopolitical columnist for openDemocracy.net, has often pointed, as he did
recently, to
 "the development of closer links between the US military and the Israeli
Defence Forces (IDF), especially the Americans' procurement of specialist
Israeli equipment developed for use against the Palestinians [for their
forces in Iraq], and the IDF's sharing their experience of urban warfare
[with the Americans in Iraq]. In pursuing these links, US military planners
believed that any relevant experience or equipment that might limit US
casualties was greatly welcome. They did not appreciate that news of Israeli
involvement would have a cumulative impact in Iraq and the wider region -
confirming the widely-held view that the US occupation of Iraq was part of
an overall Israeli-American policy to redraw the political map of the Middle
East."

    The Israelis have simply added another round of munitions to a Kurdish
situation in northern Iraq that is, as Dilip Hiro points out below,
explosive. Any such explosion could draw all sorts of states into conflict.
Hiro, a veteran Middle Eastern analyst, surveys the Kurdish situation at
this perilous moment and suggests what the shape of a future Iraqi civil war
might look like and where it might begin. Tom
     The Sarajevo of Iraq
    Worsening Kurdish-Arab Friction
    Threatens the Region
    By Dilip Hiro

     In the ongoing crisis in Iraq, one factor has remained unchanged: the
loyalty of the Kurds to Washington. Whereas, for most Arabs, March 20, the
first anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, was ignored,
Iraq's Kurds celebrated it with traditional dancing and gunfire as "Iraq
Liberation Day." Unsurprisingly, when the time of "transition" came, the
Bush administration gave the Kurds two of the top five positions in the new
interim Iraqi government - instead of the one that would have been their due
if their percentage of the national population were all that was taken into
account.

     Indeed, when Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani - the respective leaders
of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) - protested Washington's failure to include a reference to the
Transitional Administrative Law (popularly known as the interim
constitution), in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546 that paved
the way for the "transition" in Iraq, it was no more than a lovers' tiff.
Kurdish leaders have, in fact, doggedly maintained their loyalty to the
United States in the hope and expectation that George Bush would set them
firmly on the path to an independent state - even though their history,
since U.S. President Woodrow Wilson failed to deliver such a state after
World War I, should have taught them quite a different lesson.

     Sadly, to this day their perception of that history is blinkered. The
1920 Treaty of Sevres, signed by Damad Feird, the Ottoman Sultan's Prime
Minister, and the wartime Allies stipulated that Anatolia would be
dismembered and Turkey's southeastern region, then containing Mosul
province, turned into an autonomous territory. The prospect of independence,
if recommended by the League of Nations, was dangled before the Kurds, then
rejected by the Turkish parliament and, in July 1923, superseded by the
Treaty of Lausanne, which made no mention of the Kurds.

     According to the latter treaty, Turkey renounced its claims to the
non-Turkish provinces of the former Ottoman Empire and the Allies confirmed
Turkish sovereignty over Anatolia. Two years later, at Britain's behest, a
League of Nations arbitration committee awarded Mosul province to Iraq, then
under British mandate.

     And so it went for the Kurds, though their historical myopia persists.
Only recently, misreading the interim constitution, promulgated on March 8,
the inhabitants of Iraq's three Kurdish-majority provinces, Dohak, Irbil,
and Suleimaniya - since 1974 collectively called the Kurdistan Autonomous
Region (KAR) - thought they had been granted independence, and welcomed its
promulgation with wild celebrations. Apparently, this was due to a popular
interpretation of a provision in the interim constitution stipulating that
if two-thirds of the voters in any three of Iraq's eighteen provinces cast
their ballots against a draft permanent constitution in a referendum, then
it would "fail." This was seen as, in essence, an independence veto.

     It was true that Turkey found this provision sufficiently objectionable
to express its public disapproval of Iraq's interim constitution, which
describes the Iraqi government as "republican and federal." Ankara has
repeatedly aired its opposition to a federal Iraq, arguing that any such
arrangement would inspire its own sizeable Kurdish population to demand a
federal Turkey. The Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad, racked by riots
in its predominantly Kurdish northeastern region in March, has been no less
alarmed by Kurdish irredentist aims in Iraq, which, in turn, fuel Kurdish
nationalism in adjoining countries.

     Turkey, uneasy with the armed Kurdish militias - or peshmargas ("those
prepared to die") - in northern Iraq, noted with satisfaction that, on June
8, soon-to-be Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Alawi announced that the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) had reached an agreement with the leaders of
nine militias to dissolve their forces by January 2005. The erstwhile
militiamen were to be given the options of retraining, integration into the
new Iraqi security forces, or being pensioned off. Since three-quarters of
the 100,000 militiamen that fell under this agreement belonged to the two
main Kurdish parties, the on-the-ground responses of the Kurdish leaders
were what mattered most, and they were predictable.

     Having agreed to dissolve their militias or merge them into the new
Iraqi army, Barazani and Talabani soon postponed the agreement indefinitely.
So it came as no surprise when, in a recent interview with a Czech
newspaper, Talabani practically disowned the CPA deal entirely. This led a
senior Turkish military commander to criticize Washington for failing to
curb the ‘terrorists' (read, KDP and PUK militias) in Iraqi Kurdistan.

     The Growing Kurdish-Arab Divide
    Within Iraq, there is a clear conflict between secular Kurdish
nationalism, fostered by the 12 year long autonomous existence of the
Kurdish Autonomous Region under an Anglo-American air umbrella while Saddam
Hussein ruled the rest of the country, and the aspirations of the recently
empowered, deeply religious Shia majority to establish a centralized Islamic
republic in Iraq through the ballot box. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has
made clear his fears that the Kurdish "veto" provided by the interim
constitution will result in drafts of a permanent constitution bouncing back
and forth indefinitely while the interim constitution hardens into
permanency.

     The situation in Kurdish Iraq threatens to draw various regional powers
into conflict. For example, the potential for an expansive Kurdish-Shia
conflict has been noted by Israel's top leaders, who have been increasingly
worried about the rising power of Shias in a region where Iraq and Iran are
Shia-majority countries and Syria is ruled by an Alawi, a sub-sect within
Shia Islam. In response, they decided to upgrade their espionage network
among the Kurds in each of these countries as well as in Turkey. (The
proportion of Kurds in their populations varies from 6% in Syria to 20% in
Turkey.) For Israel's Mossad and Aman (its military intelligence), the
starting point for such an enterprise remains the 150,000-strong Kurdish
Jewish community in Israel, a fairly wide pool to tap.

     In July 2003, Israel's intelligence agencies swung into action after
their political masters concluded that the US occupation of Iraq was going
badly, wrote Semour Hersh, the prize-winning New Yorker investigative
journalist, in Plan B last month (based on his interviews with his
intelligence sources in the United States, Israel, and Turkey). A further
impetus to Israeli planning came in December when Washington suddenly
announced that it would hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30. Israel's
leaders decided it was only prudent to take out an insurance policy in case
the transfer of power went badly, resulting in chaos - to the benefit of
Iran.

     While evidently assigning their Kurdish agents in Iran the task of
gathering intelligence on the government's nuclear activities, in Iraq their
agents have been encouraging Kurdish aspirations for an independent state.
This, in turn - and to their satisfaction - inspired rioters in Syria's
Kurdish-majority towns of Qameshli, Amuda, Hasaka, and Malikiya, where
protestors burnt public buildings and raised the Kurdish national flag. Some
40 people were killed before the Syrian army restored order.

     But Israel's strategy has a distinct downside, since encouraging
desires for Kurdish independence runs dangerously counter to Turkey's
long-standing policy on the Kurds and so has the potential of undermining
Israeli-Turkish military cooperation that dates back to 1995. "The lesson of
Yugoslavia is that when you give one country or component independence,
everybody will want it," a Turkish official told Hersh. "Kirkuk will be the
Sarajevo of Iraq. If something happens there, it will be impossible to
contain the crisis."

     Kirkuk: Eye of the Storm
    Lying midway between the Turkish-Iraqi border and Baghdad, Kirkuk was
the military staging post for the Ottoman Turks, who captured it in 1534 and
settled it with the Turks - called Turkmen - from Anatolia. It thrived as a
garrison town. When petroleum was discovered in the area in 1927 by the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, its executives found that neither Turkmen (mostly
merchants and rentiers), nor beduin Arabs were interested in working for
them; so they began to recruit workers from the Kurdish areas to the east
and north. These Kurds settled in villages around the city.

     Thus Greater Kirkuk emerged as a multi-ethnic city - with Turkmen at
its center, surrounded by Arabs, in turn surrounded by Kurds on the city's
outskirts. While the three communities maintained this voluntary
segregation, it was an edgy situation. In 1959, in a three-day battle
between pro-Communist Kurds and anti-Communist Turkmen, for instance, 79
people were killed.

     During the Kurdish insurgency of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the
ethnic composition of Greater Kirkuk became a point of contention between
the Iraqi government and Kurdish nationalists, with the latter claiming a
Kurdish majority in the city and its suburbs. However, the (then-classified)
census of 1977 showed the 484,000 residents of Kirkuk province (later
renamed Tamim) being 45% Arab, 38% Kurd, and the rest Turkmen. The 1997
census indicated that Kirkuk's population of 370,661 was 40% Arab and 38%
Kurd, with the remainder Turkmen - little change, that is, despite Saddam
Hussein's policy of settling Shia Arabs from the south in the area. On the
eve of the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the estimated 700,000 people
then living in Greater Kirkuk probably divided up along similar lines: 45%
Arab, 35% Kurdish, and the rest Turkmen.

     Following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the two Kurdish parties
made no secret of their plans to transform Kirkuk with its oil wealth into
the capital of an expanded Kurdish Autonomous Region. Kurds, some pushed out
of the city by Saddam, now arrived in their thousands. The Peshmerga were
turned into the local police force and, assisted by the occupying American
military, Kurds dominated the US-appointed city council. All this was in
violation of an initial agreement that U.S. forces would maintain the status
quo and not allow Kurds to cross the KAR's border, 15 miles east of the city
center.

     Assisted by Kurdish-dominated local security forces, tens of thousands
of Kurds have forced Arabs from their homes, creating at least 100,000 new
refugees living in squalid camps in north-central Iraq. This has engendered
widespread anti-Kurdish feeling among Arabs in the region and beyond.
Anti-Kurdish graffiti, attacking Kurds for collaborating with the "infidel
occupiers," is a commonplace in the Shia districts of Kirkuk. Elsewhere, the
followers of Hojatalislam Muqtada al Sadr have vocally denounced the Kurds.

     Many Sunni Arabs, though sharing the same sectarian affiliation with
Kurds, are equally critical of them. The Sunni Arab-Kurdish divide widened
when the Arab press reported in April that Kurds were fighting in Falluja
with the Americans. These Kurds belonged to one of the two Iraqi Civil
Defense Corps (now National Guard) battalions that had been ordered to fight
alongside U.S. Marines in the assault on the insurgents in the city. The
other battalion, consisting exclusively of Arabs, refused to do so.
Talabani's convoluted explanation for Kurdish actions - "Some Kurds have
joined the new Iraqi army, and if the Coalition commanders forced them to
participate in some fighting, it was without the knowledge of the Kurdish
leaders." - left many unconvinced.

     During her foray into Falluja in late April, Hala Jaber of the Sunday
Times found the locals speaking of "the mercenary Kurds, accused of being
Mossad agents." She added, "Some Kurds had confessed [to being Mossad
agents], I was told, and had been summarily executed."

     The situation in Kirkuk remains tense. "The Kurdish peshmargas [acting
as policemen] are unqualified and untrained, and this creates irritation,"
said Khudair Ghalib Karim, a Turkmen leader. "If there are clashes this is
the reason." Across the Green Line, though the Kurdish militiamen are
reportedly ready to make a major push for Kirkuk, they are unlikely to act
as long as the Americans remain in the city.

     Viewing Iraq as a whole, it is safe to say that if the country slides
into a civil war, it would not be between Sunnis and Shias, but between
Arabs and Kurds - and it will start in Kirkuk.

     Dilip Hiro's latest book is Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom"
and After, a sequel to Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm (both Nation Books).
Hiro is based in London, writes regularly for the New York Times, the
Observer, the Guardian, the Washington Post and the Nation magazine, and is
a frequent commentator on CNN, BBC, and Sky TV.

 

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