INVASION BLUES
Dilip Hiro
Outlook
1025&fname=hiro&sid=1
Oct 26 2007
India
The Kurdish problem has been a running sore for Iraq and Turkey since
their emergence as modern states, but was little more than a local
irritant–until now. American failure to rein in the restive Kurds
has reignited a long-simmering conflict
The Kurdish problem has been a running sore for Iraq and Turkey
since their emergence as modern states, but was little more than a
local irritant–until now. With US occupation forces encamped in Iraq
and the Kurdish drive for independence appearing irreversible under
Washington’s wings, the issue has shot up on the international agenda,
threatening to upset the fragile regional balance of power and further
delay US withdrawal from Iraq.
Several strands make the issue highly combustible: tapped and
untapped hydrocarbon reserves in the Kurdish territories; strong
extra-territorial Kurdish solidarity; the unresolved distribution
of power between the center and the provinces in post-Saddam Iraq;
Washington’s ongoing coddling of Iraqi Kurds, who consolidated their
quasi-independent status, with support of the US and Britain for 12
years; and the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) in Turkey resorting
to violence to achieve autonomy for the Kurdish-majority region.
Although Kurds in the region are citizens of Turkey, Iraq, Iran or
Syria, their ethnic identity tends to supersede their loyalty to the
central national authority. A major event concerning Kurds in one
country quickly engages fellow Kurds in neighboring states.
The Kurds in the region envy those in Iraq. Consisting of three
provinces, Iraqi Kurdistan has its own army, parliament and flag. Its
schools impart education in the Kurdish language, akin to Persian, not
Arabic. It passed its own hydrocarbon law. And, ignoring the warnings
of the oil ministry in Baghdad, it signed exploration and production
contracts with nine oil companies including the Dallas-based Hunt
Oil Company, which is close to the Bush administration.
Recent events put the Kurdish issue on the front burner. Despite last
month’s agreement between the prime ministers of Turkey and Iraq to
stamp down Kurdish terrorism, and repeated pinprick forays by the
Turkish army into northern Iraq, an estimated 3,500 PKK guerrillas,
based in Iraqi Kurdistan, have killed 42 Turks, soldiers and civilians.
The Turkish parliament provided the government with a yearlong window
to conduct cross-border operations against the PKK, listed as a
terrorist organization by the US and the European Union. The vote was
507 to 19, with all negative votes cast by ethnic Kurds, highlighting
the priority that Kurds give to their ethnicity over their nationality.
Against this volatile background came the ill-considered attempt by
the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to pass
legislation that inflamed Turkish opinion. The resolution describes
the massacres and deportations of 1 million Armenians during World
War I–when Ottoman Turkey sided with Germany against the Allies–as
genocide. This is a highly sensitive subject for Turkey, successor to
the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has threatened, if the House adopts this
resolution, to close its airspace and ports to the US, thus reducing
Pentagon effectiveness in Iraq.
After securing parliamentary authorization for "cross-border
operations"–a euphemism for invasion–Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan said that such a move was not imminent.
That did not stop thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the regional capital of
Irbil marching to the United Nations compound to demand intervention
by the UN Security Council.
Nor did it dampen debate in Iraq as to how Iraqi authorities would
respond to the Turkish army’s advance into northern Iraq. Will Kurdish
militiamen–called "peshmergas," or those ready to die–and US troops
engage the Turkish soldiers? Or will the central government deploy
forces to repel the incursion?
The second option is academic.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has upgraded the 75,000
peshmergas, belonging to the two ruling political parties–the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK)–to regular soldiers, and refused to let Iraqi troops enter
its territory. Its armed forces guard the posts along the borders
with Turkey and Iran.
Faced with the prospect of an onslaught by the Turkish army, the second
largest in NATO, a spokesman of the KRG offered "honest dialogue"
with Ankara to resolve the PKK problem without "the constant violation
of Iraqi sovereignty."
In his view, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki made a mistake by
excluding the KRG from talks with his Turkish counterpart to forge
an agreement on countering PKK terrorism.
But Turkey has shunned the government in Irbil–which repudiated the
Erdogan-Maliki agreement–while loudly protesting its ever-expanding
power and profile. It fears that even implicit recognition of this
entity will encourage Turkish Kurds to demand autonomy as a preamble
to independence.
The idea of independence for the Kurds in the region dates back to
the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, formalized
in the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. Kurds feel that US President Woodrow
Wilson failed to keep his promise of delivering to them an independent
state as envisaged in the treaty. They ignore the fact that the Turkish
parliament rejected that treaty and the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne
of 1923 made no mention of an independent Kurdistan.
More recently, heeding the call by US President George H.W. Bush at
the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the Kurds in Iraq rebelled against
Saddam Hussein’s regime, only to see their uprising crushed by
Saddam’s forces. Washington and London created a safe haven in the
north for Kurdish refugees and rebels by providing an air umbrella
that continued until the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Kurdish leaders agreed in March 2004 to dissolve their militias or
merge them into the new Iraqi army and then later said they were
postponing the agreement "indefinitely." The US, the occupying power,
did nothing.
In the interim parliament, lacking proportionate Sunni representation
due to the Sunnis’ boycott of the general election, conflict
developed between Shiites and Kurds. The recently empowered, deeply
religious Shiite majority wanted to establish a centralized Islamic
republic. But, committed to secular Kurdish nationalism, the KDP and
the PUK favored a federal Iraq with a weak center.
When Shiite leaders failed to get their Kurdish counterparts to agree
to diminution of the autonomy Kurdistan had enjoyed, they approached
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for guidance. Noting Kurdish obstinacy,
Sistani recommended a federalist system, allowing one or more of the
15 non-Kurdish provinces to form a regional government with powers
comparable to Kurdistan’s.
This alarmed Ankara. In contrast, the Bush administration, beholden
to the Iraqi Kurds, looked on benignly as the new Iraqi constitution
sowed the seeds of the republic’s break-up.
Washington’s failure to pressure the Iraqi Kurdish leadership at a
crucial moment alienated the Turkish government.Matters grew worse
when Ankara’s repeated appeals to the US to use its forces to curb
the PKK went unheeded.
Irked by Bush’s warnings against a military move into Iraqi Kurdistan,
Erdogan said that he did not need to seek permission from any foreign
entity: "Did they [the Americans] seek permission from anybody when
they came from a distance of 10,000 km and hit Iraq?"
What puzzles the Turkish leaders is Bush’s failure to see that they,
too, combat terrorism.
"Turkey is implementing the same international rules that were
implemented by those who linked the attacks on the twin towers to some
organization," explained Turkish justice minister Mehmet Ali Sahin.
But payback inevitably follows. "If Turkey conducts any attack or
operation against Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurds anywhere, we are prepared
to defend ourselves," said an unnamed PKK leader. "We will spread
resistance throughout Turkey and Kurdish areas in Iraq, Iran and
Syria."
The Bush administration should have tempered its indulgence toward
Iraqi Kurds with pressure during the drafting of the new constitution
and gotten its leaders to scale down Kurdistan’s quasi-independence
to re-establish a unitary republic. The failure to do so brings it
to the point where the US is seen as soft on terrorists–albeit of
non-Islamist variety–facing the prospect of the only peaceful Iraqi
region turning into a battlefield.
Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation ‘Iraqi
Freedom’ and After, and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The
Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources, both published by
Nation Books, New York. Rights: © 2007 Yale Center for the Study of
Globalization. YaleGlobal Online
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