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The Eurasian Politician - February 2003
By: Anssi Kullberg, 22nd Feb. 2003
The Kurds constitute about one fifth of Iraq's population, and although there are numerically more Kurds in Turkey and in Iran, the Iraqi Kurds have played a crucial role in Kurdish nationalism. The Kurds have had a formal autonomy in Iraq, but in practice, the position of Iraq's Kurds has been the worst of all Kurds, because in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, autonomy and any other promises have had no real meaning.
The Kurds of Iraq came under double-fire in the Iran-Iraq War in 1980s. Saddam used chemical weapons of mass destruction against the Kurds in e.g. the notorious Anfal Operation and in the bloodbath of Halabja, in which tens of thousands of Kurds were massacred. It is by no means exaggeration to speak about genocide. Even after the Gulf War, cleansing of Kurds and Iraqi Turkmens continued in all those regions that were not covered by the no-fly zone imposed by the UN.
The word peshmerga, which means Kurdish guerrillas, became known by the legendary freedom struggle led by the famous guerrilla commander Mustafa Barzani. His son Masud Barzani is now leading the most powerful Kurdish party of Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The KDP is believed to play a vital role on the northern front if the war breaks out.
After the Gulf War, the old dream of the Kurds, an independent state of Kurdistan, became almost true, because the KDP and its most important Kurdish rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) got control of the de facto independent Kurdistan, thanks to the no-fly zone. However, the traditional weakness of the Kurds has been their mutual disunity and quarrelsomeness. Also after the Gulf War, the KDP and the PUK continued fighting each other. Kurdistan became to look ever more like Afghanistan, and the continuation of such a situation both corrupted the Kurdish parties, added chances for Islamist fanatics like the Al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Islam and other terrorists like the PKK to get foothold in Kurdistan.
Barzani was benefiting of the embargo of Iraq disproportionately, because he collected significant profits of the oil smuggling to Turkey, which broke the embargo from the very beginning. This also brought the KDP an advantage in weaponry against the PUK. The PUK, meanwhile, accused the KDP for that Barzani was not seriously committed to overthrow Saddam's tyranny and to revenge the genocide of Kurds. If Saddam's regime would have been overthrown, Barzani would probably have lost both his remarkable oil income, and his little kingdom, the semi-independent Kurdistan, as the international community has not been sympathetic to any solution that would split Iraq into more than one states.
While this was the rational, yet opportunistic, situation of the KDP, the PUK, which had been sidelined from the oil business, found it more necessary to overthrow Saddam's dictatorship. The PUK commander Jalal Talabani therefore also indicated some willingness to one day become leader of all Iraq. This is the reason why the PUK never really committed to the idea of Kurdish separatism, even though it claimed to be "patriotic".
However, all attempts to overthrow Saddam in 1990s were undermined by the fact that the supposed grand enemy of Saddam's regime, the United States, lacked after all the political will to provide adequate backing to the Iraqi enemies of Saddam. The PUK, the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmad Chalabi, as well as some military conspiracies within the Iraqi Army all had to disappoint, as Washington first let them understand that the US still hoped to see Saddam overthrown, but then demanded - quite unrealistically - bloodless coup, and at the last minute refused the decisive support from the Iraqi allies. Green light was changed into panic-driven attempts to brake, risking the lives of the Iraqi allies.
In fact, the Gulf War was never finished. Saddam remained in power, and the tyranny in place, although the war had decisively weakened and demoralized it, and the embargo did the rest. Yet the war was neither stopped, as it continued as time-to-time bombing by the US and Britain, and of course as the embargo, which was broken by almost all of Iraq's neighbors, as well as for example Russia, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Belarus, and France.
The most important natural resource of Iraq's is the oil, which many nowadays consider as the motive for the war. However, the very same oil has been there for all this time, and the US has rather been preventing it to get to the free market, than desiring it. Also Russia and France have greatly benefited from the Iraqi embargo, and they share large energy interests in Iraq. If Iraq were liberated, the entry of Iraqi oil to the world market could possibly lower the price of oil, which would be in favor of the US and Europe, but harm Russia and Saudi Arabia, which are greatly dependent on the artificially high oil price.
The most important oil reserves of Iraq are situated outside the are inhabited by the ruling Sunni Arab minority of Tigris: The northern reserves lie in the Mosul (Mawsil) and Kirkuk regions inhabited by Kurds and Turks, and the southern reserves lie in the delta region inhabited by the Shi'ite Arab majority.
Iraq as a state is an artifact of the British colonial power, and it has never really held together. For the British, and the other European colonial empires who participated in scavenging the carcass of the Ottoman Empire, the main interest of annexing Mosul and Kirkuk to Iraq was to steal these vital oil regions from Turkey. Now some analysts are already forecasting - some with anti-Turkish horror, others with pro-Turkish sympathy - that the militarily strong Turkey could seek to regain Mosul and Kirkuk.
At the same time, Turkey could form Kurdistan as a protectorate to herself. Turkish troops have been operating in Northern Iraq for years already, and the Iraqi Kurds are not as hostile at Turkey as the ultra-left extremist PKK of Turkey. If successful, such an arrangement could even finally help Turkey heal her relations with her own large Kurdish minority by granting them more autonomy and thereby gaining more loyalty by the Kurds.
However, the idea of Turkish protectorate in Mosul and Kurdistan is not very probably, because the Turkish Republic has been throughout her history very cautious towards involvement in affairs outside her borders. Atatürk's dictum "yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh" has been the leading doctrine of Turkish security policy, although the Cyprus intervention, the participation in the Gulf War, and the recent modifications of the doctrine towards more active role in the Middle East during General Kivrikoglu's command in the Turkish Armed Forces have altered the military strategy somewhat. However, it is unlikely that in the present situation Turkey could ignore the significant hostility towards any such involvement by the Western European allies, on whom Turkey's prevalent dream, the EU membership, depends. On the other hand, the categorically anti-Turkish comments of certain French politicians may convince Turkey to rely only on the US.
If the Coalition of the Willing will now invade Iraq, to finish what they left undone twelve years ago, it is likely that it is still bound to the principle of holding Iraq together, and will thereby disappoint both the Kurds and Chalabi's INC. Spring is bad time for betraying the Kurds, since they are used to taking off to the mountains and continuing guerrilla war against whoever rules Baghdad. Yet the US is gathering the Kurds to form a northern front against Saddam. What are they going to offer the Kurds if not Kurdistan?
One option might be the model already tested in Afghanistan. We can remind ourselves of the autumn 2001, when many experts were skeptical at the US reliance on the so-called Northern Alliance, led by the Tajik minority. It was generally questioned, whether any non-Pashtuns could rule in Kabul successfully. However, it turned out that the US had chosen her allies exactly right. Afghanistan is now calmer than any time in 24 years. The Tajiks constitute smaller a portion of the population of Afghanistan than the Kurds constitute in Iraq. Would the Kurds finally succeed in burying their internal conflicts if they would be opened the chance to rule Baghdad? Even Saladin (Salahuddin) was a Kurd.
For the Kurds to be able to enjoy the trust of the Arab majority of Iraq, too, the US would probably also need a figurehead similar to Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai. Like Karzai in Afghanistan, the future head of Iraq should also be charismatic, able to use double language - speaking both the languages of the Western discourse and that of post-Saddam Iraq - and finally, he should be, like the Popalzai Pashtun Karzai, from a group that on the other hand represents the majority of Iraq but on the other hand avoids fixation to a certain powerful group. So, the future leader of Iraq should be an Arab, but able to co-operate with a Kurdish minister of defence, and enjoy at least moderate trust by both Sunni and Shia Arabs.