What
a gamble, and a seemingly ugly one. The merchants of propaganda have
naturally been busy with this new, and petulant, kid on the block. Three
areas of Iraqi Kurdistan have gone to the polls for a referendum that
is intended to add meat to the bone of any future negotiations for
secession. The desk minders in Baghdad are fuming; regional power
brokers are minding their military inventories.
The Reuters news agency noted the words of a man queuing to vote in Irbil.
“We have been waiting 100 years for this day. We want to have a state, with God’s help. Today is a celebration for all Kurds.”
President of the Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani was unflappably confident on Sunday:
“From now on, Kurdistan will be a neighbour of Iraq, but not a part of it.”
Iraq remains
a construction, an artificial confection of miscellaneous, often
murderous groups. It is being held together – barely – and the Iraqi
leaders wish to keep it this way. Given its sheer vulnerability, the
Iraqi state, or at the very least parts of it, have been ripe for
severance. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, vain
efforts to secure various states of autonomy were crushed with cold
blooded determination. Towns such as Halabja and Qala Diza blot the text
books as bloodied, failed enterprises.
The romance of a
free Kurdistan, or at the very least its dream cleaved from the Iraqi
whole, has been the lingering preoccupation of some. The late Christopher Hitchens,
who remained a staunch backer of the invasion of Saddam’s Iraq, was
ever keen to scribble about the advances being made in the region. He
had found an underdog to back.
The Christmas
holidays of 2006 were spent taking advantage of this new Kurdistan, one
free of Saddam. (Never mind the fact that Iraq was unraveling and
untethered from any concept of a unified state at that point.)
Travelling with his Greek-speaking son, Hitchens noted the ease of air
and road travel, and that “walking anywhere at night in any Kurdish town
is safer than it is in many American cities.” Erbil was visited, “where Alexander the Great defeated the Persians”.[1] With some cheer, it had been a year since the last suicide bomb attack.
Such
sentiment aside, this non-binding vote has already stirred resentment. A
curfew was imposed on the city of Kirkuk on Monday evening, a
characteristic reminder that trouble is brewing. There are suggestions
that the voting process has been compromised, despite loud proclamations
that democracy is being practised with vigour. Turkmen and Arab groups
had urged a boycott.
Geopolitical
considerations, as they often do in these situations, are bound to force
their way into the profane reckoning. Nature’s abhorrence of a vacuum
has duly brought in replacements, and they are furious with this
experiment in balloting. This was, for Iraq’s Vice President Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, “a declaration of war on the unity of the Iraqi people.”[2]
To
the Baghdad authorities can be added Turkey, Iran, the United Nations
and the United States. The reasoning there is elementary: the moment the
Kurds get a nationalist foothold, the surge towards independence may be
unstoppable. Minorities may upset local applecarts through the region.
Police and military measures, followed by massacre, will be perpetuated.
From the crucible of death a state shall be born and slain.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
has not disappointed with his stance: military and economic measures
are promised against the Kurdistan Regional Government for holding the
referendum. Baghdad, he insists, must remain behind the steering wheel
of the country’s affairs.
“After this, let’s see through which channels the northern Iraqi regional government will send its oil, or where it will sell it.”[3]
As oil is life, the
president is keen to remind the upstarts of the KRG
that Ankara controls “the tap. The moment we close the tap, then it’s
done.”
The
move stresses the complex dynamics of oil politics in the area, with
Iraqi Kurdistan able to develop an independent oil sector of some
consequence. This burgeoning sector supplies some 80% of revenue for the
KRG. Some 600,000 barrels of oil are exported on a daily basis,
impressive when you start considering the petroleum output relative to
such states as Ecuador and Qatar.[4] The
Turkish threat, however, is an important one, given that half of the
oil product goes through a Turkish pipeline which effectively bypasses
Baghdad’s own oil company.
Washington has
also affirmed its traditional duplicity regarding the Kurdish
situation. While happy to avail itself of Kurdish help fighting Islamic
State forces, pen pushers in the Pentagon and State Department would
prefer it if they use their weapons for an entirely altruistic cause.
Forget the nationalist drive: defeating ISIS is the only cause that
truly matters.
According to Army Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve,
“There is a distraction from the fight against ISIS”.
Irritatingly
for Dillon, the Peshmerga forces had been biding their time in the
latest offensive against Hawija, where an estimated 800 to
1,500 ISIS fighters remain.
“The Peshmerga are not part of the elements that are conducting the advance, but they will very much likely play a part because of the proximity of the Kurdish defence line.”[5]
To
add a final, and by no means exhaustive touch of complexity to the
vote, some Kurdish groups have preferred caution, the sort harvested
from centuries of disappointment. Businessman Shaswar Abdulwahid Qadir, the man behind the “Not4Now” campaign, urges the care and patience only wealth can buy.[6] Secession
hardly comes cheaply. The Kurdistan Islamic Group and the Change
Movement (Gorran) are similarly opposed to the timing.[7] But nationalist referendums are rarely about caution and timing, and the waiting, for some, is over.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMITUniversity, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Notes
Featured image is from Kurdistan 24.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Global Research, 2017
