Tag: Kurds
Partition of Iraq is not a good idea
The Hill published my piece this morning:
The idea of partitioning Iraq is once again getting traction. It may of course happen. But it is not a good idea to pursue it and will not help to stabilize Iraq or Syria. It is a formula for more war, for decades to come.
You’ll have to read the rest on their website.
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Help, or else
Things are not going well for Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki, whose calls for foreign assistance have grown increasingly frantic. While Iraqi Kurds agitate for an independent state, the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) consolidates power in northern and western Iraq. At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Lukman Faily Tuesday tried to make a case for increased military assistance to Iraq. His argument came down to this: if you don’t help us, someone else will.
The Obama Administration is understandably reluctant to send weapons into what has become an increasingly sectarian conflict. However, the ambassador said that his country needs American assistance “to turn the tide against ISIS.” Until more robust US aid materializes, Iraq cannot decline offers of assistance from other countries, including Iran, Syria, and Russia. Iraq will not get involved in the Syrian conflict, but he said that Maliki “welcomes” Assad’s help. He added that Iran and Iraq have a shared history, and Iran considers many of Iraq’s Shi’a shrines as within their sphere of influence. “Their expertise is welcome.” The two will continue to cooperate as long they face a shared enemy.
He claimed that ISIS has been cleared in Tikrit, contradicting a number of media reports. The area remains heavily booby-trapped, however, and Iraq’s security forces cannot win with ground troops alone. Echoing Maliki’s earlier statements, Faily said that air supremacy is key to defeating these insurgents. A political solution must arrived in tandem with military force.
Faily, who is Kurdish, said that the Iraqi constitution was written to ensure Kurds are adequately represented, and 95% of Iraqi Kurds agreed to these provisions. While acknowledging Kurdish president Massoud Barzani’s aspirations for an independent state, he said that Kurds are still expected to play a role in shaping Iraq’s future. He left open the question of whether Kurds deserved their own independent state. Still, as long as ISIS controls the border between Iraq and the Kurdish region, it will be difficult for the two sides to cooperate against ISIS. His government welcomes Kurdish cooperation, but an independent Kurdish state is not feasible in the current political situation.
I asked the Ambassador if he would be willing to involve ex-Ba’athists, including those who have colluded with ISIS, in any future reconciliation process. He answered that no members of ISIS could be included, but that he welcomes any homegrown elements of the insurgency, as long as they have “not been involved in bloodshed.”
Time Magazine’s Michael Crowley asked the ambassador about an attack on the al Askari, or Golden Dome, mosque, one of the holiest shrines in Shi’a Islam. Al Qaeda destroyed the mosque in 2006, sparking a civil war that claimed thousands of lives. Faily admitted that the outer perimeter of the mosque had been hit, and several people were killed, but would not say if the shrine itself had been damaged. He added that ISIS had been evicted from Samarra, calling the attack a “hit and run” operation.
Faily also acknowledged that dozens of Sunni prisoners had been executed while in custody of Iraqi forces and Shi’a militias, and said the government “was looking into it.”
300,000 people were displaced when ISIS came into Mosul, and 120,000 in Tal Afar. These displaced people also threaten Iraq’s stability, and his government needs material support from the US to deal with them. Last week, he told US Secretary of State John Kerry, “We need your help now. Do not put conditions” on assistance to Iraq, because the threat is to immediate. He called this an “acid test” for the US-Iraq relationship.
Both the US and Iraq are “forever tied together because of the lives we lost and the treasure we spent in the past decade in the fight against terrorism.” ISIS is not only a threat to all Iraqis, but regionally and indeed internationally. If they are allowed to consolidate the gains they have made, ISIS will have a safe haven from which to launch attacks on American interests. And if America does not help, Russia, Syria, and Iran are more than happy to step in.
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Obama’s options for Iraq
The Hill published my “Obama’s Options for Iraq” yesterday:
President Obama has chosen the tough-love option: American assistance to meet the challenge of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) blitzkrieg moving towards Baghdad will be conditional on a more inclusive political settlement within Iraq. Only a major U.S. combat deployment is ruled out. Here is my list of possible additional options, with some cons:
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Maliki’s fault, but…
Everyone is blaming Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki for the implosion of the Iraqi army and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) takeover of Anbar, Ninewa, Salahedin and who knows what next. He deserves blame.
But not everything said about him and situation is true. The New York Times states baldly that he failed to include Sunnis in his government. That is false. He has always had Sunnis in his government. They may have not been the right Sunnis, he certainly didn’t listen carefully to them and he has tried to arrest some of them, but they have been there all along (and still are). Maliki is not running an “inclusive” show, but Sunnis are not entirely excluded.
I just heard on CNN that Maliki hasn’t provided oil revenue to Sunni provinces. That isn’t true. So far as I am aware, he has cut off only Kurdistan, with which he has a long-running dispute about accounting for the money and about whether its Regional Government is entitled to export oil without Baghdad’s approval. The Sunni provinces have received their share, based on population.
Some are marveling at this disaster occurring in the aftermath of a reasonably good election. It is occurring at least in part because of the election, in which Maliki conducted a sharply sectarian campaign and gained by far the largest bloc in parliament on the strength of his popularity among Shia voters. Sunni unwillingness to resist ISIS is due in large part to the feeling that Sunnis, who went to the polls fragmented rather than united, will not get a fair shake in the future, because Maliki has announced his intention to form a government with a narrow majority and therefore with less need of Sunni participation.
I’m told ISIS fans are crowing about their triumph over the states created in 1916 by the Sykes-Picot agreement. But Sykes and Picot had Mosul in the French-controlled territory with Damascus. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres had it in Kurdistan, whose fate was to be determined by a referendum. It was confirmed as in Iraq only in 1926. ISIS action so far has confirmed Sykes-Picot, not negated it.
If the Kurds do in Ninewa what they’ve already done in Kirkuk to fill the vacuum the Iraqi army has left, at least part of present-day Ninewa province is likely to end up where the Treaty of Sevres had it: in Kurdistan, whose once-promised referendum may not be all that far off if this keeps up. Turkey, which could in the past be relied upon to object, may no longer, as its companies are making lots of money in Kurdistan and Ankara may well prefer Kurdistan to the caliphate as a neighbor.
Lots of commenters are discussing ISIS’s military prowess. I’m not a military expert, but almost any army look good if its enemy abandons the field. The contest here is not really a military one but a political one. The Iraqi army’s implosion has political roots. It is due to the failure of many of its cadres to develop loyalty to a popular but sectarian leader unwilling to do what was required to make sure the Sunni community would reject extremism and contribute its best efforts to the Iraqi state.
The real question now is what the United States, Turkey, Kurdistan, Iran and what is left of Iraq will do about state failure in Iraq and what could become a much wider regional war with extremists who wish all of them ill. Uniting to fight the common enemy may be distasteful to some, but unavoidable to all.
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No tempest in a teapot
I did this piece based on my visit to Erbil last week for the Middle East Institute, which published it today under the title “Erbil, Baghdad and Implications of the Oil Dispute”:
Erbil—the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan—was once a chaotic and dusty backwater. Today, it is well on its way to becoming an attractive and orderly commercial and government center. A decade ago there were virtually no trees, as they had all been cut down for firewood to heat Kurdish hearths during the 1990s wars among Kurds and between Kurds and Saddam Hussein’s army. A magnificent wooded park now graces the mile or so from the high-rise hotel district to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s parliament and offices. The ancient citadel—the current signs claim it was settled as early as 6000 BC—is being tastefully restored with UNESCO help. The once shambolic souk still needs work, but it is a lot more organized than a decade ago. Wide avenues outside the center are sprouting shopping centers, restaurants, offices, hotels, and apartment buildings.
The security presence is high near government offices, but mercifully light elsewhere. Al-Qa‘ida attacks still occur, though rarely. The peshmerga forces associated with what were once the two main political parties, which fought against each other in the 1990s until the United States mediated a peace pact, have been partially merged. More than a dozen public and private universities have been established in the last decade. Health conditions have improved.
All of this is the result of a deliberate, sustained effort by the Kurds of Iraq to use their share of Iraq’s oil revenue to build a Kurdish state, one that is constitutionally part of a sovereign Iraq but with broad self-governance in many areas.
At the moment, a caretaker government is in place, because the now three biggest political parties—one party split and has found itself in third place behind its rebel portion—have been unable to agree on how to slice the patronage pie. Parliament functions as in most other countries, though Kurdish sources tell me the media is far from independent and corruption is a big problem. Kurdish politics can be a rough sport, though nowhere near as deadly as politics in the rest of Iraq.
The vital revenue to support this burgeoning state comes mainly from oil. The Kurdistan Regional Government receives 17 percent of Iraq’s overall oil income, minus deductions for Baghdad expenses that are supposed to benefit Kurdistan. The real amount comes to more or less 14 percent, but that approaches the large sum of $15 billion.
The trouble from the Kurdish point of view is that Baghdad controls the flow of the money, and an increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki controls Baghdad. A recent dispute over Kurdistan’s oil production prompted Baghdad to reduce and eventually to end the revenue stream, leaving Erbil without the funds needed to pay its employees. The dispute concerns Kurdistan’s production and export of oil without Baghdad’s permission. One and a half million barrels of Kurdistan crude is currently sitting in storage tanks in Turkey, exported via a pipeline that Baghdad does not control.
This may seem like a tempest in a teapot. But it has broader implications than Kurdistan. Iraq has vast oil and gas reserves. It currently produces over three million barrels per day but has potential for much more. Kurdistan produces about one-tenth that amount, but also has potential to produce much more. Once Kurdistan production passes 500,000 barrels per day, Erbil would be better off receiving 100 percent of its own oil revenue rather than 14 percent of Iraq’s, if Iraq’s production does not increase.
The amounts are important, but so too are the directions in which the oil is exported. As things stand today, Iraq sends about 90 percent of its oil through the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, under the threat of Iranian guns. If more Iraqi oil were exported to the west (via Jordan to Aqaba) and to the north (through Turkey), Iraq would be tied much more definitively to Europe and the West. Its gas, still largely undeveloped, could eventually be a serious alternative to Russia’s, also reinforcing ties with the West.
Thus it is the geopolitics and geoeconomics of Kurdistan’s oil and gas that make it important. This is why an American diplomat, Brett McGurk, has been shuttling between Baghdad and Erbil, trying to resolve their current dispute. It is also why Turkey and Kurdistan have gone to great lengths to settle their differences. Today, Turkey is a major investor and trading partner for Kurdistan.
As goes oil, so goes Iraq. If Baghdad and Erbil can settle their current differences and reach the long-anticipated agreement on a law regulating production and export of oil and gas as well as distribution of the revenue, Iraq will stay in one piece. But if Kurdistan decides it would be better off to go it alone, calling the referendum President Massoud Barzani never fails to mention to visitors who call at his Saddam Hussein-era palace outside Erbil, Iraq will come apart, and not likely in two neat pieces.
Erbil and Baghdad have never settled their disputes over which territory should be governed by one and the other, including oil-rich Kirkuk. Nor are the Sunnis of western Iraq likely to stick around in an Iraq that without Kurdistan might be 80 percent Shi‘a. Their provinces are already in rebellion against Maliki. A messy dissolution of Iraq, with uncertain borders and ready availability of Sunni extremists from Syria, would be a formula for violence, further realignment of Baghdad and its vast oil reserves with Tehran, and a haven for terrorists in Iraq’s western provinces.
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Hang together, or hang separately
Hadi Bahra, of the Syrian Coalition political office, is anxious to call attention to UN Security Council resolution 2118, which not only provided for removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons capability, but also endorsed
…fully the Geneva Communiqué of 30 June 2012 (Annex II), which sets out a number of key steps beginning with the establishment of a transitional governing body exercising full executive powers, which could include members of the present Government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.
The problem is that the Russians are far from agreeing that this should be the over-riding purpose of a “Geneva 2” conference. Nor is Bashar al Asad preparing to send a delegation to the January 23/24 Montreux/Geneva conference empowered to hand over all executive authority.
The Syrian Coalition is right to insist, but the question is what it should do if it doesn’t get its way, as it won’t. Does it still go to Montreux/Geneva, or does it refuse?
Refusing would mean stiffing John Kerry, endangering American and other Western support and handing a propaganda victory to Bashar al Asad. That’s not a good outcome.
Attending means daring the Syrian regime to show up, gaining a bully pulpit for the opposition’s own interpretation of UNSC resolution 2118, and giving the Americans some satisfaction. Many in the opposition hope the regime will not take the dare and embarrass itself by not showing up. That would be a satisfying outcome, but just for that reason unlikely. The Russians will deliver the Syrians, just as the Americans will deliver the opposition.
What will happen at Montreux/Geneva, assuming both sides do turn up? The Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG) recently ran a simulation intended to find out. The simulation focused on establishing a ceasefire, forming a transitional government and accountability for wartime abuses. To make a long story short, the Syrian opposition was fragmented going in and the pressure of negotiation made things worse. A unified Syrian government delegation with strong Russian support had a field day reinforcing the notion that President Asad is indispensable. The Americans and Russians conspired to keep Asad symbolically in place while a technocratic government took over. Only a walkout–not something that will gain any points with the international community–saved the opposition from getting its clock cleaned.
Simulations are just that. They are not reality. PILPG spins the outcome in positive directions: the opposition needs to come to Geneva 2 unified around its own plans for security, transitional governance and accountability.
That does not appear likely. Pressed hard on the battlefield, the opposition continues to shatter. While the Syrian National Coalition is reported to be meeting Monday in Turkey to elect its president (or re-elect the current one), other groups are meeting in Spain. The Islamic Front fighters have not supported either group as yet, and it is unclear whether they will turn up in any form Montreux/Geneva. The extremists associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Jabhat al Nusra are uninterested in the talks. Syrian Kurdish attitudes are divided.
There is a lot of preparatory work still to be done. Hang together, or hang separately.
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