In
2004 I co-edited a book, De Facto States: The Quest for
Sovereignty, which was to include a chapter on Iraqi
Kurdistan. The person asked to write it didn’t come
through, though, so it wasn’t in the anthology. Today such
an article would be an absolute necessity.
It’s
been a long time coming, but on Sept. 25 the Kurds in
northern Iraq finally voted in a referendum on
independence. In a turnout of some 73 per cent of
the more than five million eligible voters, the
pro-independence side gained 92.73 per cent of the vote.
Those
who follow events in the Middle East know that the Kurds,
at least 30 million in number, are the largest ethnic
group in the world without their own country, even though
one was promised them as far back as the end of the First
World War.
They
are spread across the region, mainly in Iran, Iraq, Syria
and Turkey, and have fought for a state of their own at
one time or another in all of these countries.
But
only in Iraq, where they have enjoyed limited
self-government since the Gulf War in 1991, when the
United States enforced a no-fly zone across the
north, have they
had a realistic chance to acquire it. Indeed, the area
they govern has increased since the Islamic State
temporarily drove the Iraqi army out of northern Iraq in
2014.
The
Kurds now control around a fifth of Iraq’s territory,
including land they have long claimed is theirs but which
was Arabised under Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It
includes the disputed city of Kirkuk, which is
populated by a mix of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.
While
the rest of Iraq has for years been beset by violence, the
Kurdistan Autonomous Region, with its population of
eight million, gained international recognition as
part of a federal Iraqi state in 2005.
Before the elimination of Saddan Hussein,
the Kurds in Iraq were the victims of mass murder and ethnic
cleansing, which peaked in the late 1980s when Saddam
slaughtered some 200,000 of them.
In 1992, the two major political parties
in the region, the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), established
the autonomous regional government.
The
two parties have long contended for power. The capital,
Erbil, is the stronghold of the KDP, led by the Barzani
clan. The current prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, is a
nephew of the region’s president, Masoud Barzani.
The weaker PUK is
run by the Talabanis, whose leader, Jalal Talabani, is a
former president of Iraq. His son Qubad has been
the deputy prime minister since 2005. They dominate the
region around the city of Sulaymaniyah.
Not
surprisingly, the Baghdad government opposed the
referendum and said it would never give up its
claim to Kirkuk, located within an oil-rich province from
which the Kurdish regional government has been independently
exporting oil.
Those oil fields pump about 40 per cent
of Iraq’s total output and are seen as the economic engine
necessary to support an independent Kurdistan.
Washington,
concerned that the vote would hobble the fight
against the Islamic State, saw it as a bad
precedent and as a destabilising force in the region.
The
governments of Iran,Turkey and Syria also dislike the idea
of an independent Kurdistan breaking away from Iraq, since
the Kurds in those countries might wish to join them in a
greater Kurdistan.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
has threatened to cut off the pipeline which exports the oil
from Kirkuk across the Turkish border.
Will the overwhelming yes vote lead to
independence? Maybe, but it won’t be easy.
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