Northern
Iraq’s Tangled Web
By Conn Hallinan
20 June, 2007
Fpif.org
There
are few areas in the world more entangled in historical deceit and betrayal
than northern Iraq, where the British, the Ottomans, and the Americans
have played a deadly game of political chess at the expense of the local
Kurds. And now, because of a volatile brew of internal Iraqi and Turkish
politics, coupled with the Bush administration’s clandestine war
to destabilize and overthrow the Iranian government, the region threatens
to explode into a full-scale regional war.
A series of bombings and
attacks over the past year in Turkey touched off the current crisis.
The Turks attribute the violence to the Iraq-based Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK), which fought a bitter war against the Turks from 1984 through
the 1990s. Ankara’s campaign to repress its Kurdish population
during that period ended up killing some 35,000 people, destroying 3,000
villages, and forcibly relocating between 500,000 and 2 million Kurds.
The Kurds make up about 20% of Turkey and Iraq and have a significant
presence in Syria and Iran. With a population of between 25 and 30 million,
the Kurds represent one of the world’s largest ethnic groups without
a country, a status that has long aggrieved them.
In May, the Turks declared
martial law in three provinces that border Iraq. They massed troops,
armor, and artillery, and threatened to invade if the United States
and the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not suppress
the PKK. It looked like a conflict simply between the Turkish government
and the Kurdish separatists. But things are never quite what they appear
in northern Iraq.
Independent Kurdistan?
While the Turks are indeed
concerned about the activities of the PKK, Ankara’s real agenda
is to block any possibility of an independent Kurdish nation on its
border. The Turkish Army is also whipping up nationalism in an effort
to influence the outcome of the July 22 Turkish elections.
Turkey is deeply worried
that an upcoming plebiscite in Kirkuk could make the oil-rich city,
which the Kurds claim as their capital, a part of Kurdistan. Ankara
fears that if Kirkuk joins Kurdistan, the Kurds will obtain the economic
base they need to build a Kurdish state, which will, in turn, stir up
Turkey’s restive Kurds to demand independence or autonomy. The
Turks charge that the Kurds are trying to influence the outcome of the
plebiscite by driving 200,000 Turkomen and Arabs out of the city, and
moving in 600,000 Kurds. This would reverse the 1980s population shift
when Saddam Hussein forced many Kurds out of Kirkuk, moving in Arab
families to take their place. To keep the Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG) as an ally, the Maliki government is backing the plebiscite and
supporting a plan to remove 12,000 Arab families from Kirkuk and send
them back to their original homes in central and southern Iraq.
Ankara blames the United
States for ignoring the issue of Kirkuk and turning a blind eye to the
PKK. “It is widely acknowledged,” says Syrian historian
and journalist Sami Moubayed, “that the PKK cannot operate out
of northern Iraq without the full blessing of Maliki, [Iraqi] President
Jalal Talabani (a Kurd) and the United States.”
Attacking Iran
Rather than suppressing the
PKK, the United States is using its offshoot, the Party for a Free Life
in Kurdistan (PEJAK), to attack Iran. According to a Financial Times
investigation last year, U.S. Marines are working with Iranian minorities
to see if “Iran would be prone to violent fragmentation along
the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq.”
Farsi speakers dominate Iran,
but they make up only a slim majority of the country. The rest of the
population consists of Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, and Baluchs. The United
States is also supporting a violent Baluch group, the Jundallah, which
killed 11 Revolutionary Guard this past February in southern Iran.
“I think everybody
in the region knows that there is a proxy war already afoot, with the
United States supporting anti-Iranian elements in the region as well
as opposition groups in Iran,” says Vali Nasr of the Council on
Foreign Relations. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that
PRJAK is also receiving help from Israel, and that there are some 1,200
Israeli intelligence agents in northern Iraq. According to Meir Javedanfar,
an Israeli expert on the Kurds, Israel is using the Kurdish areas of
Iraq “to undermine Iran’s influence” and “the
Iranian government itself.”
PKK’s Usefulness
The Islamacist Maliki government,
with its ties to extremist Shiite militias and Iran, is no friend of
the secular and socialist-minded PKK. But Maliki needs Kurdish support
in his battle with former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose coalition
of former Baathists, Sunnis, secular Shiites, and disgruntled Kurds
that has designs on bringing down Maliki’s government. And while
the current Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) -- a coalition of the
formerly warring Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic
Party -- has no great love for the PKK, the organization is tough and
battle-hardened and has become an invaluable ally against a rising tide
of Islamicism in the Kurdish region.
The United States is hoping
the KRG will rein in the PKK. One anonymous Iraqi official told The
New York Sun, “The Americans want the Kurds to make their lives
easier. They need the Kurdish government to show they are willing to
tackle terrorism in the north… maybe alert Turkey of a threat,
act on intelligence, arrest some people, make an effort.”
However, the KRG has a problem
with a growing wave of Islamicism in Kurdistan. The PKK is strongly
secular—it was formerly the Kurdish Communist Party—and,
in a fight with Islamic extremists it would be an invaluable ally. On
top of which, the PKK is widely respected for its long struggle against
the Turks, and if the KRG were to turn against the PKK it might not
go down well with the average Kurd. Even if the KRG reins in the PKK,
it might not be enough for Ankara, because Turkey wants to roll back
any movement that would create an independent Kurdistan.
But that genie is already
out of the lamp. The well-ordered and relatively peaceful Kurdish region
has a working parliament, several universities, and Kurdish language
radio and television. It has essentially been a functioning country
since 1992 when the Americans and British established a “no fly”
zone over the area following the end of Gulf War I.
Whatever the Turks might
want, Kurdistan is already a reality.
Inside Turkey
The current crisis is also
a reflection of Turkey’s internal politics. Beating the anti-Kurdish
drum is part of the Turkish army’s strategy to whip up nationalism
in order to weaken the religious government of Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan before the July elections.
The major danger is that
the tension between Turks and Kurds could quickly get out of hand. For
the past few weeks the Turkish Army has been shelling Kurdish villages
in Iraq and sending small units across the border. A miscalculation
by either side could quickly escalate, which is exactly what the United
States fears.
“Fighting between Turks
and Kurds in Iraq could spread to Turkey itself,” says Henri J.
Barkey, chair of international relations at Lehigh University and widely
considered to be the top U.S.-Turkish scholar. This, he said, could
lead to “a severe rupture in U.S.-Turkish relations” and
“deal a fatal blow” to U.S. efforts in Iraq.
Northern Iraq has always
been a complicated place, but the U.S. war has sharpened the tensions
that have plagued it for over a century. Now those tensions have pushed
the region to the brink of chaos.
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