Iraq And Kurdish Nationalism: After Sectarianism, Ethnocentrism

 

I visited most cities and towns of the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan enclave which replaced the Iraqi flag by a tri-colored bright star centered flag; I talked to Kurds from different denominations and all walks of life, to include government officials. I’ve discovered that they are very hospitable people who have adapted to and in instances survived the political changes the region has known, thus preserving a memory of their historical imperativeness. The Saddam regime had targeted the Kurds and sought their eradication for most of its tenure; government orchestrated mass killings, arbitrary detention, and displacement were frequent, but since the fall of Saddam’s despotic regime, they unabashedly celebrate the distinctiveness of their language, folklore, and history while embracing the ethnic and religious diversity of Iraq of which they consider themselves proud citizens. This aspect of the Kurdish character is one of the reasons thousands of Iraqis, Sunnis, Shi’a, and Christians, flocked to Kurdistan to escape the ravages of the sectarian and ideological conflicts gnawing at Baghdad, Basra, and Al-Anbar. Inter-ethnicity marriages and economic factors have, throughout history, strengthened the kinship between the Kurds and their Arab, Turkman, and Persian neighbors.

 

The Kurds’ pride in their heritage is unfortunately being corrupted into politicized ethnocentrism by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), a convergence of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the two main Kurdish militant groups in Iraq. The KDP and the PUK have different political aspirations, but decided to unite on nationalist grounds to maximize on their alliance with the United States. It is partly thanks to this alliance that the relative security and economic prosperity Kurdistan enjoys are an undeniable fact.

 

The KRG is engaged in a political path disadvantageous to the unified political sphere of Iraq its Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, claims to be an integral part of. It operates as a fully functional government and independently from the Iraqi central government (ICG) in Baghdad. The decision making process of its appointed officials is alienated from and rarely seeks the approbation of the ICG.  When Ashti Hawrami, the Kurdish Natural Resources minister – who answers only to the KRG president who appointed him, Massoud Barazani, and the Kurdish parliament – signed lucrative production sharing oil contracts (PSC) with a number of large foreign corporations, the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein Al Shahrastani, was never consulted. The KRG contends that such contracts are legal and do not transgress the Iraqi constitution. Opponents of the Kurdish initiative within the ICG are led by Al Shahrastani; they argue that the KRG’s deals were not made with the best interest of the Iraqi people in mind and consider the its actions a vindication against the Iraqi Arabs whom it sees as complicit to the persecution of Kurds by the Ba’ath party. Al Shahrastani whose criticism increased to outright condemnation before the stubbornness of the KRG to rescind the deals threatened to blacklist any firm that sign Kurd oil deals from gaining contracts for the rest of Iraq. Even some members of the KRG, such as MP Pishtiwan Ahmed, believe that the exclusion of the ICG from international contracts pertaining to Kurdistan are illegal and will certainly hamper “the return of disputed areas” such as Kirkuk and Khanaqeen, both oil rich regions, and which the KRG seeks, through judicial and extrajudicial venues, to annex to its three Kurdish provinces.

 

The Ba’ath party subjected the Kirkuk province to a forceful Arabisation campaign. During the 1980s, Saddam expelled 120,000 Kurds and other ethnicities from Kirkuk and brought thousands of Arabs from other parts of Iraq offering them enticing relocation packages. Article 140 of the current Iraqi constitution is designed to remedy this injustice and calls for a referendum to determine whether Kirkuk, Salah Al Din, Diyala, and Ninawa should be annexed by the KRG territories. The referendum, initially scheduled for 15 November 2007, was postponed numerous times. The Kurdish Alliance claims that the delays are for technical reason. The truth is that the KRG has initiated a vicious operation, similar in principle to Saddam’s Al Anfal campaign, targeting Arabs. The Peshmerga and Kurdish intelligence operatives have subjected the Arabs residing in Kirkuk to intimidation and displacement and facilitated an influx of Kurds into the city in an attempt to gerrymander electoral boundaries. So far, thousands have been relocated and over 1,500 Arabs have been detained by the Kurds on charges of terrorism. Arab politicians in the city, who have been boycotting the local government, say that those charges are fabricated.

 

The KRG’s hegemonic agenda extends to Mosul, the multiethnic fulcrum of northern Iraq. The city has been described by American and Iraqi officials as the last urban bastion of Al Qaeda in Mesopotemia and other Sunni terrorist groups. On the western side of Mosul, a mostly Sunni Arab section of the city, the Peshmerga, active participants in the Umm Al Rabiain operation along with U.S. and Iraqi troops, explicitly target Arab residents and businesses threatening them to vacate their residences or risk detention on terrorism charges. The situation became even more precarious when the Arab residents of the city started abetting terrorist and insurgent groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), Ansar Al Islam (AAI), Army of Muhammed (AoM), and the 1920 Revolution Brigade in order to benefit from their protection.

 

Within the Kurdish territories, the KRG imposes draconian restrictions on Iraqi Arabs seeking refuge from the ravages of war. Peshmerga troops manning checkpoints on all the roads leading into the Kurdish provinces explicitly ask drivers if they or any of their passengers are Arabs. Those who are identified as such are then asked out of the vehicles and subjected to an exhaustive scrutiny to determine their motives. The slightest anomaly in their paperwork could lead to detention. Even the carry of a handgun for protection, a right in Iraqi legislation, draws verbal and physical abuse, and sometimes death. Arab residents in Kurdistan need the vouching of a Kurdish sponsor and only receive temporary residency permits allowing them to stay in Kurdistan no longer than three months and within a specific area; travel within Kurdistan for Arabs is prohibited without authorization.

 

The geopolitical balance in northern Iraq is flimsy and requires constant calibration. To gratify Turkey, the US labeled the Kongra Gel, formerly known as the Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan – Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as a terrorist organization. The Kongra Gel is a Marxist-Leninist and Kurdish nationalist militant organization in Turkey founded by Abdullah Ocalan in the 1970s. The organization, which is not recognized by the Turkish government, aims at creating an independent socialist Kurdish state. Its aspirations are not any different than those of the KRG. The same labeling standard the US applied to the Kongra Gel applies to the KRG. In downtown Erbil, one could find maps depicting the Greater Kurdistan. It extends from southern Turkey and northern Iran to the Strait of Hormuz. The KRG provides safe haven to operatives from the Kongra Gel and PJAK, another Kurdish militant group fighting for independence in Iran. Turkish and Iranian forces conduct joint operations targeting Kongra Gel and PJAK positions in the Qandil Mountains in Northern Iraq on a daily basis. Iranian infiltration in Iraqi Kurdistan runs deep and precedes US involvement in the region by decades. The surreptitious Iranian presence is also a contributing factor to the fragile peace in which Iraqi Kurdistan wallows.   

 

Without a doubt, the war in Iraq has been characterized by constant mutations. Now that the sectarian war is abating, an ethnic one looms in the distance.

 

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

AFRICOM’s Challenges

 

AFRICOM, tasked to consolidate U.S. military responsibilities for all of Africa, excluding Egypt, which will remain a CENTCOM area of operation (AO), and with a 2009 budget in excess of $400 million dollars, is due to be operational October 1^st, 2008. Having failed to secure long-term operational locations on the African continent, its 1300-personnel strong command and control (C2) will remain at its current location at kelley’s Barracks in Stuttgart. Instead, it created thirteen regional offices called Offices of Defense Cooperation (ODC) that will operate out of U.S. embassies; it will also benefit from the support of the Defense Attachés Offices (DAO) which, organically, are a DIA element. Within the next four years, AFRICOM intends on opening eleven more ODC offices. The bulk of AFRICOM personnel will deploy to host nations from Stuttgart on liaison and planning missions as needed.

 

AFRICOM’s attempts to find a location for its headquarters were hampered by the Bush administration’s greatly eroded credibility. Its initial “peace time” military engagements in the continent underscored to many African observers a neocolonialist agenda driven by an urgent need to secure energy supplies and reduce its reliance on Middle Eastern oil, extend the U.S. counterterrorism campaign, and counterbalance China’s growing influence in Africa.

 

Worry swept the continent. Kenyan senior diplomat Bethuel Kiplagat said: “U.S. equates terrorism with Islam.” Many in Africa believe that AFRICOM aims, through the bases it purportedly intends to build on the continent, at keeping a sensing finger on the pulse of its Moslem population. African nations that acquiesced to hosting AFRICOM’s offices and personnel are seeing as inviting U.S. surveillance on their own citizenry. The numerous official visits of its commanding general, General William E. Ward, to African capitals were unsuccessful in dispelling African public’s skepticism of the alleged good will of the Bush administration.

 

From AFRICOM’s perspective, African nations are havens for terrorist training camps and smuggling routes. Their territories hide huge expanses of ungoverned spaces that Moslem terrorists and extremist groups use as regrouping bases from which attacks could be hatched and murderous teams could be launched. In recent years, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations expanded their operations to Africa where disenchanted youths make ideal recruits and former anti government entities rally with its cause. Maritime blind spots such as the Gulf of Guinea are ideal hiding places for smugglers and terrorists. They are poorly covered by a system the U.S. Navy uses worldwide to track ships. AFRICOM’s mission is to correct such shortcomings; the mission has installed equipment to reduce this “sea blindness, while instructors teach martial arts and leadership to host nation militaries. With its “soft power” programs, it tackles a litany of issues and supports a large spectrum of efforts to alleviate Africa’s crippling food and water shortages, to mend the shameful human rights track of its ineffective governments,  and to address its monumental medical problems. Over the past seven years, the U.S. aid to African nations tripled, reaching $9 billion annually.

The leadership of AFRICOM and its strategists saw an imminent need to deemphasize the command’s military might and lower its negative public profile and keep it away from controversy. They scaled down its ambitious initiative and devised a policy to bring forth the soft power of the Pentagon’s venture into the continent, thus easing its adjustment to the African political landscape. The policy calls for military elements supporting AFRICOM to engage in humanitarian missions; U.S. Army soldiers could be seeing vaccinating cattle in Nigeria and providing medical and dental assistance in remote villages in Morocco; U.S. Navy Seabees actively dug wells and built schools in Uganda. The U.S. military undertakes such activities alongside host nations’ militaries, which in the African public’s eye are seeing as a governmental oppression tool, to enhance the image of both. To improve global security and forge closer and stronger ties with its African allies, the policy launched a number of programs such as “Good Boat Diplomacy” and “Africa Partnership Station” which provides comprehensive training programs on maritime safety and security initiating African militaries to such complex operations as Vessel Boarding Search and Seizure (VBSS) and Oil platform take down.

 

While AFRICOM is champing at the bit to get moving, it is also bridling itself; its failure to seduce the African nations, to a certain extent, is self-inflicted. The security requirements and force protection measures outlined for U.S. overseas government installations are so draconian that they infringe with the sovereignty of the host nation. There are no overt U.S. installations abroad that are not collocated with a fortified embassy or consular complex, or heavily protected by a combat ready military element. This of course is in addition to the taxing security detail the host nation is forced to provide.

 

AFRICOM is also plagued with internal issues. It is designed to be a model for a new interagency structure that would coordinate “hard” and “soft” U.S. power. However, there is no government mechanism to create an interagency headquarters. USAID and other government development partners worried that the military will overshadow or take over their development programs that are already established in Africa. Aid groups protested plans to expend the military’s role in economic development programs in the continent. To soften a typically aggressive military approach and opting for a more deliberative tack, Gen. Ward is retooling AFRICOM military mission stirring it away from development and toward military focused programs such as peacekeeping, military, and counterterrorism training and education; the Pentagon also submitted to U.S. DoS that its personnel be given senior positions within the command; thus, U.S. Agency for International Development personnel were assigned to AFRICOM and a Senior DoS diplomat was assigned as one of two deputies under U.S. Army General Ward. The decision making power, however, will remain with the military.

 

Why are the U.S., China, and other powerful nations so interested in Africa today? Africa is a virgin territory in the world hegemony game. Its markets are coveted; its oil reserves yet to be exploited. Since the U.S. is the principle target of Moslem extremism today, AFRICOM prepares African nations to fight Islamic insurgents so it won’t have to. Ugandans, for instance, are being trained to go to Somalia to combat Islamic extremists.

 

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008