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