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Φανή Πεταλίδου
Ιδρύτρια της Πρωινής
΄Έτος Ίδρυσης 1977
ΑρχικήEnglishThe Kurdish independence changes the entire Middle East

The Kurdish independence changes the entire Middle East

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The Iraqi Kurdish revenge and the effects of the Kurdish struggle for a sovereign nation

Kurds Voted. So Is the Middle East Breaking Up?

Pity the Kurds. Theirs is a history of epic betrayals. A century ago, the world reneged on a vow to give them their own state, carved from the carcass of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. The rugged mountain people were instead dispersed into the new states of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, with another block left in Iran. Since then, all three countries have repressed their Kurds. Saddam Hussein was so intent on Arabizing Iraq’s Kurdistan that he paid Arab families to unearth long-dead relatives and rebury them in Kurdish territory—creating evidence to claim Arab rights to the land. He also razed four thousand Kurdish villages and executed a hundred thousand of the region’s inhabitants, some with chemical weapons. Syria stripped its Kurds of citizenship, making them foreigners in their own lands and depriving them of rights to state education, property ownership, jobs, and even marriage. Turkey repeatedly—sometimes militarily—crushed Kurdish political movements; for decades, the Kurdish language was banned, as was the very word “Kurd” to describe Turkey’s largest ethnic minority. They were instead known as “mountain Turks.”

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Iraq’s Kurds got a bit of revenge this week. In a historic but controversial referendum, more than ninety per cent of voters endorsed a proposal to secede and declare their own country. “The partnership with Baghdad has failed and we will not return to it,” the President of Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, vowed on the eve of the poll. Jubilation erupted. Waving their distinctive flag—three stripes of red, white, and green, with a blazing golden sun in the center—Kurds across northern Iraq took to the streets.

The Kurdish vote reflects an existential quandary across the entire Middle East: Are some of the region’s most important countries really viable anymore? The world has resisted addressing the issue since the popular protests in 2011, known as the Arab Uprising, or Arab Spring, spawned four wars and a dozen crises. Entire countries have been torn asunder, with little to no prospect of political or physical reconstruction anytime soon. Meanwhile, the outside world has invested vast resources, with several countries forking out billions of dollars in military equipment, billions more in aid, and thousands of hours of diplomacy—on the assumption that places like Iraq, Syria, and Libya can still work as currently configured. The list of outside powers that have tried to shape the region’s future is long—from the United States and its European allies to the Russian-Iran axis and many of the Middle East’s oil-rich powers. All have, so far, failed at forging hopeful direction.

They’ve also failed to confront the obvious: Do the people in these countries want to stay together? Do people who identify proudly as Syrians, for example, all define “Syria” the same way? And are they willing to surrender their political, tribal, racial, ethnic, or sectarian identities in order to forge a common good and a stable nation?

The long-term impact of these destructive centrifugal forces is far from clear. But, given the blood spilled over the past six years, primordial forces seem to be prevailing at the moment, and not only among the Kurds. “The only people who want to hold Iraq together,” Lukman Faily, the former Iraqi ambassador to Washington, opined to me recently, “are those who don’t live in Iraq.” That sentiment is echoed, if not as concisely, elsewhere.

The challenge is addressing the flip side: If these countries, most of them modern creations, are dysfunctional or in danger of failing, what then will work to restore some semblance of normalcy to an ever more volatile region? No major player, in the region or the wider world, seems to be exploring solutions.

The vote this week is non-binding. A new Kurdish nation is far from a done deal. In his weekend address, Barzani said, “The referendum is not for defining borders or imposing a fait accompli. We want a dialogue with Baghdad to resolve the problems, and the dialogue can last one or two years.”

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The “problems” include control of “disputed zones,” notably oil-rich Kirkuk, which is claimed by both the Kurds and Iraq’s Arabs. Kirkuk is often described as the “Jerusalem of Iraq,” because of rival claims and disputed histories. It is also home to other minorities, complicating its political future. Since 2014, the city has been under Kurdistan’s control, after its Peshmerga militia saved Kirkuk from the isis blitz across northern Iraq. This spring, I drove through Kirkuk, in between visits to several Kurdish cities; the tension was palpable.

Iraq shows little interest in compromise with the Kurds. In a televised speech to the nation this week, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called the referendum “unconstitutional” and vowed to take all “necessary measures to preserve the unity of the country. Iraq will remain for all Iraqis. We will not allow it to become a possession of one or the other, and we will not permit anyone to play with Iraq and not pay the consequences.”

The U.S. and the international community also lobbied hard to prevent the Kurds from voting—and then refused to recognize the results. The United Nations warned of the “potentially destabilizing” effect across the Middle East. During Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign, he said he was “a big fan of the Kurdish forces.” But his Administration called the vote “provocative.” Both the U.N. and the U.S. dispatched top diplomats in a last-ditch alternative that included a “serious and sustained” dialogue on the Kurds’ future and potentially a more equitable power-sharing agreement among Iraq’s diverse communities.

After the polls closed, the Trump Administration said that it was “deeply disappointed.” The vote would “greatly complicate” the Kurds’ already precarious situation in the region, the State Department warned. “The fight against ISIS is not over, and extremist groups are seeking to exploit instability and discord,” it said. “The United States opposes violence and unilateral moves by any party to alter boundaries.”

One of the few voices of dissent was the New York senator Chuck Schumer, who called for creation of an independent Kurdish state “as soon as possible.” In a statement, he argued that “the United States should stand for self-determination for our strongest partners. The Kurds are one of the largest ethnic groups in the Middle East without a homeland and they have fought long and hard for one.”

The backlash from the leaders of countries with Kurdish minorities was ferocious. Turkey called the results “null and void,” and threatened to cut off vital routes for Kurdistan’s oil exports. Turkey and Iraq announced joint military drills along their frontiers bordering Kurdistan.

“If Barzani and the Kurdish regional government do not go back on this mistake as soon as possible, they will go down in history with the shame of having dragged the region into an ethnic and sectarian war,” the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said. “It will be over when we close the oil taps, all revenues will vanish, and they will not be able to find food when our trucks stop going to northern Iraq.”

Iran closed off its flights to Kurdistan. Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military official and adviser to the country’s Supreme Leader, described the referendum as treasonous. “Iran has blocked air traffic to this region, but we are hopeful that the four neighboring countries will block the land borders with Iraq, too,” he told an Iranian news agency.

The timing of the referendum was intentional. It exploited both the region’s chaos and its dependence on the Kurds to fight isis. The Kurdish Peshmerga, long famed for their skills as warriors, even when vastly outmanned and outgunned, have been the most pivotal force in the U.S.-backed campaigns in both Iraq and Syria. The Peshmerga stopped the isis blitz in 2014, which was headed for Baghdad. They were pivotal in retaking huge chunks of the Islamic State and, this spring, in retaking Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. In Syria, the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces have been the most reliable and effective party in the current campaign to retake Raqqa, the Islamic State’s pseudo-capital.

But the Kurds also have their own problems in forging a new state. They are not, in fact, one united people. They have rival political parties and competing ideologies. They have different tribal affiliations and diverse world views. Some are steeped in traditional clans, politics, and ways of life, reflected in their trademark baggy trousers, wide sashes, and unique turbans; others have adapted Western ways, wardrobes, and ideas. Kurds don’t all speak the same dialect.

Kurds have even fought each other, notably in Iraq, when the rival Peshmerga militias loyal to the two main parties fought a mini-civil war in the mid-nineteen-nineties. While the outcome of this week’s vote was overwhelming, the turnout also indicated that not all Kurds agreed with the way the independence issue has been handled—or how it might benefit one Kurdish party, namely the Barzani clan, over others. For an issue at the very heart of Kurdish nationalism for a century, only seventy-two per cent of Kurds voted. And there were tens of thousands of spoiled ballots—for a vote that involved answering only one question.

The Kurds have their own place in history. But they are also, effectively, a miniature version of the type of discord that plagues the Arab world.

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