What are the chances of an independent homeland for the Kurds emerging?
The news is that the Kurdish government in northern Iraq is to hold a referendum about independence (I wonder where they got that idea from.) Sadly they face great opposition from the government of Iraq and just about every country in the neighbourhood. The Kurds fought the Saddam regime with the US and are doing a lot of the fighting against ISIS with US support.
Will they get their own independent country? Will the US and the West support them?
Given that Kurdish areas span from Turkey to Iran, Iraq and even Syria, and given the way these things go in the Middle East, I’d bet giving one section independence probably would lead to civil wars in three other nations.
This is one battle the U.S. needs to stay the hell out of.
It’s possible and I hope so, but it’s definitely complicated. The Iraqi government is in no position to shut them down, really. Their only hope would be international involvement on their side, but I don’t see that happening. I think Turkey has signaled a willingness to accept an independent Kurdistan on the condition that they make no claim to any Turkish territory and don’t aid Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Turkey being a NATO member, that would likely be a red line for the US as well. Syria, being embroiled in civil war, is in no position to have much of an opinion. Iran is kind of a wild card, but they have zero interest in supporting the Iraqi government per se (and Iranian help probably wouldn’t be sought or welcomed by Iraq). I do think the Kurds of Iraq/newly-independent Kurdistan could accept a bargain with Turkey, hard as it may be, and maybe they’ll accept an agreement, perhaps unspoken, not to intrude on Iran in return for Iranian uninvolvement.
Where it gets messy is Syria. Kurds currently control an area of northern Syria. They are not really affiliated with the Kurdish authorities in Iraq, but I could definitely see the two attempting to join together. Turkey may even support such a move as a way of undermining Assad and turning Kurdistan into more of a buffer state for them. However, that risks getting the Russians involved.
Turkey absolutely opposes any Kurdish independence. They fear (rightly so) that an independent Kurdistan would inflame Kurdish separatism in Turkey and provide a base for the separatists.
Iran definitely has an interest in supporting Iraq’s government. They have provided significant support and ground troops for the campaign against ISIS. They probably don’t want to see an independent Kurdistan either as they have their own Kurdish minority, though it is small.
It’s hard to see Kurdistan gaining their independence All of their neighbors oppose it and no one really backs them. Even if they did, what meaningful support can be delivered? Anything would have to go through Tukey, Iraq, Iran, or Syria.
Iraqi Kurdistan controls some of the Iraqi oil fields. But it is dependent on a pipeline to get it out to market and that runs through Turkey. Turkey will let the oil flow as long as they get a cut, knowing that they can cut the pipe at any time to get a political point across, if they have to. The Turkish Kurdish groups disapprove of this dependency and the pipeline has been attacked several times. Turkey may yet tolerate an Iraqi Kurdistan, it gives them a lever against the Kurds in Syria and Turkey.
The position of Iran is interesting, they are supporting the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIS (an area of overlap with the US policy). But the Iraqi government has claim to the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan and especially the oil fields of Kirkuk. Iran also has its own Kurdish minority that it does not want to encourage.
I am wondering what is the position of the US in all of this. The Kurds supported the fight against Saddam and are an important military force in the fight against IS in Iraq and Syria, supported by the US and West. But this conflicts with US support for the Iraqi government if it supports a complete break from the Iraqi state.
The Iraqi Kurds are planning a referendum later in September on whether they should press for independence (I wonder where they got that idea from.) Obviously, they are pressing their case and seeking international support while Iraq is still weak.
There’s been at least one other thread on this subject. But here is the my 2 cents on the matter…
IMO encouraging the current “defacto” independence situation is an incredibly bad idea for the international community. It is basically just setting up the region for the next war.
The current situation is tolerated both in Iraq and Syria, because both countries are complete shitshows right now and the central government (if it can be called that) has enough other problems to deal with. So they are prepared to put up with a Kurdish region that behaves like an independent country (or in the case of Syria are in no position to do anything about it, having long since lost control of that region).
But the fact is both countries will most likely end up with a functioning central government of some form, commanding a vaguely competent military (that simply because of the resources available will be much more powerful than anything the Kurdish region can muster). And that central government, regardless of the form it has, is very unlikely to tolerate an semi-independent region within their borders. So at that point, having just emerged from many years of war, they will plunged back into another one.
So personally I think the international government should be encouraging full independence or full integration into Iraq (hard to encourage this in Syria, as the country of Syria has basically ceased to exist). Anything else is just setting up the next war, and certainly as when the British carved up the middle east.
Emphasis added. That’s potentially a little misleading - there are more Kurds in Iran than Iraq. It’s just a significantly smaller proportion of Iran’s population, which is much larger than Iraq’s. Similarly the proportion is nearly as high in Syria as Iran, but the numbers are much, much less than Iran’s due to Syria’s much smaller population.
Basically excluding those is diaspora ( one or two million ), very roughly half of all Kurds live in Turkey, a quarter in Iran, a fifth in Iraq and about one twentieth in Syria. They speak at least five mutually unintelligible “Kurdish” languages ( Kurmanji, Sorani, Pehlewani + Zaza and Gorani, the last two spoken by people who self-identify as Kurds, but are not considered Kurdish languages per se ), with numerous dialects.
Hence any independent Kurdistan comprising only Iraq would be excluding about 4/5 of all Kurds.
Iraq was dominated by the Saddam and Sunnis. When the US intervened, the Shi’ites became stronger, but the Iraqi army, which was dominated by Sunnis weakened considerably and IS sprang from disaffected officers who had served under Saddam. The Iraqi army is now supported by the Iranians and their troops are doing a lot of the fighting with IS. The Iraqi Kurds are the other group fighting IS and they receive a lot of support from the US.
How will it end when IS is defeated? Support for Kurdistan could be part of the answer if they had a settlement with Turkey. A Kurdish state might be a counter balance to Iranian influence in Iraq, but its economy would be vulnerable to pipeline politics. There is also the Russian factor, should the US abandon the Kurds, as it did after the first Gulf War.
The more the develop their economy and stabilise their politics, the more attractive they become to outside powers interested in securing an oil deal. But they need an alliance that would ensure their security. Only the US or Russia could do that.
That has been there since their inception as a nation (in fact for a long time prior to that during British rule) and there is a big difference between lawless tribal region and a de-facto nation with it’s own government in their territory (to see how well that goes, see Biafra, Goa, Chechnya, etc. etc.)