Per this article, the Iraqi Kurds, emboldened by their strong showing in the election, want to maintain a level of autonomy that equals or exceeds that which they enjoyed under no-fly protection during the reign of Saddam. To quote Massoud Barzani…
I take it some the Kurdish leadership aren’t all that interested in a Federation at all, but may tolerate it if it affords them almost complete military, economic and cultural separation from Arab Iraq. Not much of a Federation.
I won’t rehash all the reasons why this sort of language causes neighboring countries, most notably Turkey, great consternation. Suffice to say, the emergence of a politically self-determined, veritably sovereign or de facto sovereign Kurdistan, is going to be a major bone of contention both in and out of Iraq.
One of the stated goals of invading Iraq and setting up a democracy was to stabilize the region. Some have posited that Balkanization of Iraq will do anything but, as it will lead inevitably to ethinic cleansing within Iraq, and increased ethnic strife in neighboring Kurdish regions in other countries.
Did the Bush Admin/Neocons forsee this eventuality, and if so, what’s the plan to deal with it? Should they simply leave the matter alone? Is the assumption that the Kurds will accept a federalist approach in a more orthodox sense, and hence dire predictions of Balkanization (with its attendant attrocities) are typical left-wing distortions and pessimism? What does Bushco really want for the Kurds, and do those goals fit with the reality on the ground, in addition to the desire for a peaceful and democratic Iraq?
I don’t often sympathize with President Bush, but he got handed a can of worms on this issue. The Kurdish situation is about as close as being impossible to settle as a person could imagine. On the one hand you’ve got the Kurds, who have definitely shown they want to form a sovereign nation. On the other side, you’ve got Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and other regional powers, who are completely opposed to the formation of a sovereign Kurdistan. Whichever way the situation goes will probably further de-stabilize the region. Good luck on this one, George.
My presumption is not only did they forsee this, it is exactly what they are hoping for. Then again, if the only choices on the last presidential ballot were Bush and Satan, I’d have voted for Satan.
The Kurds have had defacto autonomy for a decade, and Turkey didn’t implode then. I don’t see what the difference would be if they continue to have a similar amount of autonomy.
It sure is. See this post in the Iraq election thread for the bits of the transistional law that attempt to defuse the kurd problem. Neither the Kurds or the Shiites have enough votes to change that document without the other, but if they try, they could easily bring down the government. It does look like the shiites intend to try eliminating “the kurdish veto” set out in Article 61 section C.
That’s kind of what I’ve been thinking. I sympathize with the Turks – the prospect of having a sovreign nation right on their borders that has the exact same ethnic makeup of a large portion of their citizenry, some of whom have behaved in ways that are definitely terroristic, is pretty scary. I imagine they fear an independent Kurdistan would be a constant source of trouble until and unless they ceded the lands now occupied to Turkish Kurds to said independent Kurdistan. OTOH, maybe if they gave all their current Kurds the option to move to the Kurdistan in Iraq, maybe that would cut down on the terrorism levels.
Knotty problem, as noted, and I don’t think Bush gives a flip as long as he has the Kurds as friends. Problem is, how long can he keep both the Kurds and Turks as friends, given that their interests are almost diametrically opposed?
Bush could provide military aid to Turkey such that the chaos in Iraq stays within Iraq. The idea is to create ethnic strife within Iraq. Bush’s goal wasn’t to save Iraq, but to destroy it.
There is a very interesting article in today’s NYT Sunday magazine on the subject of the Kurds. My NYT registration is not working for some reason, so I can’t link to it. But just go to the NYT home page and select “magazine”. There’s also quite a bit about the Turkmen in that region, too.
My position is that this was done as a power grab in an economically vital region. If the goal is just democracy and stability, aren’t there an awful lot of other places on Earth US troops should be sent to? It isn’t like Iraq was invading other countries, or even had weapons of mass destruction that this was a major worry.
But if things do become stable in Iraq, then the US troops will no longer need to be there to control it. By arranging to keep things unstable, the US can stay around indefinitely. Stability can’t possibly be a reason for why the US invaded Iraq. The country was stable under Saddam before we invaded. As for the idea of bringing democracy to Iraq, I don’t believe for a second that is a US priority. If democracy is the US goal, then why hasn’t the US invaded other Middle Eastern countries that aren’t democracies? Heck, the US was happy to support Saddam the dictator while he was advancing US interests.
Thereby saving us money. Where’s the payoff in an indefinitely prolonged occupation?
Stable – but under the control of a dictator who had a grudge against the U.S.
I still don’t understand what you mean when you say Bush’s goal all along was to “destroy” Iraq. What would be the benefit, from his POV or the neocons’ POV or the American people’s POV, of one of the world’s major oil-producing nations degenerating into a Lebanon the size of California?
That this guarantees that whoever will end up ruling Iraq won’t act hostile to US interests. Surely many Iraqis want revenge against the US for the invasion.
Correct. The US aim in Iraq isn’t stability, but domination.
I mean destroy Iraq as a nation, and make it more like a US possession.
Like the Philippines were? That’s impossible. I mean, it might be materially possible to kill all the insurgents and pound the rest of the people into submission like we did with the Filipinos, but it’s politically impossible. We can’t sell plain old “white man’s burden” colonial imperialism any more. To claim Iraq as a success, Bush has to be able to point to a country that is internally at peace and has at least the semblance of independent self-government.