The Fall of Kurdistan

One of the most chilling parts of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate is its section on the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk. It noted that the Kurds are moving to cement their hold on the city, annexing it into the Kurdistan Regional Province against increasingly virulent opposition from the city's Arabs. It is becoming clear that the Kurds will never accept being part of a unified Iraq--their dream of an independent Kurdish nation cobbled together out of oil-rich Northern Iraq is a higher priority. If we wish to prevent Turkey from intervening in Northern Iraq (and thus adding an entirely new and bloody dimension to the conflict), we must do everything possible to discourage the Kurdish dream of an independent state while at the same time developing contingency plans for the fallout of a possible, even likely, partition.

The Kurdish desire for an ethnic state is understandable. Kurds have been a victimized people for the past 100 years. And the atrocities that weigh most on the Kurdish mind occurred even more recently-- in the last thirty years. Saddam Hussein infamously slaughtered 100,000 Kurds with military force and poison gas during the "Anfal" campaign in 1988. Since the dawn of modern Turkey, the Turkish government has carried out a campaign to erase the Kurdish identity, barring them from politics and banning the Kurdish language. And since the early eighties, Turkish armed forces have razed Kurdish villages and "disappeared" Kurds suspected of aiding enemies of the Turkish state.

Yet historical trauma alone does not explain the deep Kurdish distrust of Iraq's central government. Power struggles in the modern Middle East are best understood as winner-take-all contests between religious and ethnic communities. They are contests where the winners utterly dominate, bestowing patronage and official favor to members of their own groups. The losers face repression and persecution. Understandably, the Kurds do not want to be losers. They value their own survival more than allegiance to the abstract Iraqi nation-state, an entity designed by the British to guarantee access to oil.

Turkey has conducted many raids into northern Iraq against the Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK), a terrorist group. These raids serve a dual function: they attempt to deprive the terror group of its base of operations, and they signal the United States that it will not abide an independent Kurdish state. Obviously, the United States has not taken well to this intervention. Washington's envoy to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, has warned certain "third parties" not to interfere with Iraqi affairs. But all signs point to the fact that Turkey's patience is wearing thin. The Kurds have done little to dislodge the PKK from its base of operations in Northern Iraq, most likely out of sympathy for their aims, as the PKK claims to fight for the rights of Turkey's Kurds. As a result of PKK operations, over 30,000 people have died since 1984.

Additionally, changing political realities have lessened American influence in Turkey. The Brookings Institution notes that anti-Americanism has been "embraced by all segments of Turkish society." Among the more educated, there is a sense that American unilateralism in the Middle East has led to instability that has diminished Turkish security and threatened Turkish interests. This has been exacerbated by America's failure to bring the Kurds and the terrorists they harbor to heel. In fact, many Turks believe America's real goal is to encourage Iraqi partition in order to found an oil-rich Kurdish client state loyal to America. In the broader public there is a general suspicion as well that, like in all Middle Eastern states, the American "war on terrorism" is a war against Islam, most likely prosecuted for the benefit of Israel.

There is also a wider backlash in Turkey against the West arising from repeated Western criticisms of Turkey's human rights record and the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, an affront to the fiercely nationalistic Turks. Lastly, the 2003 "hood incident," where Turkish special forces units operating in Northern Iraq were captured by American troops, led away with hoods on their heads, and interrogated by American soldiers, was a deep affront to national honor that damaged U.S Turkish relations and even inspired a blockbuster Turkish action film, Valley of the Wolves Iraq. A fiercely anti-American movie, Valley of the Wolves Iraq's plot was built around the ironic spectacle of Turkish commandos taking bloody revenge on the American military in a classically American Hollywood fashion. It was Rambo II as written by Al Qaeda.

For these reasons, our leverage over the Turks has lessened. In a blunt news conference on January 12, 2007, Turkish Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan slapped aside Washington's admonition against interfering and warned that he will do "whatever is necessary to combat the terrorists."

Erdogan is in an election season and under heavy pressure, like all incumbents, to demonstrate to his voters that he is "tough" on terrorism. If Iraq degenerates further, a full-borne Turkish invasion of Kurdistan is a possibility. The Iraqi paper Al-Zaman noted that formations of the Turkish army have been put in place on the border and are frantically drilling in counterinsurgency tactics. Al-Zaman speculated darkly about a "winter offensive" against PKK positions in the coming months. However, this could be just a show of force designed to intimidate the United States and the Kurds to do something about the PKK.

Is there anything we can do to pressure the Kurds to avoid declaring independence? The unfortunate answer is that there is little we can really offer the Kurds to dissuade them from their course. The United States has laid the groundwork for Kurdish secession by allowing them virtual self-rule in Northern Iraq for 16 years. After the end of the Gulf War in 1991, an autonomous Kurdish region was created, protected by the American military. Since the 2003 collapse of Saddam Hussein's central government, the Kurdish safe haven in Northern Iraq has evolved into a fully-fledged mini-state, complete with a government, an army, and readily exploitable oil resources.

The Kurds have little to gain by joining an Iraqi government largely dominated by Shiite allies of Iran. Iran is also discouraging Kurdish independence. The Kurds also know that the Iraqi central government is weak and that domestic American support for the war in Iraq is fast declining. With no real incentive to submit, the Kurds will bide their time.

The United States must ultimately accept the inevitability of a Kurdish succession. The only thing that we can really do under the circumstances is attempt to minimize the fallout. We must let the Kurds know that the United States will not save them from Turkish wrath should they foolishly give it a pretext for invasion by harboring the PKK terrorists or otherwise encourage Turkey's Kurds to revolt. The Kurds, though headstrong, are pragmatic in one sense--in the event of a conventional civil war following an American withdrawal, they would be fighting against the Sunnis and the Shiite central government, and they do not need a third enemy. At the same time, the United States should also warn Turkey in strong terms that invading and occupying the Kurdish north will not be regarded as legitimate and would have extremely negative consequences for US-Turkish relations. Europe, whose Kurdish population rioted when PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was arrested, would also not be keen on the idea of a Turkish invasion. We still have some leverage over the Turks, but it is rapidly declining.

If all else fails (and it could), a Turkish invasion would be catastrophic, but manageable. Although they could indefinitely occupy Northern Iraq, Kurdistan would become a liability to them rather than an advantage. The Turks would not be able to employ the same chemical weapons and genocidal massacre tactics used by Saddam Hussein to pacify the Kurds, who would bitterly fight the Turks to the death with terrorist tactics. Public opinion both in Northern Iraq and the rest of the world would be against the Turks, and it's unclear whether the Turkish population's hawkish mood would survive a bruising counterinsurgency on foreign ground. It's also not inconceivable that the Shiite central government, with their own designs on Kurdistan's oil fields, could sponsor terrorist irregulars to strike in an attempt to get the Turks off Iraqi soil. The Turks would eventually leave Northern Iraq---because it's simply not valuable enough for them to expend the amount of resources it would take to perpetually occupy it.

Even in the event that an invasion does not occur, border clashes, guerrilla combat, and Turkish Special Forces infiltration are likely to occur. Turkey will do whatever possible to destabilize its neighbor. And the Kurds are likely to tolerate and even encourage some guerilla actions against Turkey as a means of deterring it from invasion. That is something that the U.S. can ultimately do little about--but some instability, albeit of the covert variety, is much better than the destabilizing effects of invasion and occupation.