Kurds

Iraq continues to bedevil American foreign policy, and the world. Now the Kurds will vote on their own state.

Syria’s civil war is being fought on multiple fronts by an array of combatants whose alliances, capabilities, and in some cases motives have been in flux.

The war between the military and Kurdish insurgents is really a conflict over what it means to be a citizen of Turkey. That’s why there’s no end in sight to the bloodshed.

Not quiet on the Kurdish front.

The myriad alliances and rivalries between Turkey, the United States, and the Kurds of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey are complicating U.S.-Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East.

This is a post in a new series on the Development Channel,“This Week in Markets and Democracy.” Each week, CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Program will highlight noteworthy events and articles. Free Trade vs. Human Rights? Malaysia, TIP, and the TPP On Monday, the U.S. State Department released its Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, an annual guide to how countries measure up in combatting the $150 billion global trafficking industry. The TIP report is known for its tier-based ranking system: Tier 1 (best) to Tier 3 (worst). Already the State Department is getting flak from Congressional leaders and human rights advocates for its controversial upgrade of Malaysia–moved from Tier 3 to a Tier 2 ‘Watch List.’ The report justifies Malaysia’s rise due to an increasing number of trafficking investigations and a widespread public awareness campaign, but critics point to evidence that migrants are still “trafficked and abused with impunity.” Many believe the upgrade reflects political expediencies related to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, as the recently passed Trade Promotion Authority excludes Tier 3 countries from fast-tracked agreements. The controversy calls into question whether the TIP report prioritized politics over principles. Turkey Targets Kurds–Does Democracy Suffer? My colleague Steven Cook writes this week that the deepening U.S. and Turkish cooperation to fight ISIS creates a foreign policy “quagmire” for the United States. He worries that Turkey is using a U.S. military partnership as cover to target the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)–the Kurdish nationalist movement with a presence in both Iraq and Turkey. Viewing the PKK as a major political and security threat, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has detained hundreds of Kurds and blocked pro-Kurdish websites for “promoting terrorist propaganda.” Critics accuse Erdogan of exploiting anti-Kurdish sentiment to gain political advantage after his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in June’s elections. Though potentially a political winner for Erdogan in snap elections this fall, anti-Kurdish nationalism represents a step back for Turkey’s democratic progress. All this makes Turkey an uneasy partner for the United States and its own foreign policy goals. Cardin’s Anti-Corruption Agenda Before Congress recesses in August, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Democrat Ben Cardin is pushing two anti-corruption measures. The first–the bipartisan Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act–expands on a Russia-specific sanctions law (named for whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky) to make corruption a sanctionable offense globally. It allows the president to deny or revoke visas and freeze assets of foreign individuals responsible for “significant acts” of corruption and “gross” human rights violations. Championed by rights groups, the re-introduced bill made it through committee on Wednesday. Also this week, Senator Cardin called out the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for failing to implement section 1504 of Dodd-Frank, five years after the financial regulation passed. Known as the Cardin-Lugar amendment, 1504 requires extractives companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to disclose payments made to foreign governments, allowing citizens and NGOs to track oil revenue from multinationals such as Exxon, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. As the United States stalls, 30 other countries have adopted similar laws.

Upheaval in the Middle East presents both challenges and opportunities for the 30 million Kurds living in the region. The newest InfoGuide outlines these dynamics, their historical underpinnings, and how they could reshape the Middle East.

Erbil had a weird feel to it this week.  The euphoria that came when the Kurd’s military, known as the peshmerga, took over Kirkuk on June 11 has not exactly faded, but reality is making people nervous.  The Kurds have never had it so good, but it is all relative, and the Kurds may be getting ahead of themselves which could lead to disaster. The chaotic dissolution of Iraq creates an environment for an independent Kurdistan in Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah provinces to emerge.  The mad rush of the peshmerga down to the city of Kirkuk two weeks ago has created a new fact on the ground.  Kirkuk, which is disputed among Kurds, Arab, and Turkmen, is central to the Kurds’ national narrative. When I was in Sulaymaniyah last fall, one Kurdish interlocutor told me that without Kirkuk there can be no Kurdistan.  Not everyone feels that way, of course, but the status of Kirkuk is an emotional issue, especially since Saddam Hussein tried so hard to alter its demographic balance to strengthen Arab claims to the city.  As a result, the Kurds have declared that Kirkuk is not subject to negotiation.  Lest anyone have any doubts about Kurdish resolve on the issue, not long after moving into the city the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs, Kurdistan’s nascent Ministry of Defense, stated:   The entire Kurdish territories outside Kurdistan Region were [sic] now in the hands of the Kurdish forces….the Kurdish troops have no intention of leaving the area.  We are here to stay... Basically, all Kurdish villages and localities are now protected by the Peshmerga forces.   The Kurds estimate that after some work done on the oil fields in the area, they could eventually export 800,000 barrels of oil a day to fund their state in the making.  Over the objections of both Baghdad and Washington, who remain committed to the Iraqi constitution, which grants the central government control over energy exports, the Kurds began exporting oil through Turkey. Despite the likelihood that the Iraqi government will seek legal damages against the KRG and its clients, the Kurds have sold the four tankers full of oil that they have put on the market.  They have a long way to go, of course.  At the moment, they are exporting 125,000 barrels per day, but they need to do five times that volume in order to make up for the revenue they will lose in the break from Baghdad.  Legal action or not, the Kurds have opened an export channel that they will only expand in the coming months. The control of Kirkuk and the successful sale of Kurdish oil have unburdened the Kurds. When the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, told Christiane Amanpour that it was the time of Kurds’ “national self-determination” it was not terribly different from what he or other Kurdish officials had said in the past, but he also made a point of emphasizing “new realities.” These new realities are the collapse of Iraq, its military, and U.S. influence in the country.  The Kurds, especially Barzani, also have a good relationship with Turkey, which has its own concerns about Kurdish independence, but that pales in comparison to the threat that ISIS nihilism poses.  The Kurds claim that they are willing to work with a new Baghdad government so long as they can be assured that new leaders are committed to federalism and Kurdish rights are protected.  These are just words, however.  The Kurds can make these demands knowing they will never be fulfilled. Declaring that they are no longer pawns in someone else’s game, Erbil now believes it has the wherewithal to play as well. For all the confidence in Erbil, the Kurds have a host of significant problems that seriously complicate the establishment of an independent Kurdistan.  The Kurds have enjoyed something that looks a lot like a state for the past three decades, but they have never actually had the responsibilities of a state.  Even as they railed against Baghdad for routinely bilking them out of large amounts of the 17 percent share of government revenue they were supposed to receive, they were still dependent on the central government.  The answer is obviously oil revenues, which are promising, but it is clear that with legal challenges and capacity issues, it is no panacea.  The Kurds will be living hand-to-mouth for quite some time. There is a lot of oil and a fair number of Western oil guys hanging around the Divan and Rotana hotels, but beyond that there seems to be very little economic activity in Kurdistan.  Erbil is notable for its half-finished construction sites, including a shell of what is slated to be a JW Marriott and some of those exclusive have-it-all-in-one-place developments that cater to expats and super wealthy locals all around the Middle East.  The Kurds clearly envision Erbil to be the next Dubai, but it is not even Amman yet.  There are shops and some good restaurants, but no real banks to finance development. Other than oil, the Kurds do not produce much of anything. If there was ever an indication of Kurdish economic vulnerability, it was the immense lines for gas at Kurdish petrol stations.  Last Sunday, one line in Erbil stretched for two miles.  Even though the Kurds have refineries in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, they remain dependent on the much larger Iraqi refinery in Baji, which has (or has not) fallen to ISIS and its allies.  A number of years ago there was a lot of breathless commentary about how the Turks were building Kurdistan. The Turks are in the Kurdish areas in large numbers, but the construction boom—which is their specialty—seems to have ground to a halt.  If you want to buy Turkish crackers and cookies or a Turkish-manufactured air conditioning unit it is no problem, but the availability of Turkish consumer goods says nothing about the real economy, which does not seem to exist. One can, of course, imagine the development of a sustainable Kurdish economy over a long period.  There is a more fundamental significant challenge to Kurdish goals, however. Writing at Nick Kristof’s New York Times blog last week, Cale Salih put her finger on it:  Since 1991, Kurds have been of Iraq, but they have not been in Iraq.  Consequently, they built an island of stability that generally works, especially in comparison to the rest of the country, which suffered terribly under Saddam and in the decade since the U.S. invasion.  That is not to say that there have not been problems.  Late last September, terrorists attacked the headquarters of the KRG’s intelligence arm, Asayish, in Erbil.  In December, there was a similar attack in Sulaymaniyah.  Overall, however, Kurdistan has been spared the blood-letting of the rest of Iraq. With the fall of large sections of Iraq to ISIS and its Baathist partners, the Kurds are suddenly vulnerable.  No one wants neighbors like Abu Bakr al Baghdadi or Izzat Ibrahim al Duri—who allegedly leads the Baathist push against Maliki—but that is now part of the Kurds’ reality.  They know that they will have to fight at some point and nothwithstanding the near universal respect for the peshmerga, they have old and unreliable Russian equipment. No one is worried about the fall of Erbil, but when the Kurds have encountered ISIS and its partners in and around Kirkuk, it has been a fight. In a twist that only politics in Iraq and the politics of the American invasion and its aftermath could produce, the Kurdistan Regional Government has been under an American arms embargo.  Washington has not wanted to do anything to that could be interpreted as supporting the partition of Iraq so it was willing to give all kinds of weapons to the Iraqi military under someone as unreliable and incompetent as Nouri al Maliki, but not the Kurds.  Rumor was that Barzani’s first request (even demand) of Secretary John Kerry in their meeting on Tuesday in Erbil was for American arms.  Given the new realities that the Kurds face, they should get them.  The future of Iraq is no future at all. It is one of chaos and violence.  That is probably not the new reality to which Massoud Barzani (and every other Kurdish official) has been referring to, but that is precisely what they are confronting. It is hard not to be sympathetic to the Kurds.  They have accomplished much despite the very real conspiracies against them.  The end of Iraq makes it a lot harder for their opponents to continue to deny the Kurds the independence they want. Yet as RUSI’s Michael Stephens commented to me over coffee at the pretty solid O’Caffe in the Ainkawa area of Erbil, “the Kurds want to run before they can actually walk.”  You cannot blame them.  They have suffered much in the last century.  Still, it seems that the appropriate response of the United States is to help the Kurds instead of hindering them.  Washington has it so upside down in Iraq that only the Obama administration and the Maliki government remain opposed to Kurdish independence. The Turks and Iranians may not like it, but right now Ankara actually grudgingly accepts the idea and the Iranians may be too busy trying to save their interests in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq to care very much.  It is time to give up the fiction that somehow a more inclusive government in Baghdad is actually possible, though I understand why the Obama administration cannot.  To do so would be to acknowledge that the arguments that Secretary Kerry put to Massoud Barzani about the downsides of independence are meaningless.  Yes, it is better to be part of a wealthy Iraq than an independent Kurdistan, but a unified Iraq does not exist. To accept reality as it is would also run contrary to what seems to have been the most important aspect of U.S. Iraq policy to the White House: preventing the country from breaking up as long as President Obama is president.  

My research associate, Alex Brock, is in Cairo getting some well-deserved rest.  I thought you would be interested in his thoughts on recent developments in Egypt.  Enjoy. Cairo, Egypt—I waited, and waited, checking Twitter.  I stopped by Tahrir Square a few times, figuring if anything would happen it would be there.  Some BBC employees staged a moment of silence, but that was in London. There was nothing in Cairo after a court convicted three Al Jazeera journalists and sentenced them to 7-10 years in prison.  Just silence.  The Twittersphere went crazy over the verdicts while the rest of Egypt went about its business.  The political turmoil in Egypt has become a fight between elites, while the rest of the country seems to want some sense of normalcy. Egypt has come full circle: the old regime has resumed control of the country and the majority of Cairenes seem to be OK with it.  The days of making large sacrifices for the sake of political freedoms appear to be over. Egypt is exhausted.  The familiarity of the old order and the stability it promises is to many Egyptians progress, especially compared  to the instability that has dominated the time since Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011.  This is how the old guard has managed to establish political support when on the eve of the January 25 uprising it had none. There is also the intimidation factor. The tourism police, who used to carry semi-automatic weapons equipped with blank clips merely to create a sense of security for foreigners, are now replaced with police with fully functional semi-automatic weapons, backed up by sandbags, blast walls, barbed wire, and the like. To be sure, these preparations are largely a response to the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters some of whom the regime accuses of conducting attacks in Cairo since former president Mohammed Morsi was ousted. But it also seems to send a clear message that organized dissent in the form of protests will not be tolerated. Even those who do have strong opinions about the verdicts fear the repercussions should they organize and go out into the streets, thereby breaking the anti-protest law. Al-Sisi also gave his implicit endorsement of the court’s decision when he telephoned Justice Minister Mahfouz Saber to express his intention not to interfere with the judicial branch’s authority, ruling out the possibility of a presidential pardon and implying that he would not accept strong opposition from the public. This Egypt is the Egypt I knew when I lived here in 2006-2007, and again in 2009-2010. There is not the constant buzz of political chatter that I overheard everywhere during a visit in November 2012.  Where previously there would have been debate and protest, now Egyptians express only some head-shaking embarrassment when pressed for an opinion about the Al Jazeera verdicts. They once again seem to accept the worst excesses of their government in the service of stability.  This backsliding is stunning given the fervor for political change in the post-Mubarak period. There also seem to be a lot of Egyptians who believe that the defendants Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy, and Baher Mohamed, are, “guilty by association” because of Egyptians’ deep suspicion of Al Jazeera more generally.  It does not matter to them whether the journalists did what they are accused of doing.  The mere fact that they work for Al Jazeera, which many Egyptians believe supports the Muslim Brotherhood in its efforts to undermine the political process and worse, makes them guilty of something deserving of long prison sentences. Stability, familiarity, and some sense of order have all now become the priorities of Cairenes. Shop owners want to be able actually to open their doors for customers without the fear of a riot disrupting their transactions yet again; travel agencies and tour companies are nostalgic for the days when the world did not fear traveling to Egypt to see the Great Pyramids of Giza, or the countless monuments in Luxor and Abu Simbel, or to enjoy the beaches in Sharm al-Sheikh and Dahab. Al-Sisi benefits from this reorientation of the public’s priorities. Given his military background, Egyptians reason that the new president will be able to bring stability. Even if a strong hand is successful in bringing order, it will not likely last, however.   Force will ultimately produce more instability in the country when the demands for freedom of expression and assembly that were the impetuses for the uprising in 2011 begin anew as they almost certainly will. But for the time being, it seems that Egyptians are more than happy to return to the predictability of everyday life that once was a source of discontent and frustration.  

Significant Middle East Developments Syria. The United Nations Security Council established the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria on Saturday, increasing the number of ceasefire monitors there from thirty to three hundred. UN special envoy Kofi Annan subsequently urged the Security Council on Tuesday to deploy the expanded unarmed military mission rapidly. However, the head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous, said it will take a month to deploy the first one hundred monitors. French foreign minister Alain Juppe announced on Wednesday that he would push for the deployment of the entire three hundred person contingent within two weeks. Juppe also suggested that France would push for Security Council action under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter if Assad’s government does not fully implement the Annan peace plan by early May. Meanwhile, an explosion ripped through a residential building in Hama on Thursday killing at least sixteen Syrian civilians. The opposition blamed government shelling for the deaths while Syrian state media accused terrorists of bombing the building. Iraq. Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, warned on Wednesday that Kurdish voters may consider secession if Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite bloc do not agree to share power by September. He said that Iraq’s unity is threatened by Maliki’s "dictatorship and authoritarian rule." Barzani’s comments followed earlier remarks on Sunday in which he expressed his concerns that Maliki might use F-16 warplanes against Iraqi Kurdistan, saying "We must either prevent him from having these weapons, or if he has them, he should not stay in his position.” Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr arrived in Kurdistan on Thursday in an attempt to help resolve the situation. Noteworthy U.S. Foreign Policy Developments Yemen. The White House has granted the CIA and the U.S. military greater leeway to target suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen with drones, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The shift in policy, confirmed by senior officials, is a significant expansion of the drone war against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), considered to be the most active affiliate of the terrorist network. Until now, drone strikes were only allowed against known terrorist leaders whose names were on CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) lists. The expanded authority will allow the CIA and JSOC to target lower-level terrorist operatives whose names may not be known but whose militant activities suggest the presence of an important operative or the intention to attack U.S. interests. Quotes of the Week                   "The Sinai is turning into a kind of Wild West which…terror groups from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al-Qaida, with the aid of Iran, are using to smuggle arms, to bring in arms, to mount attacks against Israel." – Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking on Israel Radio Tuesday "The Russians and Chinese, and the Iranians must understand that this man is finished and they cannot defend him. They must persuade him to leave power and hand over to his deputy.” – Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki quoted by the regional Arab newspaper Al-Hayat Tuesday "Turkey tried to restructure the geopolitics in the region on the basis of getting everybody together to focus on the economy—now we’re at a point where we see major sectarianism and we need to step back." – Iraqi vice president Tariq al-Hashemi speaking on Wednesday in Istanbul   While We Were Looking Elsewhere Jordan. Jordan’s prime minister Awn Khasawneh suddenly resigned today after barely six months in office. Khasawneh, an International Court of Justice judge, was appointed by King Abdullah to bring about political reforms. His proposed election law has drawn sharp criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the IAF, which criticized the limitation on seats that could be won by political parties. In a letter announcing the move, Abdullah said that reforms in Jordan are not moving ahead apace. Meanwhile, press reports indicated that Khasawneh was unhappy at the limitations placed on his authority as prime minister. The king announced the appointment of Fayez Tarawneh, who previously served as prime minister in the 1990s, to once again serve in that post. Egypt. Egypt’s election commission reversed its decision to ban former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq on Wednesday, allowing him to be included in the finalized list of thirteen candidates that was released today. Shafiq had been disqualified on Tuesday after the military council approved a new law passed by parliament that banned from public office anyone who had served as vice president or prime minister in the last ten years of Mubarak’s rule. Campaigning for the presidency will formally begin on April 30, and the first round of elections will take place on May 23 and 24. Bahrain. Riot police employed tear gas against protesters on Tuesday, dispersing the crowd before it could reach Pearl Square in Manama. The protests came a day after the funeral of a young man who had been found dead on Saturday night after clashes between demonstrators and security forces on the eve of Bahrain’s Formula One race. The unrest intensified in the week leading up to the race, and has continued to escalate over the worsening condition of imprisoned activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja who has been on a hunger strike. A bomb explosion in the village of Diraz wounded four police officers on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland issued a statement condemning all violence and urging restraint. UAE-Iran. In the latest round of tension between the UAE and Iran over the disputed island of Abu Musa, the Iranian parliament announced plans on Monday to establish a new province with Abu Musa as its capital. Vali Esmayeeli, a member of the Iranian parliament’s Councils and Interior Policy Commission told Fars News Agency that the new province would be named the Persian Gulf Province. Abu Musa, in addition to the Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb, are at the center of a UAE-Iranian territorial dispute. On Tuesday, Sharjah ruler Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi pledged to provide a ship to provide safe and reliable transportation between the UAE and Abu Musa. This Week in History This week marks the nineteenth anniversary of the first parliamentary elections to take place in a unified Yemen. The election resulted in a three-part coalition composed of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s People’s General Congress (GPC), the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), which had previously governed southern Yemen, and Islah, the Islamist opposition party. The election was hailed at the time by the National Democratic Institute for establishing Yemen as “the most democratically developed and stable Arab state…worthy of study and emulation.” However, the coalition broke apart less than a year later and the country was consumed by a short civil war that resulted in the defeat of the southern forces and the consolidation of power in the hands of Saleh and some of his supporters. Statistic of the Week The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported on Tuesday that over six thousand Syrians have registered with the agency in Jordan over the last month. The total number of Syrians registered as refugees has exceeded twelve thousand, and UNHCR expects that figure to rise to fifteen thousand by the end of April. A spokesperson for UNHCR said that the agency has only received $15.6 million out of the eighty-four million dollars it requested for support services for Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq.