BAGHDAD — Kirkuk is on war footing as the Kurdish peshmerga on one hand and a combination of Iraqi army units and Shiite militias on the other face off over the disputed, oil-rich city. The fighting, should the skirmishes around the city’s outskirts escalate into something more, will be a catastrophe for Kirkuk and, more broadly, Iraqi Kurdistan.
The tragedy, of course, is it didn’t have to be this way.
Analysts have long recognized Kirkuk as a flashpoint. Not only is Kirkuk oil-rich — oil wells flare from within sight of both Kirkuk’s historic citadel and the governor’s mansion — but it is also one of Iraq’s most diverse regions. In May 2001, I interviewed the late Jalal Talabani who, at the time, controlled one of Iraqi Kurdistan’s two main political parties. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein still ruled territory just a few dozen miles away.
At the time, I was just one of three or four Americans in the region. Neither of us could imagine that within just a couple years, tens of thousands of American troops would occupy Iraq, Talabani himself would become Iraq’s president, and Saddam would be on his way to the gallows.
During that interview, Talabani spoke about the importance of Kirkuk as a major sticking point preventing any real rapprochement with Baghdad. He declared, “There are no grounds for a political relationship with Baghdad,” and explained, “Take Kirkuk, for example, the ‘Jerusalem of Kurdistan.’ We cannot compromise on control of it.” That lack of compromise was rooted in Kurdish anger at the Saddam-era ethnic cleansing of the city.
Kurds, and indeed most non-Kurdish Kirkukis, celebrated Saddam’s fall. When I worked briefly for the Pentagon in 2003-2004, I witnessed family reunifications among residents from across the religious and ethnic spectrum as the veil of tyranny was lifted. But, I also saw Kurdish leaders skew the historic narrative.
Traditionally, it was the Turkmen, not the Kurds, who were the urban and intellectual elite in Kirkuk. Those Kurds from the city whom Saddam expelled only to replace with Arabs were mostly tenants, not property owners. The situation was different in the rich agricultural countryside surrounding the city, where Saddam’s thugs forced Kurdish farmers to flee from their land. That said, the narrative embraced by Kurdish leaders of a desire to return a Kurdish city to Kurdish control was woefully simplistic.
Initially, Kurdish leaders mishandled Kirkuk and, indeed, many other disputed areas. Rather than convince residents that they were better governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government than Baghdad, they embraced Kurdish chauvinism. They rightly sought justice for displaced Kurds, but failed to understand how their efforts played against other communities. Some Arabs had lived in and around Kirkuk for three or more generations, and so they looked at Kurdish moves as no better than what Saddam had done, especially when Kurdish leaders failed to distinguish between old and new Arab families.
Even local Kurds from Kirkuk and nearby disputed areas complained: Both Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were patronage-based if not tribally based, and so the expansion of Kurdish authority caused resentment as both parties pushed machine politicians from outside Kirkuk upon the city.
The appointment of Najmaldin Karim as governor, however, enabled a renaissance in the city. A neurosurgeon and the former head of the Washington Kurdish Institute, Najmaldin was unabashed in his Kurdish nationalism, but he was also smart. Initially, he treated Arab and Turkmen residents of the city even more generously than the Kurds. He brought a technocratic attitude toward many of the city’s problems, and soon Kirkuk was thriving, especially compared to nearby Mosul.
So what went wrong?
The rise of the Islamic State changed the status quo. Iraqi forces withdrew rapidly from Kirkuk to regroup, and Kurdish peshmerga filled the vacuum. Here, though, Kurdish disunity also undercut the situation as the KDP refused to equip fully the peshmerga in and around Kirkuk, many of whom were PUK, even in the face of an anticipated Islamic State offensive. While Kurds now warn of war and issue hyperbolic statements talking about the advance of the Iraqi military and Shiite militias, in reality what is occurring is a return to the status quo ante. There is also a degree of hypocrisy to the Kurdish arguments stating that previous Iraqi withdrawals disqualify their forces from returning. After all, by the same logic, the Kurdish peshmerga have no business in Sinjar, where they had abandoned the local Yezidi residents to their fate.
Intra-Kurdish squabbles may also have undercut the Kurdish status quo. Not only does real animosity continue to exist between the KDP leadership and PUK powerbrokers like Jalal Talabani’s wife Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, or Hero Khan, but there is also constant squabbling within the PUK. Hero Khan hates former PUK (and Kurdistan Regional Government) Prime Minister Barham Salih, and both Barham and Najmaldin competed more often than cooperated. Add into the mix Kosrat Rasul and other PUK luminaries and the situation simply grew more complex.
The basic point is this: Over the last three or four years, Kirkuk Gov. Najmaldin Karim remained formally inside the PUK but shifted for all intents and purposes into the KDP and Masoud Barzani’s orbit. Barzani far more than Talabani has embraced Kurdish nationalism as a rhetorical tool. Hence, Najmaldin abandoned the balance he so carefully crafted and embraced provocations, such as the raising of the Kurdish flag in the local council.
While Barzani’s supporters see sincerity in his embrace of Kurdish nationalism, opponents are right to also suspect cynicism. After all, it was Barzani who invited Saddam’s Republican Guards into Erbil to kill political opponents just eight years after Saddam’s chemical weapons attacks on Kurds. For Barzani, personal power has always trumped nationalism. Indeed, approaching Kurdistan and Kurdish politics with a perspective limited to the here and now rather than recognizing the personal baggage that each of the most prominent politicians carries is an invitation for inaccuracy and misunderstanding.
Power and ego also matter. There were four main drivers of the referendum despite the international consensus against it: Masoud Barzani and his son Masrour; Masoud Barzani’s uncle Hoshyar Zebari, a former Iraqi foreign and finance minister; and Rowsch Shaways, a former deputy prime minister in Baghdad. Barzani may have seen in the referendum a chance to distract from the financial ruin in which he has driven Kurdistan. Visitors to the region may stand in awe of Erbil’s new skyline, but many of the buildings remain empty, and outside companies are beginning to flee the region and they recognize that its government is neither unwilling nor able to tackle endemic corruption. Barzani, meanwhile, salivates at his chance to be king. He considers the presidency to be his birthright, and if he can be president of an independent state, all the better.
Hoshyar and Rowsch, meanwhile, are bitter. Hoshyar is widely respected in the international community for his tenure as foreign minister, and he also sought to tackle his job as finance minister professionally. He got caught in the maelstrom of Iraqi politics and was impeached for corruption. While it is true Hoshyar may not have been completely clean, it is also true that the parliament’s targeting of him was politically motivated and many voting for his impeachment were far more corrupt than he was. Rowsch likewise resents the abruptness of his dismissal. Both men are willing to bring Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan to disaster for the sake of revenging personal slights.
Iraqi Kurdistan has achieved much over the past quarter-century, and it is not realistic to see that reversed. But, in a fit of their leader’s pique, ego, and a quest for power, they voided the formula of careful, balanced policies, which had served them so well. Indeed, according to Eli Lake, they even dispensed with an offer to win themselves what they now seek to salvage from the rubble of bad decisions: a negotiated solution to their nationalist quest.
Alas, for Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, it appears that there will be no winners, but only losers in the current crisis.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
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