U.S. Policy and the Safety of Kurdistan
Part One:
Iraq and the Region



CAN IRAQ BE SAVED?
If Kurds in Iraq and Iraqi Arabs agree about one thing, it is that Kurds are not Iraqis. Nevertheless, the most important factor that will affect the future safety of Kurds and Kurdistan—aside from Turkish foreign policy, which will be addressed in Part Two—is the Sunni/Shia civil war in central Iraq
This war has passed its tipping point: everyone in central Iraq has become far too concerned about their own and their family’s physical safety for it to be possible for any authority in either the Sunni or Shia communities to build a constituency for restraining the ethnic cleansers emanating from their own community.
Deaths in civil violence have risen steadily since the bombing of the Samarra mosque on February 22; October was the worst month yet. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that in 140,000 Iraqis were displaced per month.
There is no constituency for meaningful power-sharing among either Shia or Kurds. On October 11, 2006 Iraq’s parliament authorized referenda that would create autonomous regions in both Northern and Southern Iraq, freezing Sunnis out of meaningful political power or access to oil revenues.
While the presence of Coalition forces in Iraq over the last three years probably slowed the escalation of the Sunni/Shia civil war—Bosnia went from almost no violence to full-scale war in the single month of March 1992—they could not stop it and may not be able much longer to contain it at all. The Coalition-created Iraqi Army is unreliable; four out of six battalions ordered to Baghdad in October 2006 to contain sectarian violence just melted away rather than obey. The police are so deeply infiltrated by Shia death squads that there is often no distinction. Attempts to recruit Sunnis to the police in mixed areas of the country have repeatedly been derailed by mass executions of the new recruits; one plausible culprit would appear to be the police themselves. Independent neighborhood militias have sprung up everywhere.
The report of the U.S. Iraq Study Group on December 6 recommended the gradual reduction of U.S. military forces in Iraq as a way pressuring the Iraqi government to improve the reliability of government forces and take responsibility for security. But U.S. efforts to persuade Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki government to disarm militias are pointless—he neither will nor can. There is no Iraqi government independent of the main Shia religious factions, who are not going to disarm their own militias. Even in towns where Shia militias have fought each other, Shia residents still say that disarming the militias cannot be considered because of the Sunni threat.
This kind of pressure might have worked a year or two ago, when the Shia were more frightened that Sunni insurgents might actually conquer the country. By now, however, the Shia realize that they are going to win the civil war. In addition, if the U.S. leaves Iran will supply what they need. The Shia simply don’t need the U.S. any more.
U.S. Central Command commanders have admitted that intensified efforts in recent months to dampen communal violence in Baghdad have not succeeded nor even prevented continuing escalation of sectarian killings. Further, these efforts are no longer fully welcome. Until early November, U.S. forces manned checkpoints controlling movement through Baghdad in order to cut down on opportunities for sectarian killers to get at victims. The U.S. has now agreed to Iraqi government demands to remove the checkpoints and not to conduct clearing operations to disarm militias without Iraqi permission.
No matter what adjustments may be made to missions or strategy, U.S. forces may not be able to stay in Iraq much longer. In a September 2006 poll, 62% of Iraqi Shia thought that attacks on U.S. forces were justified. Since then, fighting between U.S. forces and Shia militias has escalated; a new poll might show worse results. The Iraqi government has proposed altering the U.N. Security Council authorization for Coalition troops in Iraq to restrict them further.
Some experts and Democratic Party politicians now propose a managed partition of Iraq. Others oppose partition on the grounds that it will generate yet more refugees and will not necessarily end the war because there will still be prizes worth fighting over, such as oil, while neighboring powers including Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia will have powerful motives to intervene. Partition could lead to decades of instability and war back and forth across Mesopotamia.
Some of these objections are misguided: the ongoing war is displacing the same people who would be displaced by partition. Others are important: given the predictable extreme dissatisfaction of Iraqi Sunnis with what partition is likely to leave them, the possibilities that the now (mostly) submerged divisions within both the Kurdish and Shia communities may come closer to the surface, the conflicting interests of the neighboring powers with each other and with communities in Iraq, the oil, and the flat terrain and relatively good roads, post-partition Iraq will not be stable.
Both proponents and opponents of partition, however, are asking the wrong question. The question is not: Should we partition Iraq? It is: Can anyone prevent Iraq from partitioning itself? The answer is no.
The fact that virtually all Sunni Arabs and most Shia still oppose partition is not relevant; they cannot help reacting to the situation in which they now find themselves. Iraq is partitioning itself. The ethnic cleansing will continue until Iraq is divided into three parts: ‘Shiastan,’ ‘Sunnistan,’ and Kurdistan. This will be a de facto, not de jure partition—the legal government of Iraq, although located in Shiastan, controlled by Shia, and without any influence on events in Sunnistan or Kurdistan—will continue to exist and will continue to be the recognized government. Few if any countries will recognize Sunnistan as an independent state, and none will recognize Kurdistan.
AMERICA’S LAST MISSION IN IRAQ
The United States still has roughly 140,000 heavily-armed troops in Iraq, and there is one worthwhile military mission that the U.S. can still accomplish: namely to protect, transport, and re-settle refugees. This means identifying the 150 to 200 towns, villages, and urban districts that are most at risk for ethnic cleansing and sitting on them until we can organize well-defended transport for those who wish to leave. We should do this for two reasons: It is the right thing to do; many people who might otherwise die at the hands of death squads will survive if we protect them long enough to re-locate safely and without becoming desperately impoverished. A second reason is that the United States will be accused – is already accused – by almost everyone in the world of responsibility for all of the evils that have befallen Iraq since 2003 and for all those that will happen there for many years into the future. It is in the national interest to shorten that bill of indictment, if only a little.
Finally, the U.S. should do what it can to stabilize the region’s future. It can no longer manage the Persian Gulf mainly by military force. Iran and the new (Shia) Iraq are the region’s natural dominant powers; America’s allies on the Southern side of the Gulf are weak not only externally but internally. If they survive it will be by reform or by accommodation, not by American extended deterrence.
Some Kurds may think that the partition of Iraq will be a good thing because it will make it harder for a future Iraqi government to challenge the de facto independence of Kurdistan, but in fact Iraq’s collapse will make the Kurds’ situation more dangerous. One of the questions that U.S. policy makers will have to consider, in this changed situation, will be whether the U.S. should or can continue its quiet policy of guaranteeing the security of Iraqi Kurdistan provided that the Kurds do not declare formal independence—and policy toward Kurdistan will not be considered the most important part of U.S. policy toward the region. This issue will be discussed in Part Two.
The situation in and around Iraq today is reminiscent in many ways of 19th century European crises that the major powers of that time sought to manage through the various Congresses of Berlin and Vienna. Something like a “Congress of Amman” is called for. The three Iraqi communities, regional powers such as Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, and global powers such as the U.S. and Russia must consult each other on how to cope with the changed situation created by the disintegration of Iraq and to manage conflicting interests to minimize risk of an even larger war that none of them want. Each party must explain to others what policies they can expect, and must learn from rivals what they cannot tolerate.
Admittedly, few if any of the parties who need to talk to their rivals and enemies show signs of being ready to do so—in particular, neither the U.S. nor Iran appear ready to talk to each other in a constructive way. Even when or if serious discussions begin, managing the new Persian Gulf region will remain difficult for a long time to come. Perhaps the goal of the First Congress of Amman should be simply to see if all the parties can agree that there will be a Second.

Chaim Kaufmann
Associate Professor
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, Pennyslvania, U.S.A.


U.S. Policy and the Safety of Kurdistan
– Part Two:
U.S. Policy after the Iraq War

SOURCES OF THREAT
It is a truism that the Kurds are the largest nation in the world that have no state. Everyone realizes that most Iraqi Kurds would prefer sovereign independence to regional autonomy within Iraq and that many if not most Kurds in Turkey, Iran, and Syria would like formal regional autonomy or independence if they could get it. But almost all observers agree that none of these things are possible. The quiet American security guarantee to Iraqi Kurdistan would end if the Kurds declared formal independence, while none of Turkish, Iranian, or Syrian Kurds can achieve meaningful autonomy without substantial help from a strong foreign power, which they will not get.
So the real questions for the future security of Kurdistan are whether it will be possible to establish the four-province autonomous region – including Kirkuk province – provided for in the new Iraqi constitution, and whether that autonomous status can be maintained, especially after most or all U.S. military forces have left Iraq. This may or may not happen before a new President takes office in 2009, but it will happen before long.
Kurdistan faces four main sources of threat. Three of them are the usual ones: the governments of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. The fourth is possible change in U.S. policy toward the region.
IRAQ
The Iraqi threat is dormant for now because even though most ordinary Shia as well as Shia political leaders dislike the idea of Kurdish autonomy, they are too concerned about fighting the Sunni Arabs to devote much energy to the Kurdish issue. Back in Spring 2005 the dominant political force in Iraq, the Shia United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), concluded that in order for the Shia community to gain and keep control of the central government they had to have Kurdish cooperation. This meant that they had to pay the Kurds’ price – most important, the regional autonomy provision that was written into the new constitution. They did it reluctantly, but they did it. Since then, however, Shia opinion on this issue has diverged further. While the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and most of the rest of the UIA have come to favor regional autonomy – for the South more than for the North – or at least continue to tolerate the idea, Moqtada al-Sadr and his followers are deeply opposed to it. When parliament voted on October 11. 2006 to authorize the regional autonomy referenda (albeit with an 18-month delay), the Sadrists joined Sunnis in boycotting the vote. It remains possible that, before the referendum on Northern autonomy is actually held, further changes in Shia politics will lead them to block it.
Two factors will matter most to Shia behavior toward Kurdistan—the power of the central government and the behavior of Kurds. The central government is likely to remain Shia-dominated but weak. Even if the proposed “national unity government” including the key Sunni parties while excluding the Sadrists is formed, the level of distrust between the Sunni and Shia Arab communities will remain very high, and the civil war will likely continue at least until ethnic cleansing has largely eliminated minorities of either group in areas dominated by the other. Recently Shia forces have begun trying to create an all-Shia band across Northern Baghdad that would connect majority-Shia neighborhoods and isolate certain majority-Sunni areas.
The result will be a de facto partition in which the recognized government of Iraq will actually control only the Shia-dominated areas. While there may be substantial internal conflict within the Shia community, the main policy concern of this ‘Shiastan’ will be the continuing threat from the four mainly Sunni provinces (‘Sunnistan’). There may be more rounds of Sunni/Shia fighting even after ethnic cleansing is largely complete. Undermining Kurdish autonomy will not rank high among Shia policy concerns, although there is a risk that—once the Shia have secure control of the nine Southern provinces as well as most or all of Baghdad—many of them will lose interest in a Southern autonomous region and therefore feel free to withdraw their support for the Northern autonomous region too.
Kurdistan can survive without the referendum, but its chances in the medium and long term will be better with formal, internationally recognized autonomy than without. This means that Iraqi Kurds have strong incentives to make themselves useful to the main Shia factions and to avoid annoying them unnecessarily. First, Kurds have thus far mostly stood aside from the Sunni/Shia civil war, but might be better off seeking ways to assist the Shia community’s efforts to secure itself. The form of this assistance may not be important; it need not involve committing troops. What matters is creating an impression among Shia masses as well as leaders that they can count on the Kurds as a source of help not only now but well into the future. If Iraqi Shia believe this, the referendum on Northern autonomy will happen; if they don’t, it may not happen.
For the same reasons, it has been sensible for Kurdish efforts to achieve an electoral majority in Kirkuk Province to rely mainly on colonization rather than on ethnic cleansing. While this policy has not avoided active resistance from Turcomans and Sunni Arabs, it avoids annoying the Shia, the United States, and Turkey more than necessary. Efforts to contest control of Mosul, however, have been unwise. Regardless of what Kurds may think about historical claims to the area, the fact is that in April 2003 Kurds were a small minority in the city and in Ninewa Province. Even more important, achieving Kurdish control of Mosul would require dividing the province—but the Iraqi constitution makes no provision for this. Thus far the big war in the South has reduced attention to the much smaller war over Mosul, but that won’t last forever. At some point the contest over Mosul will gain more attention and will annoy almost everyone, both friends and enemies of Kurdistan.
IRAN
While Iran has concerns about separatism among its Kurdish minority, the roughly 45 million Farsi-speaking Shia who dominate the country have virtually no fear that a Kurdish or any other separatist movement could actually succeed. Nor is there any realistic hope of deposing the regime, however much American, European, Israeli, or Sunni Arab governments detest it. Iranians, like everyone else, are nationalists. While many of them are dissatisfied with their government, the more that the U.S. or other outsiders threaten Iran, the more the Iranian people rally around the regime.
Iran thus has no motive to act decisively against Kurdistan – except one: Iraqi Kurdish support for U.S. efforts to promote a Kurdish separatist movement in Iran. Kurds are in a difficult position on this issue, caught between current friends and possible future enemies. The key thing to keep in mind is that while both Iran and the U.S. will remain permanent, powerful forces in the region, relative power is shifting toward Iran.
TURKEY
Turkey, of course, remains the greatest threat to the safety of Kurdistan. Turkey has invaded Iraqi Kurdistan several times and has cooperated with offensives launched from Baghdad. In April 2003 the Turkish military deployed its three strongest armored divisions – nearly 60,000 men – on the Iraqi border and offered to ‘take responsibility for security’ in Northern Iraq. Although the U.S. told Turkey to stay out, senior Turkish generals debated whether they should intervene anyway and dare the U.S. – which had only 2,000 lightly-armed airborne troops in Northern Iraq – to shoot first. The Turkish Commander in Chief, General Hilmi Ozkok, decided against the idea. Nevertheless, this incident illustrates how extreme Turkish behavior can become over anything that they think could promote Kurdish separatism in Turkey even indirectly.
Since 2003, Iraqi Kurds have permitted the PKK to begin re-constituting itself on Kurdish-controlled territory. This can only increase the risk that one day another Turkish general will make the opposite decision.
U.S. POLICY
No one can mount a serious attack against Kurdistan right now because the U.S. would not permit it. But most Americans now believe that the war in Iraq was a mistake, most favor troop cuts, and nearly half favor starting troop withdrawals immediately. Since there is no prospect that minor adjustments in U.S. policy will end the Sunni/Shia civil war or allow the building of an Iraqi government that is both effective and friendly to the United States, pressure to get U.S. forces out of Iraq will only increase.
Once the decision to withdraw is made—whether by this President or by the next one—that decision will force the United States to confront several more questions. One of these will be whether to continue the client relationship with Iraqi Kurds, which could include keeping a small permanent U.S. garrison in Kurdistan. This, however, will not be seen by American policy makers or by the public as the most important U.S. interest in the region. Others that will or may seem more important will include:
-What to do about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Many experts believe that there is little that can be done, but that view does not control policy, or not yet;
-What to do about Iranian dominance of the region, including the likelihood that Iran will support Shia dissident movements in the Sunni countries on the Southern side of the Persian Gulf;
-What to do about U.S. relations with ‘Shiastan.’ Few Iraqi Shia want to become clients of Iran, but they will do what they have to if they cannot get enough of what they need from the U.S; and
-What to do about the U.S. relationship with Turkey, which has been damaged by U.S.—Turkish disputes over the Iraq War as well as by European—Turkish bad feeling over the continuing delay of Turkey’s application to join the EU. Islamist factions in Turkish politics are growing stronger, and some of them are becoming more anti-Western. The U.S. may have to decide what it will pay to salvage its relationship with Turkey before it is too late.
It may seem that U.S. concerns about the threat from Iran can only push it closer to any local power, such as Kurdistan, that is willing to help. The problem is that U.S. policy makers could well decide that they need others more than they need Kurdistan. What will U.S. leaders do if part of Turkey’s price for help against Iran includes the U.S. abandoning the Kurds? Or, somewhat less likely, if ‘Shiastan’ demands the same price for their cooperation? (The Saudis too might like to separate the U.S. from the Kurds—to strengthen the position of Iraqi Sunni Arabs—but they are too afraid of Iran to insist.)
These are only the most obvious dangers. When a region as important as the Persian Gulf is suddenly de-stabilized, no one can anticipate all the possibilities that may arise. The main point is that Kurds must realize that they may not be able to count on the United States much longer and that there is little that Kurds can do to influence the U.S. decision when (or if) that moment comes. Kurds may think this unfair, but should not be surprised. The U.S. has abandoned the Kurds before when it decided that other interests were more important, for instance in 1975 when the Shah and Saddam Hussein settled their dispute over the Shatt al-Arab.
Iraqi Kurds must begin thinking now about how to manage relationships with their neighbors without U.S. backing. Two steps that might help would be to eject the PKK and to promise Iran that support for Kurdish separatism in Iran will end when U.S. forces leave Iraq. Other issues will also require re-thinking.



Chaim Kaufmann
Associate Professor
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, Pennyslvania, U.S.A.