Iraq’s newly-elected
National Assembly holds its first session in Baghdad
in nine days time, to embark on the road to
democratic institutins - a new president, deputy
presidents, prime minister, government and
constitution. However, Iraq’s Kurds and their
Turkomen neighbors have been moving forward with
plans of their own, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly disclosed in
an exclusive report on February 25.
Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani
termed a proposition put before them recently by the
heads of the Turkomen community “ extremely
interesting and worth pursuing.” The pursuit has
gained headlong momentum.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources reveal that Saad e-Din
al-Kidj, chairman of the Turkmen Supreme Council
essentially proposed the introduction of self-rule
for the Turkoman homeland of Turkmeneli which abuts
and often overlaps the Kurdish region and the
oil-rich lands of northern Iraq (See attached
DEBKAfile Special Map) and promises it will act as a
buffer between Kurdistan and other parts of Iraq.
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The Turkomen, predominantly a Muslim Turkic nation,
represent Iraq’s third ethnic minority, whose
interests and safety are closely protected by
Ankara.
The plan for Turkomen autonomy has come up before.
In 2002, about a year before the US-led invasion of
Iraq, CIA agents and undercover US troops floated
the proposal while preparing the military and
intelligence infrastructure for the war in the
autonomous Kurdish region. The heads of the far
larger and more powerful Kurdish community angrily
rejected the plan as a political and security threat
to their interests.
But much has changed in three years. Suddenly an
autonomous Turkoman belt along their southern border
looks to the Kurds like an asset to be welcomed - a
shield against any Arab military threat from the
south and east and a better-than-good insurance
policy against Turkish military steps to stop the
Kurds’ advance toward independence and domination of
the mixed town of Kirkuk. Irbil is already rubbing
its hands at the prospect of bilateral economic and
military cooperation with Ankara.
So keen are Talabani and Barzani on the Turkomen
independence scheme that they have counter-offered
the Turkomens a 25% share in the oil revenues of
Kirkuk. This offer was made without a by-your-leave
from the interim government in Baghdad headed by
Iyad Allawi and certainly not from the post-election
administration due to rise.
Most Iraqis in high places find the notion of the
Kurdish-Turkomen oil grab hard to believe..
But the momentum is hard to stop. Ankara has been
informed that the Kurds will pocket 75% of the
northern oil revenues and grant the Turkomen 25% to
support their self-ruling enclave.
This deal augurs a reshaping of the map of northern
Iraq. The Turkomen strip runs transversely from Tel
Afar near the Syrian border in the west up to a
point south of Kurdish Halabja near the Iranian
border to the east. Its population, estimated at
between two and three million, centers on the two
main towns of Tel Afar and Kuz-Khrumatu.
The oil receipts will finance a new army whose
Turkish officers will supply the weapons and
training.
This will be the first time in modern history that
the Turks will have gained a military foothold in
northern Iraq in a region that commands the Sunni
Triangle north of Baghdad.
Ankara will have no more need to establish a
military presence in northern Iraq. It will have
under its command 50-60,000 Turkomen troops, which
the Turks and the Kurds are certain will be fully
trained and combat-ready much sooner than the Iraqi
army the Americans are building further south. This
army will be backed by the 100,000-strong Kurdish
army.
This signal development should not only dispel
Ankara’s fears of a Kurdish independent state but
bring forth is firm support.
By the end of this year or early 2006, the central
government in Baghdad may therefore find itself
staring at an army of 160,000 trained soldiers to
the north. This force, not subject to the federal
government’s orders, will be the best trained and
disciplined of any force in the country.
The Turkomen-Kurdish deal has an important ethnic
aspect.
Their coalition in the new national assembly,
102-105 deputies strong, is committed to voting
against the new constitution proclaiming Iraq an
Arab republic. Sections of the dominant 140-member
Shiite United Iraqi Alliance may go along with this
position. It is therefore very possible that, for
the first time in two centuries, a
democratically-elected majority will take a former
Arab state out of the Arab bloc.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Kurdistan report that
Kurdish leaders have been showering lavish
concessions on the Turkomens to make sure they do
not have a change of heart. Areas once hotly
contested are now opened up to them – and not
entirely out of the kindness of Kurdish hearts; they
reckon that if the Turkomen expand into all parts of
Kurdistan and are awarded equal rights, they will
sink a part of their share of oil profits in
Kurdistan and so invest in independent Kurdistan’s
development and prosperity.
This week, therefore, Kurdish leaders invited all
the Turkomen driven out of Kirkuk (where they used
to account for one-third of the population) to
return and reclaim their property with Kurdish
government’s guarantees for their safety.
In a few short weeks, the seedlings of two
independent non-Arab Iraqi states have begun sending
out strong shoots.
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2005
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