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Summary
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari
traveled to Turkey on Feb. 28, drawing strong
condemnation from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani,
who accused him of making unilateral state visits
without consulting the government. Talabani is well
aware that Jaafari's discussions in Ankara will
center on the issue of containing Kurdish
aspirations for regional autonomy. And as the chief
representative of Iraq's Kurdish population in the
central government, Talabani's response to Jaafari's
visit has revealed a widening breach between the
Shia and Kurds as negotiations towards the formation
of the Iraqi government intensify.
Analysis
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Feb. 28 that he
deeply regretted interim Iraqi Prime Minister
Ibrahim Jaafari's unilateral decision to make a
state visit to Turkey. He added that the Iraqi
government is not committed to any agreement reached
between the prime minister and Ankara.
Talabani is slightly more than perturbed that
Jaafari is acting on his own accord before even
being reconfirmed as Iraq's prime minister.
Moreover, Jaafari's visit to Turkey will be followed
within days by a visit from radical Iraqi Shiite
leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Jaafari and al-Sadr are
widely perceived by Kurdish leaders as the Shiite
leaders least friendly to the Kurds in the
government-formation talks. Jaafari's trip to Turkey
has jabbed a sharp thorn into these negotiations,
providing an opportunity for the Sunnis and Shia to
serve their mutual interest by using the talks to
contain the Kurds.
The Kurds are responding to the talks by pointing
out that as outgoing interim prime minister, Jaafari
does not yet have the authority to carry out
negotiations with the Turks, even though he is prime
minister-designate of Iraq's new full-term
government. Talabani's remarks, in fact, underscore
a deep rift between the Shia and the Kurds at a time
when the Shia are also experiencing
tenser-than-usual relations with the Sunnis.
The Turkish government will primarily address the
Kurdish question in its talks with the Iraqi Shiite
leaders. Turkey's concerns are clear. Like Iran, it
does not want Iraq's reinvigorated Kurdish
population to encourage Kurdish separatist movements
within Turkish territory.
Ankara also wishes to keep the oil-rich northern
Iraqi city of Kirkuk out of Kurdish hands to deprive
Iraqi Kurds of a key asset that would help finance
their long-term goal of independence. Ankara also
wishes to safeguard the interests of Kirkuk's
Turkoman population. Also on Turkey's wish list is a
guarantee that the peshmerga, or Iraqi Kurdish
militia, will be disbanded under the new government.
The Kurds, on the other hand, are playing their
cards carefully to ensure the advances they have
made since the 1991 Persian Gulf War are not lost in
the web of negotiations with the Shia and Sunnis.
The Kurds opted for a more gradual approach in
securing their autonomy in northern Iraq, realizing
that an aggressive push for independence in the
post-Saddam Hussein era would only have invited a
messy reprisal from Turkey.
Thus, even though it is a priority for the Kurdish
delegation to keep Kirkuk under the control of the
Kurdish regional government [Kurdistan Regional
Government], the Kurds are willing to offer the
concession of allowing current oil revenues to
filter through the central government in Baghdad. By
December 2007, Kurds hope to readjust Kirkuk's
outdated census numbers by allowing the return of
displaced Kurds who were driven out by Hussein's
forces in his bid to "Arabize" the city and populate
the area with mainly Shiite Arabs from the south.
Afterward, the Kurds wish to hold a referendum in
the city allowing them to keep Kirkuk part of the
Kurdistan Autonomous Region legitimately. And
Kurdish leaders do not plan on disbanding the
peshmerga, but will gradually integrate its
guerrilla forces into the state security apparatus.
Washington likely will not endorse the Kurdish
strategy fully. Kurdistan faces the dilemma of
having its territory spread across four countries --
Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey -- each of which has a
core interest in repressing their Kurdish minorities
to dampen any separatist tendencies. For its part,
the United States has complex relations with each of
these countries, and so cannot afford to promote the
existence of an independent Kurdistan in the region.
Washington's main goal in the negotiations for the
formation of Iraq's full-term government is to bring
the Sunnis into the political fold. This is aimed at
quelling the Sunni nationalist insurgency and
bringing pressure to bear on the Sunni jihadists.
And if containing the Kurds can be used as a lever
to bring the Shia and Sunnis to the negotiating
table, the United States will discreetly use that
lever.
For the Kurds, this means a considerable number of
obstacles lie in their path to regional autonomy.
Not only must the Kirkuk issue be addressed within
the framework of the Iraqi government, the method of
carving up Iraq into federal regions or provinces
must also be worked out among the factions.
Earlier, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim -- who leads the main
Iraqi Shiite political party, the United Iraqi
Alliance, as well as the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) -- loosely
supported the Kurds in the idea of regional
federalism during the referendum negotiations. At
that time, the prospect of securing a Shiite enclave
in the south looked promising.
While SCIRI, an Iranian creation formed in Tehran in
1982, saw federalism as being in its interest,
Jaafari's Hizb al-Dawah and the movements of al-Sadr
and Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are much more centered
on a strong central government.
Thanks to the Shiite failure to achieve a consensus
on the notion of federalism, the Sunnis won a chunk
of the government in the December 2005 elections.
When Sunni participation in the election decreased
their influence, Shiite leaders joined al-Sadr's
call for a strong central government.
They also openly opposed the Kurdish preference for
a regional federal structure, which essentially
provides for an autonomous Kurdish region in the
north that would include all the provinces with
sizable Kurdish populations.
Given the complexity of the negotiations, the most
the Kurds can hope for at this juncture is a
political framework containing as many loopholes as
possible to allow for their continued evolution into
a sovereign entity. Moreover, for Kurdish
aspirations to be met, the United States must
maintain its military presence in Iraq to keep
regional forces in check. What is becoming
increasingly clear, however, is that Washington's
interests in Iraq do not clearly align with Kurdish
interests.
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