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Iraq's Kurds fear US pullout
1.8.2007
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August 1, 2007
The people of the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan
are anxious about increasing American talk of
withdrawing at least some troops from the country.
The American decision not to stay and protect the
Kurds at the end of the first Gulf War left them
vulnerable to genocidal attacks by Saddam Hussein's
forces.
Australian lawyer Jonathan Morrow has been working
for the Kurdistan regional Government of Iraq on oil
treaties for the last couple of years, after helping
form East Timor's constitution.
He tells the ABC's Mark Colvin the relatively normal
and prosperous life of this unusual part of Iraq
could be under threat.
"The only thing greater I think than their fear at
being abandoned again by the West is the fear of
being overrun by their neighbours," he said. "They
will not test the relationship with the US and with
Great Britain, though they may have reason for doing
that for fear that they will be left out again [and]
they'll be left to the mercy of hostile elements in
the region."
Why are the Kurds worried about the way they're
surrounded?
"Well, right now, even as we speak, there are
approximately 200,000 Turkish troops on the border
of Turkey and Iraq.
There, the perceived threat from the Turkish point
of view are rogue Kurdish elements that are Turkish
Kurds who use the border with Iraq as a way of
getting sanctuary from their sporadic conflicts with
Turkish forces - not at all supported by the
Government in Iraqi Kurdistan but nonetheless seen
by the Turks as a threat and seen at least as a
reason or a pretext for Turkish engagement.
"Threat number two, at least as great, is largely
Sunni Arab Iraqi extremism, the Al Qaeda or
insurgent element that we know about so well from
Iraqi politics, which not only want to bring down
the largely Shiite Iraq Government but would like to
see the Kurdish regional Government also suffer.
"That had much less success in Iraqi Kurdistan
because it's so much better secured than is Baghdad,
so over the course of the last four years, since the
American occupation of Iraq in 2003, there's only
been something like four of five bombs in Iraqi
Kurdistan that have killed people. That's bad
enough, you might say, but of course four or five
successful bombings over the course of let's say
four years is ... a drop in the ocean, it's a quiet
afternoon in Baghdad. I think they are hoping,
perhaps against hope now, that they will at least
this time be given some real security guarantee and
some real support in economics and so on by America
and the west generally."
What would be the possibilities there if the
Americans are going to pull out in some form from
the rest of Iraq?
"There are two groups that would be emboldened by
that. Most immediately, the Sunni extremists are
mentioned - the people have carried out bombings in
Iraq and of course in Kurdistan, they are the most
immediate threat.
"However, that isn't, I think, the most long-term
threat that the Kurds face from a precipitous, to
use President Bush's word, pull-out from the rest of
Iraq. It is, in fact, the likelihood of a Shiah-dominated
Iraq Government that is much less pleasant than the
current [Nouri Al] Maliki one. Imagine an Iraq
Government that was led by [radical cleric] Moqtada
al-Sadr, for instance, which is very easy to
imagine. The polling data suggest that he is
probably the most popular politician in Iraq ...
"That kind of regime in Baghdad - not the
traditional threat to Kurdistan, which is a Sunni
Arab supremacist regime, Saddam being the classic
example - but a new kind of regime in Baghdad
actually would be a very serious threat to the Kurds
and that's the greatest danger in the medium- to
long-term from American pullout and a lack of
support to Iraqi Kurdistan."
So what some people are talking about is a second
option, which is that the Americans, instead of
pulling out of Iraq, would actually pull back into
Kurdistan and maintain some kind of garrison force
in Kurdistan?
"I don't think anyone's talking about any wholesale
movement of 150,000, 160,000 American troops in Iraq
now into Kurdistan. That would be, I think,
unnecessary. But certainly, if you look at for
instance the Liberal think tank - the Centre for
American Progress has proposed, I think, about a
10,000-strong US presence in Kurdistan, which would
both be of strategic utility to the Americans but
would beyond that really be an underwriting of
Kurdistan's security in the region. It would be a
signal to the world that any of the elements that
I've mentioned couldn't really make an incursion
into Iraqi Kurdistan without alerting the attention
of the Americans and presumably inviting some
opposition from them."
Given the history, are you an optimist about this
or a pessimist?
"I'm an optimist about it. There aren't many signals
at the moment from the current administration in the
US that they are prepared to single the Kurds out,
if you like, for special protection that I've just
mentioned. It goes completely against the grain of
the White House's rhetoric of a unitary, almost
non-federal Iraq in which there's an
undifferentiated mass of Iraqis, all of whom should
owe allegiance to some wonderful Government in
Baghdad.
This vision, which is of course wholly false,
doesn't permit to give those kind of security
guarantees, it doesn't even permit them to encourage
direct investment into Kurdistan or a real
diplomatic engagement, so that's the near-term.
"However, you can see in some of the Democratic
Party presidential candidates some understanding of
what Kurdistan is - Hillary Clinton particularly but
also Barack Obama. You're seeing an understanding
that Kurdistan, whatever happens in Iraq, however
quickly American troops should be pulled out of the
rest of Iraq, Kurdistan shouldn't be abandoned."
abc net.au
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