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Coddling Iraqi Kurds
5.4.2012
By Denise Natali
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Foreign Policy |
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The President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Massoud Barzani (L) was officially received by
President Obama and Vice President Biden at the
White House on Wednesday April 4, 2012. Photo: KRP
Denise Natali is the Minerva Fellow at the Institute
for National Strategic Studies, National Defense
University and the author of The Kurdish
Quasi-State: Development and Dependency in Post Gulf
War Iraq.
Read more by the Author
April 5, 2012
Iraqi Kurdish leaders are pressing Washington to
codify a "special relationship" with the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG). The idea has gained
support among certain members of the U.S. Congress,
think-tanks, and others concerned about diminishing
U.S. influence in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki's concentration of power, and the
destabilizing Iranian role in Iraq. A special United
States-KRG relationship, they argue, could hedge
against these threats and better assure U.S.
interests in the region. Others assert that the
United States has a responsibility to protect Iraqi
Kurds, who have proven to be a valuable and
dependable ally.
But, in fact, the United States has little to gain
by creating a privileged relationship with the KRG.
Not only would it send the wrong message to Iraqi
Arab populations and aggravate communal relations,
but it would create another cushion for the KRG
leadership and dissuade political accommodation with
Baghdad. The key issue for the United States is not
about reciprocating Kurdish goodwill but clarifying
the conditions in which a United States-KRG
partnership can be sustained based on American
principles and larger commitments in the region.
There is already a strong relationship between the
United States and the KRG. The United States
recognizes the important role the Kurds have played
in supporting its objectives in Iraq. The KRG
mobilized its militia alongside U.S. troops to
depose Saddam Hussein. It provides intelligence and
military support to help control terrorist networks
in the region. It helps manage cross-border Kurdish
nationalisms and works with the government of Turkey
to quell the Kurdistan Workers' Party or Partiye
Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK). Kurdish leaders also
continue to support U.S. efforts to forge a unity
government in Iraq, including brokering numerous
meetings with other Iraqi political factions.
Such helpful actions have not gone unrewarded. The
United States not only has advanced Kurdish
political demands, but has allowed the KRG to become
the biggest beneficiary of post-Saddam Iraq. With
its Kurdish ally (and some Shiite groups), the
United States crafted a constitution that
disempowered the central government and devolved
large, although unclear, powers to the region. The
constitution gave the Kurdish north financial
largesse: 17 percent of the Iraqi budget as annual
revenue or nearly $11 billion in 2012. The KRG also
receives additional payments from Baghdad, including
a recent $560 million allocation to pay
international oil companies (IOCs) operating in the
northern region.
Better still, the KRG reaps these benefits with
virtually no responsibility or reciprocal access to
the KRG for counterparts in Baghdad. Unlike other
federal systems in the world, the KRG receives its
revenue -- which comprises 95 percent of its budget
-- without having to make transfer payments to the
central government. It does not declare its customs
revenue or submit full receipts to Baghdad for
official oil export payments. The KRG also refuses
Iraqi military officials from entering its northern
region, exerts full control over its own borders,
and permits foreign companies to purchase land but
not other Iraqis residing outside the Kurdistan
region.
The United States has unintentionally expanded the
KRG's political latitude by giving it carte blanche
in Iraq. Since 2003, the United States has ignored
Kurdish oil smuggling to Iran, shrugged at the KRG's
territorial expansionism and extrajudicial
detentions in "disputed territories," and tolerated
increasing authoritarian rule inside the Kurdistan
region. When the KRG violently stifled Kurdish
opposition groups in last year's demonstrations, the
U.S. government remained virtually silent.
By over-determining Kurdish leverage in Iraq and
under-estimating the KRG's dependence on external
patronage, the United States has given the KRG
leadership little incentive to moderate its behavior
or compromise with Baghdad. What has emerged is a
Kurdistan region further entrenched in its
nationalist ambitions,www.ekurd.net
an increasing imbalance within the delicate
intra-Kurd political dynamic, a central government
trying to reign in the KRG, and local populations
elsewhere increasingly concerned about KRG
territorial expansionism. Sunni Arabs in particular,
have become critical of the KRG's land grabs in
disputed areas they claim as their own. Further, as
the KRG enhances its status in the Iraqi state,
Kurdish communities in Turkey, Syria, and Iran will
likely increase their demands for similar rights,
creating new pressures for Kurdish autonomy across
borders.
Given these realities on the ground, the United
States should keep pursuing engagement with the
Kurdistan region populations but stop coddling the
KRG leadership. The United States should set
conditions and shared goals in which the Untied
States-KRG partnership can be ascertained, to
include:
• Commitment to Iraqi unity -- The United States
should continue to affirm its commitment to the
territorial integrity of the Iraqi state. This
commitment should avoid favoring any particular
ethnic or sectarian group or further encouraging
communalism among Iraqi Arabs and regional actors.
The Kurdish leadership should not contemplate
separating the KRG from Iraq or pursuing
independence.
• Counterterrorism, Intelligence, and Security
Cooperation -- The United States should continue to
work with the KRG on shared counterintelligence and
counterterrorism issues while pressing Iraqi Kurdish
elites to remove the PKK bases from its territory.
• Energy Security -- KRG energy sector development
should be encouraged without compromising Iraqi
state sovereignty and regional stability. The
northern corridor remains an essential transit route
for Iraq's oil and gas and should be developed in
cooperation with the central government and the KRG.
An important component of this objective is greater
transparency in KRG energy sector activities,
including the bidding process, contracts, and
payment processes. The KRG should be pressed to
submit full receipts to Baghdad for IOC payment and
cease signing contracts in disputed territories
until a national hydrocarbons law is signed.
• Economic and Commercial Development -- The United
States should encourage U.S. business development in
the Kurdistan region as long as the KRG can assure
contract sanctity and a transparent commercial and
legal environment. This effort depends upon the
extent to which the KRG can de-link the political
parties and their private family businesses from the
economy, address corruption, and develop a real
private sector and free market economy.
• Relations with Iran -- The United States should
apply the same conditions to the KRG as it does to
other regional states supporting the Iranian regime.
It must clearly recognize and sanction Kurdish oil
smuggling to Iran, while encouraging the KRG to send
its crude oil through legal channels to Baghdad for
payment.
• Governance and democratization -- The United
States needs to send a clearer signal to the KRG
that it is expected to engage in real political
opening and reform. Stability in the Kurdistan
region has come at the expense of increasing
authoritarianism. Journalists continue to be
threatened, honor killings are among the highest
levels in the Middle East, and the polity and
society remain highly controlled by the two main
parties and their associated leaders and families.
• Education and Cultural Cooperation -- The United
States should continue to encourage all Iraqi
students, including Kurds, to engage in educational
and cultural exchanges, with the goal of having
these students return to Iraq and become future
leaders of the country. These students should be
selected according to merit without any intervention
by the Kurdish political parties or their leaders.
The United States should assist the KRG in
facilitating these exchanges, particularly in
developing more efficient visa application
processes.
These conditions should not undermine the United
States-Kurdish partnership but rather assure that
U.S. engagement in Iraq is even-handed and that U.S.
objectives are not compromised. Further, they
clarify shared goals on U.S. terms (not Kurdish
nationalist interests) and provide the KRG with a
difficult but much-needed realization that it is
ultimately responsible for the strategic choices and
actions it pursues. The KRG will ultimately have to
recognize that it is no longer a victim in
post-Saddam Iraq and that it if wants to reap the
benefits of Iraqi federalism, then it too, will have
to make compromises, create openings to the south,
and play by the rules of the game. As long as the
KRG has preferential U.S. support as a crutch, it
may have little interest in pursuing these larger
objectives.
Denise Natali is the Minerva Fellow at the
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS),
National Defense University and author of The
Kurdish-Quasi-State: Development and Dependency in
Post-Gulf War Iraq. The views expressed are her own
and do not reflect the official policy or position
of the National Defense University, the Department
of Defense, or the U.S. government.
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