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Kurdish history: Leaders' greed trumps
nationalism
10.6.2012
By Michael Rubin
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The Kurdistan Tribune |
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June 10, 2012
June 1 marked the 37th anniversary of the founding
of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). While
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Massoud
Barzani graciously congratulated PUK leader
Talabani, bad blood between the two families and
their parties is long, deep, and persistent.
The schism predates the PUK's birth; historian David
McDowall, whose A Modern History of the Kurds,
remains the desktop reference for Kurdish history,
details the development of factionalism in the KDP
in the wake of the Mahabad Republic's collapse.
The PUK was born out of the collapse of the Kurdish
rebellion in 1975. While Kurds today castigate
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Algiers
Accord he brokered between Baghdad and Tehran,
contemporaries spread blame more widely. While the
KDP today memorializes Mullah Mustafa as a fierce
nationalist, the truth is that Massoud's father
often subordinated Kurdish nationalism to personal
power. Mullah Mustafa's agreement with Abd al Salam
Arif, a fierce Arab nationalist who served as Iraq's
president between 1963 and 1966, omitted any mention
of Kurdish autonomy. If Mullah Mustafa forfeited the
Kurdish nationalist objective, in Arif he won an
ally who threatened to turn Baghdad's power against
anyone who would challenge Barzani. Mullah Mustafa
even accepted weaponry from Arif to use against
Kurdish competitors.
Talabani and Ibrahim Ahmed were no less corrupted
than Mullah Mustafa. When Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
seized power in 1968, both embraced the Baathists
with whom they shared socialist roots. Talabani sang
the Baath's praises in the press three months after
the revolution. He called the Baath "the first
ruling Arab political party…to extend its hand to
the Kurdish people directly, sincerely, and
hopefully." It was their turn to become tools of
outside forces as they sacrificed Kurdish
nationalism for personal power. While Talabani
accepted Baghdad's patronage, Barzani sought
Tehran's which was enough to keep him on top.
In 1975, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
effectively pulled the rug out from beneath Barzani.
Mullah Mustafa, with young Massoud in tow, fled to
Iran. Ibrahim Ahmed disappeared to London, but his
daughter and Talabani moved to Syria where, with
Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad's patronage, he
formed the PUK. The division simply continued the
pattern in which Kurdistan's neighbors compromised
its leaders and used them as proxies willing to
subvert broader Kurdish interests to ambition and
greed.
Divisions continued through Saddam Hussein's rule
and even during the Anfal, as neighboring states
used Kurdish leaders' greed and venality to
transform Kurdish parties into proxies in a larger
war. Massoud Barzani, who succeeded his father upon
Mullah Mustafa's death, had sided with Iranian
leaders during the Iran-Iraq War, not simply out of
animosity toward Baghdad, but also because the
Iranian army was seeking to eliminate his rivals in
the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.
Talabani, meanwhile,www.ekurd.net
sought a ceasefire with Baghdad in order to protect
the PUK rear while he sought to consolidate control
in Kurdistan at the Barzanis' expense. While both
PUK and KDP condemn the Anfal, had Kurds displayed
unity at the time, Saddam's government would have
been far less successful with its ethnic cleansing
campaign.
In 1991, the Kurds finally received their chance at
real autonomy. After a close election, the PUK and
KDP and both parties affiliates decided to divide
power along near even lines. However, money and a
quest for power again got in the way. In 1994, the
power sharing deal began to fray and full-fledged
civil war erupted between the PUK and KDP. This
culminated in 1996, when Barzani invited Saddam
Hussein's elite Republican Guards into Erbil to root
out PUK elements that now were supported by Iran.
Saddam may have harbored genocidal hatred to the
Kurds and deployed chemical weapons against
civilians, but Barzani believed his quest for power
trumped such concerns. Talabani likewise hardly
batted an eye at allying himself with "Hanging
Judge" Sadegh Khalkhali's brethren.
In the wake of the civil war, the
Barzani's—especially Nechirvan, as records captured
during Operation Iraqi Freedom suggest—continued
business ties with Saddam. They found themselves
increasingly at odds with Turkey, however, which
often attacked KDP territory as the Turkish Army
sought to battle the PKK. While Talabani was no
friend of the PKK, he grew closer to Turkey. After
all, as a senior PUK official explained to me while
I taught at the University of Sulaimani, the KDP
controlled the entire length of the Iraqi-Turkish
border, so whenever Turkish troops invaded
Kurdistan, they would strike Barzani first.
When the U.S. forces occupied Iraq, Kurdish parties
repositioned themselves. Both KDP and PUK sought to
embrace the Americans from whom they believed they
could extract the greatest rewards. In this, Barzani
was more successful. As the KDP co-opted U.S.
forces, some in the PUK again sought to reach out to
Iran. It was in this context that Bafel Talabani
found himself in such trouble as, according to
sources in Washington, he reportedly assisted
Iranian operatives who sought to kill Americans in
Mosul. The PUK likewise decided it no longer needed
Turkey. Qubad Talabani bragged that it was PUK
intelligence that led to the July 2003 incident in
which the members of the 173rd Airborne captured and
hooded a Turkish Special Forces unit alleged to be
planning assassinations in either Sulaimaniyah or
Kirkuk.
Today, Kurdistan is booming. Oil is flowing and
foreign direct investment continues to pour in.
Never before have the financial stakes been so high.
The revenues from the Ibrahim Khalil customs post
over which Barzani and Talabani fought the Kurdish
civil war pale in comparison to the stakes from oil
contracts. Barzani's arguments with Maliki have less
to do with principle than with cash. After all, if
principle mattered, Barzani would think twice about
allying himself with apologists for the Baath Party
or, for that matter, Muqtada al-Sadr. That Talabani
refuses to jump onto the Barzani bandwagon on this
issue and instead sides with Baghdad is simply a
continuation of the pattern of foreign powers using
Kurdish leaders as proxy members in an outside
battle.
The looming crisis for Kurdistan is not about
leadership in Baghdad, however. While Western and
Korean businesses dot the landscape in Kurdistan,
the two economic powerhouses in Kurdistan today are
Iran and Turkey. According to a recent interview in
Hawler (Erbil), the Iranian consul in Erbil placed
Iranian trade with Kurdistan at $7 billion.
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Trade Minister
Sinan Chalabi put Kurdistan-Turkish trade at $8.4
billion in 2011. While the Iranian government
initially welcomed the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), there
is no doubt that Erdoğan's confidence, sectarianism,
and international involvement now antagonizes
Tehran. Whereas Barzani has embraced Turkey, PUK
officials like Kosrat Rasul have cast their lot with
the Iranian interests — irrespective of Rasul's own
past grievances with Iran. Partisans in Turkey and
Iran do not hesitate to play the decades-old Kurdish
factional game.
Not all battle lines are yet drawn. While Nechirvan
is involved personally in many Turkish projects, he
also enriches himself immensely by smuggling oil to
Iran. Unless Kurdish authorities are willing to
divorce governance from personal business interests,
however, the Turkish-Iranian dispute will likely
reinforce old divisions. Kurds may blame their ills
on division among four countries but the
responsibility too often is with their
leaders—Mullah Mustafa, Ibrahim Ahmed, Jalal
Talabani, and Massoud Barzani—who allowed
self-interest and greed to undermine the broader
Kurdish project.
Michael Rubin
is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute AEI. His major research area is the Middle
East, with special focus on Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and
Kurdish society. He also writes frequently on
transformative diplomacy and governance issues. At
AEI, Mr. Rubin chaired the "Dissent and Reform in
the Arab World" conference series. He was the lead
drafter of the Bipartisan Policy Center's 2008
report on Iran. In addition to his work at AEI,
several times each month, Mr. Rubin travels to
military bases across the United States and Europe
to instruct senior U.S. Army and Marine officers
deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan on issues relating
to regional state history and politics, Shiism, the
theological basis of extremism, and strategy. Tweet
Michael Rubin
@mrubin1971
The article has been republished from
michaelrubin.org. First published at
Kurdistan tribune
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