Mick Hartley

Terry Glavin, on the Kurdish referendum:

After several postponements and fits and starts going back several years, and against an array of sternly-worded warnings and outright threats of violence, the already semi-sovereign Kurdish Regional Government of Masoud Barzani went ahead with the contentious referendum on Monday. What Barzani sought was a modest non-binding mandate to spend the next two years sitting down with Baghdad to peacefully negotiate a transition out of more than a quarter-century of de facto Kurdish autonomy in Iraq to full de jure autonomy. That’s it.

Kurdish election officials report a massive turnout of 78 per cent among more than five million eligible voters and a “yes” vote in the vicinity of 93 per cent. The result was greeted with jubilation among the stateless Kurds, wherever they live. There are at least 30 million Kurds in their mountainous homelands, divided a century ago between Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. In the Middle East’s various presidential compounds and emirs’ palaces, however, you’d think Barzani had issued a unilateral declaration of independence, proclaimed an outright republic and declared war on his neighbours.

In Ankara, Erdogan threatened to cut off landlocked Iraqi Kurdistan from food shipments through Turkey, warning the Iraqi Kurds to “give up or go hungry.” Erdogan also threatened to close the spigots on a pipeline carrying Kurdish oil through Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea. “We have the tap,” he said. “The moment we close the tap, then it’s done.” Two years ago, Erdogan resumed a brutal war in Turkey’s Kurdish regions following the collapse of peace talks with the leadership of Turkey’s 14 million Kurds.

In Tehran, the regime declared an air embargo on Iraq’s Kurdish region, halting all flights to Irbil and Sulamaynia, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced it was dispatching mobile missile launchers to the border. Following spontaneous post-referendum celebrations among Iran’s seven million Kurds — thousands of people poured into the streets of Kurdish-majority cities in Iran’s southeastern provinces — convoys of troop carriers rumbled through Mahabad, Bana, Rwansar and several other Kurdish towns. Regime fighter jets were circling the skies above Piranshar.

The anatagonism of the neighbouring countries was to be expected. Less so, perhaps, the attitude of the West, led by the US.

The State Department communiqué revealed that three days earlier, on Sept. 18, the U.S. had convened a meeting of several foreign ministers. The result: a cobbled-together agreement calling upon the Kurdish Regional Government “not to move forward with the scheduled September 25 referendum” and imploring Barzani to continue talks with Baghdad instead. The futility of those talks is one of the main reasons the Kurdish referendum went ahead in the first place….

Peter Galbraith, the former U.S. diplomat who uncovered Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s mass murder by poison gas of at least 3,200 Kurdish civilians in the town of Halabja in 1988, had this to say about the Trump White House effort to corral U.S. allies in a bid to preempt Monday’s referendum: “This was the most astonishingly inept diplomatic initiative I have ever seen.”

At the very least, it is evidence for the truth of an old Kurdish proverb: “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.”

Seth Frantzman in the Jerusalem Post:

Where was the international support? Where were the international monitors and observers, the former US presidents and senators? How could European countries that accepted the Scottish referendum, not see Kurds as having the same rights as their neighbors? How could countries that stood with Kosovo in the 1990s, not see Kurdistan through similar eyes.

Many of the region’s residents are perplexed at how the world is not celebrating alongside them.

The questions people in the Kurdish region ask don’t have easy answers. Kurds are victims of history. 

First, they were victims of the colonial era, being divided between countries carved out of the Ottoman Empire without a say. Despite being victims of colonialism, they did not benefit from the decolonization and anti-imperialism of the 1960s. Instead when they sought to struggle for rights in the 1970s they describe being betrayed by the US. In the 1980s the same international community that went to war for Kuwait in 1991 ignored them as they were gassed by Saddam Hussein.

Then in 2003 when the US sought regime change in Baghdad and supported democratization, Kurds agreed but asked for autonomy. They received it, but Kurdish leaders said in the lead-up to the referendum that Baghdad violated its promises to Erbil, cutting the budget and not resolving disputes.

Now in 2017, when they planned a referendum vote suddenly they found themselves ignored by cynical Western states that seem to be tired of engaging with the Middle East. Kurds who voted “Yes” for independence see immense hypocrisy in Western states that talk about human rights and democracy but have not had a strong voice supporting the Kurdish region’s decision to hold a vote….

The overall feeling is one of disappointment in the international community tempered with determination for independence. Kurds are steeling themselves for difficult times ahead lasting from several days to months as they face Baghdad’s anger and also threats from Iran and Turkey. They say that the region has passed difficult tests before, but they also expect that their real allies will emerge.

“We’ll see” is a common refrain, suggesting that being patient is the best answer. A statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday indicated that “Moscow respects the national aspirations of the Kurds,” a positive statement for the Kurds. The US also seems ready to encourage Baghdad not to close the airports.

The hope is that Turkey will recognize not only the economic importance of the link to Kurdistan but that it has common interests as it has in the past with the region. In addition, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have a common interest in a stable and moderate Kurdish region that is also a bulwark against Iranian influence in Baghdad and Syria. Eastern European countries, which still remember getting independence from the Soviet Union, are also expected to warm to the Kurdish region’s aspirations.