All prepare for the mini state of Kurdistan!

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Celebrate the new world order in Mesopotamia, Persia, and the Gulf States as the Treaty of Lausanne falls into the dust.

Powerful shadows seem to menace the playground. A group of Qatari boys are engrossed in a game of ‘Simon Says’ down on the Corniche. The little patch of ground is hemmed in by tall, shining towers and nearby Al Jazeera is still broadcasting its independent, high quality media despite the Gulf State boycotters’ calls for its closure.¹ Trump has also rewarded Qatar with a $12 billion deal in fighter jets just days after calling the country a financier of terror.² Politics is a fickle game. For now, the US can also afford to abide a mini state of Kurdistan.

The heads of other nations are engrossed upon a map of the old Ottoman Empire from which the names of the Assyrians and Kurds were all but erased. And things are changing: on 25 September 2017 Iraqi Kurdistan is to hold a referendum as to independent status for a mini state cut from the larger map of Kurdistan drawn by nationalists after the failure of Lausanne to grant a national homeland for the Kurdish people.

The reactions? “Simon says, Don’t do it!’ bellows Erdogan. “Simon says, No!” warns Tehran. “Simon says, we are against it” cries Teresa “Mayhem” and various other Western players – most of them concurrently profiting from Kurdish oil ventures.

“Do this, do that, do anything but!”

Fortunately, the Kurdistan Regional Government has seen the writing on the wall. If Daesh could do it, the Kurds certainly can and must. Are they not the West’s allies, fighting and dying to clear the way of ISIS militants in Syria and Iraq?

When that job is done, as they must suspect, they cannot truly count on their fickle and greedy US friends to stand by them – but they’ve reached a deal with Turkey valid for the next fifty years, extendable, to export Kurdish oil and that helps.³

Kurdistan is not yet independent of Baghdad’s yoke but is very likely to become so and has acted freely to negotiate its own oil contracts for the past few years.⁴ The oil contracts make it a safe bet that Kurdistan can survive as oil is thicker than blood and business is the game changer. Kurds have made many more friends than the proverbial mountains of old and have also made them very very rich. None of the predatory giants in this playing field are going to walk away.

Mini Kurdistan can declare the will of the people for independence – but just who can vote? All Kurds everywhere? No. All Iraqis everywhere? No. According to Al Jazeera: “The vote, set for September 25, will take place in the three governorates that make up the autonomous Kurdish region … as well as other disputed areas that are claimed by both Kurdish Iraq and Baghdad: Makhmour in the north, Sinjar in the northwest and Khanaqin in the east, and most importantly, the oil-rich province of Kirkuk.”⁵

The terms of independence and negotiations may still be undefined, like the UK’s Brexit strategies, but you have to start somewhere. A historic Kurdish ideal it is – and manageable too. The Kurds can finally dictate some terms for change.

The Kurdish flag has been flying in Kirkuk and the Kurds have increased their territory in Iraq by 40% from what it was before Daesh rode in. Kirkuk may best be administered along multi-ethnic lines – hold its own referendum, become a zone like the UN HQs in New York.

In Turkey, Erdogan grows ever more belligerent, and Turkey’s Kurds – the majority of all Kurdistan’s divided and vassal regions – have lost even the little they had gained from the earlier peace process that came to an abrupt about face with round two of the elections of 2015. Erdogan turned against the Kurds at home in Turkey while making a fortune out of his relations with Barzani.

Erdogan should actually be happy for his business partner, Massoud Barzani. He should be happy that it is a mini state being conceived of and not the greater Kurdistan that would slice off that vast sector ravaged by the Turkish military in more than 30 years of war against PKK rebels and ordinary Kurds. Happily for Erdogan, Barzani is no friend of the PKK or the PKK-linked Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) either but he is a friend of the Saudis and they of him – Saudis have recently set up enthusiastic social media support for Kurdistan’s independence using the hashtag #SaudiForKurdistan.⁶

Closer to home, Rudaw observed on the Sunni split with Qatar: “President Barzani said that Qatar and Kurdistan are two different things. Qatar is accused of supporting terrorism, while Erbil has defeated the myth of terrorism by fighting the ISIS group in Iraq.”We would prefer to die of starvation than to live under the oppression and occupation of others. If this decision is made by referendum and the reaction is to isolate us, let our people die. That will be a “glory” for the world that they have killed our people by starvation just because those people wanted to express their destiny through democratic means.”⁷

Iran embroiled

In Iran, Kurds from the KDP-I and PAK are back on a war footing with Iranian security forces⁸ and the government continues to string up its Kurdish captives on the gallows with brief nods to court judges. Iran, as ever, fears a greater Kurdish state. The PUK seeks to allay those fears, calling on the KDP-I not to launch its resistance against Iran from the KRG, as in the past, when it allowed Iranian intelligence operatives into its area to pick off KDP-I targets or even handed them over as in 1996. Iranian agents managed to detonate explosives against KDP-I HQs in the PUK’s area of Koya last December killing 5 KDP-I peshmergas, a security official and injuring ten others.⁹

Iran is also increasingly opposed to the KDP and Barzani’s plans for independence as well as the KRG’s open friendship and direct links with Israel. According to writer Eyup Nuri:” Kurds are deeply sympathetic to Israel and an independent Kurdistan will be beneficial to Israel…It will create a balance of power. Right now, Israel is one country against many. But with an independent Kurdish state, first of all, Israel will have a genuine friend in the region for the first time, and second, Kurdistan will be like a buffer zone in the face of Turkey, Iran and Iraq…”¹⁰

Syria still in chaos

In northern Syria, Kurds had declared a Kurdish-administered enclave of Rojava, another mini entity, but this too was better than nothing and far better than before. ‘Simon says’ don’t do it, but they did and “Bravo, cry many Western fans – particularly of YPG’s Kurdish female fighting forces, the Women’s Protection Units.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) stressed a divergence of views between the PKK and the local YPG command: “a tendency has emerged that appears to prioritise Kurdish self-determination in Syria over the fight against Turkey, a tendency Turkey-oriented PKK leaders have tried to suppress by appointing trusted senior cadres who follow the Turkey-focused line.

“While the two visions could coexist and were even mutually reinforcing at first – while the YPG-PYD worked to build Rojava, the PKK used YPG-PYD progress to put pressure on Turkey – more recent developments present PKK leaders with a choice they may soon have to make: to devolve power to the party’s Syrian branches and allow them to refocus on Kurdish self-rule in Syria, or continue to use Syria as a springboard for guerrilla war against Turkey…¹¹

The US needed local Kurdish help in undoing the monster it helped give birth to in the deadly backlash that is Daesh. The Syrian Kurds know they cannot rely on the Americans and that Trump is fickle – fickle in business, fickle in politics. The US cannot fully abandon Turkey although rejecting Turkish demands it ceases its military collaboration with the YPG – so long as this alliance remains expedient.

Shi’a ‘Caliphate’ in reality?

Baghdad is in turmoil and has become Iran’s Shi’a dominated vassal. Ultimately it was the US and its allies that were responsible for the Iraqi disaster and deliberately coaxing sectarianism: it is now too late to close Pandora’s Box. Some Sunnis regard having their own Sunni dominant region as the only solution to the imposition of Iran’s wider regional project. And what of the dispossessed former Ba’ath elite? Turning to Jihadist groups, including to ISIS, has not paid off.

It takes little stretch of the imagination to foresee that Iraqi and Iranian Shi’a forces can readily operate along the same supply routes as Daesh was profiting from, but in this case establishing a so-called ‘corridor’ all the way from Tehran across northern Iraq and Syria into Lebanon in an active manifestation of a Shia Caliphate – in fact even if not in name declared. The Shi’a forces have already reached al-Tanf and the border access to Syria.

Such an active Shi’a strategic corridor would hopefully be less brutal than that operated under Daesh and must lessen the beheadings and burnings but the Shi’a joint forces may then move on Israel as the supreme ideological goal in addition to controlling lucrative resources. Things can get much much worse than now, I believe, with far too many players in the game.

The new international alliances, Lebanese Hezbollah being trained and backed by Russia while also working with YPG Kurds for now still backed by erratic Trump and his administration and on the other hand a Sunni fraternity including Turkey highlights the wider regional and international fault lines.

A Transylvania Intelligence analyst commented: “If successful in its endeavor Iran will rise to the status of regional hegemony in the Middle East and gain a foothold in the East Mediterranean, and consequently in the Euro-Atlantic security complex. The Assad Government and Hezbollah will benefit from a constant uninterrupted flow of supplies which will feed their military operations to threaten regional security, the state of Israel, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and will completely cancel Iraq’s sovereignty. ..¹²

Qatar is not the only financer of proxy terror groups

The Sunni alliance is adjusting after the 5 June spit with Qatar – Qatar remains vociferously supported by Erdogan and his Shi’a neighbor, Iran. But otherwise, the Turkish dictatorship has the leader still seeing enemies everywhere, both inside and outside of the country, locking up opponents at will. So why stand with Qatar when the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi, Egypt and Yemen have turned foe, cutting diplomatic ties and imposing an economic blockade?

For his part, Erdogan told the AKP “isolating a nation in all areas is inhumane and against Islamic values. It’s as if a death penalty decision has been taken for Qatar. That is because, useful Kurdish ally, Barzani aside, Qatar is his ideological counterpart.

Billionaire businessman, Rex Tillerson, now US Secretary of State, stated in a recent televised press conference, as reported by Newsweek: “…the blockade is also impairing US and other international business activities in the region and has created a hardship on the people in Qatar and the people whose livelihoods depend on commerce with Qatar. The blockade is hindering US military actions in the region and the campaign against ISIS…¹³“

The US drive against ISIS is said to rely on its airbase in Qatar and it also has 10,000 troops based there. Turkey has committed to send another 1,000 troops in addition to the 100 deployed, although this is largely symbolic as there is no military offensive taking place. Bahrain and other partners in the Qatar blockade condemned the spectacle of Turkish tanks rolling through the streets of Doha at the weekend.¹⁴

Kurdistan 24 observed pertinently: “…the standoff could lead to the powers of Qatar, Turkey, Iran, and Russia on one side and a Saud coalition on the other.

Saudi has counter moves of its own, such as support for Iraqi Kurds in their bid for independence as well as Syrian Kurdish autonomy.”¹⁵

Simon says, “Biji Kurdistan!” Let the children play on.

Related posts:

In the name of ‘honour’ – lingering ghosts of the girls killed in Iraqi Kurdistan The Mad Dogs of Mosul – Part I Iraqi Kurdistan – “Sold Out!” – Part II The Hit List: Killing pro-Kurds on the orders of the Turkish State – then and now The Shiladze’s Fury and the KDP—Turkey’s Common Concerns Intelligence Agencies in Iraqi Kurdistan are Political Police of KDP and PUK Who Are the Persian – Part I The talks on Kurdish independence referendum, such forgiveness!