LE MON DE DI PLOM ATIQU E | APRI L 2023
7
I N I RAQ AS I N SYRIA, I NTERNAL TENSIONS RISE
Kurdish discontents are growing
The Kurds won international support for fighting against Saddam Hussein and then ISIS. But turning
autonomy into independence remains out of reach, as external threats and internal divisions multiply
Vicken Cheterian | Translated by George Miller
Intra-Kurdish rivalry
Nonetheless, infighting has persisted, in particular the enduring rivalry between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDp) and Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (p UK ) in Iraqi Kurdistan.
This rivalry has even meant Iraq was without
a president, and therefore a government, for
several months: since 2005 the position – which
is ceremonial but symbolic of Iraqi unity – has
been held by a Kurd, elected by a parliamentary vote, under an arrangement between the
parties which gives the pUK the presidency and
the KDp leadership of the regional government.
But after the national parliamentary elections
in October 2021, both parties put forward a
presidential candidate, creating institutional
deadlock. Only a year later was the pUK ’s Abdul
Latif Rashid elected president under a compromise agreement between the pUK , KDp and
other Iraqi parties.
But even with this crisis resolved, the KDp
leadership still consider the p UK ’s demands
disproportionate to their electoral support.
‘The pUK doesn’t represent half of the Kurdish
people’, said Mahmud Mohammad, of the KDp’s
political bureau.
For its part, the pUK , whose electoral stronghold is in the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan (or
KrG), is critical of the KDp’s control over the regional government based in Erbil. This, it claims,
leads to an unfair distribution of funding. While
the KrG receives 17% of Iraq’s budget, the pUK
says too little of this money goes to Sulaymaniyah province, where the pUK has strong support
and public sector workers, particularly teachers
and municipal employees, often demonstrate
over the late payment of their salaries. The two
parties are also at odds over the control of oil
production and the distribution of the revenues
it generates, as the KrG has about 45 billion
barrels of oil reserves (30% of Iraq’s total) and
8-10 trillion cubic metres of gas.
There is a more fundamental disagreement
about bringing all peshmerga fighters under
a single command. Since achieving Kurdish
autonomy under US protection in 1992, two
separate military forces have each controlled
a well-defined territory, with Unit 70 loyal to
the pUK and Unit 80 to the KDp. This division
has proved disastrous on several occasions: in
2014, when ISIS attacked Sinjar’s Yazidi minority,
the KDp peshmergas withdrew, resulting in the
massacre of several thousand members of this
community; and in 2017, when the Iraqi army
advanced on Kirkuk after the independence
referendum, the pUK peshmergas abandoned
their positions, which led to the fall of the city
that symbolises Kurdistan’s oil wealth. Other
‘disputed territories’ have also been retaken by
Baghdad. ‘With a unified, reformed peshmerga
army, we’d have a chance of survival,’ says Niyaz
Barzani, the KrG presidency’s head of foreign
policy and diplomacy. ‘With divided peshmerga
units, we’re likely to face more defeats.’
Each party controlling a military force means
that any political disagreement risks turning
into armed confrontation, as happened in the
1990s. It also hinders the development of an
effective administration that can rise above
partisan issues. If either side loses an election,
there’s a significant temptation to resort to
force to maintain political dominance.3
With a reformed,
united peshmerga
army, we’d have a
chance of survival.
With divided peshmerga units, we’re
likely to face more
defeats
Niyaz Barzani
The leaderships of the KDp and pUK are undergoing some renewal, creating both opportunities and tensions. The KDp, a historical Kurdish
organisation, was founded in 1946 by Mustafa
Barzani in Mahabad, Iran. Initially a pan-Kurdish
party, it’s now seen as a traditionalist organisation under the control of the Barzani family.
When its founder died in 1979, his son Masoud
became leader of the party and its military
forces. He also led the KrG from 2005 until his
resignation in November 2017 after the failed
referendum, which he had initiated. However,
he retains control of the KDp as a new generation of Barzanis come to the fore.
Being part of the Barzani dynasty
This new generation prefer western suits to
military fatigues and have kept out of internal
Kurdish struggles. But lacking the legitimacy
of their elders, who fought against Saddam
Hussein’s army, their place at the top of the
political hierarchy derives solely from being
part of the Barzani dynasty. Kurdish society has
not questioned their legitimacy but there are
concerns about the emergence of new power
Kurdish autonomous regions
ARMENIA
NAKHICHEVAN
(AZERBAIJAN)
Lake Van
TURKEY
Tabriz
Diyarbakır
Lake Urmia
Mardin
Gaziantep
Afrin
Kobane
Tell Abyad
Qamishli
Hasakah
ROJAVA
SYRIA
Kirkuk
Deir al-Zor
Palmyre
LEBANON
Kurdish populated areas
Majority
Minority
Damascus
Kurdish autonomous regions
Autonomous Administration
of North and East Syria
Area occupied by Turkey
Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous
region
relations within the leadership itself. After Masoud Barzani stepped down as KrG president, he
was replaced by his nephew Nechirvan Barzani
and his son Masrour became prime minister. As
the division of their respective responsibilities
has not been formalised, rivalry and political
tensions have grown.
The power struggle has been even fiercer in
the pUK . After the death of its founder and historical leader Jalal Talabani in 2017, his son Bafel
and his nephew Lahur vied for control. Together,
they had purged the party’s old guard but then
a clash led to Bafel’s victory and his cousin
being ousted.4 The stability of Iraqi Kurdistan
will therefore depend as much on the ability of
these two parties to manage their differences
as on how, within each organisation, the new
generation will exercise power.
Relations between Rojava and the KRG
But what about the relationship between the
KrG and Rojava? Travelling from Erbil, the
KrG’s capital, to Qamishli, Rojava’s main city,
gives an idea of the level of animosity between
these two Kurdish entities. What should be a
five-hour drive in fact takes most of the day.
The border crossing at Semalka – a pontoon
bridge over the Tigris – is only open three days
a week and access requires a special permit.
This is because of the tense relations between
the KDp and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (pKK),
which was founded in Turkish Kurdistan but is
also represented in Syria by its local branch, the
Democratic Union Party (pYD) and its armed
wing, the People’s Protection Units (YpG).
In the past two years, armed clashes between
the pKK and the KDp have rekindled fears of
another inter-Kurdish war. These clashes are
a consequence of the Turkish army’s massive
campaign against Kurdish guerrillas within Turkey. Since 2015 Ankara has managed to reduce
the pKK’s military activities by exacting a very
high price, including the destruction of Sur,
the old city of Diyarbakır.5 As a result, Kurdish
fighters have dispersed to other regions inside
Iraq and into Syria. The KDp has not welcomed
their arrival, as it has long sought to maintain
good relations with Ankara.
But Rojava’s leaders are less worried about
bad relations with the KDp than with Turkey.
Ankara continually threatens to invade all of
northern Syria and establish a 30km-deep ‘security zone’ to settle Syrian refugees living on
its soil and build an ‘Arab belt’ on its southern
border.6 Many observers believe that what’s
Erbil
IRAN
Mosul
Raqqa
Aleppo
Homs
Mahabad
Sinjar
Sulaymaniyah
IRAQ
Euphrates
ig
T
CÉCI LE MARI N
I
n September 2017 the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KrG) held a referendum on
independence for the autonomous enclave
it administers in northern Iraq. Despite a
92.73% vote in favour, the initiative failed, both
because Iraq’s central government in Baghdad
refused to ratify the result and because neither
the great powers (the United States and Russia)
nor neighbouring states (Saudi Arabia, Iran
and Turkey) were willing to countenance Iraq’s
break-up. This failure weakened the KrG, which
has since had to concede significant territory to
central government forces, including the strategic
city of Kirkuk.
Further west, in northeastern Syria, the
outlook is equally bleak for the Kurdish entity
known as the Autonomous Administration of
North and East Syria, set up a decade ago, which
is under constant threat from the Syrian regime
as well as repeated attacks by the Turkish army.1
But while Kurdish territorial ambitions may
be thwarted by international power games,
they are also complicated by rivalries between
Kurdish leaders.
It’s impossible to talk about stability in the
Middle East without taking account of the
anomaly of the Kurdish situation. After the
first world war, the region was reshaped, with
control going from dynastic empires to new
states based on ethnic criteria, such as Turkey
and the Arab countries, including Iraq and
Lebanon. On the map, the Kurds were a ‘people
without a state’, divided between Turkey, Syria,
Iraq and Iran – countries which failed to respect,
and sometimes even to recognise, Kurds’ fundamental rights. This situation led to numerous
revolts that were in turn forcibly suppressed.
However, in recent years, the weakening or
collapse of the Iraqi and Syrian states have
given the Kurds new opportunities, not least
because their various military forces in Iraq
and Syria became the main allies of the US led international coalitions, in 2003 against
Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime and, since
2014, against ISIS. This latter engagement won
Kurdish fighters and their cause unprecedented
international support. It also encouraged the
emergence of an autonomous entity in Syria
following the mobilisation of Iraqi Kurds, which
led to KrG autonomy being written in to Iraq’s
2005 constitution.2
ris
Baghdad
0
200 km
Sources Michael Izady, ‘The Gulf/2000 Project’,
Columbia University; The Kurdish Institute of Paris
stopping this invasion is the presence of around
900 US troops, spread across more than a dozen
bases. What if they left? ‘We’ve never severed
relations with Russia, despite our military alliance with the US ,’ says Abdulkarim Omar, the
autonomous administration’s de facto foreign
minister.
Saleh Muslim, the pYD’s co-president, met
me in a complex near Hasakah to discuss the
Syrian Kurds’ ability to face a Turkish offensive.
Because of the US military base nearby, we
were constantly interrupted by the sound of
helicopters. ‘The Turkish army isn’t in a position to win against the [pKK] guerrillas in the
mountains,’ he told me, referring to the frequent
fighting in northern Iraq. When I asked about
his forces’ prospects in Syria if Turkey attacked,
given the flat terrain on Rojava’s arid steppes,
he said, ‘We don’t have mountains here, but we
can dig tunnels.’
Some Syrian Kurds, however, want dialogue
with the Turks. ‘The Kurds won’t succeed in
creating an independent state in present-day
Syria, but let’s think about how to achieve stability instead of never-ending war,’ says Nasser
Haj Mansour, director of the Syrian Centre for
Research and Dialogue and himself a Kurd. He
doubts Ankara’s willingness to make concessions, however small. Be that as it may, Rojava
and the KrG remain more stable and prosperous
than several states in the region: Lebanon and
Syria are on the brink of collapse. And for these
two autonomous entities, survival depends as
much on the upheavals in the wider Middle East
as on cooperation between Kurds
•
Vicken Cheterian is a lecturer in history and
international relations at the University of
Geneva and Webster University Geneva
1 See Mireille Court and Chris Den Hond, ‘Rojava occupied’,
Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2020
2 See Vicken Cheterian, ‘Poised to profit’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, May 2013 3 See Hawre Hasan
Hama, ‘The consequences of the fragmented military in
Iraqi Kurdistan’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies,
vol 48, iss 2, Glasgow, 2021 4 See Amberin Zaman, ‘Talabani family feud at centre of power struggle in Iraqi Kurdistan party’, Al-Monitor, 14 July 2021, al-monitor.com 5 See
Laura-Maï Gaveriaux, ‘Turkey’s new dirty war’, Le Monde
diplomatique, English edition, July 2016 6 See Jean Michel
Morel, ‘Syria, divided, fought over and broken’, Le Monde
diplomatique, English edition, March 2023