This blog contains a selection of the most interesting articles and YouTube clips that I happened to read and watch. Every post always have a link to the original content. Content varies.
Showing posts with label 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum. Show all posts
She says the KRG did not expect the "unsophisticated" reaction to the referendum by the US and Europe. "With every statement they made against the referendum, they were emboldening our neighbours and Baghdad to think the Kurds were alone and that they could punish us." [...]
According to Rahman, Baghdad continues to cut off the region's budget and has left them to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and to accommodate 1.8 million displaced people and Syrian refugees.
While she says there's been some improvement in the relationship with Baghdad in recent weeks, Rahman also argues that the budget issue and Iraq's failure to establish a federal and pluralistic democracy is what led to the KRG's pursuit for independence. [...]
When asked whether corruption and nepotism, particularly among family members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party President Masoud Barzani, are to blame for the lack of progress in the independence movement, Rahman says "people know who they're voting for". She says "many people are proud of their record. Many people look up to them for leadership."
That moment was believed to mark the first time a modern Iraqi leader has spoken in Kurdish, which, along with Arabic, is an official language of Iraq. And he accompanied that with a more substantive overture, agreeing to transfer more than $250 million to the Kurdish Regional Government to help pay the salaries Kurdish government workers and security forces. [...]
Although the Iraqi Kurds made some progress this week, their brethren across the border in Syria aren’t having a good week. Here, too, the Kurds were a long neglected and long oppressed minority. Here, too, they were among the most effective fighting forces against ISIS. Here, too, they carved out their own enclave—this time in northern Syria. But last weekend, Turkish forces succeeded in retaking Afrin, the Kurdish-controlled Syrian town near the border with Turkey. The Turks, who have their own restive Kurdish population, want the Syrian Kurds to withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River—and are now threatening the town of Manbij, also west of the Euphrates and under Kurdish control. Some Syrian Kurds have links to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a separatist Kurdish group that operates inside Turkey, and which Ankara (as well as Washington) regards as a terrorist organization. Some are also supported by the U.S. (For more on the many overlapping alliances and conflicts inside Syria, go here.) [...]
“The red line is independence—or even having a referendum on independence,” said Joost Hiltermann, an expert on the Kurds who directs the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group. Referring to the situation in Iraq, he said the regional powers such as Turkey, not to mention Iran and Iraq itself, had made their peace with Kurdish self-governance within the Iraqi state. But Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish president at the time (who remains influential in Kurdish politics), wanted more.
How should central governments treat independence movements? My own research shows that central governments can limit the uncertainty and violence over secession campaigns when they provide a legal path to independence. The most recent scenes in Catalonia and Iraqi Kurdistan only serve to further confirm this finding. When central governments crack down on independence movements, political and economic instability and even violence are the usual outcomes.
There are two major reasons why suppressing secession attempts by force is no solution to the issue. First, it is impossible to efface the dream of independence from people's minds. Repression raises latent support for independence, even if it removes all public expression of that support. If the state eventually faces a moment of weakness or crisis, that latent support could quickly break out into a mass movement, as happened in various parts of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in the 1990s.
Second, when governments try to eliminate the possibility of independence, they give themselves a freer hand to mistreat their ethnic minorities. My research shows that democracies that define themselves as "indivisible" in their constitutions are less likely to decentralise power to their regions and give more rights to local communities to govern themselves. [...]
Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, secessionism generally does not spread across borders. Some evidence suggests that self-determination claims are more likely to arise when there are more such claims in nearby countries, but no one has yet found that the success of independence movements in one country causes independence movements to become more successful in nearby countries.
Iran also enjoys political preeminence in Baghdad. The ruling Islamic Dawa Party is traditionally pro-Iranian, while the Badr Organization controls the powerful interior ministry, which has allowed it to blur the boundaries between the official armed forces and its militias — thus allowing rebranded militiamen to benefit from U.S. training and equipment. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has been left playing catch up: Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited Riyadh in late October to launch the new Saudi-Iraqi Coordination Council, the first time an Iraqi premier had made the trip in a quarter-century. But it is not clear that the Saudis have much more up their sleeve than financial inducements to potential political allies. [...]
In each context, Iran has been able to establish proxies that give it political and military influence in the country. Tehran also has successfully identified and exploited seams in their enemy’s camp. For example, Tehran acted swiftly to nullify the results of the Kurdish independence referendum in September and then to punish the Kurds for proceeding with it. The Iranians were able to use their long-standing connection to the Talabani family, and the Talabanis’ rivalry with the Barzanis, to orchestrate the retreat of Talabani-aligned Peshmerga forces from Kirkuk in October — thus paving the way for the city and nearby oil reserves to be captured by its allies. [...]
It’s impossible to say the extent to which Washington and Jerusalem are on board with such an effort. However, the statements last week by Defense Secretary James Mattis suggesting that the United States intends to stay in eastern Syria, and by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel will continue to enforce its security interests in Syria, suggest that these players may have a role to play. [...]
Past Saudi behavior might encourage skepticism. Nevertheless, the Iranians here have a clearly visible Achilles’ heel. In all the countries where the Saudi-Iran rivalry has played out, Tehran has proved to have severe difficulties in developing lasting alliances outside of Shiite and other minority communities. Sunnis, and Sunni Arabs in particular, do not trust the Iranians and do not want to work with them. Elements of the Iraqi Shiite political class also have no interest of falling under the thumb of Tehran. A cunning player looking to sponsor proxies and undermine Iranian influence would find much to work with — it’s just not clear that the Saudis are that player.
Persistence of the international and regional powers' "one-Iraq" policy has evidently resulted in the emergence of a "two-Iran" reality in the Middle East. The increasing Iranian influence over Baghdad throughout the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) concluded with Tehran's proxies dominating the country's "disputed areas" and Kurdistan proper. It is fair to claim that the future of Iraq is now in the hands of Iran today, rather than any other regional and/or international actor. [...]
It is essential to remind everyone that the US has never succeeded in brokering a durable peace agreement for any of the conflicts in the Middle East - even if Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to that end. [...]
Washington's reaction towards the crisis that broke out in the Middle East due to the Arab Spring was therefore not an exception. Since the cross-border nature of the Arab Spring that motivated the masses was, above all else, a threat to existing political borders, the US and the international community as a whole tried to maintain "stability" once again by reinforcing the territorial integrity of each state and/or by continuing support for the dictatorial regimes. [...]
The US, however, preferred not only to trigger the tensions which eventually paved the way for greater Iranian influence in Iraq but also to sit back and watch the destruction of the KRG presidency. Yet the KRG has so far gained a symbolic representation value and capacity in the name of all Kurds beyond Iraqi Kurdistan's borders.
From Catalonia to Kurdistan and Quebec, many people are demanding independence. What does it take to transform a cultural identity into a nation-state? And what is the impact?
The number of countries in the United Nations has grown over the decades – from 51 states in 1945 to 193 today. Many more places want to become independent.
But national governments almost always oppose secession. Catalonia’s parliament declared independence from Spain in October 2017 following a referendum deemed illegal by the central authorities in Madrid. Spain dismissed the region’s government, and decreed that a fresh election should be held. Catalan politicians leading the independence movement could be jailed for decades if found guilty of rebellion and sedition.
The autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq also held a recent independence referendum. It outraged the government in Baghdad and neighbouring countries, which also have Kurdish minorities. The Baghdad government claimed the independence referendum was illegal and seized back the lands Kurds had taken beyond their region.
The desire for secession is nothing new. There are estimated to be more than than 8000 ethno-cultural groups in the world. With many independence movements demanding that their homelands be recognised as countries. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said that if every region had its way, the EU would become unmanageable. So who gets to form a state? There are no clear international rules.
The 1933 Montevideo Convention declared that a region needs 4 things to become a state:
- a permanent population
- a defined territory
- a government
- and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.
But these are only guidelines. Ideally a region would also meet other conditions, such as: - show that a clear majority have freely chosen independence - respect its own minorities - have a viable state - and settle terms with the state it leaves and its neighbours.
In practice, all these conditions are hard to meet. Taiwan is a modern, democratic state in all but international law. It’s an island off the south-eastern coast of China which has its own constitution, functions as an independent state, has democratically elected leaders, and was the first place in Asia to rule in favour of gay marriage. Per head it’s around three times richer than mainland China. But China regards Taiwan as a renegade province. It insists that no country can have diplomatic ties with both itself and Taiwan. Only 19 countries, plus the Vatican, officially recognise it.
Somaliland is another region seeking to be recognised as a country. The semi-desert territory on the coast of the Gulf of Aden declared independence from Somalia in 1991. It has its own government, police force and currency. But no foreign government recognises it. Perhaps for good reason. To recognise Somaliland would encourage other separatists in the region. It would undermine the already-weak federal government of Somalia. And it would probably lead to war. There have only been two major changes to African borders since the 1960s and neither is a success story. Eritrea declared independence from Ethiopia in 1993. Today the country has a despotic government and its people are mired in abject poverty. In 2011 South Sudan seceded from Sudan, making it the world’s newest country. Soon after South Sudan formed civil war broke out displacing 2.2 million people. Although a ceasefire was signed in 2015, the country lies in ruins - plagued by hyper-inflation, famine and violence. Independence has a romantic ring. Many sympathise with the demand for freedom. But redrawing borders is dangerous, and often causes as many problems as it solves.
On September 25, Iraqi Kurds voted in a controversial secession referendum, amid rising regional tensions and international opposition. The referendum set off a chain of events, culminating this week in a military confrontation between Erbil and Baghdad.
But most of the world, these days, calls any decision by direct popular vote a referendum. Democratic nation-states dislike them, feeling that they confess a failure of representative democracy. France is one country that has tried to tame the referendum. At first, French republicans damned it as a tool of Bonapartism, since it was used by Napoleon III in the nineteenth century to bypass parliaments and base his dictatorship on “the people.” But later, republicans worked the measure into their curious rules for orderly regime change: first a revolution, then a provisional government to prepare elections for a constituent assembly to draw up a new Constitution; next comes a referendum to approve the Constitution; and then, finally, the first parliamentary elections of the new Republic. [...]
Behind referendums and plebiscites lies the idea of popular sovereignty. But does that legitimize a “right to self-determination,” when it’s a vote about leaving an existing nation state? That right is, anyway, a fine-sounding collective right, which is almost impossible to define, let alone to enforce. It can be made to mean almost anything: for instance, German postwar “expellees” from Central Europe claimed that it meant their right to return to their homeland and evict the Polish and Czech settlers who had replaced them. [...]
The central factor in referendums is who has the right to call them. Formally, the Kurdish and Catalan referendums were both illegal because neither the Iraqi nor the Spanish government licensed them. (But the European Union showed despicable hypocrisy in snubbing the Catalans, since more than half the EU’s members only exist because they broke away from larger states without permission or prior referendum). Some places—California and Switzerland among them—have for many years granted a specified minimum of petitioners the right to call a referendum. But now, globalized social media is transforming the whole ballot initiative question. A ceaseless torrent of organized demands for change is spreading the habit of direct democracy, which is already bypassing traditional legislatures. Referendums, vulnerable to demagogues and lies as they certainly are, look set to carry the politics of the future.
Compare this to the experience of Catalonia. The Spanish Government did all it could to stop people voting. They seized ballot papers, arrested officials, disconnected technology and shut down apps, and when that failed used police brutality and repression - the latter in full display of a shocked world who could not believe what they were seeing in 21st century Western Europe. In one day - October 1st 2017 - the Spanish Government lost any right to the high ground and made the Catalan case for independence even more powerful. [...]
Spain is in a very different place. The idea and ideals of Spain have been dealt a powerful, perhaps even mortal blow. It’s hard to see how the Spanish and Catalan authorities can agree any way forward. The stakes are high – this is a crisis about democracy, self-determination and the right of a people to be only governed by consent. The Catalan authorities will clearly not back down, but what mechanisms for independence can be identified which Spain will respect? How can the Spanish government climb down from using repressive force? And if Spain in the short-term further ratchets up the temperature by suspending the Catalan authorities (via Article 155 of the Spanish constitution) what kind of end game have they in mind? [...]
The Catalan vote and the recent Kurdish referendum throw up the thorny issue of who and what constitute a nation state? The realpolitik answer is that the shape and nature of the world and even the boundaries of most nation states is entirely haphazard and one which in many cases defies logic and any sense of natural justice. Instead, the existence of many nationless peoples, from the Kurds to Palestinians and the case of Tibet, are a product of when and how empires retreated and dissolved, and who emerged at the right time to seize the claim of statehood. The writer Fred Halliday called this ‘post-colonial sequestration’ to explain this state of affairs, by which some nations emerged as empires fell, and others (the Kurds, Palestinians, Tibet) missed the opportunity and then have had to struggle to claim their statehood. [...]
All of this also reflects on the nature of the United Kingdom. The caricatured, reactionary image of the UK is one many of us tell and retell on many occasions. This is a country which has presided over war and military action in every year since 1945, which sponsors privatisation and corporate greed the world over, and has long lineages of racism and xenophobia. But there is also another British story: which includes the defeat of foreign and domestic fascism, and the victories and triumphs of generations of working people and the labour movement which have stood for democracy and human rights and against the powers of privilege and reaction.
And yet, while we should all be in favor of a free Kurdistan, the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many other Israeli politicians for Kurdish independence in recent weeks was both premature and unwise. For a start, the whole point of a referendum is to ask what the people think. The result is almost guaranteed to be overwhelmingly in favor of independence, but endorsing a “yes” vote in advance is blatantly interfering in the internal affairs of another country.
Beyond the historical friendship between the two nations, it is clear why Israelis are supporting the Kurds. Kurdistan is located at the strategically critical junction of Iran, Iraq and Syria – the area where Iran is hoping to establish its “Shi’a Crescent” land corridor, which would allow it to transport arms and fighters directly to Hezbollah’s strongholds in Lebanon. A free and pro-Israel Kurdistan on Iran’s borders will not only stymie Iran’s designs but will also be a major strategic asset in the region. But Iran, along with Iraq, which is loath to lose the oil-rich region, and Turkey, which is anxious to prevent any form of Kurdish independence that could influence the much larger number of Kurds living within its own borders, is determined to stop the establishment of Kurdistan. By openly supporting the Kurds, Israel is only creating a situation in which Iran and Turkey will find independence that much harder to stomach. [...]
The Kurds in northern Iraq still won't have a state the day after they vote for independence. The land-locked autonomous region is surrounded by countries that oppose it breaking away from Iraq. The only way it can continue to trading with the world is through Iran, Iraq or Turkey, all of which have already taken steps to closing their borders and air space. At least one of those three countries will have to come to terms with Kurdish independence in order for Kurdistan to become a reality, which is why the United States and other Western nations which may support independence in principle have all counseled the Kurds to wait with the referendum.
The Supreme Court declared the ruling on Monday, which calls for all preparations for the September 25 vote to be halted, following a review of multiple "requests to stop the referendum".
"The supreme court has issued the order to suspend organising the referendum set for September 25 ... until it examines the complaints it has received over this plebiscite being unconstitutional," it said in a statement. [...]
"What we see at the moment is that the Iraqi parliament is trying to use all the legal mechanisms that exist in this country and say that the referendum is against the constitution, which the Kurds have signed and helped write in 2005." [...]
"At this point, you have to remember that the background to all of this is a really sour relationship between Erbil and Baghdad for some time now, even though there has been some military cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS)."
This arrangement has its limits. From the perspective of the Kurds, the Iraqi leadership in Baghdad is determined to keep the KRG weak. In Iraq’s system of spoils, the Kurds are supposed to receive 17 percent of government revenues. According to officials in the Kurdish capital, Erbil, Baghdad has consistently shortchanged the Kurds of this constitutionally mandated share of government revenues. This accounting spat has exasperated both Kurds and Arabs and has compelled Kurds themselves to ignore agreements with Baghdad as they see fit. The best example of this is the Kurdish decision to sell oil independent of the Iraqi government. At one point in 2014, the fight over the KRG’s proposed oil trade required then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to intercede. American officials helped negotiate an agreement in December 2015, but that quickly faltered, leading the Kurds to sell oil without the consent of Baghdad in 2015. Then, of course, there was the Islamic State’s invasion and the performance of the Iraqi security forces, which convinced Kurdish leaders that Iraq was irredeemably broken. [...]
The Turks are opposed to KRG independence because they are worried about Syrian Kurdish independence and they are currently engaged in a fight with the separatists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a terrorist group. Yet Turkey is also the KRG’s largest investor, and Barzani’s KDP has developed strong ties to Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party. The Kurds are hoping that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s appropriation of the anti-Kurdish nationalist right will not affect their aspirations to statehood. Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, it is hard to imagine the Turkish military invading Iraq to snuff out Kurdish independence there. Its foray into Syria has demonstrated the limits of a military that seems far less fearsome than many imagined from the second largest army in NATO.
The real problems the Kurds have lie in Tehran and Baghdad. The Iranians are opposed to the referendum for similar reasons as the Turks. They have their own Kurdish population that exists uneasily within the dominant Persian political and cultural milieu. The Iranians have more of a capacity to make mischief for the Kurds, which is why officials in Erbil are angry that the United States has counseled a referendum delay. They believe this has only emboldened the Iranians to threaten the Kurds. From their perspective, the American position is bewildering. The Trump administration was supposed to roll back Tehran’s influence, not enable bad Iranian behavior.
As September 25th, the date set for a referendum on the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan approaches, Israel must treat a position of even tentative support for Kurdish independence with caution.
Jews and Kurds share a profoundly similar history of statelessness, persecution, and hope for change. They have, more than once in living memory, shared the same enemies in the Middle East, too. [...]
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that on several occasions in the last five years Israeli officials have supported the formation of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Recently PM Netanyahu called for an independent Kurdish state for the "brave, pro-Western people who share our values," and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked declared this week that "Israel and countries of the West have a major interest in the establishment of the state of Kurdistan", at least in "its Iraqi part". [...]
As U.S.-Iran relations are inflamed and Hezbollah gains ever more strength on Israel’s fringes, the notion that an independent Iraqi Kurdistan would advance Israeli national security objectives in the region is an attractive one. [...]
This common opposition from both Iran and Turkey is likely to complicate matters further from an Israeli perspective. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Iran's Bagheri last month in Istanbul, where hands shook and heads nodded on the importance of Iranian-Turkish unity on opposition towards an independent Kurdistan. The meeting also produced plans for greater cooperation between the two countries in the Syrian theatre.
