Breaking From Baghdad: Kurdish Autonomy vs. Maliki’s Manipulation
Breaking From Baghdad: Kurdish Autonomy vs. Maliki’s Manipulation
The Kurds tend to get lost in discussions about the tilt of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki toward Iran, the increasingly arbitrary nature of his rule, and the growing tension between the Shiites and the Sunnis with their demands for “federal region” status. But the deteriorating relationship between the semiautonomous Kurdish minority in the north and the central government in Baghdad is perhaps the most incendiary of Iraq’s potential crises. This conflict—which is only superficially about revenue sharing of oil wealth but more deeply about what a New York Times article earlier this year characterized as “historical grievances and Kurdish aspirations for independence”—casts the largest shadow over the future of a unified Iraq.
The status of the Kurds is particularly daunting because it is caught up in a web of historical complexity stretching back to the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in 637, when the Kurds fought against other empires or each other to achieve some form of self-rule.
The victors of World War I drew a new world map that spread the Kurds through the newly formed states of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, and Syria instead of giving them a state, largely because of a lack of strong political institutions. Ignoring the fact that the Kurds stubbornly identified themselves on a tribal basis, these architects of the new order tried to deal with the problem they represented by prescribing harsh assimilation.
While Turkey fights the Kurdish rebels with weapons and in court, the Kurdish guerrillas have added a new weapon to their arsenal—a savvy political capacity with domestic and international reach.
The Kurds formed political parties in reaction to this threat against their identity. Often the states that were home to the Kurds supported one group against another. Kurdish parties also became accustomed to fighting each other, although all of them believed passionately that they were fighting for a unified Kurdish state.
In Iraq, the Kurds had to operate in a political climate that was increasingly pan-Arab after the 1950s. This left little room for their own national aspirations and resulted in a constant challenge to Baghdad’s rule in armed struggle from 1961 to 1991 by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and later the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan as well.