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KurdistanObserver.com
The Kurds: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
January
30, 2007
 Earlier
this month, American forces in Iraq raided an Iranian facility in the Kurdish
city of Irbil. Documents and computer files seized in that raid indicate that
the facility was being used by members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps in an operation to provide money and weapons to various Shia militia
groups in Iraq. The weapons include advanced improvised explosive devices,
mortars, newer generation rocket propelled grenades and shoulder-fired surface
to air missiles. The advanced IED’s have already killed American troops, and
mortars allegedly traceable to Iran have been used in attacks on Sunni areas of
Baghdad.
Is the IRGC operating in
Kurdish northern Iraq? Of course they are - they’ve been there since at least
1991. Soon after the Iraqi defeat in Kuwait, IRGC officers conducted clandestine
and covert operations in the southern Shia area and the northern Kurdish area,
and have been active there ever since.
The raid earlier this month
on the Iranian facility causes problems for the Kurdish Regional Government and
its autonomous region in northern Iraq. Since the Iranians claim that the
facility was an Iranian consulate that had been in operation in the Kurdish
enclave for years, it created a diplomatic incident. Having served in northern
Iraq, including Irbil, and observing Iranian operations, I am skeptical that the
facility was, in fact, a consulate. Since the raid, Iraqi foreign minister
Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Kurd, has demanded that the United States release the
five “consular officials.”
The incident highlights the
conflict the Kurds face. They are part of Iraq, but are not Arabs like 80
percent of the population. For almost the entire period that the Baath Party
ruled Iraq, they were the target of a genocidal campaign aimed at eradicating
their separate identity. During that time, the Kurds – at times out of
necessity – developed a close relationship with the Iranians. When Saddam
Hussein’s forces attacked the Kurdish village of Halabja with chemical weapons,
when the Iraqi army killed thousands of Kurds in the Anfal campaign, the
Iranians became the Kurds’ only ally. Iran provided refuge to hundreds of
thousands of Kurds, creating a bond that is hard to break and hard to ignore.
When no one else seemed to care about their plight, Iran opened its borders to
them.
Now that Saddam is gone and
the Kurds have established an autonomous region in the north, the Iranians are
exploiting that past relationship. After the fall of Baghdad in 2003, the
Iranians greatly expanded their presence in the Kurdish north as well as with
their fellow Shia Muslims in the south.
The Iranian presence is not
a good thing for the American efforts in Iraq. It also presents problems for
the Kurds, easily America’s best allies among the Iraqis. The Kurds are
balancing their close relationship with America against their close relationship
with the Iranians. When more raids like the one in Irbil occur in the future –
and they will, given new orders to U.S. forces to no longer “catch and release”
Iranian operatives, but to capture and kill them – the Kurds will have to decide
which relationship means more. You can’t have it both ways. Just like the Iraqi
government of Nuri al-Maliki, they have to decide if they are with us or with
the Iranians. |
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