A Framework Settlement and Kurdish Concerns
Stratfor
May 11, 2007
Summary
While the Iranians are busy creating the framework for a comprehensive
settlement with the United States over Iraq, the Kurds have good reason to be
worried.
Analysis
Following the May 3-5 Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt, the Iranian government
has thrown out a number of indicators that it is making serious moves toward
reaching a comprehensive resolution with Washington over Iraq. The Iranians
presented a detailed paper at the summit outlining Tehran's demands for Iraq,
and essentially demonstrated that the appropriate concessions will be made to
appease Iraq's Sunni faction as long as the government in Baghdad falls within
the Iranian orbit of influence.
The United States is most unlikely to be completely on board with all of Iran's
demands, and there are still lengthy negotiations to be had. But now that the
Iranian proposal has been thrown out into the public view for the Sunni Arabs
and Kurds to see what plan the Iranians have cooked up for Iraq, Washington is
facing quite the damage-control task to assure these factions that any deal it
works out with Iran will not compromise their core interests.
The Iranian paper acknowledges that Iraq's Sunni faction would have to be
appeased in a number of ways to quell the insurgency and allow the Iraqi
government to function. The relevant proposals include making amendments to the
constitution to give 40 percent of the seats in Baghdad to the Sunnis; altering
the de-Baathification law to allow the rehiring of former Iraqi army personnel;
holding fresh parliamentary elections; and reaching an agreement on the "fair"
distribution of oil revenues, "especially the regions in the center of Iraq" (a
direct reference to the oil-deprived and Sunni-dominated central region of the
country).
These proposals give Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) much to worry
about. Currently, the Iraqi 275-seat parliament is divided to give the Shia
about 47 percent of seats, the Sunnis 20 percent and the Kurds 21 percent.
Iran's suggested doubling of the percentage of Sunni seats, with the Shia
maintaining the overall majority, leaves little room for Kurds in the
parliament.
The Kurds are not going to be enthusiastic about amending the Iraqi Constitution
in any event. When the charter was formulated in late 2005, the Sunnis opted for
the insurgency and boycotted the political realm. Without the Sunnis in play,
the Kurds took advantage of the situation and helped design a constitution
largely favorable to Kurdish interests. This is particularly true of the
intentionally ambiguous clauses on oil legislation, which allow the regional
governorates considerable authority over decisions related to developing oil
fields, exploring new and undeveloped fields, and dividing revenues.
The Kurdish faction will hotly contest any attempt to give the Sunnis a larger
piece of the oil pie, especially by re-establishing the state-owned Iraq
National Oil Co. As Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and
the KRG representative to the United States, recently threatened, "The oil issue
for us is a redline … if a centralized oil regime is imposed on us, we will not
participate in the state of Iraq." The Kurds see the recent add-ons to the oil
legislation by the Sunni and Shiite factions as an outright attempt to rob the
Kurds of their prized oil resources. No major concessions by the Kurds can thus
be expected on this subject in the near future, particularly when the Kirkuk
issue remains unsettled.
The final status of the ancient, multiethnic and oil-rich city of Kirkuk is
supposed to be settled in a local referendum by the end of 2007 under the
constitution. Turkey, Iran, and Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions all have a
vested interested in making sure Kirkuk's oil wealth does not officially fall
under the Kurds' control, and are actively working to settle more Arabs in the
city to reverse the demographics back in their favor.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders regret not taking Kirkuk at the outset of the Iraq war,
and know that the longer the referendum is delayed, their chances of securing
Kirkuk will be further diminished. With Turkey making threats across the border
and the United States with its hands full in dealing with the Sunni insurgents
and Shiite militias farther south, the Kurds are pushing for the referendum to
take place before they lose their chance altogether.
In essence, Iraqi Kurds are looking at a whole new ball game in post-Hussein
Iraq. Iraq's Kurds are experiencing the highest degree of independence in their
history. For the first time they have their own political system (in which the
two main rival Kurdish parties are united for a change), security forces and a
steady source of income, which is why desperately holding on to the region's oil
resources has become such a vital issue. Needless to say, the KRG is not willing
to easily surrender any of that.
And if history serves as a lesson, the Kurds cannot be all that assured that
they will not again end up on the losing side. The aftermath of 1991 Gulf War,
when the United States essentially reneged on a backdoor deal to support Kurdish
and Shiite uprisings in the north and south, leaving both factions to get
brutally crushed by Saddam Hussein's forces, is still fresh in the minds of
Iraqi Kurds. Knowing full well that the United States is anxious for an exit
strategy from Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds are not completely confident that Washington
will not overlook Kurdish interests in an effort to reach a final settlement on
Iraq.
And though Tehran has a long history of working with Iraq's Kurds --
particularly the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by KRG President Massoud
Barzani -- against the Sunni-led regime in Baghdad, with a Shiite-dominated
government in Baghdad, the Iranians and Iraqi Kurds no longer have a common
enemy to battle. The Iraqi Kurds already knew the tenuousness of such working
relationships given the 1975 Algiers accord between Iran and Iraq, which halted
Iranian support for a Kurdish rebellion in Iraq, seriously crippling the
movement.
In addition, the Iraqi Kurds are fully aware they represent the common adversary
to Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions, and that once the attention shifts from the
sectarian violence farther south, they will face familiar moves from Baghdad to
suppress Kurdish autonomy. The Iraqi Kurds also enjoy no assurance that the deep
historical rifts between Barzani's KDP and President Talabani's Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan will not end up compromising Kurdish interests in the long run,
particularly if Talabani's health begins to fail.
Do-or-die time for the Kurds to consolidate their gains has arrived. The KRG can
pressure Washington to keep Kurdish interests in mind during these negotiations
by issuing veiled threats to withdraw from the central government and halt
peshmerga support for U.S. forces, but in the end, a significant compromise of
some sort looks inevitable. The adage that history repeats itself holds
especially true in geopolitical matters. Unfortunately for the Kurds, their
history is all too painful a reminder of what could lie ahead.
