Thoughts on the Kurdish Independence Referendum

Having spent a fair bit of time in Iraqi Kurdistan over the past several years, a number of people have asked me for my opinion about the recent independence referendum. Of course, there's an entirely separate post to be written about why there is a dearth of news and analysis on this relatively major global political moment available to these people such that they don't have to ask me, but this post turned out to be far too long already.

So to cut to the chase, do I support the independence referendum? Well, it really is a case of short answer: "yes" with an "if," long answer: "no" with a "but."

Ideologically, ethically, and morally it makes sense for Kurds to have their own nation (although I'm generally opposed to states defined in large part by ethnicity, but again, that's another post). There's not nearly enough room to go into all the history of it here, but the Kurdish people have been, to put it very mildly, quite poorly treated in most every nation they've been a part of.

At one point in time, Kurds were promised their own nation after the break up of the Ottoman empire and the end of the first World War, but instead they were partitioned into 4 separate nations (Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey) by the major world powers of the time (Britain being most guilty for the, again to put it quite mildly, poor conception and design of what is now the Iraqi state). There have been many times throughout the history of Iraq when the Kurds might have had a chance at gaining independence had everything broken exactly the right way, but world history is complicated and things are always easier to figure out in hindsight.

But importantly, there have been more than a few times the West in general and America specifically have either strongly implied or outright promised to help build an independent Kurdistan, which is a bit more relevant for the purposes of this conversation. Iraqi Kurds were very much led to believe that their assistance in the first Gulf War in 1991 was going to earn them if not their outright independence at the moment, at least US support in gaining it eventually. After all, the genocidal Anfal campaign Saddam carried out against the Kurdish people was a major selling point of the war to the American public (indeed, as a third grader at the time, I remember the phrase "gassed his own people" as being used nearly every time Hussein's name was mentioned).

Instead, the US more-or-less abandoned the Kurds as soon as the war was declared over. Sure, they maintained a No Fly Zone above Kurdish airspace, but that was far from enough to stop Saddam from enacting all sorts of revenge against the Kurdish people. So instead they had to settle for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the semi-autonomous state-within-a-state they continue to occupy to this day. Although there was supposed to be a referendum regarding Kurdish independence completed by 2007 as part of the original federal agreement, for a laundry list of reasons this never happened. Most recently, as by far the most effective force in fighting the Islamic State, again Kurds hoped to earn their independence by successfully ousting the group from their territory as the central government forces had been unable to do.

This thumbnail sketch is obviously a woefully too short summary of the various trials and tribulations of the Kurdish people within Iraq, but I think it's more than sufficient to demonstrate why I said at the top there are so many reasons to support immediate Kurdish independence.

The but, however, is one of practicality.

As the KRG currently stands, it's somewhat difficult to envision where a lot of the basic necessities of a functional state would come from. There's little industry or agriculture in the area, and the KRG as a whole imports the vast majority of what it consumes. This is already a big enough problem before you realize that an independent Kurdistan would immediately be surrounded by four nations that are strongly opposed to its very existence, two of which (Turkey and Iran) are currently the KRG's biggest trading partners, who would likely immediately cut them off upon independence. Not to mention that land-locked Kurdistan's only trading routes would be through Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, all of whom again are strongly opposed to the existence of a Kurdish state. That's...not ideal.

Independence could be somewhat feasible with meaningful support from the United States, but that support was not forthcoming from the Obama administration and will not be coming from the current administration, either. Pretty much the only nation that supports an independent Kurdistan is Israel, and I probably don't need to give you an extended primer on Middle East politics to know why that's not super helpful.

Again, I want to make it clear that I fully support Kurdish independence. Pointing out the many reasons it's largely not feasible right now is not at all to say it shouldn't happen, just that its prospects for success right now are dangerously slim.

Somewhat ironically, the Kurdish people get a fairly good deal  in the current Iraqi constitution. For instance, the region gets significantly more in its share of the nation's oil revenues, at least in the context of what the KRG itself actually produces. Which is yet another reason independence will be quite difficult -- the only way the KRG could survive as a nation is if they control Kirkuk, a disputed city on the edge of the region which is also the only oil-producing area within/near the KRG.

Kirkuk has a long and interesting history (Mary, as in the mother of Jesus, was said to stay at a temple there for a period of time), but that is again another post for another day. What is relevant now is that Kirkuk used to be a Kurdish city. However, in the 1980s, Saddam began a campaign of Arabization in Kurdish areas, giving the cities Arabic names and offering large sums of money to Arab families that would move from the South into homes of displaced Kurdish people. It was a concerted campaign to break up the large Kurdish majority in the city, and it largely worked, as the city is now quite multicultural. Which is generally a good thing, but in this case was done specifically in an attempt to thwart Kurdish claims to the city.

So the current Government of Iraq will never just cede Kirkuk to the KRG without a fight, and sure enough, immediately after the independence referendum, Iraqi troops and tanks began massing on the border of Kirkuk. While tensions are still fairly high, at this point it doesn't look like any major fighting is going to happen, but it almost assuredly would if the KRG actually declared independence and officially severed ties to Baghdad.

All of these practical problems are not lost on the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. Having spent the majority of this past summer there and spoke to a lot of people about the referendum, opinions were pretty mixed. More than a few people felt it to be a political ruse, an attempt to distract people from the corruption of the KRG's current ruling regime (and there's quite a bit of that!) and the current economic crisis the region is experiencing. Others felt it to be a useless exercise, given all the issues I've laid out here and the many others that could have been brought up. Indeed, there was a concerted political campaign called "No for Now" that made many of these arguments. Of course, a number of the leaders of this movement have been receiving death threats and facing violent retaliation. Which I'm sure is completely unrelated to the aforementioned corrupt political leaders who would greatly benefit from independence.

Of course, many people were more than happy about the referendum, and the fact that it passed with something like 85% indicates whatever problems most people had with it, they still voted yes. And really, how could you blame them? You live all of your life under a brutal dictator and then a violent occupation from a world super power and you get a chance to declare that you should finally be allowed to rule yourselves? Even with all I've written about the actual practical problems of trying to create an independent Kurdistan right now, I'd have voted yes if given the opportunity.

So to drastically oversimplify it: Of course the Kurds deserve independence, but it's hard to see how an independent Kurdistan would be able to survive for long under current conditions. So, do I support Kurdish independence? As the Right Reverend Lovejoy would say "Yes, if they can grow a domestic economic base and secure more regional political cooperation" or "Not but that's only because there's so many seemingly insurmountable challenges right now." Which is  fancy way of saying I can't really say whether independence should happen right now or not.

What I can say is that there is no doubt the United States owes the Kurdish people some meaningful assistance in this matter. The Kurds have been the only allies the US has actually had in Iraq or probably even the wider Gulf region, and the US has constantly leaned on their assistance in a number of important and serious issues, not least of which the number of Kurdish fighters who have died defeating IS and securing the nation they don't even want to be a part of. And for all of their decades of loyal assistance, we've done...well, pretty much nothing for them.

So I guess I'd say independence is not really advisable right now from a cold realpolitik standpoint, but that's really easy for me to say when it's not my life and freedom on the line. And ultimately, that's really the point -- this is a question for the Kurdish people, who have pretty clearly laid out their preference. And despite the long odds, if they want independence, I want their independence. And, really, the United States should, too.