This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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It seems that some who support the Kurdish cause see an opportunity in the mayhem in Iraq. Commentators from abroad see the Iraqi army’s meltdown and retreat from the Sunni Arab heartland north of Baghdad as a sign that things might finally fall into place for the Kurds. Here in Erbil, people were positively elated when the Kurdish armed forces, called pesh merga (meaning “those who face death”), consolidated their grip on oil-rich Kirkuk, after the Iraqi army gave up on the region this week.
But the giddy, quickly rising Kurdish expectations are out of whack with the real dangers that the current crisis in Iraq poses for Kurdistan.
The single most important asset that set Kurdistan apart from other parts of Iraq was not oil, but security. Kurdistan now faces a dangerous situation: ISIS has gained significant ground on two of its borders, with Iraq and with Syria. The group has targeted Kurdish populations in both countries. The Kurds have managed to build a private-sector friendly, largely secular and westernized autonomous region in the Middle East. But they should not forget that they will always be shackled by geography.
Since 2003, while the rest of Iraq has endured horrific sectarian violence, Kurdistan has emerged as a boomtown. Signs of new wealth are ubiquitous. In the countryside, oil trucks, almost glittering in the reflection of the blazing sun, snake through the rugged mountainous landscape. Every inch of Erbil, the capital, appears to be under construction, and new restaurants mimicking foreign chains (such as Costa Rica Coffee and Burger Queen) attract a clientele that is young, affluent and English-speaking.
Yet this success may now be at risk.
Kurdistan now shares a 1000-kilometer border with insurgents – only 50 kilometers are left shared with the Iraqi army, according to a member of the Kurdish armed forces. A growing number of pesh merga soldiers have died in fighting with ISIS in northern Diyala and southern Kirkuk, where the territorial lines between ISIS and the pesh merga are yet to be decided. These deaths are a reminder that ISIS and groups that they cooperate with may turn their attention back on Kurds.
Although ISIS has for now largely set its sights on Baghdad, where a bloody sectarian war with Arab Shiites looms, ISIS and its partners have targeted Kurds in the past. Indeed, a week before the takeover of Mosul the group attacked a Kurdish political party office in Diyala, killing 18 people.
Commentators have also claimed, preemptively, that Kirkuk has been “resolved overnight.” Yet Kirkuk is a complex problem, and its rival communities that claim historical rights to the province will not give it up without a fight. A couple of days ago, a Turkmen official indicated his willingness to fight for it, saying that if the Kurds “refuse to return Kirkuk [to the Iraqi government] we will fight back.”
More broadly, the idea that the Kurds benefit from an unstable Iraq doesn’t hold water. Yes, the Kurds have long yearned for an independent state. But the reality is that Kurdish people would have stood more to gain from remaining part of a stable Iraq, within which they would enjoy a degree of political and economic autonomy and also earn a share of Iraq’s national revenue, than forming their own state. The alternative – unstable neighbors overrun by a lawless, anti-liberal insurgency on two borders – threatens the region’s hard-won successes.
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