The Middle East will never be the same. The Kurds are the greatest beneficiary of the current upheaval in the Middle East especially in Iraq and Syria in addition to the political momentum in and the crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Kurds have been part of Middle Eastern history for a long time, yet the Turks, Persians, and Arabs have denied Kurdish history. An independent Kurdistan is something that all Kurdish people dream of; all of them have fought with their lives and waited so long to see it come about. Now is the time. The Kurds in Northern Iraq are independent in all but name. When I was walking around the streets of Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, I felt like I was in Istanbul or Dubai.
The Kurdish police and soldiers have a strong presence, and the people play the national anthem, speak the local language, and fly the Kurdish flag on the public buildings and elsewhere. A visitor will also notice imposing buildings for Parliament and the Prime Minister’s Office and will see other countries’ diplomatic ministries with some of those foreign offices even offering visas. Yet with all these manifestations of autonomy, this is still not an independent state. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) President Masoud Barzani keeps asking his parliament to start preparing for a referendum on independence.
Meanwhile, disorder is everywhere else. The Iraqi government has been influenced by Iran’s Shiite government and has cut off financial transfers to the Kurds as part of a fight over control of the oil resources. Sunni Arabs have been fueling the dramatic rise of the Islamic State. While the rest of Iraq is falling part, Iraqi Kurdistan is growing and doing well proving it that the Kurds can rule themselves independently and have no need of anyone telling them how to rule their household.
Last week the President of the Northern Iraq Regional Government, Masoud Barzani, held a meeting with the consuls and representatives of the diplomatic ministries of thirty-six countries in which he discussed a possible break from Baghdad and independence for Iraqi Kurdistan. Most of the Kurdish people who live in Iraq strongly believe that they should decide on their own future and should declare their own independence regardless of whether Turks, Persian, or Arabs are ready for an independent Kurdistan located on their border. However, Iraq is a failed state now, and Turkey, Iraq, and Iran have been aware of the matter ever since the U.S. pulled out of Iraq after the war, especially with the heavy Iranian influence in Iraq and current sectarian violence between the Shiites and the Sunnis. With the close ties between the KRG administration and Turkey, Turkey is ready to accept an independent Kurdistan, but what matters most is that the Kurds play their card intelligently. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own; the Kurds have been the West’s most effective ally battling the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and the Kurds defeated ISIS pushing them back from their borders.
Kurds are Muslims but are being oppressed by Muslim countries such as Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. If the Kurds’ dream of having their own independence finally becomes a reality, there is one person in particular that the Kurds will have to thank for it: George W. Bush, the former President of the United States. Even though many people did not like Bush and hated him for his foreign policies, especially the war in Iraq, I strongly believe history will judge Bush differently. Although the U.S policy toward the Kurds often has not been very good, today the reason the KRG is doing very well is because of the establishment of a no- fly zone over the region after the Gulf War I in 1991, and the overthrow of Dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. That is why the Kurds tend to be overwhelmingly thankful to George Bush for giving them the opportunity to rule themselves. However, President Obama has been reluctant to support the independence of Kurdistan because he thinks supporting an independent Kurdistan will create instability in the region, but the reason the region is not completely unstable is because the Kurds are part of that region; nevertheless, they have been excluded from their own homeland. Actually the Kurds already have proved that they can rule themselves because they remain intact while the Iraqi state has become a failed state, and sectarian conflict between the Sunnis and the Shiites continues perpetuates the violence.
. The current turmoil in the Middle East again makes the Kurdish Card important. Turkey had never been friendly to Iraqi Kurds before, but now the Kurds are selling their oil on the open market via the Turkish terminal at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. For years Iraq would not allow the Kurds to sell their oil. In fact, the Iraqi government would sue oil traders who sold Kurdish oil, but lots of oil has been sold via the Israeli port of Ashqelon. The Israeli government has recognized that an independent Kurdistan would be a great ally.
Oil remains integral to the Kurds. After the Iraqi army failed to protect the Kirkuk oil-rich province from the ISIS, the Peshmerger Kurdish soldiers expanded their control into the Kirkuk province. The Iraqi Kurdistan economy is based on oil, but since oil is not doing well at this moment, the Kurdish economy has slumped, but that does not mean the situation will continue like this. Iraqi Kurdistan has the largest gas reserves beside the Gulf Oil reserve, so Turkey has started to work on that resource to pump gas from the Kurdish region. It is true, though, that Kurdistan needs to diversify its economy. Corruption remains a significant problem in that only a couple of families dominate the political parties, and nepotism has reared its ugly head in business, in the media, as well as in politics. Nevertheless, Kurdistan enjoys a level of democracy that should be implemented in all Arabian countries. Democratization is a process, but it requires basic elements already seen in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
The creation of ISIS ended the colonial era of the Sykes-Picot border between Iraq and Syria, and the terrorists announced that they were going to create a new caliphate. At the of the WWI the Sykes British and Picot French decided to partition the Ottoman Empire along those ethnic fault lines. In addition, shortly before the fall of the Empire, the Turks decided to settle the Christian question by killing the Armenians. The treaty cheated the Kurds at the first, having been promised to have their own country, but when the British discovered the huge oil field in Kurdistan, the British carved the Kurds out of the Ottoman Empire, giving their land to Iraq. By this geopolitical strategy, the British gained access to all the oil. Even if America and France protested the British decision to annex Mosul and Kirkuk to Iraq with both citing the need for a creation of a Kurdish state, money talks. Then when the Brits gave the French and Americans some of the share of oil, which would become the Northern Oil Company, they seemingly solved the problem. Now we know why the Sykes- Picot partition of the region has caused more grief than good.
The Sykes- Picot agreement should be abolished, and the Kurds should rule themselves instead of being ruled by oppressive regimes such as the Arabs, Persian, and Turks. The last twelve years the Kurds have been acting diplomatically and intelligently, having no enemies, and building relationships with all of their neighbors. The reason that today Turkey is very close to Iraqi Kurdistan is because of the political situation in the region; Iraq has been influenced by Iran, a stimulus prompting Turkey to maneuver closer to Iraqi Kurdistan to take advantage of the oil supply.
A country can declare independence if it has an identity and a common language. This is why the Arabs, Turks, and Persians regimes have been denying the Kurds their language in order to destroy their identity. For example, in Turkey from 1980-2002, the both the written and spoken Kurdish language was illegal. The use of Kurdish names containing letters X, W, Q, which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet, is still not allowed, so the Kurdish people cannot use their names on their passports. The only thing that has started to change in Turkey is recently when the AKP took over, the party made some concessions. They did so not because the AKP cared much about the Kurds but because the party knew they could no longer deny the truth, that Kurds belong to that land, it is their birthright, and no one has justification to deny their rights. The time has come for the Kurds to decide their fate; they should not wait another century or even decade to declare their independence and thereby have their own country.
Dr. Aland Mizell is President of the MCI and a regular contributor to Mindanao Times. You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com