Oil and Borders: How to Fix Iraq’s Kurdish Crisis

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Dec 21, 2017
Oil and Borders: How to Fix Iraq’s Kurdish Crisis

Oil and Borders: How to Fix Iraq’s Kurdish Crisis

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[This report was issued by the International Crisis Group on 17 October.]

Oil and Borders: How to Fix Iraq’s Kurdish Crisis

  • What happened? On 16 October 2017, the Iraqi federal government launched an operation to restore Iraqi sovereignty over the disputed territories, including Kirkuk and its oil fields. This reversed the situation in place since the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of an onslaught by the Islamic State in June 2014.
     
  • Why did it happen? The action was triggered by the independence referendum staged by the Kurdistan Regional Government on 25 September, in which Kurds overwhelmingly cast “yes” votes.
     
  • Why does it matter? These actions have broken what remained of the tense relationship between Baghdad and Erbil. Yet the only sensible way forward is a return to UN-led negotiations, supported by the U.S., EU, Iran and Turkey.
     
  • What should be done? Future talks should centre on the issues that gave rise to the current crisis in the first place: the unresolved status of the disputed territories, and the question of oil revenue-sharing.

I. Overview

In the early hours of 16 October, Iraqi federal forces launched a drive toward Kirkuk city that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said was aimed at retaking oil fields, an air base, the airport and federal installations lost in June 2014 when the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of an onslaught by the Islamic State (ISIS). The military move, which met with relatively little resistance, reportedly was enabled by a deal between the Abadi government and a faction of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).The PUK mostly withdrew, while forces of the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region, who staged a popular referendum on Kurdish independence in late September, fled. In the end, federal forces established control not only of the oil fields, but of an even more emotional prize, the city of Kirkuk.

At the root of the conflict in Kirkuk – and potentially in other parts of the disputed territories as well – is the failure to resolve the status of these areas through negotiations since 2003. A constitutional article (Article 140) that prescribed a process by which to do so never was implemented. This triggered great frustration with Kurdish leaders, who long had laid claim to these areas. Their acquisition of Kirkuk and its oil fields and other strategic installations in June 2014 was a windfall. They filled the security vacuum and continued to entrench their positions for the next three years. Barzani repeatedly declared that these areas were now “Kurdistani” and would stay in Kurdish hands.

The federal government considered the Kurdish parties’ control as unilateral and temporary, to be reversed – by undetermined means – once ISIS was defeated. That opportunity arrived in early October with the rapid defeat of ISIS in Hawija, a district town in Kirkuk governorate, which brought battle-ready Iraqi troops closer to Kirkuk city and the oil fields. It was triggered by Abadi’s need to reassert Iraqi sovereignty over these areas in the wake of the Kurdish independence referendum, which took place not only in the Kurdish region but also in Kurdish-controlled parts of the disputed territories such as Kirkuk. And it was enabled by intense inter-Kurdish rivalries between the KDP and PUK, as well as an intra-KDP power struggle between Masoud Barzani’s son, in charge of the region’s security file, and his nephew, its prime minister.

 In commanding his troops to advance, Abadi must have realised he had the wind in his back: almost unanimous international anger concerning Barzani’s decision to proceed with the referendum over their clearly stated objections allowed him to make his move with the support of the country’s two powerful neighbours Turkey (Barzani’s ally until even a month ago) and Iran, and with the apparent green light of the U.S. While Abadi declared that his objectives were limited to Kirkuk oil fields and installations, swift military success led his forces, led by the U.S.-trained elite counter-terrorism unit and the army’s 9th armoured brigade, to enter the city of Kirkuk. It may propel them further, to other parts of the disputed territories, including Khurmala Dome, the northern-most operating part of the super-giant Kirkuk oil field. There are other changes on the ground: KDP forces reportedly left the disputed Sinjar area near the Syrian border on 17 October, and the PUK appeared to have withdrawn from Khanaqin near the Iranian border as part of the deal. Whether Iraqi forces will press their advantage and try to recuperate disputed territories in the Ninewa Plain north and east of Mosul from KDP control is the next question.

These short-term military advances spell long-term trouble. To prevent further escalation that might escape the respective leaders’ control, and bend the chain of events toward a negotiated outcome, outside parties with most influence in Iraq – the U.S., Iran and Turkey – need to step up their pre-referendum mediation efforts. In principle, all three share an interest in stabilising the situation. All three were irked if not outright angered by Barzani’s decision to proceed with the September referendum. All support the territorial unity of Iraq. All accept the integrity of the Kurdish region and have consistently opposed unilateral attempts at settling the status of the disputed territories.

The basis for mediating a settlement is therefore there, but serious obstacles remain. First, and notwithstanding the objective alignment in the external parties’ interests, tensions among them – and particularly between the U.S. and Iran, which were exacerbated by President Trump’s decision to decertify the nuclear deal – could well get in the way. Crisis Group warned of the spillover potential of the president’s decision, and Iraq could be the first victim.  Second, the outbreak of violence could make a settlement far harder if not impossible to reach, especially should the parties, fuelled by domestic political imperatives, escalate. To avert this outcome, forceful mediation should be undertaken at once; a renewed UN role could be critical in this respect, as it would give cover to efforts made by these three states in their individual capacities.

Beyond that, if and when fighting has been halted, a peaceful way to settle the deeper issues that are driving this conflict exists. Indeed, the current crisis offers an opportunity to resume a track that was abandoned amid election fervour eight years ago. In 2008-2009, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) carried out an extensive study on what it called Iraq’s “Disputed Internal Boundaries” (DIBs) and proposed specific ways forward to settle the question of the Kurdish region’s boundary and the disposition of the income derived from the sale of oil and gas located there.

Progress on the DIBs could be interpreted by both sides as a face-saving way out, as both need the internal border to be defined and a fair and workable resource-sharing deal in place. It also would serve the interests of Iran and Turkey, the key de facto veto holders on Kurdish statehood, as it would bind Baghdad and Erbil more closely together and thus offer at least a temporary reprieve from the Kurds’ secessionist agenda. Western states have been strong supporters of this approach. Its resuscitation therefore could be a win-win for all main stakeholders.

What is required following a ceasefire is a UN Security Council resolution providing a renewed mandate for UNAMI, with support from all key outside parties, to address the DIBs question as a matter of priority. A serious effort to solve that critical concern would maintain Iraq’s unity without pre-empting the Kurds’ right to self-determination nor prejudging how it might be expressed in the future.

Brussels, 17 October 2017

[Click here to download full report.] 
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Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412