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Kurdistan under pressure

I enjoyed a couple of hours serving on a panel this morning with Kurdistan Regional Government Representative in Washington Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the Atlantic Council’s Nusseibeh Younes, and SAIS second year student Yael Mizrahi. Sasha Toperich of SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations and leader of its Mediterranean Basin Initiative moderated. I won’t even try to reproduce the nuanced and fine-grained presentations by Bayan, Nusseibeh and Yael, but here are the talking points I used:

1. I am, like most Americans, an admirer of Iraqi Kurdistan and what it has achieved, even if I wouldn’t say the democratic transition there is even near complete.

2. That’s not surprising: Kurdish national aspirations were frustrated in the aftermath of World War I. Even in recent decades, Kurdistan has seen oppression, war, expulsion, and chemical attacks.

3. It has taken a hundred years for a fraction of the Kurdish population—the part fortunate enough to live in Iraq—to gain some degree of self-governance.

4. Until recently, it looked to some people as if that self-governance might progress towards independence and sovereignty.

5. I had my doubts, not I hasten to add due to weakness in the Kurds case: they were treated at least as badly as Kosovo Albanians and arguably much worse.

6. But geopolitical pressure from Iraqi Kurdistan’s neighbors has made independence a dicey proposition. Ankara, though friendlier than ever with Erbil, does not want independence for Kurdistan. Tehran is dead set against it. Baghdad doesn’t want it either.

7. In the last year, the situation has become even more complicated.

8. Kurdistan is under pressure for three dramatic reasons:

• The fall of oil prices;
• ISIL’s successful takeover of most of Sunni Iraq;
• Its own internal political strife.

9. Let me consider these one by one.

10. Oil prices are now at less than half their level of June 2014. At $100/barrel, Kurdistan needed production of something like 500,000 barrels per day to replace its share of Iraq’s overall oil production.

11. I’m guessing, but it seems to me likely it now needs production of well over 1 million barrels per day to replace the money it expects from Baghdad.

12. Even 500,000 bpd was a stretch. A million is a much bigger stretch, even with Kirkuk production now in Kurdistan’s control.

13. Second, Kurdistan now has to defend about six hundred miles of confrontation line with the Islamic State, as well as something like two million displaced people and refugees it is hosting with international assistance.

14. That is a daunting battle front and a massive humanitarian requirement.

15. Third is the serious political strife within Kurdistan, which pits President Barzani and his PDK against Gorran and other dissenters from his desire to prolong his stay in the presidency. They want a more parliamentary and less presidential system.

16. Soldiers who are expected to fight ISIL will want to know who and what they are fighting for. There is more ambiguity and dissension about that today than there has been for many years.

17. I don’t see any of these pressures letting up soon.

18. Erbil is getting ready to return to Baghdad in an effort to restore the agreement on oil that was supposed to allow exports directly from Kurdistan in exchange for payment of what Baghdad owes Erbil.

19. Let’s hope that issue can be sorted out, but even if it is oil prices remain under $50 per barrel and are unlikely to go above $80, due to unconventional production enabled by US technology that is now spreading to other countries.

20. Oil is priced in a global market. Kurdistan now has little prospect of meeting its budgetary needs as an independent state.

21. ISIL is not going away. Even if it is forced to withdraw from Ramadi, as it has been forced to do from Tikrit and Bayji, it will be some time before Mosul is retaken. The Kurdish confrontation line with ISIL is likely to remain long for some time to come.

22. Even after ISIS is defeated, I would anticipate extremist attacks on the KRG, as have occurred in the past.

23. Nor is Kurdistan’s internal strife likely to go away. Barzani is standing his ground. So is Gorran, which has been suspended from the parliament and the coalition government. Even if things were to get patched up, the differences remain profound and the willingness to resolve them weak.

24. So Kurdistan faces some intractable problems, even without mentioning the complications that come from the war in Syria: Turkish attacks on the PKK inside Iraqi Kurdistan and the help Erbil has given to the Kurdish forces flying PYD/YPG banners, which Ankara resents.

25. So what looked like a natural slide towards independence a year or two ago now looks like a return to the 20th century: a Kurdistan hemmed in on all sides and unable to pursue the self-determination that its people unquestionably want.

26. What should the U.S. do?

27. It should certainly support the Kurds, both Syrian and Iraqi, in the fight against ISIS, so long as they are prepared to treat Arabs and other non-Kurds well.

28. It should also continue to provide generous humanitarian assistance.

29. And Washington should do what it can to help Erbil and Baghdad resolve their dispute over the distribution of oil revenue.

30. On the internal Kurdistan issues, we should want to see them resolved sooner rather than later, since later could mean disrupting the fight against ISIS.

31. But we also need to nudge our Kurdish friends in a direction that respects the rule of law and democracy.

32. No president is forever. No governing party is forever. Adherence to the constitution as well as fair and free competition for votes is what we should expect of our partners, no matter what the outcome for longstanding friends.