Tag: Kurds

Talk but little progress

Posted in Daniel Serwer - September 7, 2016 - 0 Comment

The Middle East Institute published my brief on the G20 summit yesterday: 

The weekend’s G20 meeting in peaceful and prosperous Hangzhou, China focused on the world economy, especially trade and finance, as well as climate change. But President Barack Obama met on the sidelines with presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while Secretary of State John Kerry tried and failed for the umpteenth time to hammer out an agreement on Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The war-ravaged Middle East is never far from world leaders’ priorities these days, but progress is proving elusive.

The American proposal for Syria would renew the cessation of hostilities, allow delivery of humanitarian assistance, and enable joint U.S./Russian targeting of extremists while grounding the Syrian air force. The Russians ran out the clock in Hangzhou, enabling the Syrian army with Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah support to cut off access again to Aleppo, where opposition forces had managed to breach the siege of several hundred thousand civilians. The Russians may eventually agree to a cease-fire, while Syrian government forces pursue the “starve and surrender” tactics they have used successfully elsewhere. Without a rebalancing of the military situation in favor of the opposition, President Bashar al-Assad is likely to regain control of Syria’s largest city, by foul means.

Obama’s meeting with Turkey’s president focused on responsibility for July’s coup attempt, which the Turkish government blames on an erstwhile Erdogan ally who lives in Pennsylvania. While Obama lauded the survival of Erdogan and Turkish democracy and also promised cooperation on determining responsibility for the failed coup, he is unwilling to short-circuit the extradition procedures, which can be lengthy and complex. Erdogan was undoubtedly disappointed.

The Turkish and American presidents likely also discussed Syria. The Americans want to target the Islamic State and minimize Turkish and C.I.A.-supported Arab opposition clashes with Pentagon-supported Syrian Kurds—only making the contradictions in U.S. policy all too apparent.

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Middle East and Europe: impact and prospects

Posted in Daniel Serwer - August 24, 2016 - 0 Comment

I had the privilege this morning of speaking today by Skype to the Ambassadors’ Council convened at the Macedonian Foreign Ministry in Skopje. These are the notes I used:

  1. First let me thank the organizers, in particular Ambassador Abdulkadar Memedi and Edvard Mitevski, for this opportunity. It is rare indeed that I get to talk about my two favorite parts of the world: Europe and the Middle East.
  1. My focus today will be on the latter, as I am confident that Europeans—a category that in my way of thinking includes all the citizens of Macedonia—know more than I do about the impact of the refugee crisis on your part of the world.
  1. But big as it looms for you, the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants from the Greater Middle East is a fraction of a much larger problem.
  1. There are 4.8 million refugees from Syria in neighboring countries, the largest number in Turkey but millions also in Lebanon and Jordan. Upwards of 8.7 million will be displaced within Syrian by the end of the year. 13.5 million are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.
  1. The number of refugees leaving Syria has leveled off, but asylum applications in Europe are well above 1 million and still rising, albeit at a declining rate.
  1. The U.S. is committed to taking only 10,000 Syrians. I don’t anticipate that our politics will allow a lot more anytime soon, though eventually we will have many more arrive through family reunification and other modalities.
  1. The 1.5 million people you saw flow through Macedonia over the past year or so were the relatively fortunate Syrians, not the most unfortunate. Moreover, most who have arrived in Europe are male. If their asylum applications are successful, that will lead to large numbers of family members eventually joining them.
  1. The vital question for me is this: what are the prospects for ending the wars that are tearing Syria to shreds? And what are the prospects for other potential sources of migrants and refugees from Iraq, from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya?
  1. More than five years after Bashar al Assad’s attempted violent repression of the nonviolent demonstrations in his country, prospects for peace still look dim.
  1. The Russians and Iranians, whose support to Assad has been vital to his survival, show no signs of letting up and have in fact doubled down on their bad bet.
  1. The Iranians have committed Lebanese Hizbollah, Iraqi Shia militias and their own Revolutionary Guard to the fight, not to mention Afghan and other Shia fighters.
  1. The Russians have not only redoubled their air attacks but also added flights from Iran, now suspended, as well as cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea. Moscow has now killed more civilians, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, than the Islamic State.
  1. The Americans continue to refuse to fight Assad, Iran, or Russia. President Obama lacks both legal authorization and popular support to attack them. Americans want him to focus exclusively on the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, which is what he is doing, apart from assistance to some Syrian opposition forces willing to join in the fight against extremists.
  1. Donald Trump would certainly follow the same policy, perhaps redoubling efforts against the Islamic State and looking for opportunities for cooperation with Russia. Hillary Clinton has pledged to look at other options like protected areas or no-fly zones, but it is not clear that she will pursue them.
  1. The space for moderates in Syria is shrinking. Violence always polarizes, as you know only too well. In addition, the Americans are restraining the forces that they have equipped and trained from attacking the Syrian army. They want moderates focused exclusively on fighting the Islamic State.
  1. This morning, Turkish forces entered Syria at Jarablus on the Euphrates, in support of Arab and Turkman forces aiming to deprive the Islamic State of its last border point and block the expansion of Kurdish forces from taking the last stretch of the Turkish/Syrian border they don’t control.
  1. When will it all end? I don’t know, but I think it likely to end at best not in a clear victory of one side or another but rather in a fragmented and semi-stable division of areas of control.
  1. The Syrian government will control most of what Assad refers to as “useful Syria”: the western coast and the central axis from Damascus through Homs and Hama, with Idlib and Aleppo still in doubt.
  1. The opposition will likely control part of the south along the Jordanian border as well as a wedge of the north, including a piece of the border with Turkey stretching from Azaz to Jarablus.
  1. The Kurds will control the rest of the border with Turkey. Raqqa and Deir Azzour are still up for grabs, with the likely outcome opposition in the former and government in the latter.
  1. That is the likely best. Will that end the refugee problem?
  1. I think not. Nothing about this fragmented outcome is likely to make it attractive for Syrians to return home. Security will remain a serious problem and little funding will be available for reconstruction. Syria will remain unstable for years to come.
  1. What about other parts of the Greater Middle East?

Read more

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Shifting currents in Syria

Posted in Daniel Serwer - August 22, 2016 - 0 Comment

As UN envoy Stefano de Mistura tries to reconvene Syria peace talks next week, there are important developments that could impact his prospects.

The Syrian government has continued to block aid to opposition-controlled areas, causing Stefano to abruptly curtail humanitarian task force deliberations last week. Moscow last week flew bombers from Iran, an innovation now reportedly suspended. The Russians also launched cruise missiles allegedly targeted against Jabhat al Nusra (which is generally embedded with more moderate insurgents) from the Black Sea. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, Russia has now killed more civilians in Syria than ISIS, though it started years earlier. Moscow has shown no visible inclination to limit Syrian government strikes on civilian areas, which it targets on a daily basis.

At the same time, the situation in northern Syria has evolved in a direction favorable to the US. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are mostly Kurdish fighters, have retaken Manbij from the Islamic State and are heading for Jarablus on the border where the Euphrates crosses from Turkey into Syria. Arab SDF forces are said to be preparing the assault from inside Turkey, which wants to block the Kurds from taking over the entire northern border of Syria. At the same time, farther east in Hasakeh, US-supported Kurdish forces are fighting with the Syrian army, with which they cooperated in taking the town a year ago and had maintained a truce since. The Syrian air force last week came close to clashing with US aircraft sent to protect the Kurds, who are reportedly trying to oust President Assad’s forces entirely from their northeastern “canton.”

If successful, these operations in northern Syria will cut off the Islamic State from its supply lines in Turkey and possibly end the ambiguous relationship of the Kurdish PYD forces with the Syrian government, though the Syrian opposition is unlikely to accept the PYD into its fold, not least because of Turkey’s opposition. The possibility of an attack on the Islamic State capital at Raqqa is starting to loom on the horizon, perhaps even before an effort to liberate Mosul in Iraq.

Still John Kerry is saddled as the Obama Administration draws to a close with the unenviable task of conducting Middle East diplomacy without any serious threat of coercion. The President, supported by most Americans, simply doesn’t want to use American force against anything but the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. This means not targeting the Syrian government  and Hizbollah forces, even when they attack civilians. The Iranians and Russians in Syria are following his lead in a way: they are using force on the issues they care about and ignoring diplomacy. No matter what they say about not being wedded to Assad, the Russians and Iranians are mostly fighting the Syrian opposition in an effort to prevent regime change, with few relatively few attacks on on the Islamic State.

This free for all isn’t likely to work well for John Kerry in his efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Syria. The proposition he has been flogging is this: US cooperation with Russia in targeting the Islamic State and Al Qaeda (presumably including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the allegedly unaffiliated successor to Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al Nusra) provided Russia ends attacks on the non-extremist Syrian opposition and convinces President Assad to ground his air force. The relative success of US-allied forces in northern Syria may strengthen Kerry’s hand, but there is no sign yet of any willingness on Russia’s part to meet its side of the bargain.

 

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The story will not end with Mosul’s liberation

Posted in Daniel Serwer - August 1, 2016 - 1 Comment

A former Middle East Institute research assistant still working on Iraq offers this: 

The dust is settling in Fallujah, where the Iraqi army is digging in. The center of gravity in the fight against Da’esh (ISIS) is now moving north. Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and a Da’esh stronghold since June 2014, will now become a battleground again. D-Day remains unclear, though on Sunday Nineveh’s former governor predicted a mid-September start date for the Mosul offensive.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi Federal Government in Baghdad – alongside international partners – have held months of discussions and planning sessions to prepare for what is to come. At times the discussions have been less than amicable, but it is generally understood that Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi Army will work together closely to liberate the city.

The humanitarian situation arising from that liberation will be bleak. Contingency planners in Iraq and Kurdistan believe there are around 1.2 million civilians trapped inside of the city, with another 800,000 in the surrounding districts and villages in Nineveh province. This population will be directly exposed to the fighting.

This will present an unprecedented challenge for authorities. KRG reports predict that the number of new IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) will reach around 420,000 individuals (72,000 families). The vast bulk of these IDPs will flee north and east, into the Iraqi Kurdistan.

This could spell disaster for the KRG. The region is already suffering from the effects of years of fighting, a severe economic downturn, and a bitter ongoing dispute with the federal government in Baghdad over its share of the nationwide budget. Despite all this, Kurdistan has become a comparatively safe haven for those displaced by regional turmoil (and for economic migrants from the south). As a result the KRG now hosts close to 1.3 million IDPs, plus 245,000 Syrian refugees – around a quarter of the region’s total population.

Moreover, the 420,000 IDP figure does not represent the worst-case prediction. One briefing document produced by a KRG department presents three possible scenarios for the Mosul offensive’s IDP fallout. In the first, best-case scenario, the operation lasts only a few weeks. In this case, the number of IDPs will remain comparatively low, as Da’esh bans freedom of movement, and Mosuli civilians attempt to weather the conflict at home.

The second, middle-case, scenario gives the 420,000 IDP contingency figure. It assumes an offensive lasting more than several weeks, in which shelling and airstrikes become more intense, and the battle descends into block-by-block street fighting.

In the third, worst case scenario the offensive lasts several months. Bitter street fighting, increasing shortages of food and supplies, and inner-city chaos ensue as Da’esh slowly loses control. In this scenario, the number of people fleeing the fighting may rise to more than a million.

This third case scenario warrants being taken seriously. The operation to retake Fallujah lasted a month. The Mosul offensive could well last much longer. Mosul city is considerably larger than Fallujah, at approximately 250 square miles to Fallujah’s four square miles. Mosul’s still-resident population is also vastly larger than Fallujah’s, making it harder and more time-consuming for attacking forces to avoid collateral damage (it can be assumed that the defenders will have no such qualms). Further, Da’esh has had more than two years to entrench. The loss of Mosul, the jewel in its crown, will be a more symbolic defeat than any previous loss. Da’esh is likely to put up a determined defense.

Any of the three scenarios will put an incredible financial and logistical burden on already struggling Kurdistan. Five new IDP camps are planned, but the KRG already struggles to care for the numerous IDPs already in-region. Meanwhile, the stagnant economy has forced the domestic population to undergo painful belt-tightening.

While Iraqi Kurdistan remains relatively stable for now, tensions and resentments bubble barely below the surface. Civil service salaries have been slashed and frequently have not been paid at all. President Masoud Barzani has clung to power, even as his presidential term (and the extension he gave himself) has expired. The Kurdish parliament has ground to a halt as party relations between former coalition partners, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Gorran, have deteriorated to non-speaking terms. Politics between the major parties has become increasingly violent.

Conversations with Kurdish citizens in the region suggest that the failures of their leaders have not gone unobserved, but rather are currently being tolerated for the greater good. Popular grievances will resurface once the common enemy is defeated. Kurds will expect speedy redress from the government in return for their patience these past two years, starting the moment Da’esh is beaten.

Mosul’s fall may be seen as that moment. The domestic and international press will see it as the moment the international coalition broke the back of Da’esh in Iraq. Even as it falls, Erbil will be facing a vast influx of IDPs. It is doubtful the KRG will have the capacity or resources to process and provide for this new population, while also caring for its own.

But even if the liberation of Mosul goes smoothly, other risks will follow: ISIS fighters are likely to escape and pose as IDPs, Arabs fleeing to Kurdistan may therefore be distrusted and even mistreated. Disputes between the KRG and Baghdad will intensify, especially if the Kurds try to keep the eastern bank of the Tigris in Mosul as well as the Nineveh plain, which has a mixed Yazidi, Assyrian Christian, Kurdish, Shabak, Arab population of about 400,000.

This story will not end with the liberation of Mosul.

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The day before ISIS

Posted in Katie Preston - July 25, 2016 - 0 Comment

Iraq’s problems were not born in 2003.

In a roundtable discussion hosted by the Middle East Institute on last Tuesday, Dr. Luay al-Khatteeb, founder and director of Iraq Energy Institute, made clear that current discussions in Washington about Iraq are lacking. The focus in DC think tanks on “the day after ISIS” neglects a century of mistreatment, mismanagement, and disregard.

Taking a longer vie, al-Khatteeb focused on the origins of Iraq’s present problems. Sectarianism has been a virulent force in Iraq since before the Ottomans; it didn’t suddenly appear in 2003. Al-Khatteeb points to the 12 successful coup d’états in Iraq’s recent history as a major source of instability in Iraqi politics. If Turkey’s week is any indicator, coups shake the foundation of a society to its core, and their reverberations continue to affect societies long after their conclusions.

The strong centralism that dominated Iraq for most of the 20th century didn’t prepare Iraq’s political class or citizenry for federalism. According to al-Khatteeb, the Kurds had an 11-year head start; enjoying self-government for a decade before the fall of Saddam gave them a huge advantage going into the post-2003 political process.

Miscommunication about federalism in the establishment of the new Iraqi state is one of the major factors contributing to Iraq’s current governance failures. Many political participants came to the negotiating table talking about federalism, but were still grounded in the centralism of previous decades. Kurds adopted the language of federalism, but had independence in the back of their minds throughout the negotiations.

Because of this lack of meaningful consensus, Iraq never established functioning governing institutions. How then, did Iraq survive for 10 years ? Al-Khatteeb says sheer luck. Oil prices were high enough that the Iraqi government could muddle along without thinking of the future. People in government looked at oil money as a supermarket—taking as they pleased to finance any number of special projects. Currently there are 7 million Iraqis on government payroll. Those constantly expanding public salaries drained surpluses during high oil prices and are now dragging Iraq down into deeper deficits. In 2013, Iraqi foreign reserves were at 80 billion. Total is down to 40 billion today.

On the Kurdish question, al-Khatteeb predicts that the now dominant KDP would lose to the PUK and Goran alliances if an election was held today. They are clearly winning at the constituent level, and are negotiating with Baghdad to ask what’s in it for them to remain in the Iraqi state.

Right now, the answer is quite a bit. The KRG gets $100 billion per year from Baghdad. It also gets to keep somewhere around $40 billion in its own production, although exactly how much oil is produced and exported from Kurdish regions is not publicized. However, Kurdish production is dependent on Kirkuk, and Kurdish hold there is tenuous at best given the competing claims for the territory. Even still, oil production in the Kurdish area has fallen from 800,000 barrels to 550,000.

Everything comes back to government mismanagement. There are 1.4 million people on government payroll in Kurdish areas. The Iraqi federal government was encouraging governorates to hire as many people as possible, and threatened to withhold funds if hiring demands weren’t met. The salaries of government officials are criminally high, in al-Khatteeb’s mind. MPs make $20,000 monthly, each of their dozens of advisers each make $10,000, on top of the president and PM making $50,000 each month. If Iraq is going to overcome its centuries of neglect, they need to start paying some attention where it matters.

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Iraqi Kurdistan’s future

Posted in Daniel Serwer - July 14, 2016 - 0 Comment

Some colleagues asked me to offer my view of the future of Iraqi Kurdistan. Here is what I told them:

  1. A Martian could be forgiven if he arrived today on earth and concluded that Iraqi Kurdistan will be independent by November.
  1. President Barzani has promised a referendum by then and even the Martians know that Iraqi Kurds would vote overwhelmingly for independence if given free choice and opportunity.
  1. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) case for independence is strong: Iraqi Kurds have been brutally treated by their own government, chased from their country and even attacked with chemical weapons; they have governed themselves sort of democratically for decades and treated minorities well by regional standards; they have fought the Islamic State courageously and welcomed people of all ethnicities displaced by the fighting.
  1. One of my pro-independence friends argues that Iraq is like former Yugoslavia: a failed state that has disappointed all its inhabitants and needs to dissolve into its constituent parts.
  1. Another friend asks why Washington would not welcome another stalwart and more or less democratic friend in the turbulent Middle East.
  1. So why do I think independence won’t happen?
  1. To make a long story short: the KRG lacks well-established borders, the means to defend itself, the needed internal political cohesion, the required economic resources, the good relations with its neighbors and the required support of the world’s great powers to become a sovereign state.
  1. Before explaining in depth, let me make an important distinction: political independence is something you declare. It is an expression of political will, sometimes unilateral.
  1. Sovereignty is something you acquire, largely through recognition by other states, which sometimes requires the defense or conquest of territory. The KRG already has a large measure of independence. What it lacks is sovereignty.
  1. President Barzani’s proposal is a classic process for achieving independence: a referendum followed by a unilateral declaration.
  1. It would do little or nothing to establish sovereignty.
  1. For that, the KRG would need to have in the first place well-established borders that none of its neighbors would contest.
  1. That is simply not the case. Baghdad has not and will not accept the KRG’s right to all the disputed territories the peshmerga seized in the confusion of 2014, when the Iraqi Army collapsed in Mosul and other parts of the north under Islamic State attack.
  1. The Iraqi Army today is in no condition to contest KRG control of Kirkuk, parts of Diyala and parts of Ninewa province, but Baghdad won’t accept the fait accompli either. A declaration of independence now would leave a giant unresolved border problem that sooner or later would likely be resolved by force.
  1. I don’t really see how the KRG will ever be able to defend itself from the rest of Iraq if Baghdad gets its act together, which to some degree it seems to be doing. In fact, there might be nothing so likely to unite Shia and Sunni Arabs in the rest of Iraq than a KRG declaration of independence.
  1. How does a KRG with a population of 5.2 million defend itself from an Arab Iraq of perhaps 28 million? Only by reaching an agreement that would likely involve the surrender or compromise of Kirkuk and other disputed territories.
  1. The KRG lacks the internal political cohesion for a deal of that sort and many other requirements of sovereignty and independence. Just last month a Sulamaniya delegation was in Baghdad forswearing any intentions to go for independence.
  1. The PUK and Gorran have no intention of letting President Barzani be the George Washington of the KRG, or even allow him an unconstitutional third term. He has locked the opposition Speaker out of parliament, which is unable to meet even to decide how the referendum will be organized.
  1. Kirkuk’s governor wants his province to become a region, separate at least initially from the KRG. Some in Sinjar are resisting incorporation into the KRG. One observer even sees signs of Balkanization of Kurdistan.
  1. Resources are also a problem. At oil prices of $100/barrel or above, KRG officials thought production of 500,000 bpd might enable them to replace all the money Baghdad was supposed to be sending. At $50/barrel, the production required is presumably close to 1 million bpd. Current exports are a bit more than 500,000 bpd.
  1. The KRG is an oil rentier state. Even with recent tax increases and reductions in subsidies, it has precious little revenue other than from oil.
  1. The consequences for the KRG economy are dramatic. Civil servants are going unpaid, the economy is in crisis and the enormous influx of people displaced by the Islamic State has increased the stress. The 1.4 million people on the government payroll, including those fighting the Islamic State, are being paid erratically.
  1. Kurdistan’s difficult neighborhood is an additional problem. All the KRG’s oil is exported to Turkey, which has greatly improved its relations with the Iraqi Kurds. But Ankara under current conditions is still unlikely in my opinion to welcome a KRG declaration of independence, for fear of incentivizing the Syrian Kurds or its own to head in the same direction.
  1. Iran is even harder over against KRG independence, for fear of what it would mean for its own province of Eastern Kurdistan, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is chasing Kurdish guerrillas and occasionally shelling across the border into the KRG.
  1. Syria no longer counts for much in regional politics, but KRG independence would not be a welcome move there either. The KRG could expect none of its neighbors to offer it diplomatic recognition and exchange of ambassadors.
  1. Most of the great powers will be even more resistant than the KRG’s immediate neighbors. The United States will fear that a referendum and independent Kurdistan would strengthen Russia’s case for the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as well as the annexation of Crimea and eventual annexation of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, not to mention Bosnia’s Republika Srpska.
  1. Europe, in particular Germany, is hard over against independence.
  1. China would agree: it wants no precedents that Tibet might want to follow. Russia might be more amenable, though Moscow would be wise to contemplate the issue, since an independent Kurdistan is likely to be strongly pro-Western (and its own constituent republics might be getting ideas).
  1. To summarize: if you can’t expect recognition by any of your neighbors or your best friends, if you don’t have the money to pay the bills, if your internal politics are divisive and you will not be able to defend the borders you claim, my best advice is don’t try it.
  1. The Kurds would be wise to wait for a more auspicious moment. It may well come, possibly within the next five years. They will know the time is right when they have Washington and Baghdad’s concurrence, recognition by Iran and Turkey, revenue to cover their expenses, a functioning parliament and a leader who attracts support from Sulamaniyah as well as Erbil. Stranger things have happened.

What, my colleagues asked, if the KRG went ahead despite the circumstances. What would happen?

I answered maybe nothing, since without recognition of sovereignty declarations of independence evaporate pretty quickly. Kosovo’s in 1991 didn’t work, nor did the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad declared in 1946, another colleague noted. But it is also possible a Kurdish declaration of independence would spark a wider war in the Middle East, involving Iran and Turkey even more directly than the current conflict. That would not be good news.

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