Written evidence from Gary Kent (KUR0018)

Scope of submission

This submission focuses on the aspirations of the Kurds in Iraq, the FCO's position before and after the referendum, and UK interests in a strong Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and a viable Kurdistan Region in Iraq (KRI). Kurdistan, Kurds and Kurdistani are used as shorthand.

The author

My views are based on 11 years of active engagement until recently with the KRI as a part-time adviser to two KRG UK High Representatives for ten years, as the paid and now voluntary secretariat of the APPG on the Kurdistan Region in Iraq since 2007, and as Deputy Chair of the European Technology and Training Centre in Erbil, which works with the British Consulate-General there on schemes to reintegrate Kurdistani returnees.

I visited Baghdad twice in 2008 and 2009, as a guest of PM Maliki and his Dawa Party, and the KRI 25 times since 2006, including 14 APPG delegations. I have also taught media relations and the rule of law to KRG civil servants. The then APPG Chair, Meg Munn and I once gave seminars for half the KRI's MPs on how the UK Parliament works. I write frequently on Kurdistani matters. This submission is in a personal capacity.

Summary

  1. Anglo-Kurdistani relations
  2. Kurds have a deep affinity with the UK. They often chide us about the chain of events set off by Sykes-Picot in 1916 but thank us for liberating them through the no-fly zone and safe haven in 1991 under which they developed the KRG. They also thank us for what they see as the liberation of Iraq in 2003 that lifted the genocidal threat posed by Saddam.
  3. English is the unofficial second language for leaders and others who enjoyed exile in the UK, although many younger Kurds have returned to the UK and other countries and more may follow them, which will impair Kurdistani capacity. Three prestigious universities teach in English.
  4. Kurds appreciate the quality of British goods and services that add value to companies whose labour costs are lower; Erbil International Airport was designed by Scott Wilson and built by a Turkish company. The KRG officially designated the UK as a partner of choice. They admire our parliament and position as a UNSC, Nato and EU member.
  5. The FAC report on Kurdistan in January 2015 outlined measures to encourage that special relationship. The differences between the UK and the KRG on the referendum and especially its aftermath have damaged the UK's reputation, and even more that of the USA, but raw perceptions can change and should be a UK goal.
  6. The 2017 referendum
  7. The referendum was a long time in the making, and was delayed twice in recent years. The Kurds made it clear in US sponsored conferences in London between opposition parties before the 2003 invasion and ever since that federalism was the condition of rejoining and remaining in Iraq. Their decision to rejoin Iraq in 2003 was itself an exercise of self-determination.
  8. They secured a federal constitution in 2005, a 'contract between enemies,' as Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly once described the Belfast Agreement. They used their skills to stabilise Iraq although two million Kurds backed independence in an informal referendum that year.
  9. Shia majority leaders never accepted federalism and equality but had no choice when the Kurds were powerful enough to insist on them. The Shia bloc's largely ephemeral support for the federal constitution agreed by Iraqis in a referendum in 2005 became increasingly evident. Baghdad failed to finalise the status of the disputed territories by 2007, as stipulated. This was difficult due to war with Al Qaeda but there was no later push to honour the pledge.
  10. Yet, for most of the time I have been visiting Kurdistan since 2006, independence was not urgent. The Kurds initially did well as 'The Other Iraq' and insufficient shares of Iraqi revenues, medicines, food, and military equipment mattered less when shared oil revenues were high.
  11. Kurds used this 'golden decade,' the only period of cordial relations in a century, to dramatically improve their public services and living standards. Kurdistani envoys fanned across the world to win political support and encourage international investors thanks to its open investment policy.
  12. Baghdad was relatively weak and the Kurds had a state in all but name: the 1.5 state solution. But the game was up when Iraq unilaterally abandoned the revenue-sharing agreement by cutting all federal fiscal transfers to the KRG in February 2014. This necessitated independent oil exports via Turkey, although the slump in oil prices and the cost of war exacerbated economic crisis.
  13. The loss in June of Mosul signalled the end of Iraq and the Kurds saw a chance to make their move, signalled from 2012. The context was serial violations of federalism, fears that an increasingly post-federal Iraq would never accommodate the Kurds, and concrete evidence the Iraqi state could not protect itself let alone the Kurds.
  14. Fifteen of the 17 Kurdistani parties supported the referendum and the other two parties belatedly accepted what the Gorran leader told MPs on 26 September was a national consensus.
  15. My interviews in May 2017 with the President, the Foreign Minister, the PM's Chief of Staff, and the former Iraqi Foreign Minister and head of the Referendum Council capture the thinking of the Kurdistani leadership before the referendum was announced. https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/gary-kent/can-kurds-pull-off-kurdexit
  16. A desperate people sought to escape the confines of an Iraq that owes them a massive debt for stabilising the country during civil war and saving Kirkuk from Daesh.
  17. The Tillerson letter
  18. The referendum was touch and go even at the 11th hour. Two days before the referendum I was with British MPs in Erbil when a tweet announced a postponement of the referendum. I assumed with some relief that American-led diplomacy had delivered a decent alternative deal but it was a false alarm.
  19. It is unclear when US, UK and UN diplomats began their efforts in earnest and the Foreign Secretary was uncertain about the timeline at the FAC. The referendum was formally announced in June but my impression is that high-level engagement began in early September with a frenetic fortnight of diplomatic engagement.
  20. There were several drafts of the letter from Rex Tillerson to President Barzani but it is unclear how much this letter, whose specific commitments were strengthened, was drafted by agreement with the Iraqi Prime Minister.
  21. It is an open question if the letter, delivered on 23 September, could have made more impact if sent earlier. UK efforts were honourable and their views were held by some inside the KRG but the leadership decided to proceed, overseas voting having already begun.
  22. Peter Galbraith, a former American Ambassador to Croatia and old friend of the Kurds, writes that President Barzani explained why he could not accept the American request to postpone: 'Iraq is not what was on offer in 2003. Iraq is a theocratic, autocratic state. The intention is clear. The faces are different [from Saddam’s time] but the goal is the same. As long as we wait, they get stronger and we get weaker.' (The New York Review of Books 2 Nov 2017) http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/11/02/kurds-pay-for-trumps-gift-to-iran/
  23. The meaning of the referendum
  24. The referendum was emphatically not about a unilateral declaration of independence or 'busting loose' as the Foreign Secretary told the FAC. The leadership consistently stressed that it was about negotiating an 'amicable divorce,' a phrase widely used in Kurdistan.
  25. The KRG said the referendum was the beginning of the bargaining for statehood and better relations with Baghdad. Kurdistani leaders also left open the possibility of a genuine and reliable federal settlement or confederation. Self-determination is rarely consensual but the Kurds gave it a try.  
  26. The referendum was unilateral even if the outcome was seen as mutual but followed years of unilateral acts of omission and commission by Baghdad which voided the constitution of its value.
  27. The KRG, which enjoys mixed relations with other Kurdistani formations in Iran, Turkey, and Syria, also stressed it was about a Greater Kurdistan, improbable after a century of variable political geometry. I have discussed the matter with Kurdistani leaders from Iran, Syria and with Turkish/Kurdistani activists here. They generally accept that a single Kurdistani state would mean both war with host states and also civil war between competing Kurdistani forces for dominance. The existence of four Kurdistans seems permanent.
  28. The decision to hold the referendum in Article 140 territories was controversial but the logic was that the constitutional path had failed and a yes vote would allow the people to say they wished to be part of the KRG and its eventual independence. Failure to disaggregate referendum results, however, contradicts the desire to allow border areas most opposed to opt out possibly via land swaps.
  29. The Iraqi response to the referendum
  30. Continued KRG administration in Kirkuk, described by former Iraqi President and PUK leader, Mam Jalal Talabani as 'Kurdistan's Jerusalem,' was constitutional. KRG control was reinforced when Maliki requested it after Iraqi forces fled in 2014. The agreement between PM Abadi and the KRG in December 2014 accepted KRG control of Kirkuk. As did the defensive lines accepted by the KRG, Baghdad and the American-led coalition before the offensive to liberate Mosul in October 2016.
  31. KRG administration of the disputed territories and the referendum were not the final words. Baghdad could have responded in kind and politically but chose blockading international flights to Kurdistan's two airports, a malign and possibly illegal no-fly zone, and using violence as a first resort to seize disputed territories although force to settle internal political differences violates the constitution.
  32. Baghdad also sought to send troops into the undisputed four provinces of the Kurdistan Region in late October 2017 to wrest control of two border crossings inside the KRI but no shots have been fired for several weeks.
  33. Baghdad's military solution seeks to punish the Kurds for wishing to leave peacefully and there are fears that Iraq wishes to dilute the constitutional power of the KRG by turning it into individual Kurdistani provinces with fewer rights, as Iraq becomes more dictatorial, and amid fears of formal partition of the KRG.
  34. Greater use of the terms 'Kurdish provinces,' or 'northern Iraq,' a geographical concept that includes the KRI but is not confined to it, undermines the KRG's formal status.
  35. Baghdad seems determined to diminish Kurdistani rights by proposing a budget which slashes the federal contribution to the Kurds from the agreed 17% to 12.6% and less in practice.
  36. The intemperate Iraq response underpins a common Kurdistani view that such an Iraqi reaction was planned regardless of the referendum. Kurds have seen Maliki and Abadi make visits only to Slemani and see that as seeking to exploit historic tensions between the Green and Yellow zones, controlled by separate PUK and the KDP administrations from the civil war of the 1990s to the formal merging of the administrations in 2006.
  37. Baghdad's addiction to centralisation
  38. The Iraqi state must reconstruct itself after its disastrous defeat in 2014, when it lost Mosul and a third of its territory. That calamity was the result of the state's failure to accommodate its Sunni minority and the Kurdistani fifth of the country, long seen as a fifth column.
  39. A sophisticated Iraqi Ambassador once said that Iraq should emulate Switzerland, which keeps its neighbours at bay and its different ethnic groups together. But the default position of Sunni and now Shia leaders, common in the Middle East playbook, is centralisation. Iraqi rehabilitation based on genuine federalism and decentralisation seems a distant possibility.
  40. Iraq may 'keep' Kurdistan for now but any internal settlement should be based on their rights in the constitution, long neglected and the cause of the Kurdistani attempt to secure statehood. Any forced deviation from the constitution will make co-existence untenable.
  41. As KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said in November 2017: 'We expect Baghdad to act according the Constitution by implementing what the Constitution says. Many Iraqi Government decisions are unconstitutional, as are some decisions by the Iraqi Parliament against the Kurdistan Region. The Iraqi Constitution does not allow the federal government to act against the Kurdistan Region.  But, unfortunately, the federal government chooses to act according to some articles and not on others. The Constitution is not a restaurant menu.  We must accept and abide by each and every article.'
  42. Millions of young Kurds who don't speak Arabic and don't identify with Iraq will not bow the knee to a sectarian politics that despises the progressive mores of Kurdistan and wants, for instance, to ban alcohol and reduce the age of sexual consent and marriage to 9.
  43. Nor is there any equivalent of a Better Together campaign in Iraq to venerate what ordinary Iraqis call the 'beloved north' where they enjoy its resorts, hotels, scenery and cooler temperatures and where many Iraqi MPs have family homes. Many Iraqis still look down on the Kurds, who were demonised in near racist terms after the referendum in the parliament of a state that carried out genocide against them in the 1980s.
  44. Independence may have been forcibly taken off the agenda but the impulse is strong although Kurdistan is wedged between competing international relations doctrines of respecting the sovereignty of current members of the UN club and also upholding the right to self-determination. As it is also stuck between a constitution upholding unity and saying that Iraq is a free union. It takes two to tango.
  45. The weakened KRG has offered to freeze the result but Baghdad is demanding its annulment. Whatever words are agreed, however, the settled will of the Kurdistani people (93% in a 72% turnout) remains clear.
  46. Bilal Wahab persuasively argues that 'The KRG's survival is crucial for the stability of Iraq and the wider region. If the past is any indication, a fragmented KRG amounts to inviting Iranian and Turkish military interventions that undermine Iraq's sovereignty, as happened in the 1990s. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/saving-the-krg-is-vital-to-u.s.-and-iraqi-interests
  47. It's the economy...and the oil and the constitution
  48. The KRG’s fragile financial position, including revenues, expenditure, and budget deficit could deteriorate as Baghdad tightens long-standing economic sanctions described as 'collective punishment.
    The economy has faced multiple shocks since early 2014. Losses due to Baghdad's failure to make full payments according to the constitution have been compounded by additional expenditures for reasons beyond its control, and only partially mitigated by direct oil export sales.
  49. Ever since oil was discovered in the huge Kirkuk oil fields in 1927, Kurds have been marginalised as successive governments in Baghdad systematically excluded them from oil production and its proceeds. Waves of “Arabisation” were most ruthless around the oil fields of Kirkuk.
  50. Kurds often say the black gold beneath their feet has been more of a curse than a blessing. Kurds are determined they will never return to the days when Baghdad used oil revenues to buy tanks and helicopters to destroy their villages.
  51. Oil can either be a reason for Iraq breaking up, or the glue that binds it. It explains why the KRG insists on its rights to develop its own oil industry. The dispute over who controls and manages KRI natural resources goes to the heart of Iraq’s chances of survival as a democratic, federal state. 
  52. KRI energy reserves, potential and proven, are the primary spur of growth and diversification, but also the internationalisation of Kurdistan’s underdeveloped economy and can promote stability, development and prosperity across the north of Iraq, southeast Turkey, newly liberated areas from Daesh, including Syria. Abundant reserves of natural gas can be developed and exported to assist Europe with diversification of its energy supplies.
  53. However, this requires revenues being shared in line with the constitution, largely ignored by Baghdad. Reaching a reliable revenue sharing agreement is the chief priority and could relieve more intractable political problems that have plagued Erbil-Baghdad relations since 2003. This requires a thorough understanding and application of the constitution, which is detailed on KRG and Baghdad rights and responsibilities. It specifies that the KRG exercises sovereign powers over oil and gas in the KRI and also the KRG's revenue entitlements.
  54. 'Federal expenses' have been arbitrarily deducted from Kurdistan’s share of revenues, which were never allocated at the agreed rate of 17 percent. These federal deductions generally amounted to some 5%-6% of gross revenues, and were neither transparent nor audited. In the draft federal budget for 2018, the sum allocated to the KRG has been unilaterally sliced from 17% to 12.6% - Kurdistan could end up with as little as 5-6% of gross Iraqi revenue.  
  55. The passive reaction of the international community
  56. The lack of global sympathy for a negotiated Kurdexit shocked Kurds, who hoped they had greater leverage given their crucial role in defeating Daesh, providing sanctuary to Christians, Syrian refugees, and nearly two million Sunni Arabs from Mosul, and being a beacon of democratic values and religious moderation. See my report on religious tolerance at http://www.tonyblairfaithfoundationus.org/religion-geopolitics/commentaries/opinion/kurdistan-spotlight-beacon-tolerant-pluralism
  57. The coincidental referendum in Catalonia obscured the specific dynamics of the Kurdistani case and took media coverage away from Iraqi actions, which were passed off as procedural and routine rather than a needless and unconstitutional reaction cloaked in the name of the constitution.
  58. Catalonia had another impact - Spain would veto an EU policy that could set a precedent for Catalonia. The senior Rudaw columnist Ayub Nuri argues that 'Europe has more at stake in Kurdistani losses than the United States does,' given the danger of a major exodus to Europe if Iraq invaded the KRI, but 'Europe continues to fail to act and asks the United States for help.' http://www.rudaw.net/english/opinion/14112017
  59. Baghdad justifies violence by invoking Article 109 which states that 'The federal authorities shall preserve the unity, integrity, independence, and sovereignty of Iraq and its federal democratic system.' Baghdad stresses the first part while Kurds argue that failing to uphold the federal democratic system is a fundamental breach of faith.
  60. Honourable Western efforts to broker a solution and later aloofness and hostility encouraged Kurdistan's enemies. The Kurds feel they are being hung out to dry by irritated Western diplomats and especially the Americans who slammed the referendum as illegitimate.
  61. The West is currently putting all its eggs in Abadi's basket, as it did with Maliki, the sectarian strongman who destroyed Sunni goodwill achieved in the successful struggle against Al Qaeda and drove Sunnis towards Daesh. Abadi seems trapped by the grim logic of survival against Maliki and others that there are more votes in kicking than accommodating the Kurds. There may be a bitter intra-Shia battle when election campaigning begins in March.
  62. Iraq's (dishonourable) intentions?
  63. Reading Iraq's strategic intentions towards Kurdistan is difficult. I apply a half glass full approach to Kurdistan, welcoming political and economic reforms that tackle the pathologies of patronage and poor productivity they share with much of the Middle East, and believing that more reform will come. Kurdistani reformers saw eventual statehood as a means to force fundamental reform to a dysfunctional economy and that includes diversifying the economy, a bigger private sector to underpin political pluralism, and a tax base to turn supplicants into citizens. All backed by development aid for which a sovereign country of Kurdistan's strategic significance would qualify.
  64. My glass half empty approach to Baghdad is based on their leaders' continuing inability and unwillingness to recognise that Iraq is a binational country and not just another Arab Republic.
  65. The optimistic scenario is that Kurds swallow their anger and take part in the Iraqi elections, again make themselves kingmakers, and drag Baghdad back to recognising their rights in a reliably federal settlement. Abadi's tactics could then be seen as temporary shock and awe phase that fades into dialogue and settlement once he has secured his position.
  66. The pessimistic scenario is the habit of centralisation for this generation of Iraqi leaders is ingrained, especially if Maliki ousts Abadi, and that repression and restriction remain the norm. Switzerland remains a distant dream, especially if Iran retains its malignant role.
  67. A One Iran policy?
  68. The West may yet have to choose between a rampant and sectarian Iraq, backed by Iran for its own selfish reasons, and a potentially pivotal and progressive Kurdistan. Otherwise it will be complicit in condemning the Kurds to a lesser status in an Iraq that has echoes of Saddam's rule but without the genocide, and despite all the Kurds did for Iraq after 2003, protecting the Mosul Dam, and in defending us from fascism.
  69. The West is weaker than for decades in the Middle East and continues to uphold a One Iraq policy that is arguably becoming a One Iran policy. Iran opposes independence to discourage its own restless Kurds, suffocate a dynamic and democratic Kurdistani state friendly to the USA and Israel, and that could block a Shia corridor from Tehran to Tartus on the Mediterranean.
  70. Iraq has used brutally sectarian Shia militia linked to Iran and equipped with sophisticated American tanks and artillery but President Trump has not acted. US Congressman Duncan Hunter says 'A picture is worth 1,000 words. There's the M1 Abrams tank with a Hezbollah flag. I don't care what the State Department says, they can't argue with this. At the best, the State Department has been derelict in its duties,' while holding up a photo of what he believes were Shiite militias on a US tank. 'At worse they've been complicit.” (Rudaw 1 Nov 2017) http://www.rudaw.net/english/world/01112017
  71. Bruce Riedel, an American security official who was in charge of a sceptical, cautious and reluctant President Barzani's first visit to America in 1992, argues that 'Iran engineered the whirlwind against Barzani. The White House was slow to react and outmaneuvered by Tehran. The first test of Trump’s new tough Iran strategy is a blowout for the Ayatollahs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The most pro-American segment of the Iraqi population was kneecapped.' https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/11/02/masoud-barzani-and-the-roots-of-kurdish-distrust-of-the-united-states/
  72. Western diplomats worry about increasing Iranian influence and see Abadi as a bulwark against that, despite the use of 60,000 Iranian influenced and even directed Shia militia in Iraqi uniforms. An Iraqi official told a recent Conservative gathering that it was true that Major General Qassem Soleimani, the hardline Iranian commander of the Quds force, was a military adviser but the Iraq Army also had American and British advisers, as if they are morally equivalent.
  73. There are doubts that the Shia militias are entirely under the control of the Iraqi Prime Minister. Moqtadr Sadr's own popular mobilisation unit has recently announced its withdrawal from Kirkuk without formal reference to Abadi.
  74. On the day of the referendum, I saw joyful crowds in their best clothes enthusiastically voting in Erbil, Kirkuk and Slemani. Myself and other observers joined the Kurdistani governor Najmaldin Karim at his mansion in Kirkuk, once the home of the notorious Baathist commander known as Chemical Ali for organising mustard gas attacks against Kurdistani villages.
  75. Weeks later Shia militia broadcast triumphalist videos insulting Kurdistani dignity from the same offices displaying with pictures of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Shia militia trampled on the Kurdistani flag and the Iraqi military commander stopped the Kurdistani police chief and journalists using their language in a country where Kurdish and Arabic are official languages. The elected governor was the intended victim of assassination and was whisked to Erbil. The UN says 183,000 Kurds and others have been displaced from the disputed territories including 79,000 from Kirkuk city as at 2 November.
  76. The West is reluctant to choose between its allies but has effectively plumped for Iraq and Kurds feel they have been sold out, yet again. John McCain puts it well: 'If Baghdad cannot guarantee the Kurdish people in Iraq the security, freedom and opportunities they desire, and if the United States is forced to choose between Iranian-backed militias and our longstanding Kurdish partners, I choose the Kurds.' (I Choose the Kurds The New York Times, 24 Oct 2017). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/opinion/john-mccain-kurds-iraq.html?_r=0
  77. The scale of Iranian involvement in the Iraq reaction to the referendum has been soft-peddled. The Iraqi decision to increase output in the Kirkuk oil field to 1 million bpd and export the oil via Iran will alarm Turkey.
  78. Turkey
  79. Are initially solid appearances of unity by Kurdistan's neighbours viable? Turkey helped co-ordinate the response to the referendum with Iraq, Iran and Syria but held back from turning off the spigot that controls oil exports via Turkey, and has made reconciliatory noises.
  80. The material and political basis of Turkey's long improving relationship with Kurdistan remains important if smaller. Oil and gas exports earn transit fees and bolster its ambition as a secure energy hub. Kurdistan could be the gateway to trade in Mosul and Sunni provinces, the KRI, and Iraq. Turkey has been the KRG's top trading partner. The Iraqi Kurds have been valuable interlocutors with the PKK and the Turkish state.
  81. Nor is it certain how the elections in Turkey in April 2018 will affect efforts to box in the Kurds given millions of Kurds in Turkey support Erdogan and his party. The retirement of President Barzani could also help reset relations and overcome the personal animus to his alleged treason, as President Erdogan described it.
  82. Iraqi Sunnis
  83. We have also heard little from Sunni leaders who had previously seen Kurdistan as an economic partner when Kurds exported spare electricity from their more efficient network to neighbouring Sunni provinces. Part of the calculus that tempted Sunnis to side with Daesh as less bad than Baghdad was the treatment of the Kurds, an old ally of Shia parties. Surely, part of Abadi's thinking is that foreclosing future options for the Kurds sends a signal about the options open to the Sunnis. It is uncertain how that will play with Sunnis who rebelled against hyper-centralisation.
  84. Kurdistani responsibilities
  85. Kurds are not blameless. They secured major achievements such as setting up an energy sector from scratch and effecting a rapprochement with Turkey. But even friends say the Kurds never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity and can be their own worst enemies. They overcame many obstacles in the last generation but hadn't sufficiently reformed their rentier economy while deep internal political divisions were ruthlessly exploited.
  86. Ranj Alaaldin, visiting Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, rightly argues the Kurds should 'collectively engage in a long, arduous, but worthwhile journey of institution-building and political reform to enhance self-sufficiency as well as the KRG’s political and security structures. The Kurdistani leadership has few choices other than to go back to the drawing board.' https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/11/03/the-u-s-and-kurdistan-revise-and-rebuild-after-kirkuk/
  87. He urges technical, political, and financial support from the international community. One such priority remains the professional unification of the Peshmerga, which all formally come under the aegis of the KRG but a half of which owe allegiance to two historic parties. Officers of the Mercian regiment in Erbil recently told British MPs how they mentor the Peshmerga and the MOD is also part of an international project to unify the Peshmerga. Both must continue at a faster pace.
  88. Kurds are angry with themselves and with external players. Friends in Kurdistan talk about a funereal air of depression. But it is not good enough to merely blame Baghdad, betrayal, Tehran or Trump. Kurds have to get their act together for the next phase in the long struggle for freedom. Not for the first time in a century the Kurdistani question is on the agenda and this time it requires the right answers. They are long survivors in the violent vortex between large and conflicting Iranian, Arabic and Turkish blocs and have endured worse than this before. But they need allies.
  89. How the West lost Kurdistan?
  90. Is the Kurdistani love affair with the West in danger and can Russia, which has significant oil and gas interests in Kurdistan,  become a partner of choice and one that could better restrain Kurdistan's neighbours? It is tempting to suggest that Kurdistani entrepreneurs set up Russian language courses. I also wonder if future international relations students will have a new set question - why and how the West lost Kurdistan.
  91. Conclusion
  92. Kurds seeking independence did not justify Iraqi violence but Iraqi violence now justifies Kurds seeking independence. The needlessly harsh reaction to an indicative vote for negotiated independence clarifies the stakes for the Kurds, those who want Iraq to develop its democracy, and those concerned for lasting peace in the Middle East.
  93. Having avoided advocacy of independence when the 1.5 state solution was working, after a fashion, and given Iraq's violent reaction to a gradualist two state solution, I now conclude that partition is the long-term solution. Kurds clearly do not accept a one state solution and will only do so with gritted teeth as their autonomy is defanged by a vengeful and myopic Iraqi state.
  94. Kurdistani leaders usually say 'we live in a tough neighbourhood, we have no friends but the mountains and we choose our friends.' Baghdad is showing its true colours and may reap a whirlwind. Or the harsh reaction by Iraq and its neighbours can run out of steam, be subject to divisions, and a united Kurdistan with new leaders can begin a long process of state building.
  95. The UK opposed independence at this stage but not as an absolute principle. Whether the Kurds reset their relations on the basis of equality or again embark on the quest for statehood, the KRG remains a vital ally whose modernisation is for its own good and for security in the Middle East. Baghdad's military, economic and political blitzkrieg may work in the short term but the UK should encourage a decent settlement.
  96. A weak and humiliated KRG is not in the interests of the UK but a strong KRG determined to reform its economy and political system remains a great hope for the wider reform of the Middle East, and is, therefore, in the interests of the UK. The UK should also recognise has always sought pragmatic win-win arrangements with Baghdad.
  97. There are limits to the UK's heft in Iraq and Kurdistan. This makes correct analysis of the dynamics even more essential. At the FAC evidence session, the UK Foreign Secretary praised the Kurdistani Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, who has taken most of the retired President's powers, and argued that Barzani's best possible partner is Abadi and that together 'they can work together to sort this out and that is what the UK will be encouraging.' In a later statement in the Commons, Johnson put the onus on Erbil to negotiate with Baghdad, seemingly unaware Erbil had made such offers that had been ignored by Baghdad.
  98. Such formulae fail to restrain Baghdad and reinforce Kurdistani weakness when the priority should be fair and equal dialogue on the basis of the constitution and the KRG's willingness to freeze the result.
  99. The flouting of the Iraq constitution created the referendum but the reaction to the referendum makes its full application necessary to return to a 1.5 state solution even if a two state solution in the medium or longer term would deprive Iraq of its Kurdish problem and enable the Kurds to become a country that benefits the world.

November 2017