On Tuesday the International Crisis Group (ICG) released a report that describes the Kurds as land grabbers and a threat to Iraq’s integrity. It says that the Kurds must not speak of independence and that the West should send them arms only through Iraq. Reading the report makes one feel as if ISIS is fiction and that the world should worry more about the Kurds.
It starts by saying that the Kurds are non-state actors and that arming them would increase tensions in the disputed areas, prolong the war against ISIS and threaten Iraq’s unity. Did the experts who wrote this report forget that the West armed, trained and spent billions of dollars on Iraq -- the state actor -- and yet its army melted away in 24 hours?
They say arming the Kurds will prolong the war against ISIS. Does that mean, if you don’t arm the Kurds the ISIS war will end tomorrow? This argument clearly goes against all military experts who believe that giving advanced weapons to the Kurds will speed up the ISIS defeat.
The report writers emphasize a great deal on the issue of the disputed territories, which shows they are out of touch with reality. There is no such thing as disputed territories. It was just words on paper and neither Iraq nor the Kurds ever believed in it. One would wonder why this group worries so much about a constitutional article that the Iraqis themselves consider dead.
The report says that Western countries must send weapons to the Kurds only via the central government and encourage them to solve their oil dispute with Baghdad and that way “keep the Kurdish region inside Iraq.” It also says that the Kurds must coordinate with Baghdad in their military operations.
By the Iraqi army, do they mean the Shiite militia that fights under sectarian banners and is commanded by ambiguous clerics? Or perhaps they mean the Peshmerga should coordinate with the army that hasn’t been able to take back a single refinery and keeps fleeing and abandoning its weapons and armored vehicles in Anbar on a daily basis.
It says arming the Peshmerga would be dangerous because they are run by political parties. This sounds like the Iraqi army is a professional national army that has never been used by political parties to commit one massacre after another. Some Kurdish commanders might be loyal to their parties, but the Peshmerga on the frontlines are only loyal to the soil on which they stand and the flag under which they fight.
The report warns that arming the Kurds would encourage land grabs. This “land grab” cliché doesn’t really work with the Kurds because they are fighting to prevent their own land from being grabbed. They have stopped where the Kurdish borders end. Numerous videos show how the Kurdish Peshmerga are only meters away from ISIS, separated only by small a canal or a bridge.
It says empowering the Kurdish forces will weaken and hasten the disintegration of Iraq. The authors forget that it was in fact decades of centralized rule that weakened Iraq and pushed it to the partition that is becoming a reality day after day.
The report says that the Kurds should cooperate with the central government to develop a post-ISIS plan. But a plan for whom? If you watch or listen to the Sunni tribal leaders you will see that they dread any post-ISIS plan by the Iraqi government because they know it will most likely be a plan of revenge and further persecution.
Finally, the report has some advice for Iraq’s six million Kurds and their future. It asks the Kurdish president to refrain from any mention of independence. It warns that unless the Kurds run their military and political affairs the way the ICG researchers suggest, the Kurds will pose “a far more serious threat to the region’s stability than IS (ISIS) by itself could ever represent.”
If the ICG were really concerned about the region and aimed to prevent crisis, it should have instead offered a plan for a smooth partition of Iraq. That is where the country is headed anyway.
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