The Pros and Cons of a Referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan

Massoud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Region, stated this week that the time for a referendum on independence has come. He has instructed the parliament to look at possible dates in the near-term to hold the referendum, and to work out the logistics of doing so. In his statement, Mr. Barzani emphasized that “If the Kurds expect others to hand them independence as a present they’ll never achieve independence. That right is there and the Kurds must seek and fulfill it.”

President Barzani added that “It is not fair to discard the rights of the Kurdish people for political reasons or to appease others. Would they allow themselves to stop the rights of their own people? Kurdistan has every geographic, historic and human factor just as Scotland, Catalonia, Quebec and others do. The same way people in those places have the right to decide their future the Kurds too have that right and this is not open to argument….Now the time is ripe for the people of Kurdistan to decide their future through a referendum. The referendum does not mean an immediate declaration of a state but to know the opinion and desire of the people of Kurdistan which the Kurdish political leadership will implement at an appropriate time and circumstance.”

Over the past couple of years, your humble columnist has made similar arguments in the page of this newspaper. If even the new Abadi government cannot see fit to accept the Kurds’ constitutional right to manage their own oil and gas, if even the “moderates” in Baghdad cannot share power with either the Kurds or the Sunnis, if even in the face of the threat from the Islamic State Baghdad cannot see fit to allow the Kurds the kind of weapons they instead claim for their dysfunctional Iraqi army, then the case for independence gains a lot of strength.

A declaration of independence needs to be preceded by a referendum. Without establishing the will of the people of Kurdistan on the issue, KRG leaders can hardly claim a popular mandate for such a move.  Most recently independent states, such as South Sudan, held referendums first.

Although the financial crisis in South Kurdistan – a result of the very, very low price of oil today and of Baghdad’s budget cuts two years ago – complicates any move for independence, it also offers the possibility of reforming the nascent state’s economy and bloated civil service. Poorer countries than South Kurdistan have become states in the last couple of years.

The move for independence also stands a better chance of success while the Islamic State (ISIS) still has everyone’s attention. A buffer zone between Erbil and Baghdad at the time of independence could be a very useful thing indeed. The United States and others will hardly be willing to risk a reversal of all their gains against ISIS by isolating the new Kurdish state. The Kurds could thus use their potential weakness as a sort of weapon, earning their long-term freedom in the process.

There are also problems with a referendum and an Iraqi Kurdish bid for independence at this time, however. Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran, for instance, will be viewed with that much more suspicion no matter how often they insist that they are not pushing for secession. Most importantly, however, looms the problem of disunity and political dysfunction in the KRG itself. Most societies aspiring to independent statehood unite for the project and to protect themselves from outsiders opposing them. The bitter contests, coups or even civil wars for control of the newly independent state generally come after independence.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, in contrast, political divisions only seem to have grown during the past five years, well before independence. If KRG leaders – even in the face of Baghdad’s and ISIS’ threats – cannot put aside their own political squabbles, how can they move towards independence? Even now, some leaders seem intent on lavishing most Western military assistance on their own party Peshmerga rather than those of the KRG or others sharing in the fight against ISIS. If Iraqi Kurdistan’s leaders cannot truly share power with each other while in a region of Iraq, what would the future of an independent Kurdistan look like? Will a free Kurdistan also be free of patron-client networks and unaccountable politicians?

If a Kurdish nation is to truly hold a referendum on independence, its leaders must immediately do better at convincing everyone that they are truly national leaders and that tribal politics are a thing of the past.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.