Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit this week sent a letter to Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani asking him to rethink the referendum on Kurdistan’s independence. In the letter, Mr. Gheit reportedly wrote “The referendum that is expected to be held will carry a negative message to the people of the Iraqi nation whom are non-Kurds, and opens the door in the way of disintegration and fragmentation, and increases the regional complexities,” adding that “While the Arab League is strongly keen on ensuring the territorial integrity of the Arab states ... it equally urges all of its member states to keep their promises with regard to the modern terms of citizenship and equality of the rights among all members of the same nation.”
The last part of the statement includes interesting wording, which may or may not be a correct account or translation of the private letter (this columnist lacks access to the letter’s exact text since it was private). The above excerpt come from Rudaw, while the Kurdish News Network had the following concluding statement in the letter: “While the Arab League is keen to ensure the territorial integrity of Arab countries, it urges all Arab States to fulfill their obligations in applying the modern concepts of citizenship and granting equal rights to all the members of the society” [emphasis added].
The difference is important. If the letter, which was presumably written in Arabic, used the term uma, then the English equivalent would be “nation” rather than “society.” Welat, if that was the term Mr. Gheit used, would be more ambiguous, meaning “country” in English. The Iraqi state (dawlat) is made up of more than one nation, of course, and the Kurds worked hard to have this recognized in the 2005 Constitution.
This basic fact was long ignored by leaders in Baghdad, who until 2005 imposed Arabic education and banned Kurdish. When Arab drafters of the 2005 Constitution tried to insert wording stating that Iraq is an Arab country, the Kurds balked. The final compromise text on the issue, found in Article 3 of the Constitution, ended up reading as follows: “Iraq is a country of many nationalities, religions and sects and is a founding and active member of the Arab League and is committed to its covenant. Iraq is a part of the Islamic world.”
This columnist would thus be very interested in learning if the Secretary General of the Arab League just sent the Kurdistan Region’s leader a letter whose language fails to recognize the Kurds as a separate nation from Arabs. In countless revolts against Baghdad’s dictatorship and forced assimilation efforts, Kurds fought for decades to attain such recognition. Baghdad’s response to these revolts culminated in the “final solution” effort of 1987-88: the genocidal Anfal campaigns during which up to 182,000 civilian Kurds were killed by mass executions and chemical weapons.
During and immediately after the Anfal campaigns, the Arab League was of course completely silent on the issue. Like most of the international community, they viewed the issue as an “internal Iraqi matter.” This goes a long way towards explaining why most Kurds want independence: so they are not condemned to more “internal matters” in the future. The “internal matters” now occurring in Turkey, or what occurs in other parts of Kurdistan, no doubt has Kurds there thinking more about sovereignty issues as well.
It also seems ironic that the Arab League would see fit to send Mr. Barzani a letter at all. The League is not a neutral actor in this matter, given its keen interest in “ensuring the territorial integrity of the Arab states.” Perhaps the Kurdistan National Congress or some other pan-Kurdish body should send Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi a letter offering their view that he should support Kurdish independence? The letter’s language about “urging all of its member states to keep their promises with regard to the modern terms of citizenship and equality of the rights among all members of the same nation” likewise echoes the discourse of any number of dictators. One need only remember how many Saddam Husseins and Hafez al Assads promised the Kurds equal citizenship and equal rights – which generally meant the equal right to be fearful subjects of the dictator and an equal right to assimilate to the dominant nation in that state.
In the end, The Arab League suffers from three basic faults: First, its membership is composed almost exclusively of states with authoritarian governments. Second, the League until the Arab Spring (with regard to Libya and Syria) never took any position on domestic abuses of people’s rights, viewing these matters as “internal.” Third, the Arab League’s core principle of membership derives from being Arab rather than any civic or geographic inclusion within a region.
Mr. Barzani’s reply to the letter thus appears completely justified: “We have come to the conclusion that we are not welcome and not accepted as citizens and real partners,” the Barzani letter read, listing a history of genocide and denial at the hand of successive Iraqi governments since its foundation in 1920. “That is why we do not accept subordination, and marginalization; and therefore, our friends in Iraq should be blamed [for this], not us, because they are the ones who pushed us [towards holding the referendum].”
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.
