LONDON - Throughout the build-up to Scotland’s fight for independence, there have been comparisons made to secessionist movements all over the world, including Iraqi Kurdistan.
It’s a bit like comparing apples and oranges, said Shwan Zulal, a Kurd and head of consulting for Carduchi, a risk management firm.
“Britain is a single country and a democracy, so the comparison is not very relevant. But on a human level, of nations wanting to go their own way, it’s pretty much the same plight, not only in Iraq but in other Kurdish areas. All they want is to be in charge of their own affairs,” Zulal told Rudaw.
Not unlike the Scots, who will be voting for independence in a referendum on Thursday. The Kurds have warned of a similar referendum if bitter ties with Baghdad are not mended.
But while British Prime Minister David Cameron and other top leaders are making promises and pushing their “Better Together” campaign in Scotland, the Iraqi government is doing just about everything it can to drive the autonomous Kurds away, while insisting that the country must stay together.
“They say they’re united, but its words and not action,” said Zulal.
Over the past year, Baghdad has frozen payments from the national budget to Erbil and opposed and tried to block independent oil exports. And it has done nothing to settle a long-running row over vast swathes of “disputed territories” that the Kurds finally moved into after Iraqi forces beat a retreat following the advance in June by the Islamic State (IS) armies.
But even with the strength of the Kurdish Peshmerga, the only local forces able to fight IS, Zulal said the Iraqis are putting up obstacles to foreign governments arming the Kurdish troops.
Ultimately, the US has been providing light arms and ammunition to the Kurdish forces, a move seen as necessary, but also one that will inevitably tip the diplomatic balance within Iraq.
Michael Hanna of the Century Foundation told the Guardian: “If you arm the Kurds now, and I think you have to, I don’t think there’s any other way around it: you’re putting a finger on the scales of Iraq’s internal political disputes. They’re going to be retaking territory that’s part of the disputed territory. You’re basically shoring up one side of that political divide.”
The Kurds’ fight for independence in Iraq, and their discontent with government concessions, has a scarred recent history.
Henri Barkey, Middle East analyst and professor of International Relations at Lehigh University, said that the Kurds have good reason to distrust Baghdad.
“It’s the disappointments of the past that has constituted the demands of the present,” he said, pointing to the articles of the constitution that call for a census, a referendum and a redrawing of the borders that would allow the disputed lands to join autonomous Kurdistan.
“That was in the constitution, they got it,” Barkey noted. “They had a deal, but it never materialized.”
The Kurds control much more land now, but Zulal said they’re on a different path than Iraq.
“The politics of Iraq is going towards a failed state, whereas the situation in Kurdistan is about trying to go away from that. “
So what would it take to make the Kurds happy?
“Getting control of their own natural resources, to be able to export oil and share revenue,” Zulal said.
“If Baghdad can do a revenue-sharing deal, then they could be real partners. “
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