Divided by outside forces and internal strife, an age-old political and tribal fragmentation makes them an easy touch for the major powers, which use them as a buffer.
“The disorganisation and vacillation that characterises tribal relationships results from a complex association of circumstances (..) Poor communications from one settled valley to the next, particularly during the winter, tend to promote an isolation of thought and action. […] Tribal boundaries cut across international boundaries, and the differences in political climates in the various countries in which the tribesmen live further hinder the attainment of Kurdish Unity” can be read in the Geographic Intelligence Report – The Kurds, a document drafted in 1959 by Langley analysts which shows how much the CIA, ever since the first years of the Cold War, focused on an ethnic minority divided between four countries as well as being fragmented internally.
Divisions that date back a long way and are often enhanced by local politics (those of the four nations that border and contain the Kurdistan region, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria) andforeign ones, by involving the Kurds in conflicts by promising autonomy and independence only to go back on their word.
In January 1946 the Soviet Union backed the birth of a Kurdish republic in western Azerbaijan, a norther province of Iran.
The capital of the small state was the town of Mahabad, it had approximately 16,000 inhabitants and was governed by Qazi Mohammad (president) and MustafàBarzani as head of the army and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KPD). The Soviet’s used the founding of theMahabad Republic as a pawn in its attempt to force Tehran to grant it oil concessions and was so successful that already by April of the same year the Red Army retreated, depriving the small republic of its military backing. Then, between November and January, the Iranian army quickly attacked and overthrew the Kurdish state, executingQazi and causing Barzani to fleeto Russia where he was to remain for the following eleven years.
Even after the short-lived episode of the republic the leader of the KPD still believedhe could trust the Soviets to support his ambitions and thus acceptedtheir offer to return a Iraq to help general Abd al-Karim Qasim, the instigator of the 1959 coup that deposed King Faysal II and drew the country back under the Soviet wing. A political shift that convincedBarzani that the time was ripe to renew his bid for an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.
However, Qasim’s bond with Russia was mostly of an economic and political nature. Hedid not truly embracing socialist principles, as proven by the ban imposed on the Communist Party and the purge of members of the Baath party.The nationalism that inspired the new junta was a further obstacle to any petitions for greater autonomy.
Once the Kurdish leader’s requests had been rejected, relations between Barzani and Qasimbecame strained and this led to a conflict in the early Sixties in which the President of the United Arab League Gamal Abdel Nasser played a major role by backing the Kurds against the government of Baghdad, guilty of not supporting Pan-Arabism. Barzani’s faction received further backing from Moscow, ready to support a Kurdish state in order to broaden its political influence in the Middle East with a view to controlling the extensive mineral resources in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Qasim’s death and the coup that brought the Baathist leader Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr into power turned the tablesonce again. Al-Bakr reinforced diplomatic ties and cooperation with the Soviet Union while in nearby Syria the “corrective revolution” within the Syrian Baath party enabled Hafiz al-Assad to impose himself as the new leader and intensify relations with the USSR which, in exchange for a civil and military investment programme, was granted a naval base in Tartus by Damascus.
Once Moscow secured the Middle Eastern base, the strategic role of the Kurds began to wane, besides now being caught in the crossfire between the two Baathist regimes: Syria that since 1963 had embarked on a campaign to ‘Arabify’ the north western provinces (Kurdistan Rojava) and Iraq where in 1975 the failure of the Kurdish revolt led to fierce reprisals by the government in Baghdad. This was compounded by the fragmentation of the Kurdish political front with the birth of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (UPK) headed by Jalal Talabani, in open conflict with Barzani’sleadership of the PDK and the PKK (Kurdish Worker’s Party) of Abdullah Ocalan.
A further division which was once again fostered by local powers to settle territorial issues.
Born in Turkey in 1979, the PKK was soon banned by the Turkish authorities and labelled a terrorist organisation. Ocalan and many of his men sought refuge in Syria, which during the Eighties was protesting against the construction of the Ataturk dam along the Syrian-Turkish border. A haven that did not last long because militant Kurds were then returned to Turkey in an attempt to normalise relations between the two countries.
Starting around the year 2000, the international community appeared to pay greater attention to the Kurdish question. Italy and Germany for example, supplied training and equipment to the Peshmerga in Iraqi Kurdistan in their bid to fight terrorism, as was the case later during the war against DAESH in northern Iraq and southern Syria. A support which was unavoidably curtailed by the caution shown by international diplomacy, unwilling to create too much tension with Turkey, viewed as a strategic NATO ally in the Middle East and the main opposition to any form of Kurdish independence, as reiterated just a year ago, when Ankara attacked and occupied the Syrian stronghold of Afrin. But the defence of this city was a commitment that Damascus had always been in two minds about: Afrin and Kobane were protected by the men of the PYD (Kurdish Democratic Union Partyof Syria) that had never taken sides in the war
for the sole purpose of obtaining recognition of the independence of Kurdistan Rojava. Plus, in the area controlled by the PYD, there were also approximately twenty American bases, another aspect that had the Assad government particularly worried.
Over the course of 70 years the Kurds have only obtained some form of recognition during conflicts; in other words when they could be exploited as pawns on the Middle Eastern stage. Plus, if one looks back at the CIA report, the long-standing internal divisions often cause serious damage, as shown in the referendum of September 2017.
Following the fall of the Saddam regime, the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan was an important political experiment in the history of relations between the Kurds and the central Iraqi government, which for the last two mandates has been represented by the UPK leader Jalal Talabani who, using politics and diplomacy, had managed to grant greater independence to the region. The war with IS changed everything. Bolstered by the role played in defeating DAESH, the Kurdish militias (and in particular those of the PDK) started to file requests for greater autonomy from the central government and went as far as organising a referendum which only led to a military intervention by Baghdad (which felt its sovereignty threatened) and a distancing by the United States. The illusory belief that what it had been fighting for for over 70 years could be achieved with a simple vote has made it even less likely that an independent state will exist any time soon.
Perhaps Talabani had was more aware that the only viable path for the Kurds is the political and diplomatic one, and any sleight of hand or revolutionary provocation leads nowhere, particularly if a strong international backing is not at hand. Partly because at this point it’s fairly clear that none of the four states bordering Kurdistan nor any international powers, are prepared to shoulder the burden or stomach the historical responsibility to approve and support the birth of a Kurdish nation.
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Divided by outside forces and internal strife, an age-old political and tribal fragmentation makes them an easy touch for the major powers, which use them as a buffer.
