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Bombing in Kirkuk may indicate further problems to come
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I don't think the symbolism of a deadly car bombing in Kirkuk in northern Iraq on the very same day that U.S. troops evacuated Iraq's major cities was lost on many people. Obviously there are forces that see our evacuation of Iraq's cities as an opportunity to foment sectarian violence. That shouldn't be a surprise after six years (so far) of war, much of it marked by sectarian violence. However, it strikes me that comparative few commentators are viewing the fact that this bombing (and there was another, more deadly, bombing on June 20) took place in a Kurdish city.
The status of Kirkuk has been disputed for some time. While it may surprise many who remember Saddam Hussein's ruthless suppression of the Kurdish population of Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan has enjoyed at least nominal regional autonomy since 1970. The problem is that Kirkuk is not part of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region. Why not? Well, oil for one thing: The region around Kirkuk is particularly oil-rich. Also, despite the 1970 grant of autonomy to Iraq's Kurds, Kirkuk's status was left pending a census, before which Saddam Hussein pushed to "Arabize" Kirkuk so that it was no longer, technically speaking, a Kurdish city.
Saddam Hussein was a lot of terrible things, but stupid wasn't one of them.
The Kurds are politically fractious. Since April 2005, the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, has been a Kurd. And while Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani has been an ally to the U.S. forces and Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki's government, the potent PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which opposes anything but full Kurdish independence, has fought against al-Malaki and U.S. forces. The PKK has also taken their fight to the Turkish government over the last several decades, fighting guerrilla warfare to unite the Kurds of Turkey with those of northern Iraq, as well as Iran and Syria. Nothing short of a Kurdish state encompassing the majority of historic Kurdistan will satisfy them.
Now here's a question: Why should anything less satisfy them? The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnolinguistic group in the region (after Arabs, Turks, and Persians), and yet they have no country to call their own. Why not? Rather than belabor the point, I'm going to point readers to a piece I wrote two years, before the Iraq War began that lays out all the regions. For those not terribly interested in the past, suffice it to say that Kurdish nationalism is one of the reasons that U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iraq between 1991 and 2003 was so consistent (containment rather than direct intervention) was the fear of Kurdish nationalism.
Let me be very clear about something: The use of terrorism is never excusable, and that the PKK has traditionally resorted to terrorism in support of its cause — righteous as that cause may be — is a major reason why Kurdish nationalism has been opposed in the first place. But the very real desire of many Kurds to be fully independent seems to have been a point lost on the Bush administration in its prosecution of this war. True, the threat of sectarian violence within the Arab population probably posed a larger immediate threat, particularly given that the Arab majority of Iraq is Shi'a and, thus, within Iran's immediate sphere of influence. But somewhere along the way, the participation of Talabani and Barzani in the U.S. expedition in Iraq seems to have blinded people to the fact that Kurdish nationalism isn't going to go away.
What's the solution? I have no idea. I'd like to say an independent Kurdish state would solve the problem, but Turkey has varied and several reasons to oppose such a state, as does al-Maliki, for the aforementioned reason of oil. But one thing is sure: The recent bombings in Kirkuk do not bode well for the immediate future of Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdish national aspirations. This is yet another way in which George W. Bush's overwhelming desire to wage war in Iraq despite the problems that would ensue may yet come back to haunt the region and the world.
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