Framing the Conflict Between Maliki and the Kurds

Last week I wrote about Prime Minister Maliki’s establishment and deployment of the Dijla Operations Command (DOC) force, and the strong reaction this provoked in Kurdistan.  As the Kurdish peshmerga mobilize and face off with the DOC in the disputed territories of Kirkuk, Diyala, Nineveh and Salah-al-Din, the political dispute threatens to breakdown into a violent conflict.   After negotiations between Erbil and Baghdad to resolve the standoff broke down a few days ago, the tension has been mounting.  Nonetheless, most observers in Baghdad seem to believe the Kurds are bluffing when they threaten to move against the DOC.  Kurdish leaders likewise insist they want to avoid a shooting war over the issue.  A diverse array of other Kurdish and Arab voices, however, increasingly call for armed action.  Both sides seem to think they can handily defeat the other.

From my perch in the West, far outside the halls of power in Baghdad or Erbil, it’s hard for me to know how serious the threat of outright conflict between the Kurds and Maliki has become.  As a political scientist, however, I know of too many historical cases where such tensions led to wars that none of the parties intended or really wanted.  In other cases, some of those who chose or desired war expected a quick victory, only to become mired in terrible, grinding and long lasting fighting.  The region remembers when Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1967 famously took provocative action after action, from threats and blockades against Israeli shipping to demanding the withdrawal of United Nations observer forces from the Sinai.  Finally the Israelis attacked, and somehow took him by surprise and then proceeded to defeat the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 6 days.  Several years later, Saddam Hussein thought to launch a similar surprise attack on Iran, after its new religious leaders began inciting Iraqi shiites to revolt.  Expecting quick victory similar to Israel’s lightning war of 1967, he instead condemned Iraq and Iraq to eight years of war, poverty and over a million war dead.  The point is that when you overturn the cart, or even threaten to turn it over, no one really knows where its contents will fall.

If serious armed conflict between Maliki and the Kurds does erupt, intentionally or not, the media war of interpretation will undoubtedly rage as well.  How such conflict gets framed will likely play a crucial war in determining the winner, in fact.  If Mr. Maliki manages to cast the issue as a war between Kurds and Arabs (or “an ethnic war,” as he recently referred to a possible conflict), the advantage will go to him.  Given how seriously Arabs outnumber Kurds in Iraq, the medium and long-term consequences of such a framing of the conflict would prove extremely disadvantageous to Kurdistan.   Mr. Maliki and his “State of Law” Party will tell Iraqis that Barzani is trying to expand Kurdistan’s borders at Arab expense.  Under such circumstances, it would be hard even for Arabs who oppose Maliki not to rally to his cause of protecting Arabs against Kurdish maximalism.  As long as leaders in Kurdistan insist that Article 140 be implemented and the disputed territories be given a chance to join Kurdistan, it will prove extremely difficult to oppose Maliki’s framing of the issue as one of “Arab vs. Kurd.” 

Under such circumstances, the best Kurdish option might be to try harder to frame the issue as one of resistance to increasingly authoritarian rule from Baghdad rather than Arab-Kurdish strife.  To successfully frame the issue this way, however, the Kurds need significant Arab allies.  They got off to a good start by rallying Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiyaa and Moqtada al Sadr’s political bloc to their side for the “no confidence” vote effort a year and a half ago.  To truly rally some Arab parties to their cause even in the event of armed confrontation with Maliki’s forces, however, the Kurds will have to find a way to reconcile their very different preferences for the disputed territories.  Iraqi Arabs totally oppose Kurdistan’s enlargement southwards.  Most Sunni Arab groups in Kirkuk even welcomed the formation of Maliki’s DOC force as a way of blocking Kurdish attempts to control their area.  

To radically change this dynamic, the Kurds may want to consider reinterpreting Article 140, which concerns the status of the disputed territories.  Article 140 demands that “A referendum be held to determine if the people of these areas wish to remain under Baghdad’s federal authority or become part of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region.”  Seeing as nothing else short of fighting is working to get Article 140 implemented, Kurds may want to pronounce their willingness to postpone such a referendum indefinitely.  What they should steadfastly demand now in its place, however, is the application of Articles 118-121 to Kirkuk and other governorates.  Together, these articles give governorates (provinces) the right to form regions (either alone or together with others), full authority over the “establishment and organization of the internal security forces of the region such as police, security forces, and guards of the region,” and precedence to regional authority over federal authority except in issues of exclusive federal jurisdiction (only foreign relations, borders, external defence, and a few other more minor things according to the constitution).  These are all things Sunni Arabs in the disputed territories want as well, as witnessed by their attempts to declare regions in Diyala and Salah-al-Din.  Mr. Maliki quashed those attempts, in violation of the constitution.  The Kurds can thus make common cause with at least some Arabs in defence of the constitution, and perhaps get more regions created to turn Iraqi into a truly federal, bicameral system of government while they’re at it.  As I wrote in one of my previous columns, an independent region of Kirkuk might even prove more useful than the alternatives.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since August 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press).