The autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region is completely landlocked and, as a result, has often historically become ensnared in the Middle East’s most vicious wars. Despite this, the region has remained largely stable and even prospered. Its leaders and people, understandably, want to keep it that way.
Masoud Barzani, the leader of the region’s most powerful political party the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), re-emphasized this point recently when talking about Turkish airstrikes and Iranian artillery bombardments that intermittently strike the region’s border areas.
These cross-border attacks invariably target Kurdish groups that oppose the authorities in both countries but sometimes kill local civilians as well.
The most prominent of these Kurdish groups is undoubtedly the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has long had bases in Iraqi Kurdistan’s mountains that have been used to support its insurgency inside neighbouring Turkey. Similar groups, such as the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), have also used Iraqi Kurdistan as a sanctuary for its armed campaigns against the regime in Iran.
Over the summer, Turkey launched a major offensive into the mountains of the Iraqi Kurdistan’s north. It has used drones and commandos to destroy PKK caves and even fired a ballistic missile into the region for the very first time.
These conflicts, which tend to flare-up every couple of months, have seen hundreds of border villages and communities evacuated for years on end. Farmlands have also been affected and livestock killed.
Civilians caught in the crossfire are fed up of conflict. In January, after Turkish airstrikes killed six Kurdish civilians in the space of a single week in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Amedi region, infuriated local Kurds attacked a Turkish Army base in their region, the first ever attack of that kind. While their fury was directed at a Turkish military target, these same locals are just as fed-up with the PKK.
As one Kurdish journalist from the area noted at the time, had the PKK been present, “the protesters would have targeted them too”, since they “are fed-up with the PKK-Turkey conflict that has hijacked and impacted their areas and prevented them from living a dignified life.”
In general, Iraqi Kurdistan does not want to antagonize any of its neighbours or become entangled in these conflicts. The KDP opposes the continued presence of the PKK in the region and invariably says its activities and presence in the region are the only reason Turkey continues to carry out airstrikes and ground incursions.
Recently there was some speculation that Iraqi Kurdistan’s Peshmerga armed forces might directly help Turkey to militarily remove the PKK from strategically important areas in the region. In 1997, during Iraqi Kurdistan’s civil war, similar coordination between the Peshmerga and Turkey against the PKK took place. However, aversion in Iraqi Kurdistan to Kurds killing each other means this is not likely to happen again for the foreseeable future.
In his recent statements, Barzani expressed his concern “about the challenging situation on the border … with shelling and … bombings … be it from Iran or Turkey.”
According to Barzani, Iraqi Kurdish authorities are seeking a way to end this state-of-affairs without having to resort to fratricidal conflict.
“We are working on it in a way that Kurdish blood should not be shed by Kurds,” he said. “This has become a fundamental principle for us.”
The Kurdish Civil War (1994-97) transpired shortly after Kurds finally achieved autonomy from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq between the KDP and the other major Iraqi Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Both sides accepted assistance from neighbouring states – which were happy to see the Iraqi Kurds at each other’s throats – to try and get the upper hand. The conflict killed about 5,000 Kurds and ran the risk of tragically destroying the region’s nascent autonomy.
Both parties have since recognized the error of this conflict and broader aversion to such fighting among Kurdistan’s civilians, which was evident during the civil war itself, will lessen the likelihood of more Kurd-on-Kurd fighting breaking out anytime soon.
Ultimately, what Barzani and the KDP would welcome is for the PKK to cease using Iraqi Kurdistan’s mountains and borders for its conflict with the Turkish state. So long as the group continues to do so, it risks expanding that war further into Iraqi Kurdistan, which will doubtlessly undermine its stability.
After airstrikes hit villages near the PKK’s stronghold this August, injuring three civilians, Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomous government stressed that Turkey must “protect the safety of the Kurdistan Region’s citizens, who should not be the target of the shelling.”
In his remarks, Barzani also called on all parties to take into account the circumstances in Iraqi Kurdistan, “because we do not sacrifice the stability and security of our people for anyone else.”
Iraqi Kurdistan, he insisted, is “the only place of hope” for the Kurdish people and, therefore, if it were destroyed then “everything would be over.”
While imperfect in many ways, Iraqi Kurdistan is the only internationally recognized autonomous Kurdish region on the planet. Neighbouring Syrian Kurdistan’s de-facto autonomy, on the other hand, has pretty much no diplomatic recognition from either the regime in Damascus or the rest of the world.
To preserve this status quo, the Iraqi Kurds have had to avoid becoming entangled in conflicts in the other Kurdish regions just over their borders – where the regimes in Iran, Syria, and Turkey have often oppressed their Kurdish populations quite brutally.
In his former capacity as president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani supported the peace talks between Turkey and the PKK that led to a historic ceasefire in 2013 – which tragically collapsed in mid-2015. He also helped arrange a ceasefire between Iran and PJAK in 2011.
Barzani’s party would surely welcome and support another opportunity to help resolve these conflicts peacefully if it arises. In the meantime, it will continue to work to first and foremost ensure that Iraqi Kurdistan does not become entangled in any of the destructive and unwinnable conflicts that continuously plague the Middle East.
Image credit: Levi Clancy
