The past few weeks have seen a discouraging standoff ensue between different Kurdish factions over a small patch of land that evokes memories of the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War of the mid-1990s. For the most part, however, Kurds are generally cognizant of the fact that they cannot afford to let their region descend into another fratricidal conflict. Reassuringly, there are signs that they have learned hard lessons from that dark episode in their history.
The latest intra-Kurdish standoff is taking place in a 500 metre-long stretch of land in a place called Zini Warte, which is situated in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Erbil province. The area is located on the demarcation line that separates Iraqi Kurdistan’s west, controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and Iraqi Kurdistan’s east, controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
Aside from being divided between these two zones of control and influence, Iraqi Kurdistan’s vaunted Peshmerga fighters are also largely loyal to either the KDP or the PUK – although there does exist a sizeable unified and less partisan force of those Kurdish fighters. Efforts to completely unify the Peshmerga have not borne much fruit to date, despite discussions and expressed intentions by Kurds to do so.
The Zini Warte standoff began on March 16 when a brigade of Kurdish Peshmerga forces mostly consisting of KDP members were deployed to the region. The deployment was ostensibly for preventing illegal movement in the area as part of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s efforts to prevent a widespread outbreak of the COVID-19 contagion.
The PUK, however, claimed that the KDP was using the deployment as a cover to encroach on its territory and deployed its Peshmerga forces to face them down. To make matters worse, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) group also sent fighters of its own to the area, claiming that both sides were encroaching on its territory. Zini Warte is situated near the PKK’s stronghold in Iraqi Kurdistan, Qandil Mountain.
As a result, a small three-way Mexican standoff of sorts ensued over a relatively tiny piece of territory.
Kurdish officials have downplayed the severity of the standoff, insisting that it will be resolved diplomatically. This will most likely be the case, as of writing both sides are expected to resolve the impasse amicably. More broadly, all parties have fought each other before and, despite occasional tensions like these, know they cannot afford to do so again.
The KDP-PUK conflict in the mid-1990s led to little more than a stalemate before US-brokered peace negotiations brought it to an end. While both sides overran large parts of the other’s territories, they never proved capable of holding them, which led to the present border demarcating both their regions roughly between east and west. The same would likely be the case if there were another conflict between them, which leaders on both sides invariably stress is not in either side’s interest.
In October 2017, the PUK promptly pulled its Peshmerga forces out of the oil-rich constitutionally-disputed region of Kirkuk, which Kurds claim and revere as their Jerusalem, as Iraq sent forces to capture it less than a month after the September 25, 2017, Iraqi Kurdistan independence referendum.
That debacle sparked allegations of betrayal and PUK collusion with Iraq (specifically a deal to surrender Kirkuk in return for direct concessions from Baghdad) among many prominent Kurds. KDP leader Masoud Barzani made this allegation of betrayal but was careful not to name the PUK directly, most likely under the subtle understanding that more fratricidal conflict would most likely doom the Kurds and jeopardize their hard-won autonomy.
PUK-owned media, for their part, broadcast a deluge of anti-KDP propaganda of the kind not seen since the days of the civil war. Tensions were heated for a couple of weeks but did not lead to conflict or the break-up of the autonomous region’s unity.
The KDP and PKK clashed in the 1990s when the latter sought to sabotage trade between the KDP side of Kurdistan and the PKK’s enemy Turkey by attacking trucking. The KDP insisted that it could not afford to antagonize Turkey since that country constituted, and still does in many respects constitute, its lifeline and trading link with Europe and much of the outside world.
While both sides clashed intermittently throughout the 1990s, the KDP invariably argued that it did not want to kill PKK members, but rather just push them into Iran and prevent them from using Iraqi Kurdistan as a launchpad in its campaign against Turkey. KDP leaders and officials invariably use similar rhetoric today when there is an uptick in Turkey-PKK clashes in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The PUK later cracked down on PKK activities in its region in 2001, as part of a bid to placate Turkey. It did the same as recently as 2018, closing down offices of parties with purported affiliations with the PKK located on PUK-controlled territory. In response, Ankara reopened the airspace it had hitherto closed off over the PUK’s stronghold of Sulaimani.
Regarding today’s Zini Warte standoff, the PKK’s leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been in prison in Turkey since his capture in 1999, stressed the importance of Kurdish unity. According to his brother, the PKK leader said, “The Kurds do not need war and bloodshed but peace and unity. He said this is his most important message.”
Last August, in comments that won him rare praise from the PKK, Barzani said that the conflicts in Iraqi Kurdistan, namely the Turkish-PKK conflict that often sees clashes between the two enemies on Iraqi Kurdish soil, cannot be resolved by the fratricidal spilling of Kurdish blood.
“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.”
He also added that Iraqi Kurdistan is “the only place of hope” for the Kurdish people. If that hope were eradicated then “everything would be over.”
Ordinary Kurds find the idea of fratricidal conflict reprehensible, despite what they might think of different parties and factions in the region. During the civil war, when Peshmerga from both parties appealed for aid, few Kurds gave as they did during the previous wars against Baghdad given their clear revulsion over that counterproductive conflict.
One telling thing about western media coverage of that war was the fact Western journalists sometimes mistook Barzani for Talabani. When one Australian reporter erroneously called Barzani Talabani, the KDP leader responded by quipping, “I don’t blame you. Australia is very far away.”
At present, on the political front, ties between the KDP and PUK have certainly seen better days. Nevertheless, the likelihood of their disagreements degenerating into another shooting war is fairly slim.
Meanwhile, in Syria’s Kurdish region, there has also been some signs of political concordance in recent weeks. The predominant and most powerful party in northeastern Syria is undoubtedly the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).
For years, the PYD cracked down on the KDP-backed Syrian Kurdistan National Council (KNC) political coalition, imprisoning many of its members. It also denied a group of Syrian Kurdish fighters loyal to the KNC trained in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Rojava Peshmerga, from entering northeast Syria, insisting that the only armed force allowed operate in the region was its People’s Protection Units (YPG).
Today relations between these parties may soon improve thanks to US-sponsored talks on reconciliation which, if successful, will undoubtedly contribute to the political stability of that strategically-important region. The success of these reconciliation talks might also finally give the Syrian Kurds a seat at the UN Geneva negotiations on the Syrian conflict, which they have long been denied. This May, 25 Kurdish political parties united under a political umbrella called the Kurdish National Unity Parties.
In recent weeks, Iraqi Kurdistan delivered much-needed medical aid to northeast Syria, receiving the “utmost thanks and appreciation” of the authorities there. This was another reassuring development since ties between the KDP and the Syrian Kurdish-led authorities have not always been very cordial over the past seven years.
All these developments demonstrate that the Kurds, while they certainly still have a way to go for establishing solid unity and concordance, have learned important lessons from their past blunders and mistakes and are, therefore, less likely to repeat them.
Image credit: Giorgio Montersino
