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The Fletcher School Al Nakhlah Tufts University160 Packard Avenue Medford, MA 02155-7082 USA Tel: +1.617.627.3700

The Fletcher School Journal for issues related to Southwest Asia and Islamic Civilization Spring 2007

A Conversation with Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith

Matan Chorev

Peter W. Galbraith is the author of The End ofIraq: How American Incompetence Created aWar Without End. From 1979 to 1993, Galbraithwas a senior advisor to the U.S. Senate Foreign

Relations Committee and is the author of publishedForeign Relations Committee reports on ethniccleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Iran-Iraq War,and the Iraqi Kurds. Galbraith served as the first U.S.Ambassador to Croatia and has held senior positions inthe U.S. Government and the United Nations.

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What lessons did you draw from you r experiencein the Balkans that you think apply to moving

forward in Iraq?

I think there are two major lessons. Thecentral mistake that we made in Yugoslavia in1991 was to focus on trying to hold the countrytogether when that was impossible. What we didnot do is try to avoid the war which was anachievable objective. We have made exactly thesame error in Iraq. Paul Bremer [Administrator ofthe Coalition Provisional Authority] and theWhite House put all their efforts into the notion ofa non-ethnic, unified Iraq. They insisted onfederalism based on Saddams governorates. Itwas never going to work. In fact, that Americaneffort hardened the Kurdish position in favor ofmaximum independence. They didnt get it at

Matan Chorev, Fletcher MALD 2007, is a second-year student with a concentration in InternationalSecurity Studies and Southwest Asia and IslamicCivilization. He wrote his MALD thesis, entitled IraqiKurdistan: Internal Dynamics and Statecraft of aSemistate..

the Transitional Administration Law becausethey felt they had to accommodate the Americansbut when it came time to the permanent Iraqiconstitution, when they were just dealing with

other Iraqis, and when they felt more comfortablewith their position, they made it clear that unlessthey get an arrangement that makes Kurdistanlaw superior to Iraqi law they were not going toagree to this constitution. So the first lesson tolearn is that it was a mistake to try to hold thecountry together and not focus on preventing theviolence. The second lesson flows from this: Its afools errand to try to hold together a countryagainst the will of a people in a geographicallydefined area who dont want to be a part of it.

At th is po in t, what s tep would you tak e to manage

the conflict in Iraq and prevent it from de-escalating any further?

Well, lets deal in the areas where there isnta lot of violence, which is between Kurds andArabs. We have events in 2007 that could makefor a lot of violence, namely the referendum inKirkuk and other disputed areas. There arethings that we could do, now, that could make adifference, such as, negotiating power-sharingwithin Kikruk between all the communities,regardless of size, so they all have a role in thefuture of the city or the province. This would betrue regardless of whether Kirkuk is in Kurdistanor not. We should also, for example, be

negotiating the borders of Kirkuk. Once thereferendum is held, and assuming the Kurdishposition won, you could agree that districts thatdidnt vote to be part of Kurdistan would go toadjacent Arab governorates. Similarly, if the non-Kurdish position won, Kurdish districts of the citycould join with Kurdistan. Those are easier thingsto do before the event than after the event. But sofar as I know, nothing is happening. This is an

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administration that isnot capable of lookinginto the longer term.

Could you comment a bitabout the regional

dimension? What is therole of Kurdish minority populations inneighboring countries and how do they factor intothe future of Iraqi Kurdistan? And wh at do you

think are the strategic calculations of th e Iranian

and Turkish governments in particular vis-visthe future of Iraqi Kurdistan?

The Iraqi Kurds aspirations are for aKurdistan which they define as being ageographic entity bounded by the northern andeastern borders of Iraq and then the borderbetween them and Arab Iraq. They do not aspirefor a greater Kurdistan which would include

territory in parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria,which is totally unachievable and incidentallyhas little appeal to the Iraqi Kurds because in thatcontext they would be a minor part. In somesense, this is the Moldova problem whereeverybody thought that once the Soviet Unionbroke apart, Moldova would rejoin Romania. Butthey figured out it was better to be anindependent country than the most distantprovince of Romania.

The Kurdish situation is different in each ofthese countries. In Iraq, there was the most brutalhistory culminating in genocide, although theKurdish identity was recognized. But there it has

de facto independence and now wants fullindependence, and that is just a reality. InTurkey, it is principally a civil rights problem.The government defeated the insurgency in 1999and the Kurdish struggle has redefined itself. Itnow focuses on the right to use the Kurdishlanguage and to teach Kurdish in schools. The factthat Turkey is on the path to joining the EuropeanUnion also makes membership in Turkey notonly the realistic option but a much moreattractive one than independence for the TurkishKurds.

There has always been a natural affinitybetween the Kurds and the Iranians because they

are the most similar peoples. Traditionally, theIranian Kurdish agenda has been for autonomywithin Iran. Would that morph into anindependence movement? Thats possible,mostly because the Kurds are overwhelminglySunni and Iran is a Shia state. If they sawindependence as a possibility, I think they mightwant it. In Syria, the Kurdish population in thewest, they are Syrian citizens and are quite wellintegrated. In the east, the Syrians maintain the

Kurds are migrants from the 1950s, so the Kurdsdemands are citizenship, as they are basicallystateless.

In terms of the attitudes of neighboringstates, none of them of course want to see anindependent Kurdistan in Iraq because they allsee it as a threat. Syria is not much of a factor.

Turkey is the most important and there arepeople in Turkey for whom the wordKurdistan sends up all sorts of red flags. Butthere is also a widespread recognition in theTurkish military and diplomatic circles that a defacto independent Kurdistan actually exists andthat there isnt much that Turkey can do about it.So Turkey is focused on two issues. One is thePKK [Kurdistan Workers Party], which I think ismore of a way to have leverage on the Kurdsrather than them conceiving of it as a real threat. Ithink there is some PKK activity but it basicallyoriginates in Turkey and not in northern Iraq.Second, there is the issue of Kirkuk and theTurkmen. In 2002-2003 the Turkmen issue was ahuge issue but then the elections were held. Inthe first elections, the Turkmen party receivedthree seats and in the second elections, one seat.This suggests that the Turkmen population wasnot fifteen million, as some people in Turkeywere claiming it was,but actually somethingmuch smaller. This isbecause the election wasbasically a census. So thenumber of people whoidentify as Turkmenwas just a few hundredthousand, and that hastaken a lot of the steamout of the Turkish effortto play the Turkmencard. I dont know thatTurkey is really going tohave a great option on the Kirkuk referendum.They can talk about it but there is not much theycan do.

There is a view in Turkey, which I still thinkis a minority view, but a growing viewnonetheless, that not only is an independentKurdistan inevitable, but maybe its not such abad thing. The Kurds are secular, pro-Western,they aspire to be democratic. In short, they are alot like Turkey. Kurdistan today, in fact, is adependency of Turkey and therefore there are alot of opportunities for Turkish companies toexpand, including in oil. This school of thoughtalso believes that Iraqi Kurdistan might be auseful buffer against an Iranian dominated ShiaIraq.

This is anadministration that isnot capable of looking

into the longer term

In terms of theattitudes of

neighboring states,none of them of course

want to see anindependent Kurdistanin Iraq because they al

see it as a threat

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How economically sustainable will an

independent Iraqi Kurdistan be?Presuming that Kirkuk will become part

of Kurdistan, which most people think it will,then you have the control over the regions oil. Inaddition, they are working to develop their ownoil resources. There is also some significantforeign investment. If they are going to maintaintheir current standard of living they are going toneed a share of the oil resources of Iraq. There arethree exit routes Syria, Turkey, and Iraq, andthey will need access to these to get the oil out.They are discussing building a new pipeline thatgoes north through Kirkuk to Kurdistan andstraight to Turkey. The irony is that duringSaddams time, Kurdistan was viewed asinsecure so they didnt want to put a pipelinethere that could be attacked by the Kurds. So thepipeline goes from Kirkuk southwest to Baiji andthen up to Turkey and thats because the Sunni

area used to be the secure area. Now the situationis exactly reversed.

Are you a t al l concerned that the break up of Iraqwill have a regional spillov er?

I dont see it as spilling over. It will be likeYugoslavia, the Soviet Union, or Czechoslovakia.

It is likely to be contained. The Iraqi Kurds do nothave ambitions that go beyond their borders. Thesituation in the other states is just different. TheKurds are a relatively small population in Syria.In Turkey it is a civil rights issue. Of course theyare much better off in a Turkey that is going intothe European Union. If Iran can make reforms I

dont think it will have a spillover effect there,although that is the most likely place for it tohappen.

I think that there has been an enormousstrategic shift in the Middle East as a result of theIraq War. The principle one is the triumph of Iran.Since 1639, the current boundary between Iraqand Iran was between Arab and Persian but alsobetween Sunni and Shia. That line has beencrossed and now Iran is on the other side. Thatcould have an impact on the eastern province ofSaudi Arabia, which has a substantial Shiapopulation, or Bahrain. But I dont see a spilloverbeyond that.

The views and opinions expressed in articles arestrictly the authors own, and do not necessarilyrepresent those of Al Nakhlah, its Advisory andEditorial Boards, or the Program for Southwest Asiaand Islamic Civilization (SWAIC) at The FletcherSchool