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The Kurdish identity in Iraq: negotiation as a method for intrastate conflict

By: Saeed KakeyiFebruary 03, 2008

AbstractThe Kurdish conflict in Iraq has attracted grown international interest and concern after the end of the Cold War. The factional Kurdish fighting in Iraq with encouragements from regional powers meant the destruction of the unique Kurdish identity emerging after the 1991 Gulf War. However, thanks to the international third-party negotiations and mediations, Kurds were able to leave their infightings behind and focus on rebuilding homeland like never before.

IntroductionBefore the 1991 Gulf war, the Kurdish struggle for self-determination had largely been in retreat. Repeated defeats over the past century by the Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian, and Syrian ruling governments, with the complicity of the world’s previous bipolar regimes, Kurdish conflict become worsened more and more.

The results of the 1991 Gulf War and the “CNN effects” on world politics, have both given the Kurds an astonishing opportunity to internationalize their sufferings (Robinson: 2002, 63). The Kurdish political elites within the Kurdistan Front in Iraq showed how advanced their nationalist struggle was and approved their lawful fights for self-determination; this time more sharply than since the end of World War.

The Kurds in Iraq, six million people, are part of a larger nation estimated to be around forty million Kurds. Their greater homeland, Kurdistan, become divided by the European colonials early in 1920s between the newly created states of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Since the creation of Iraq in 1923, Kurds in Iraq engaged in revolts one after the other in hopes to resolve their identity conflict with the central governments of Iraq.

By the end of the Cold War and onward, Kurds in Iraq faced menace challenges and matchless opportunities. Within this conflicting environment, Kurds were able to set up a unique national identity; a little shy than a nation-state. How did they do it? What methods of conflict prevention have they been using? Did they reach any positive outcomes? This paper will address these and other related questions, arguing that it is interest which mainly entails conflict.

Definition of conflictDuring the last four decades, notable amount of literature produced to define, analyze and manage conflict. Although most of these literatures focus on interstate conflicts, there are some candid tries debating intrastate and ethnonational conflicts.

According to Thomas Grisham, Anthropologist David Levinson (1994) defines conflict as a dispute between individuals or groups of people over access to or control of economic, political, social, and personal resources. He then describes ethnic conflict as originating from culture, religion, and physical features of language (Grisham: 2006, 143-144).

Michelle LeBaron defines conflict as “interpersonal interactions that occur in the contexts of cultures” (LeBaron: 2001, 2). She furthers that “[t]he exact influence of culture will differ from person to person as no two individuals from the same country, region, religion, socio-

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economic class, gender or generation will exhibit the same constellation of cultural behaviours and attitudes” (LeBaron, 2001).

Both, Levinson and LeBaron, underline culture as a dynamic force generating conflict. However, known that culture is a by-product of low-context literate orb which pulses individual values and beliefs in a rhythmic order; therefore, nonrhythmic pulses of values and beliefs which fluctuate—common in high-context oral orb—have to be because of something other than culture. The “other,” this paper argues, is “interest.”

Interest motivates a person to act the way he or she acts. Interest has no face, color or a bounding shape. It comes from a person’s own anatomy and grows by merging with interests of other associates whom the person feels passionately belonging to. The associational belonging, therefore, can either be real or imaginary. Real, when it is closely netted by interests of preserving shared loyalty (family kinship, relatives, clan, tribe, qabila and people—nation), honor (dignity and pride), property (land, livestock and natural resources), native language (accent, dialect and language), history (ancestry), ethnonationality and beliefs (religious orders and sects). As for imaginary belongingness, it is when insecurely netted by interests of preserving self, regulated immediate family, socioeconomic status and state-nationality (country).

As explained in the discussion above, any attempt to temper with these nets, it will affect the preserving interests, and it will cause undeniable conflict. For instance, almost all suprastate, intrastate and ethnonational conflicts in underdeveloped and developing countries rooted back to the nineteenth and early twentieth century colonial exploitations. Kurdish conflict provides solid evidences to this argument.

Origins of Kurdish conflictThough Indo-Europeans in origin, Kurds also have a rich oral tradition and socially interact by collectivist mind-set (Nabaz: 2000, 5). Similar to other Muslim nations, Kurdish national interests influenced by three levels of decision-making: Civil, Tribal and Religious.

As they were subjects of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries, Kurds shared some common interests with the other Otto-Muslim subordinates for about three hundred years. This relatively harmony state of affairs empowered the Kurds to establish and run effective semi-independent Kurdish principalities (Kreyenbroek and Sperl: 1992, 14). From strictly religious Muslim point of view, such state of affairs was possible due to Prophet Mohamed’s saying that "the only difference between an Arab and a stranger, between a black and a white person, is in his degree of piety" (Gad Al-Haq: 1995, 7). Therefore, as Jabb, Loitta et al. stated, Islam was the prevailing identity of the Ottoman Empire (2007, 34).

However, as feudalism grew in Kurdistan, Kurdish tribal decision-makers gained over their matching religious rivals in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Ottoman rulers linked this transformation to the grown influence of the Russian feudalism in the area. Besides, having lost Greece in 1828 and unable to control the Balkans, chastened Ottoman army attacked the Kurdish principalities one after the other; setting series of Kurdish revolts during the rest of the century (Kreyenbroek and Sperl: 1992, 14). Therefore, this reality contradicts Dogu Ergil’s overstretching assumption that for the sake of a unitary “Muslim nation,” Kurds did not consider their ethnic identity to supersede their religious beliefs (2000: 123 cited in Jabb, Loitta et al, 2007: 34).

Western scholars with solid authorities (Martin van Bruinessen, 1978) (Robert Olson, 1991) (David McDowall, 1997) and many others have all attribute that “Kurdishness” was the

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dominant perceived identity of all Kurds regardless of their communal indifferences. The most telling record of Kurdishness as the common identity among the Kurds during the early Ottoman era, found in the Sharafname—a historical book written in Kurdish, completed in 1597, by Sharaf Khan of Bitlisi. Besides, if it wasn’t for his Kurdishness, why did Ahmadi Khani (1650-1706), a poet and scholar, think and write in Kurdish of subordinating all the Ottomans, Persians and Arabs to his Kurdish King (Kreyenbroek and Sperl: 1992, 49), only if the Kurds politically united?

Among others’ heavily influenced by the predation theory, Ergil’s distortion and denial of historic facts is yet another example of interest as the main cause for ethnonational conflict.

Kurdish nationalism as an enduring conflictAs mentioned earlier, the European colonials, especially Great Britain divided Kurdistan early in twentieth century into its current political nonexistence based on potent interests in its vast oil deposits. Such nonreciprocal action sparked many sequential violent revolts headed by feudal-tribal and moderate religious Kurdish influential leaders mainly in Iraq and Turkey. Almost all pre-World War II Kurdish revolts were brutally put down making lives of the surviving Kurds miserable. The only positive outcome seen was the emergence of Kurdish nationalism within the circles of young civil decision-making intellectuals (Vali: 2002, 7-8).

The independent Republic of Kurdistan (also known as the Republic of Mahabad), came into existence in northwestern Iran January 1946, prepared the stage for the pan-Kurdish civil decision-makers to play their active part. According to Fereshteh Koohi-Kamali, the significance of Kurdistan republic was its civil- intellectual strata’s ability to incorporate some Kurdish tribal and religious decision makers to manage Kurdish affairs effectively (Kreyenbroek and Sperl: 1992, 178). However, unable to compete with exploitative interests of the western superpowers in strengthening and preserving their puppetry monarch in Iran, the Kurds republic was crushed by the Iranian forces eleven months later. Unfortunately, the Kurds once again felt to have “no friends but the mountains”, or so an old Kurdish saying goes.

After World War II, the competing struggle between the Kurdish religious and tribal decision-making echelons invigorated the maturing of the radical Kurdish civil decision-making stratum (Sakko: 1987, 47). The program of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), established in August 1946 and later changed its name to Kurdistan Democratic Party, correlated its struggle for national identity with class based arguments of communism. This popular tendency was not unique to the Kurds of divided Kurdistan. Rather, it was also a method used by national liberation movements all over the world (Sakko: 1987, 63-64). It is worth mentioning here that this was until recently the immediate reason for the denial of Kurdish identity by decisions made in the European and North American capitols.

To this end, the inability to resist the glamorous communist promises for self-determination ended in political rifts; and brought humiliating consequences on the Kurdish leaderships in Iraq. The deadly division occurred in 1964 within KDP’s politburo members, unleashed at least two related Kurdish internal wars. The first war started in 1966 between the tribally oriented forces of the legendary Mustafa Barzani (deceased father of Masoud Barzani—the current President of Kurdistan Region in Iraq) and the class oriented forces of the poet and novelist Ibrahim Ahmad (deceased father-in-law of Jalal Talabani—the current President of Iraq) (Osman: 2001). The second internal fight, which this paper will cover later, ignited in 1994 between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), chaired by Jalal Talabani, and the KDP, headed by Masoud Barzani.

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Post-Cold War and the progression of Kurdish nationalismImmediately after the Cold War, the Kurds took advantage of the weakening of Saddam Hussein’s regime because of the 1991 Kuwait liberation war to push forward their struggle once again, freeing most of Iraqi Kurdistan in March 1991. With shy blessings from members of the United Nations (UN), specially the United States (US), Baghdad crushed the Kurdish uprising with ruthless brutality; causing over two million Kurds seek refuge beyond the borders of Iran and Turkey. Their plight, thanks to the effective media coverage which created international outcry; Turkey obliged to open its borders to the fleeing women and children and forcing the international community to set up a temporary “Safe Haven” enclave near the Syrian-Turkish borders within Iraq. While this taken place, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership engaged in failed negotiations with Saddam’s regime.

Tempting to bend the Kurds on its terms, the Iraqi government pulled off its personnel and disintegrated all of its service providing institutions. However, Kurds managed to fill the vacuum with limited support coming from international Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) often securitized by Turkish authorities.

In 1992, the Kurdish leadership in Iraq called for elections in their region resulting in the establishments of the Kurdistan National Assembly (KNA) and the subsequent Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). These remarkable Kurdish developments troubled the regional powers; especially, Turkey, Iran and Syria. For these states, the existence of any form of a Kurdish identity in their neighborhood interpreted as a direct threat to the unity of their respective countries. Accordingly, undermining the fledgling Kurdish democratic institutions was their ultimate goal. Therefore, banking on the ideological rivalries between the KDP and the PUK, functioning with scarce resources, Turkey and Iran respectively drove the rivaling parties with direct arms supplies into yet another internal war in 1994 (Osman: 2001).

The toll of the bloodshed was high. Kurds protested the madness of “brother killing” worldwide, and threatened to boycott the warring parties if they do not stop killing one another for the “others” (Turkey and Iran). Meanwhile, the US and the United Kingdom (UK), engaged in enforcing and protecting the “No Fly and No Drive Zone” in northern Iraq, threatened to halt their operations if the warring factions do not agree to hold negotiations. Though it was late, the KDP and the PUK finally realized that their lust for power cannot be achieved through the proxy war of others. Thus, for the first time in Kurdish history, Kurdish political elites agreed to try modern intrastate conflict prevention methods (Osman: 2001) and (Gunter: 1999: 67-109).

After various rounds of negotiations hosted by France, UK and the US, the 1998 Washington Agreement signed by the leaders of the KDP and the PUK and witnessed by Madeleine Albright (former US Secretary of the State Department) became binding. It provided the Kurds with the much-needed international political respect (Osman: 2001).

The sober implementation of the Washington Agreement brought relative normalcy to the embattled Kurdish nation. Scars of war dashed away with rebuilding competitions; thanks to the UN’s Oil for Food Program that allocated thirteen percent of Iraq’s oil sales for Kurdistan region (O’Leary: 2002). Trust slowly starts building again. Factional KRG split put in motion to reunite. So, the Washington Agreement shows all to well that internal conflicts, much like intrastate conflicts, can become managed and resolved effectively only if third-party stakeholders kept away from (O’Leary: 2002). Above all, with the onset of the Iraq War in 2003, Kurdish people have come to the center stage in world politics as never before, not mainly as victims, but as brave and determined fighters for democracy and national rights.

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Kurdish conflict in post-2003The active participation of the Kurdish Peshmarga (Freedom Fighter) forces with the US led Coalition Forces in removing Saddam’s regime from power was a turning point in Kurdish history. Their professionalism and disciplinary conducts not only eroded the traditional rebellious nametags wrongfully stigmatized with, but also earned them the highest respects soldiers can get; Medals of Honor. Likewise, with political acumen and technical competence at running government institutions, Kurdish politicians cemented a global position of enormous strength (Rubin, 2008). Representatives of KRG have been getting proper diplomatic treatments with no less than nation-state representatives deserve. Further, Kurds have also been trying to brake into the icy bath of the UN’s nation-states’ club by officially having a Kurdish permanent representative seat.

These positive developments are signs of a “unique” Kurdish identity which hold true value for Kurdish advanced achievements leaping from their position on solving the Kurdish conflict in Iraq by peaceful and democratic means; negotiation, mediation and arbitration. While these steps seem painstakingly difficult to walk through, Kurdish leaders do realize that they are much better for gaining agreeable—win-win—rights than banking on bloodshed—win-lose—outcomes.

ConclusionThis paper provided that prior to the 1991 Gulf war; the Kurdish struggle for self-determination had largely been in retreat and that the end results of almost all Kurdish revolts were brutal making lives of the surviving Kurds miserable. Many on-again and off-again negotiations revolts started by Kurdish tribal and religious leaders with limited scope of national aspirations. However, once the Kurdish civil decision-makers come on the center of the stage, contemporary negotiation opportunities of were taken into considerations, but not after two major internal fights between Kurdish political factions.

As this paper argued, the Washington Agreement and its sober implementation, not only prevented internal Kurdish conflicts, but also brought relative normalcy to the embattled Kurdish nation who has surprisingly made it way to gain a unique identity just a little short of a nation-state within the state of Iraq.

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