Increasingly credible reports are coming in that the Iraqi Kurds are engaging in ethnic cleansing, looting and razing Arab villages in their expanded territory to reverse the Arabification of the oil-rich area around Kirkuk that Saddam forced decades ago. This seems to follow a fairly typical pattern for US proxies in the War on Terror Era. In Afghanistan, the US allied itself with warlords who got money and weapons in exchange for producing Al Qaeda and Taliban enemies. When there weren't any Taliban at hand, the Taliban having disbanded and returned home or to Pakistan, the warlords called their local rivals Taliban and quickly realized that the good governance and human rights conditions nominally attached to American aid carried far less weight than prerogatives of killing or capturing "terrorists". And because American money allowed them to buy fighters and monopolize power and the opium trade (as they got to decide whose opium crop got raided), those warlords felt little need to compromise or share power with rival local factions. So the rival local factions actually became Taliban and civil war returned to Afghanistan. Iraq over the past decade has shaken out into a similar story up to the rise of ISIS and ouster of Maliki. There was a glimmer that the "Sunni Awakening", in which previously marginal Sunni tribesman went on American payroll and joined the Shiite-majority government to fight jihadis, signaled a more inclusive and effective strategy of American imperial rule. But then the awakened Sunnis were used "like a tissue" and then tossed away, as one of them complained about 50 minutes in here, and the government went back to sectarian ways--Maliki controlled aid and oil money so why share power? Enter the Islamic State as an option for pissed off militarily-trained Sunnis.
So are the Kurds, who are now getting US and especially European money and weapons in exchange for fighting ISIS, following the same pattern? I was in Kirkuk in 2007 hosted by the head of the provincial council and at the time the Kurds were the largest local faction but were in a much weaker political position. Both peshmerga from Iraqi Kurdistan and mostly-Shiite Iraqi Army soldiers were stationed in Kirkuk, oil was sent south and money came from Baghdad, and Kurdish politicians talked very nicely about inclusion and brotherhood among Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Turkmen, Christians, and Kurds in the province.
Now that the peshmerga are in full control of Kirkuk, the Iraqi army having run away after IS took Mosul, and are the darling of Euro-American Warriors on Terror, why be nice any more? I hope that War on Terror Imperialism 2.0 will involve a strategy with more foresight then simply encouraging local proxies to kill American enemies, with a blind eye turned to whatever else those proxies do. War of Terror Imperialism 1.0 followed that strategy and created/inflated the once-illusive enemy it was supposed to defeat and encouraged the good guys who were supposed to be on our side to become kleptocrats and sectarians.
It remains to be seen how serious the diplomats interviewed in the first story linked are about expressing their concern to the Kurdistan Regional Government about ethnic cleansing. If there is an actual credible threat at this early stage that the US and Europe would cut back aid if the Iraqi Kurds pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign (as the roundly-ignored Leahy Amendment--see e.g. aid restoration to al-Sisi's Egypt--says the US is legally required to do), that aid is in fact conditional not just on killing IS fighters but on not repeating the kind of politics and allowed IS to emerge, it may change things.
Please ignore this next paragraph as it is the middle of a conversation inside my head:
Maybe this is a fuzzy argument walking a tight-rope that doesn't exist between double government--close management of the Iraqi Kurds affairs, such that they lose incentive to cooperate with their foreign patrons and/or become locally unpopular because of their collaboration--and indirect rule. Or maybe I'm just calling for an atypical form of indirect rule based not so much on enemy-of-my-enemy alignment between local and imperial power as on the local power finding a way to rule and consolidate power that doesn't involve the usual pattern of patronage to the local ruler's own group and screwing everyone else. Certainly it is an argument based on the assumption that War on Terror imperialism will continue, that the US won't decide to just counter terrorist by beefing up airport security and withdraw militarily from the Middle East. But I think that is a safe assumption.
In other news, Turkey has joined the fight against the Islamic State, shelling IS territory this morning in retaliation for an IS attack on a Turkish border outpost, and is going to allow the US launch strikes on IS from its air bases, though Turkish and American sources at the moment conflict on whether this is on the condition of the US creating a no-fly zone in northern Syria. I expect Islamic State attacks in Istanbul in the very near future, and will avoid crowded areas.
What are you doing? the jihadists ask PM Davutoglu.
I'm building a wall to keep ISIS members from passing into this side, Davutoglu replies.
All three are on the Turkish side of the border.
Haha, say the jihadists.
So are the Kurds, who are now getting US and especially European money and weapons in exchange for fighting ISIS, following the same pattern? I was in Kirkuk in 2007 hosted by the head of the provincial council and at the time the Kurds were the largest local faction but were in a much weaker political position. Both peshmerga from Iraqi Kurdistan and mostly-Shiite Iraqi Army soldiers were stationed in Kirkuk, oil was sent south and money came from Baghdad, and Kurdish politicians talked very nicely about inclusion and brotherhood among Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Turkmen, Christians, and Kurds in the province.
Now that the peshmerga are in full control of Kirkuk, the Iraqi army having run away after IS took Mosul, and are the darling of Euro-American Warriors on Terror, why be nice any more? I hope that War on Terror Imperialism 2.0 will involve a strategy with more foresight then simply encouraging local proxies to kill American enemies, with a blind eye turned to whatever else those proxies do. War of Terror Imperialism 1.0 followed that strategy and created/inflated the once-illusive enemy it was supposed to defeat and encouraged the good guys who were supposed to be on our side to become kleptocrats and sectarians.
It remains to be seen how serious the diplomats interviewed in the first story linked are about expressing their concern to the Kurdistan Regional Government about ethnic cleansing. If there is an actual credible threat at this early stage that the US and Europe would cut back aid if the Iraqi Kurds pursue an ethnic cleansing campaign (as the roundly-ignored Leahy Amendment--see e.g. aid restoration to al-Sisi's Egypt--says the US is legally required to do), that aid is in fact conditional not just on killing IS fighters but on not repeating the kind of politics and allowed IS to emerge, it may change things.
Please ignore this next paragraph as it is the middle of a conversation inside my head:
Maybe this is a fuzzy argument walking a tight-rope that doesn't exist between double government--close management of the Iraqi Kurds affairs, such that they lose incentive to cooperate with their foreign patrons and/or become locally unpopular because of their collaboration--and indirect rule. Or maybe I'm just calling for an atypical form of indirect rule based not so much on enemy-of-my-enemy alignment between local and imperial power as on the local power finding a way to rule and consolidate power that doesn't involve the usual pattern of patronage to the local ruler's own group and screwing everyone else. Certainly it is an argument based on the assumption that War on Terror imperialism will continue, that the US won't decide to just counter terrorist by beefing up airport security and withdraw militarily from the Middle East. But I think that is a safe assumption.
In other news, Turkey has joined the fight against the Islamic State, shelling IS territory this morning in retaliation for an IS attack on a Turkish border outpost, and is going to allow the US launch strikes on IS from its air bases, though Turkish and American sources at the moment conflict on whether this is on the condition of the US creating a no-fly zone in northern Syria. I expect Islamic State attacks in Istanbul in the very near future, and will avoid crowded areas.
What are you doing? the jihadists ask PM Davutoglu.
I'm building a wall to keep ISIS members from passing into this side, Davutoglu replies.
All three are on the Turkish side of the border.
Haha, say the jihadists.
