ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Following the US invasion in 2003, Kurds held unprecedented political power in Iraq, and could use the threat of secession as one of their main trump cards in negotiations with the central government. In recent years, however, financial hardship in the Kurdistan Region has allowed Baghdad to become increasingly assertive and push Kurdish authorities to make a number of unexpected compromises, such as the handover of oil to the federal government. Experts say internal divisions have left the Kurds too weak to stand up to Baghdad and the dream of independence is far out of reach, for now.
Iraq’s Kurds have been endeavoring to establish their own state for decades. They began the process by first demanding autonomy within Iraq. The most serious armed struggle for this purpose started after the establishment of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1946 - the year the party’s Peshmerga fighters helped establish the short-lived Republic of Mahabad in eastern Iran.
The KDP spearheaded the first independence referendum in Iraq in 2017. Although 93 percent of balloters voted in favor of separation from Iraq, the results were not enforced. In a retaliatory move, the Iraqi army and Iran-backed militia groups drove Peshmerga forces out of the disputed areas they had controlled after the Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group attacked Iraqi forces in 2014.
Iraq, with the help of Iran and Turkey, appears to have been seeking to increasingly weaken the Kurdistan Region, especially after the Region’s oil exports were suspended in March following an arbitration case between Ankara and Baghdad. The process has yet to resume.
KDP founder Mullah Mustafa Barzani and his fighters fled to the USSR in 1947 following the collapse of the Kurdish republic in Mahabad. They returned to Iraq after Abd al-Karim Qasim led a coup that ended decades of monarchy rule, taking charge of the new republic in 1958. General Barzani led two major revolutions against the Iraqi army in the sixties and seventies but both failed to bring self-governance for Kurds. They reached an agreement with Baghdadwhich gave many promises, such as autonomy, but none were put into practice.
Kurds rose up once more against Hussein’s regime in the early nineties, which led to the establishment of the Kurdistan Region - thanks to the declaration of northern Iraq as a no-fly zone by powerful countries, including the United States. This semi-autonomous entity would officially recognized as “Kurdistan Region” in Iraq’s first constitution in 2005, two years after the US invasion.
Kurds were united and strong in Baghdad during the beginning of the post-invasion era. Most of their demands were met in the constitution, but only few have been put into action, as Kurdish politicians soon shifted away from passionately fighting for Kurdish territorial independence and national cause to arguing with Baghdad over the Region’s financial entitlements within the federal system of Iraq and fighting for additional representation in the federal cabinets.
Less than a decade after the US invasion of Iraq, the federal government started making military threats against Kurds by deploying additional troops to the disputed areas. When Kurds began selling their oil independently through Turkey around ten years ago, Baghdad cut the Kurdish region’s federal budget share and launched legal fights against Erbil and its oil sector.
Kurdish officials, especially former president of the Region and son of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, Masoud Barzani, repeatedly threatened to hold an independence referendum if the federal government continued its efforts to weaken the Kurdish administration.
After months of talks with Kurdish political parties and Western allies, the Kurdish leadership announced September 25, 2017 as the day for the anticipated independence referendum. Despite warnings from Baghdad and the United States, President Barzani decided to go ahead with the historical move. Other Kurdish parties hesitantly supported the KDP’s project. Only the newly-established New Generation Movement opposed it.
The majority of ballots cast in the Kurdistan Region and the disputed areas, which the Peshmerga had taken control of from ISIS, were in favor of separation from Iraq. After the vote, the Iraqi government took several measures against the Region, including a flight ban that disconnected it from the rest of the world for months. Iran and Turkey declared their opposition to the bid for independence, with Tehran shutting its borders with the Region.
In mid-October the same year, the Iraqi army and pro-Iran paramilitary forces expelled Peshmerga forces from the oil-rich Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces, which made up more than 50 percent of the land controlled by the Kurds. The Iraqi Federal Supreme Court deemed the independence vote “unconstitutional.” As a result, the Kurdish leadership decided to “freeze” the results of the referendum and put the dream of independence on hold.
Before holding the referendum, Kurdish leaders claimed that tens of countries supported their move, but none came to assistance when the dream was crushed. A historical visit by Nechirvan Barzani, then prime minister of the KRG, to France helped reconnect the Kurdistan Region to the world.
“The 2017 referendum lacked international support and exposed the KRG’s internal divisions, undermining public confidence in the current political leadership’s ability to achieve a Kurdish state. Therefore, the KRG and the public share a limited goal of managing the government and the economy,” Bilal Wahab, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Rudaw English.
“Before the referendum, the KRG leaders only listened to what they wanted to hear - they paid attention to the faint voices of support and ignored the loud warnings. Some of the international support for Kurdish independence was assumed, not guaranteed,” Wahab added.
The quick withdrawal of Peshmerga from the disputed areas in October 2017 without putting up strong resistance showed how divided the force was. A large number of the Kurdish fighters are affiliated with either the KDP or its rival the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), though some have been nominally brought under the Ministry of Peshmerga and Interior Ministry. Despite calls, support, and encouragement from the international community, both parties have yet to bring all their forces under the control of the Ministry of Peshmerga, which no longer has a minister due to tensions between the KDP and the PUK.
This inability to move past their feud for the good of the nation has created problems, according to Wahab.
“The ruling parties in Iraqi Kurdistan never made the transition to statesmanship. They have let their old rivalry between the KDP and PUK prevent them from forming a unified military force, which would have been historic,” he said.
“They have also neglected internal democracy and preferred to control their own zones rather than share the whole [R]egion. After the 2021 elections, they used their alliances in Baghdad to undermine each other,” he added.
The KDP controls the capital Erbil and Duhok while the PUK is dominant in Sulaimani and Halabja provinces. Both party have “little incentive to compromise or cooperate,” noted Wahab.
Now, Kurdish politicians refrain from using separatist terms when commemorating the 2017 referendum and some choose to stay silent.
“Today marks the anniversary of the day on which the will of the people prevailed,” wrote Masoud Barzani in a post on X, previously Twitter, on September 25 this year.
“They have reduced their national Kurdish aspirations such as self-determination and disputed territories to mere slogans. They have lost their nationalist legitimacy and relied on paying public salaries to maintain their power. This dependency, however, has made them vulnerable and weak, and Baghdad has exploited it to pressure a divided KRG,” Wahab said, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government.
A decade of financial woes - including volatile oil prices, war with ISIS, budget disputes with Baghdad, and stoppage of oil exports - has left the KRG in a crisis that has fueled KDP-PUK wrangling, with the PUK repeatedly claiming that the Kurdish government does not distribute its income fairly to all provinces - a claim strongly denied by Erbil authorities. The Sulaimani zone has even requested its share of federal funds be directly distributed from Baghdad, a move the Erbil zone sees as a threat to the status of the Kurdish entity.
Hamzeh Hadad is a Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. The Iraqi pundit told Rudaw English that KDP-PUK tensions weaken the Kurdistan Region “as both an entity within Iraq and further if it wants to split. But since independence requires constitutional amendments, they will need more than just Kurdish unity to achieve this.”
He believes that the Iraqi constitution “prevents the splitting of the state,” citing Article One which stipulates that Iraq is “a single federal, independent and fully sovereign state… and this Constitution is a guarantor of the unity of Iraq.”
KDP-PUK relations have deteriorated to the point that the parties send separate delegations to hold talks with Baghdad regarding the KRG’s budget share and other issues. The Kurdish cabinet sends its own delegation to the Iraqi capital for the same purpose.
The PUK has strong ties with Shiite leaders and Iran while the KDP enjoys strategic relations with Sunnis and Turkey.
Stronger Baghdad
In the decade following the US invasion Kurds were kingmakers in Iraq. Kurds had a say in most of the critical decisions in Baghdad and many federal cabinets were formed in Erbil due to tensions between Sunnis and Shiites. This gave Kurds great political leverage. Kurds also enjoyed 17 percent of the Iraqi national budget. Most of these facts have now been reversed.
The KRG’s share of federal funds has been slashed in recent budgets by about five percent, but even that continues to be paid to Erbil irregularly. Kurds are more divided in Baghdad than ever. Shiites - who make up the majority of the country - are also divided but they can unite when it comes to their sectarian interests.
The KRG signed a 50-year agreement with Turkey a decade ago, allowing Erbil to bypass Baghdad and export its oil to international markets via Ankara. The KRG initially refused to hand over its oil sector to an angry Iraqi government but later stated that it was willing to sell it through Iraq on its own terms. Now the Kurdish government has allowed the federal government to have full control over the sector, but this time on Baghdad’s terms following a ruling by a Paris-based court.
In March, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration court ruled that Turkey had breached a 1973 pipeline agreement that obliges the Turkish government to abide by instructions issued by Baghdad regarding the transport of crude oil exported from Iraq.
As per the ruling, Turkey has to pay Iraq about $1.5 billion in compensation for allowing the boarding of Kurdistan Region’s oil onto ships at Ceyhan port without Baghdad’s permission. Despite several talks between Erbil, Baghdad and Ankara on the issue, the export of Kurdish oil has yet to resume. As a result, the KRG has lost billions of dollars.
This has increasingly put the KRG at the mercy of the federal government. Despite sending delegations to Baghdad dozens of times, signing deals with the central cabinet, and handing over almost everything to the Iraqi government - including oil and control of border crossings - the Kurdish government still struggles to pay its civil servants in full and on time.
In September, KRG officials accepted a 2.1 trillion dinar ($1.3 billion) loan - paid over three months - from the federal government and portrayed it as a victory. They also warmly thanked Baghdad for the money.
The new academic year in the Kurdistan Region began a month ago but Sulaimani and Halabja teachers have gone on strike, demanding the payment of their missed salaries. KRG civil servants have yet to receive their August paychecks while Iraq has already paid the October salaries of its public employees.
“One of our concerns is that the government has not even reached out to us to see what demands we have. No one has held any meetings with us,” Ahmed, one of the teachers on strike in Sulaimani, told Rudaw last month.
Earlier this month, Kurdish blocs in the Iraqi parliament, excluding the KDP, submitted a petition to the legislature, calling on the federal government to pay KRG civil servants directly - a move which has angered KRG officials who see it as an attempt to undermine its power.
On top of economic constraints, Iraq is also increasing its military presence in the Kurdistan Region. After Turkish and Iranian attacks accelerated against both the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and exiled Iranian Kurdish armed groups based in the Region, Baghdad deployed more border guards to its borders with both countries.
KRG ministers used to be completely free from Baghdad’s surveillance but this has changed too. The Iraqi parliament on October 18 summoned the KRG’s finance minister and pummelled him with questions about the transparency of the Region’s income and expenditures. In the past, the minister could have easily refused to attend the four-hour session, but in the current political climate, it would place further pressure on his government if he did so.
An Iraqi flag flying at Kurdish government offices used to be a rare sight, but now it waves over even the smallest of public and private institutions in the Kurdistan Region, beside the Kurdish one. Kurdish officials during meetings and forums say that they are part of the Iraqi federal government. The Arabic language is making a comeback in the Region, replacing Kurdish as the “mandatory” language in most job descriptions and pushing into the “desired” category what Kurds long fought to make the official language of an independent Kurdish region .
Lack of cash in the pockets of more than one million KRG employees has almost paralyzed businesses, some of which only survive because of tourists visiting the Kurdistan Region in masses from the federally controlled provinces and those residents of the Region who are employed by Baghdad.
Last month, Al Monitor published a letter by KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani to US President Joe Biden in which he confirms that his government is under threat.
“I write to you now at another critical juncture in our history, one that I fear we may have difficulty overcoming. …[W]e are bleeding economically and hemorrhaging politically. For the first time in my tenure as prime minister, I hold grave concerns that this dishonorable campaign against us may cause the collapse of … the very model of a Federal Iraq that the United States sponsored in 2003 and purported to stand by since,” read the letter.
He calls on Biden to use his administration’s “significant leverage” with the Iraqi government to resolve the crisis.
Wahab wrote in an article for the Washington Institute in late September that “Barzani’s narrative does not tell the whole story.”
“The United States has long supported Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomy, security, and development, fostering greater stability and pro-American sentiment. At the same time, however, Washington has overlooked the KRG’s vulnerabilities -namely, the internal divisions, corruption, and democratic backsliding that have diminished Erbil’s reliability and brought on the current existential crisis,” read the analysis.
Wahab told Rudaw English that “[t]he unsuccessful referendum proved that the linkage of oil and independence was wrong and misleading… independence is the Kurds’ national dream, and it deserves more respect than being used as a political threat.”
With Baghdad having full control of Kurdish oil, the KRG is losing its agreements with major oil companies as they need new deals in compliance with Iraq’s rules.
Future of the dream
With the result of the 2017 referendum frozen by Kurdish authorities and deemed “unconstitutional” by Baghdad, the fate of the Kurdish dream of an independent state is up in the air. Some believe the dream looks “farther off than ever.”
Some pundits believed that Iraqi Kurds would even lose their status as a semi-autonomous region within Iraq when the flow of oil to Turkey was suspended. Baghdad has been accused of exploiting Erbil's financial crisis to try to dissolve the KRG.
Hadad, however, believes that Baghdad has little incentive to strike at the Kurdistan Region’s autonomy.
“As for the future of Iraqi Kurdistan as a federal region. There is little appetite for Baghdad to dissolve the KRG. It may want a weaker KRG, but I don’t believe they would want to see it go,” he told Rudaw English.
Wahab said that Kurds want nothing less than an independent country.
“The Kurds aspire to independence; self-rule within a federal Iraq does not fulfill their national ambitions. That only statehood can guarantee their sovereignty, security and prosperity is widely believed,” he told Rudaw English.
The strong opposition from Iraq and neighbouring countries as well as discouragement from the international community in 2017 might have forced Kurds and their leaders to cooperate with the current Iraqi establishment, but the dream of an independent Kurdish state still lives in the hearts of millions of Kurds.