The Kurds fighting the Isis resistance
“George W. Bush is a hero.” General Sirwan Barzani utters these words with quiet satisfaction. “The best thing that happened to Iraq, at least to us Kurds, was its liberation in 2003. He liberated all of Iraq from dictatorship. It was a great move.”
It is not often you hear words like these, especially in Iraq. But Barzani is no ordinary Iraqi. As well as being the nephew to the former President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, he is also first cousin of the incumbent, Nechirvan Barzani, a general in the Kurdish Peshmerga army, and a Telecoms billionaire.
I first met him in October 2021, just after the last Iraqi elections, at his base, the Black Tiger camp (Black Tiger was his military call sign), on the disputed borders of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Barzani is a hero to many in the region. He and his troops were the tip of the Kurdish spear against Isis in northern Iraq. They fought them hard and won, but they paid in blood — an old story for Barzani who spent the Nineties battling Saddam Hussein’s forces in the Kurdish mountains.
The results of that election were, as ever, reflective of the sectarianism that strafes Iraqi politics. The Sadrist Movement, led by Shi’ite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — an Iraqi nationalist and no friend of Iran — was the largest party with 73 seats, but was short of the majority needed to form a government; the Iran-backed Shi’ite Al-Fatah saw its vote drop from 48 to just 17. Sunni parties formed the second sectarian block. The Kurds came in third, with their major party, the Kurdistan Patriotic Union (KDP), taking 16 seats. The various blocs then haggled for more than a year to form a functioning government, until, in October 2022, Mohammed Shia’ Sabbar Al-Sudani was nominated to take office as Prime Minister. Iraqi democracy had finally kicked into gear again.
“Twenty years on, the situation is good, especially when compared to 2003,” Barzani told me last week. “We finally have democracy. It’s not perfect of course, and it may take 20 or 30 years for it to become mature, but it exists.” Democracy is an important word for Barzani — and for the Kurds of northern Iraq generally. During my trip to Black Tiger Camp just after the elections, I remember noticing how the tip of each soldier’s right index finger was covered in violet phosphorous-based ink, signifying that their vote had been cast. Barzani’s, I noted, seemed a little more faded than the rest. “It’s because he voted first,” an aide told me.
But if Barzani is now cautiously content with the state of Iraqi democracy, that is only half the story of post-2003 Iraq. The Kurds remain the world’s largest stateless population; their desire for a homeland stretches back centuries. I was in the region’s capital Erbil to cover the 2017 referendum when, against the implicit desires of Washington and the unambiguous orders of Baghdad, 92.73% of the Kurdistan region of Iraq voted to become an independent state.
As I watched Kurds celebrate in the streets, I remember thinking that the Iraqi government would make them pay for what they had done. And it did: as Iranian tanks massed on the border, Baghdad banned international flights to the region, slapped sanctions on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and sent troops into the city of Kirkuk and its oilfields. In total, the KRG lost around 40% of its territory. Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court decreed that to preserve the unity of Iraq, no province could be allowed to secede — a ruling the KRG ultimately said it would respect. And so, a unified Iraq remains, as do the sanctions on the Kurdistan region. Yet people here still say it was worth it. Centuries-old dreams of statehood die hard…
David Patrikarakos for Unherd.
