The regime change in Syria, the downsizing of Iran, and the end of the Gaza War, three epochal developments of the Middle East coming in fast succession, raise the unresolved issues of the Kurdish people, the Middle East’s single largest ethnicity without a homeland, to eye level.
Not that the Kurdish issue is comparable to the Palestinian. Kurds were not made homeless by the fiat of great powers, rooted in a dispute over land. Rather, they were denied a national homeland a priori at the drawing board of the Middle East after WWI, never to be offered a second chance. Their signal attempts at achieving independence, as the short-lived Mahabad Republic in Iran and the 2017 referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan, both came to naught. Scattered over five countries and separated by national borders hard to cross, they remain a nation united by culture and language, and the hope of one day coming together in a polity they may unreservedly call home.
Today, even considering such a prospect seems far-fetched. Only the Kurds of Iraq enjoy autonomy, providing them with genuine self-government, albeit subject to the whims of a federal government that touts a much-debated federal constitution in Baghdad. In Turkey, where they are the most numerous, their long struggle for recognition yielded them cultural but not political autonomy. Still, the end of the bloody strife between the PKK, a self-appointed Kurdish liberation movement that ultimately dropped its demand of secession, and the Turkish Government aiming to suppress it, is a welcome development that diverts the struggle for Kurdish rights into purely political channels.
Simultaneously, the long struggle waged by the Kurds of Syria, denied citizenship by the Assad regime, has transformed into a standoff between SDF – the Syrian Kurds’ quasi-government – and the new regime in Damascus. The stakes are how much autonomy can Damascus tolerate, and how little the Kurds can put up with. Distrust of the jihadist-turned-new-administration makes the Syrian Kurds reluctant to disarm, even less so to join the Syrian army as “individuals”. This stipulation of the March 10 agreement signed between the two sides will be hard to implement and may better be left as a caveat from Damascus.
How far the sides can converge may depend on US Special Envoy Tom Barrack’s mediation, closely coordinated with Ankara. Mazlum Abdi, the hero-status SDF leader, must resist the temptation of playing Öcalan, but Damascus must also climb down and realize that dissolving the administrative and welfare structures put in place by the SDF in its Rojava fiefdom, which serve the better part of Syrian Kurdish society, would be unrealistic and counterproductive.
This message came through loud and clear from the Kurdish leadership in Iraq at the 25th MERI Forum hosted by the leading think tank of Iraq in Erbil in early October. Speaking at the Forum, President Nechirvan Barzani extended an olive branch not just to Baghdad – after bitter disputes over energy and budget allocations seemed to have been finally resolved – but also to the new leaders in Damascus, urging them to respect the facts on the ground in the Kurdish northeast of Syria. President Barzani referred to his meeting with the new Syrian leader, where he told Al Sharaa to drop the idea of a “centralized” Syria and respect the rights of minorities (“components” in politically correct terminology). Bafel Talabani, the head of the PUK, the majority KDP’s junior partner and the Iraqi Kurds’ other major political leader, did not mince his words when he called on the Syrian Kurds to seek accommodation with Damascus. “The train is moving, do not be left behind”- he urged Mazlum Abdi, referring to the current stalemate. His concerns are justified: the PUK-ruled eastern half of Iraqi Kurdistan borders on Iran, long the supporter of the PKK against Ankara, seeking to maintain its influence among the Kurds of Syria. With the Iranian Kurds across the border, the Kurds of Iraq must be watching their steps not to irritate edgy Iran. Tehran has dubbed the Iranian Kurdish movement PJAK as separatist and an agent of Israel. The sooner the issues between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds are resolved, the better for Iraqi Kurdistan under the looming shadow of Iran. Not to be forgotten is Ankara, which threatened the SDF with disarmament should it refuse to comply.
If all this was not complicated enough, the upcoming elections of the Iraqi Parliament will see a plethora of contestants running for seats, but with deep divisions among them. The traditional Shiite and Sunni Arab parties of Iraq have little new to promise their voters, and observers expect an election with record-low turnout. The only party that can mobilize the street, the Sadrists, led by the wily operator and longtime maverick Muqtada al-Sadr, abstain. He refuses to participate in an election that he sees as offering no alternatives for the Iraqi people. True to its form, the old political elite of Iraq proceeds with its game of musical chairs with hardly any new faces showing, even less so new ideas in the fray.
This, however, may be a golden opportunity for the Kurdish parties whose voices were hitherto lost in the cacophony of Iraqi party politics. Should they be able to come together, they may clinch a good share of the mandates. That would be welcome news not only for the Kurds of Iraq but for Kurds in all neighboring states, given that the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq is the only responsible Kurdish political administration that has a decisive voice in shaping the future of Kurdish people anywhere. The Kurds of Iraq gaining a louder voice would be a consolation for the region’s many voiceless minorities, too. Long sidelined, they crave a place under the Sun in the new Middle East. Defenders of Iraq’s persecuted minorities from ISIL/Daesh in the days of their worst predicament, the Kurds may help champion minority rights in the Middle East’s most diverse country. In order to do that, they will first need to close their own ranks.
