Masrour Barzani, son of Kurdish President Masoud Barzani,repeats call for referendum on seeking Kurdish indpendence from Iraq, February 2016. Alice Martins \/ Press Association. All rights reserved.KRG\u2019s President Barzani has
\nrecently intensified his efforts for independence. There might be many reasons
\nfor this. First and foremost, the state of Iraq is often regarded uncontroversially
\nas a \u2018failed state\u2019, artificially designed by British and French colonisers in
\nthe aftermath of WW1, offering the Kurds nothing but a calamitous century-long
\nhistory including genocidal attempts to eradicate Kurdish nationalism. Added to
\nthis, the domestic demand for the right of self-determination is well known to
\nthe Kurdish leadership. 98.8 percent of Kurdish voters said yes to independence
\nin the Kurdistan independence referendum of January 2005.<\/i><\/p>\n
The small region of Kurdistan,
\nlittle more than an autonomous region of Iraq protected by a no fly zone before
\nthe overthrow of Saddam, has now become an international entity. The KRG has
\nits own foreign relations apparatus with 34 foreign consulates operating in
\nErbil. It has also a vast economic reach mainly because of colossal oil and gas
\npreserves in Kurdistan as well as its trade with neighbouring countries. This
\nhas convinced the outside world that the notion of a Kurdish state is no longer
\nout of the question. <\/p>\n
Since 2014 the Islamic State, (IS),
\nhas become another reason for the Kurds to speed up their efforts to secede
\nfrom Iraq. Failing to defend Iraq\u2019s second largest city of Mosul against IS
\nassault, Iraq\u2019s army also left the Kurdish city of Kirkuk, a troublespot between
\nArab Iraq and the Kurds for much of the last century. Taking advantage of the security
\nvacuum, the Kurds sent Peshmerga forces into the city in order to prevent it
\nfalling into the hands of IS. This led to Kurds regaining almost all of 40 per cent
\nof the territory that used to be considered, since 2003, \u201cdisputed areas\u201d. In
\naddition, rows between Baghdad and Erbil over the KRG\u2019s oil policy reached a point
\nof no return when in 2015 the Iraqi government refused to send its full share
\nof Kurdistan\u2019s 17 per cent of the national budget. <\/p>\n
The question before Masoud Barzani,
\nnonetheless, is what to do in order to turn state-building rhetoric into a
\nfuture Kurdish state which has successfully obtained the right of
\nself-determination? <\/p>\n
Needless to
\nsay, any given state-building process requires domestic
\nand external prerequisites. With respect to the latter, international and
\nregional actors have to reach a conclusion as to how such a Kurdish state would
\nbe perceived, that does not contradict their multiple interests in the region. However,
\nassuming, for the sake of argument, that such key external entities as Turkey
\nand Iran will be relatively tolerant towards the emergence of a Kurdish state,
\nsalient domestic preparations need to be made. In what follows I will focus on
\nthis dimension in particular. <\/p>\n
The German sociologist, Max Weber\u2019s
\nclassic definition of the state, as a monopoly over the legitimate use of
\nviolence within an established territory, still seems valid. Taking the two
\ncriteria of \u201cmonopoly of violence versus multiple purveyors of violence\u201d along
\nwith \u201clegitimate purveyor of violence versus illegitimate purveyor of violence\u201d
\ninto account, there are four categories in which to describe any state, which
\nare explained below. <\/p>\n
Any state possessing a monopoly of
\nviolence (one unified coercive force: army) and which possesses a legitimate
\npurveyor (popular and inclusive democratic government) and which uses this
\nviolence to keep law and order in place and protect the sovereignty of the
\nstate, is considered a \u2018consolidated state\u2019. States without these characteristics
\nare often seen as \u2018failed states\u2019, either as \u201cfactionalized\/fragile state\u201d,
\nbecause they lack a monopoly of violence or as \u00a0\u201cpredatory states\u201d, when their illegitimacy is
\ntheir distinctive feature. <\/p>\n
Applying this to Kurdistan, it must
\nbe recognised that there are currently two partisan armed and security forces
\n(traditionally known as Peshmerga) in Kurdistan, each under the control of one
\nof the two major political parties; the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and
\nthe Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, (PUK). The potential here for endless malign
\npartisan conflict, could spell a future Kurdish state of hazardous chaos.<\/p>\n
Although these Peshmerga forces are
\nevidently perceived as the foremost resource of the Kurdish struggle for survival
\nover the last century, especially due to its current internationally recognised
\nbattle against the Islamic State, the resulting disunity threatens the
\nstability of any future state of Kurdistan. The fragmented characteristic of
\nIraqi Kurdistan with its historically fissiparous nationalist struggle, which
\ndeprived it from having a unified army, is something to fix before stepping
\ninto statehood, considering the infamous capacity of the Middle East for
\nunprecedented conflicts of all kinds. <\/p>\n
Since domestic division has long
\nbeen at work, even in the shape of civil war in the 1990s, weakening Kurdistan\u2019s
\nstance on all fronts, a sincere and decisive decision has to be made in
\nreuniting all the Peshmerga forces. This is something KDP\u2019s President Barzani
\nand PUK\u2019s Jalal Talabani will have to do to meet one of the very basic pillars for
\nany relatively consolidated state to survive and thrive. <\/p>\n
The KDP and the PUK agreed to
\nreunite the offices including a Ministry of Peshmerga affairs, but another
\nsource of concern is the perpetuation of the divided institutions for governing
\nthe KRG\u2019s territory. In the recent economic crisis following the oil price
\nfalling to its lowest in decades, the KRG failed to pay civil servant salaries from
\nmid-2015 onward. This added to political disputes over the extension of
\nPresident Barzani\u2019s office term, fuelling public protests and strikes in late
\n2015. Protestors stormed the ruling KDP party\u2019s offices across the region
\nresulting in 5 deaths. Immediately afterward, KDP\u2019s Prime Minister removed four
\nministers (from the Gorran Movement, the second largest faction in Parliament)
\nfrom his cabinet. On the same day KDP\u2019s security forces barred the Speaker of
\nthe Parliament, Yousif Muhammad also from the Gorran Movement, from entering
\nthe capital of Erbil, and accused them of responsibility for the violent acts of
\nsome protestors against the KDP offices. Such political squabbles have incapacitated
\nKurdistan\u2019s parliament since then, the body that would have to oversee any progress
\nleading to a referendum for independence. <\/p>\n
Moreover, media
\nsources such as satellite channels, news outlets and local TV and radio are also
\nheavily divided and almost exclusively under political party control, yet with
\nno single national TV channel as a mouthpiece of Kurdish national interests. <\/p>\n
The employment and distribution of
\nwealth relies considerably on the loyalty that individuals and clans show to a
\ncertain political party. The preponderant nepotism stemming from the widespread
\nparty-based style of governing in public services has also penetrated into the
\nprivate sector. This unfair distribution of wealth and opportunities will
\nundoubtedly contribute to jeopardizing an independent Kurdistan, especially in
\nterms of economic prosperity and social justice.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Ironically, even the KRG\u2019s foreign This socio-political division in Having suffered from this political Current developments in the Middle Masrour Barzani, son of Kurdish President Masoud Barzani,repeats call for referendum on seeking Kurdish indpendence from Iraq, February 2016. Alice Martins \/ Press Association. All rights reserved.KRG\u2019s President Barzani has recently intensified his efforts for independence. There might be many reasons for this. First and foremost, the state of Iraq is often regarded uncontroversially as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nrelations has become an arena for partisan antagonism: the KDP has a close relationship
\nwith Turkey on one hand, and the PUK and Goran<\/em>
\nmovement seem to get on better with Iran on the other hand. This in itself has
\nspawned a deeper breakdown between political fractions. <\/p>\n
\nIraqi Kurdistan, has placed some irreversible political and economic burdens on
\nKurds both at the domestic and foreign levels. As an example of domestic
\nfailure, the affluent region of Kurdistan is suffering from an inability to
\naccommodate basic provisions such as water and electricity for its small
\npopulation of roughly 6 million. The dominant rentier economy has served a
\nsmall proportion of the society that has an association with political parties
\nin one way or another. This has left the majority of the public in poverty, to
\nan extent that the sharply growing gap between the poor and the rich suggests
\nthat obtaining a just social system for any future Kurdish homeland will be far
\nmore challenging than independence itself. <\/p>\n
\ndivision, the public in Kurdistan have wholeheartedly expressed a demand for
\nunity and furiously protested against the deviation of Kurdish politics from
\nthis goal. They know that legitimacy as one of the main elements of a
\nfunctioning state, cannot be achieved in a future state of Kurdistan if
\npolitical leaders undermine the public demand for unity. This is something that
\nis widely echoed in the oral and written language of the Kurdish public, from
\ncafes to social media and from family and neighbours to institutes. These
\nunheard voices rightly signal the fact that the current wide-ranging political
\ndisunity ensures that a prosperous Kurdish state will only be greeted with intensive
\nscepticism. <\/p>\n
\nEast have never been more in line with Kurdish collective calls for
\nself-determination. Envisaged by many observers as a kind of pioneering
\ndemocratic experience in a region traditionally fertile for totalitarianism, the
\nKurdistan region of Iraq is a relatively stable region in the civil war
\nquagmire of Iraq. This fact along with the internationally recognised Kurdish
\nco-operation in the battle against ISIS could serve a future Kurdish statehood
\nwell, if Kurdish leaders manage to set their own home in order. Otherwise
\nthough, considering the current internal prevalent disputes and squabbles between political parties, it will
\nnot surprise anyone to see President Barzani\u2019s appeal for independence
\nremaining mere rhetoric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"