At the heart of the boom are 50 or 60 foreign oil companies seeking to find and exploit Kurdistan's oil, on better terms and with greater security and official backing than they could find in the rest of Iraq. This influx started with small and obscure foreign companies in the years after the fall of Saddam in 2003. But foreign interest deepened, the size of the oil companies increased, and in 2010 ExxonMobil signed an exploration contract with the KRG. The central government in Baghdad was furious and threatened to punish Exxon, which has large interests in southern Iraq, but failed to do so as other oil majors - Chevron, Total and Gazprom - had also signed their own deals.
When the Kurds first encouraged foreign oil companies to look for oil on territory they controlled, Baghdad was sanguine. In 2007 Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani, now Deputy Prime Minister in charge of energy-related issues, said to me that, even if foreign oil companies found oil, they would not be able to export it. He asked sarcastically: "Are they going to carry it out in buckets?" It is this calculation that has changed radically in the last year. A new pipeline is being built between the KRG and Turkey, which in theory would enable the Kurds to export crude and get paid for it without permission from Baghdad. This would give the five million Iraqi Kurds an economically and politically independent state for the first time in their history after decades of war, ethnic cleansing and genocide. On the other hand, Turkey may decide that it is not in its interests to defy Baghdad and break up Iraq.
Self-determination is close, but not quite there yet. One Kurdish observer said: "We Kurds have one of the most complicated political situations in the world." It is easy to forget this in the present boom-town atmosphere of the KRG. First, the Kurdish autonomous zone is landlocked and on all sides faces powers - Turkey, Iran, Syria and the rest of Iraq - that are oppressing Kurds or have oppressed them in the recent past. The KRG may be a haven of peace for the moment but violence is not far away. Syria, Iraq and Turkey are fighting guerrilla insurgences of varying levels of intensity just beyond the KRG's frontiers. In recent weeks al-Qa'ida suicide bombers blew up the main police station in Kirkuk 50 miles south of Erbil and assassinated a senior general and his bodyguards in Mosul, a similar distance to the west.
The political geography of the Middle East is changing in ways that so far are to the advantage of the Iraqi Kurds, though the trends may not always be so. The KRG consists of three provinces - Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaimanya - that won de facto autonomy in 1991 after the Kurdish uprising in the wake of the first Gulf War. This area expanded dramatically in 2003 as the Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen advanced and Saddam Hussein's forces collapsed. The Kurds captured Kirkuk and its oilfields as well as a swathe of territory north and east of Mosul and have never been likely to give it up. An explosive aspect of the deal with ExxonMobil in 2010 is that three of its six exploration blocks are outside the KRG, but inside territories disputed between Kurds and Arabs and between the governments in Erbil and Baghdad. Last year Peshmerga and Iraqi troops confronted each other along the socalled "trigger" line, stretching from the Syrian to the Iranian border.
It is a moment of unprecedented political change in the region. Iraq as a country is getting close to disintegration as a single state, but this is not inevitable. Old alliances are being junked and hated enemies embraced. Massoud Barzani, long demonised in Turkey, was a guest at the conference of Turkey's ruling AKP party and was given a standing ovation. The Iraqi Kurds are tipping towards Ankara and away from Baghdad. For a decade Turkish companies have poured into KRG and are doing trade worth at least $8 billion (£5.3 billion) a year there. The Shia-Kurdish alliance is the backbone of the post-Saddam settlement brokered by the Americans, but today it is looking frayed. Mr Barzani and the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are barely on speaking terms. The Kurds feel, as do other opponents of Mr Maliki, that he has repeatedly reneged on power-sharing agreements, particularly when it comes to military and security appointments.
When it seemed likely in 2003 that the US would invade Iraq from the north accompanied by 40,000 Turkish troops, the Iraqi Kurds were terrified and demonstrated vigorously in protest. These days a Turkish alliance with the KRG appears to many to be a reassuring alternative to dealing with the chaotic and increasingly hostile government in Baghdad. Arab-Kurdish links are weakening at many levels. At the top, Kurdish influence in Baghdad is declining, particularly since the incapacitating illness of President Jalal Talabani who had previously played a conciliatory role at the centre of Iraqi politics. At street level fewer Kurds speak Arabic compared to 20 years ago when many were former conscripts in the Iraqi army. Few Kurds travel to Baghdad except for urgent business because it is dangerous, though many travel to Turkey on holiday. Only a few years ago the Turks would regularly close the Khabour bridge, the main crossing point between the KRG and Turkey, leading to enormous traffic jams. These days it is Baghdad that tries to emphasise the KRG's isolation, refusing even to allow the plane carrying the Turkish Energy Minister to cross its airspace for a conference in Erbil.
Kurdistan has changed enormously in the last decade. At several moments over the last 40 years the Kurdish cause seemed irretrievably lost. In 1975 their forces, then led by Mullah Mustafa Barzani, the father of the current KRG President Massoud, were betrayed by the US and the Shah of Iran who suddenly withdrew support as the Kurds were locked in battle with the Iraqi army. Saddam Hussein seemed triumphant and Kurdish prospects for self-determination were apparently extinguished forever.
But the Shah fell and Saddam invaded Iran in 1980, leading the Iranians to renew support for the Iraqi Kurds. They took over much of the country, only to see Iran forced to agree to a truce in 1988 leaving the Kurds to face Saddam's vengeance.
Many were gassed in Halabja and 180,000 civilians slaughtered in the al-Anfal campaign in 1988 and 1989. Again, everything looked dark for the Kurds until Saddam invaded Kuwait and was defeated in 1991. The Kurds rose up, failed to get US support, and were forced to flee in their millions in the face of an Iraqi counter-attack. In the midst of an international outcry, US relented and rescued the Kurds by declaring a no-fly zone.
But Kurdistan was devastated. People had been forced into cities and 3,800 villages and towns were destroyed.
This was oppression on the level of Hitler's armies in Poland and Ukraine. The very land was carpeted with anti-personnel mines like large yellow and white mushrooms. The mountains were stripped bare of trees for heating and cooking. The two main parties - the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Mr Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Mr Talibani - made a bad situation worse by fighting a ferocious and wholly unnecessary civil war.
The contrast between Kurdistan as a ruined battlefield and its appearance today is so striking as to take one's breath away. It may also be so great as to unbalance its leaders' sense of the feasible. One critic says: "We are making the same mistake with the Turks today as we did with the Americans and the Shah in 1975. We are once again becoming over-reliant on foreign powers." For all the economic development in KRG it remains dependant on getting a 17 per cent share of Iraqi oil revenues proportionate to its population. The KRG likes to present itself as "the other Iraq" so different from the rest of the country. But some things work the same. For instance, some 660,000 Kurds have official jobs though at least half do nothing at all. Much government revenue goes on paying them and without a share of Iraq's oil revenues the economy would collapse.
"Ease of doing business in Erbil compared to Baghdad is very good," says a businessman. "Compared to the rest of the world it is rubbish." A sign that many Kurds do realise their continued economic dependence on Baghdad is a sharp drop in the last three months in property prices in Erbil, a fall attributed to disagreements with Baghdad.
Kurdistan may have greater security and better political direction than Baghdad, but it is similarly corrupt. "I call it 'Corruptistan'," said one woman. "I live in an area surrounded by the houses of director generals working for the government," said another so
urce. "I have a higher salary than any of them but they have houses three times bigger than mine." He complained that it has taken him months to find a decent school for his daughter and, likewise, a good hospital for a sick friend. Erbil may have several five-star hotels, but so few ordinary Kurds visit them that local taxi drivers often do not know where they are.
In many respects the exaggerated expectations generated by the Kurdish tiger resemble those surrounding the Celtic tiger in Ireland before 2008. Both nations are small, long-oppressed and impoverished, and feel history has treated them unfairly. Having endured hard times for so long, both may be vulnerable to seeing a boom as being permanent when it is in fact part-bubble. Momentous decisions must be taken by the Kurds and their neighbours when the pipeline to Turkey is finished. One expert on Kurdistan asks "is Turkey playing a game of bluff or will it give up on Baghdad? Do they see it as having fallen permanently into the hands of Iran?" The Kurds are gambling for high stakes in balancing between Turkey, Iran and Baghdad. They have hitherto done so with success but they are in danger of over-playing their hand.
Saturday, 9 March 2013
A DISASTER WAITING TO REPEAT ITSELF
The Syrian civil war is spreading to Iraq, carrying with it the risk of fresh violence.
Forty-eight unarmed Syrian soldiers and nine Iraqis were killed earlier this week by al-Qa'ida fighters in an ambush in western Anbar province. The Syrian soldiers were in Iraqi territory, having escaped across the border from a battle with the Syrian rebels further north, and were being repatriated to Syria when they were attacked. The killings have led to fears among Iraqis that it would not take much to revive their own Sunni-Shia civil war, which only died down five years ago. Hadi al-Amiri, Iraqi Transport Minister and former head of the Shia militia group Badr, complains that "presenting money and weapons to al-Qa'ida in Syria by Qatar and Turkey is a declaration of armed action against Iraq. If we (Shia) form militia and they (Sunnis) form militia then Iraq will be lost."
It may already be too late. Iraqi leaders from different communities are edgy, fearing that the spread of sectarian civil war from Syria to Iraq and to the rest of the region is becoming inevitable.
"The next item on the agenda is Shia-Sunni conflict," said a senior Iraqi politician. "We thought Lebanon would be first affected by events in Syria, but in fact it is us. The only way to prevent Iraq being destabilised is to put out the Syrian fire at once."
Iraqis are cynical about the motives of the US and Britain in condemning an al-Qa'ida fighter as a terrorist when he is shooting and bombing in Iraq. But should the same al-Qa'ida member travel a few miles up the Euphrates, cross the Syrian border and fight the Syrian army, he is transformed into a freedom fighter and may soon benefit from "nonlethal" American and British aid.
Other parallels can be drawn between the Syrian crisis today and the Iraq crisis 10 years ago. Saddam Hussein had far more blood on his hands than Bashar al-Assad, yet there are similarities in the way both men have been demonised by Western governments and media. Discussion of ways of ending or modifying their rule is denounced as collaboration with undiluted evil. Everything wrong in Iraq in 2003 and Syria in 2013 is blamed on demonic misrule, so any change at the hands of an opponent, however bloodstained and unsavoury, is legitimised. Propaganda and slogans displace rational policy and prevent negotiations and compromise. I remember intelligent and sincere Iraqis assuring me in the 1990s that differences between Shia, Sunni and Kurd were fomented by the regime and would evaporate once it was overthrown. This "black hats" and "white hats" approach opened wide the door to opportunists and racketeers, sniffing out power and money in the new Iraq.
A decade after the US and British invasion, any audit of American and British actions must look at how much good and harm they have done in Iraq. Such is the rancour between supporters and opponents of the war that its history is primarily used as a means for allocating blame. One point seldom made, but of great importance in determining what happened later, is that the military campaign to overthrow the Iraqi government may have begun on 19 March 2003, but the economic war against Iraq started 13 years earlier with devastating results for its people. Indeed, the worst disaster for the Iraqi people as a whole arguably took place before the invasion and not afterwards.
UN sanctions between 1990 and 2003 amounted to an economic siege, unprecedented in its severity outside military conflict, that destroyed the Iraqi economy and reduced millions to poverty. People who had held good jobs were reduced to selling their furniture in the streets. In Diyala province in 1996 I remember being pursued by farmers in the fields because they thought I was a foreign doctor. Several were holding up ageing X-rays of their crippled children - there were no facilities to take new X-rays - and asking if I could help. In 1998 a Unicef survey showed that a quarter of Iraqi children under five were chronically malnourished. A year later Carol Bellamy, the American executive director of Unicef, said that had child mortality stayed at its presanctions level "there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under five in the country as a whole during the period from 1991 to 1998."
The suffering of his people did not weaken Saddam Hussein, who was happily building giant palaces and mosques to his own glory. The Iraqi health service and education systems, previously among the best in the Middle East, were degraded and brought close to collapse. Officials could not be paid so they only acted in return for a bribe. Young men without jobs or hope of employment turned to crime. Baghdad had been safe but I remember that from about 1994 taxi drivers started carrying pistols in case customers tried to rob them. The senior UN official in Iraq, Denis Halliday, who resigned in protest over sanctions, said a generation of Iraqis was growing up brutalised and open to fanatical beliefs. The US and Britain never admitted the cruelty and injustice of sanctions, but the anarchy and violence they discovered when they tried to rule Iraq had much to do with the economic and social ruin inflicted by them on Iraqis.
Many Iraqis welcomed or tolerated the US-led invasion because it ended sanctions and Saddam Hussein's disastrous rule. But supporters and opponents of the invasion blur a crucial distinction between invasion and occupation, as if American and British rule must inevitably have followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The amalgamation of two very different events may be intended to put a defensible motive for the invasion - the overthrow of a dictator - in the shop window without having to explain and justify the imposition of foreign rule, so similar to imperialist ventures in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The occupation had little to do with the good of the Iraqi people and much to do with Washington and London seeking to prevent Iran filling the political vacuum in Iraq left by the fall of Saddam Hussein.
I was in Kurdistan just before the war in 2003 when US officials told the Kurds that they were shelving plans for the immediate introduction of democracy and post-Saddam Iraq would be run by US military officers. I spoke to the veteran Kurdish leader Sami Abdul Rahman, killed the following year by a suicide bomber along with 104 others, who said scathingly "conquerors always call themselves liberators". Another Iraqi leader is fond of saying to this day that "the occupation was the mother of all mistakes". Imperial or dictatorial rule is often justified as necessary to restore law and order. This famously failed to happen in Iraq. Moreover, the whole post-Saddam political settlement was delegitimised in the eyes of Iraqis by being devised and imposed by foreign powers.
The US wanted to encourage Iraqi nationalism, but nationalism of a peculiar type that was hair-trigger sensitive and hostile to Iranian influence but blithely tolerant of American control. The Kurds had their own experienced and skilful leaders, but Sunni and Shia leaders whose careers prospered were those who could at least pretend to be fully co-operative with the US and Britain. To this day this taints many of them in the eyes of Iraqis. Last month I asked a Sunni sheikh from Fallujah organising protests against the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, how he regarded the Sunni political leaders. "I don't," he said. "They all owe thei
r jobs to the Americans." To a lesser degree the same is true of the Shia leaders, including Mr Maliki, previously a senior but little-known official in the Dawa party who was picked for the premiership to his own astonishment in 2006 by the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. The British ambassador, who opposed the choice, was asked to leave the room while Mr Khalilzad talked to Mr Maliki and persuaded him to take the job.
Britain contributed 45,000 soldiers to the invasion but they have left few memorials to their presence. One symbol of British failure survives in the shape of the police station in Majar al-Kabir, a Shia town on the edge of the marshes north of Basra. It was here, 18 miles south of the provincial capital Amara, that six British Royal Military Police were shot dead by angry townspeople on 24 June 2003. I drove from Baghdad the next day to the ramshackle little town, notorious for its heavily armed inhabitants and opposition to Saddam Hussein. The police station's outer walls were blackened by fire and pockmarked with bullet holes. The interior was gutted, its floors covered in broken glass and what looked like dried blood. I went back to the town last month and visited the building where the killings took place. It is still a police station, its exterior repainted white with a blue stripe at the top, presumably indicating police presence. The police guards outside looked relaxed, as if they were not expecting any trouble.
Majar al-Kabir was and is a very tough place, but it would be a mistake to think that its people in 2003 did not have a firm grasp of what was happening. A local leader called Kadum al-Hashimi said: "It is the belief of the people here, and it is believed by all other Iraqis, that the British want to disarm us because they want to stay for a long time."
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