On December 11, the spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that his agency was, as Gareth Porter asserted on this website earlier this month, not interested in accepting a recent invitation by Iran to visit Marivan, at least at this time.
The spokesman, Serge Gas, reportedly told Reuters in an email that the agency had “explained clearly to Iran—on more than one occasion—that an offer of a visit of Marivan does not help address specific concerns related to the issue of large-scale high explosive experiments.” No further elaboration was made in the email, according to Reuters.
As someone who has worked at a senior level for the IAEA and who has respect for its mission and its dedicated personnel, I found this statement—and the decision not to accept Iran’s invitation—disappointing and worrisome.
In its 2011 special report on weaponization in Iran that was leaked to the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), among others, the IAEA asserted that it had received generally consistent “information” that “large scale high explosive experiments” for nuclear-weapon development had been carried out “in the region of Marivan” (paragraph 43 of the Annex). The information, which appeared in more than 1,000 pages of documents (paragraph 12), cited hemispherical explosive configuration, fiber optic sensors, and streak cameras, among many other details. Indeed, the IAEA’s description of the experiments allegedly carried out at Marivan was some of the most detailed in the weaponization annex.
The report said the source for this information was an unnamed “Member State” and that more than ten other Member States provided supplementary information (paragraph 13)—including “procurement information, information on international travel by individuals said to have been involved in the alleged activities, financial records, documents reflecting health and safety arrangements, and other documents demonstrating manufacturing techniques for certain high explosive components”—that “reinforces and tends to corroborate the information.”
The report about the large high-explosive experiments involving hemispherical charges at Marivan constitutes a very serious allegation because, if the hydrodynamic experiments were actually conducted using uranium (which is not mentioned in the report), they would constitute not only a violation of the IAEA’s safeguards agreement with Iran, but also a “smoking gun” pointing to the existence of a nuclear weapons program. And while such experiments carried out without uranium would not constitute a safeguards violation, they would unquestionably also support critics’ claims that Iran was indeed developing nuclear weapons.
The IAEA report and its annex have never been published by the Agency. In fact, a search for “Marivan” on the IAEA website turns up nothing. Nonetheless, no one has questioned the authenticity of the leaked version of the report that includes the paragraph referencing “the region of Marivan.” Since then, the story has been picked up by think tanks, NGOs, and media reports all of which breathlessly describe the alleged experiments but fail to mention their allegedly having taken place in Marivan.
As Porter reported, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the IAEA, Reza Najafi, informed the agency’s Board of Governors on November 21 that Iran was ready to give the IAEA “one managed access” to the Marivan region to verify the information included in the Annex. But the IAEA has now rejected the invitation. As noted by Reuters, “…the IAEA’s main priority for its long-stalled investigation into Iran’s nuclear program has been to go to another location, the Parchin military base [sic] southeast of Tehran, where the Vienna-based agency says other nuclear-related explosives tests may have been conducted, perhaps a decade ago.”
I addressed at some length in a previous post the many reasons why I find it quite improbable that the building that the IAEA has asked to visit at Parchin (which is actually not a base at all, but rather a sprawling complex of military factories) would be the site of sensitive nuclear weapons-related testing. Moreover, it bears noting that the alleged Marivan tests cited in the IAEA’s report are of too great a magnitude to be conducted at the Parchin site, which was purportedly designed to combine uranium and high explosives in much smaller experiments. The IAEA’s insistence to visit Parchin under the circumstances is puzzling, to say the least.
Marivan is important. In fact, it is the litmus test for the credibility of the IAEA’s 2011 report. If the IAEA claims detailed knowledge of a test and its location, it is critical that it work with Iran to verify that information. If, however, the information turns out to be false, irrelevant, inactionable or beyond the scope of IAEA’s expertise, then the agency should either withdraw its 2011 “Weaponization Annex” or issue a revised report after a thorough vetting of the rest of its contents. As noted above, the large-scale high explosive experiments are the most detailed claim in the agency’s weaponization report. That claim needs to be investigated and resolved, and the IAEA’s reluctance to do so is deeply disturbing.
Marivan is also important because if, indeed, the report was based on false information, it further weakens the already-thin case for visiting Parchin, which, in my view, constitutes a quixotic quest that threatens to derail far more important talks and agreements involving Iran’s nuclear materials The Agency’s strong suit has always been tracing and accurately reporting the quantities of nuclear materials of Member States, and it should focus on that mandate as a priority.
Bob Kelley is a professional nuclear engineer licensed in California. He spent the early years of his career in the nuclear weapons program of the US on topics such as plutonium metallurgy, vulnerability of nuclear warheads and warhead engineering. He has worked on a number of isotope separation schemes for the actinides including uranium separation by gas centrifuge and plutonium laser isotope separation. In mid-career he switched to analysis of foreign nuclear weapons programs. This included the use of satellite imagery and other kinds of intelligence information. This led to becoming Director of the Remote Sensing Laboratory in Las Vegas, the premier nuclear emergency response and aerial measurements laboratory for image and radiation sensing in the USDOE. He later applied this knowledge for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as a Director for challenging nuclear inspections in Iraq and many other countries.
]]>Erbil—After a period of frostiness, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey seem intent on mending the ties, as each of the parties show signs of needing the other.
But the Kurds appear more cautious this time around, leery of moving too close to Ankara lest they alienate the new Iraqi government in Baghdad with which they signed a breakthrough oil deal Tuesday.
The agreement, which will give Baghdad greater control over oil produced in Kurdistan and Kurdish-occupied Kirkuk in exchange for the KRG’s receipt of a bigger share of the central government’s budget, may signal an effort to reduce Erbil’s heavy reliance on Turkey.
The warmth between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey was a rather strange affair to begin with. It emerged unexpectedly and evolved dramatically since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
Whereas Turkey is a major player in the Middle East and Eurasia regions, Iraqi Kurdistan is not even an independent state. The imbalance of power between the two parties made their development of a “strategic” relationship particularly remarkable.
Given the deep historical animosity in Ankara towards all things Kurdish, the change of heart on its leaders’ part also seemed almost miraculous, even if highly lucrative to Turkish construction companies in particular.
But those ties suffered a major blow in August when the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) marched toward Kurdish-held territories in Iraq.
With IS threatening Kurdistan’s capital city, Erbil, Turkey did little to assist the Kurds. Many in Kurdistan and beyond were baffled; it was a case of “a friend in need is a friend indeed” gone wrong.
The overwhelming sense in Erbil was that Turkey had abandoned Iraqi Kurds in the middle of a life-and-death crisis. KRG President Masoud Barzani, Ankara’s closest ally, felt moved to publicly thank Iran, Turkey’s regional rival, for rushing arms and other supplies to Kurdish peshmerga fighters in their hour of need.
In their efforts to simultaneously develop an understanding and save face, some senior KRG officials defended Ankara, insisting that its hands were tied by the fact that more than 40 staff members in its consulate in the Iraqi city of Mosul, including the consul, had been taken hostage by IS. Other officials were more critical, slamming Ankara for not having acted decisively in KRG’s support.
The that the country was experiencing elections where the ambitious then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was running for the newly enhanced office of president was also invoked as a reason for his reluctance to enter into war with such a ruthless group.
It also appeared to observers here that Erdogan did not want to do anything that could strengthen his archenemy, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, even if that meant effectively siding with the Sunni jihadists.
But last month’s visit to Iraq by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu appears to have helped repair the relationship with the Kurds in the north. Davutoglu turned on his personal charm to reassure his hosts, even visiting a mountainous area where Turkish special forces are now training members of the Kurdish peshmerga.
The question of how long it takes for the relationship to bounce back to the point where it was six months ago is anyone’s guess.
It’s clear, however, that despite the recent slide in relations, both sides need each other.
As a land-locked territory, Kurds will be looking for an alternative that they can use to counter pressure from the central Iraqi government.
Focused on laying the foundation for a high degree of economic and political autonomy—if not independence—from Baghdad, the Kurds’ strategic ambition is to be able to control and ideally sell their oil and gas to international clients. And geography also dictates that the most obvious and economically efficient route runs through Turkey, with or without Baghdad’s blessing.
As for Ankara, Iraqi Kurdistan is now its only friend in an otherwise hostile region.
Once upon a time, not long ago, politicians in Ankara boasted of the success of their “zero-problems-with-neighbors” policy that had reshuffled regional politics and turned some of Turkey’s long-standing foes in the region, including Syria, into friends. But that era is now gone.
Ankara has come to see Iraqi Kurdistan as a potential major supplier of its own energy needs and has generally sided with the KRG in its disputes with Baghdad.
Kurdish leaders have been criticized for putting most of their eggs in Ankara’s basket.
The last time Kurds invested so much of their trust in a neighboring country was during the 1960s and 1970s when they were supported by the Shah of Iran who used them to exert pressure on Baghdad. This produced disastrous results when the Shah abruptly abandoned Kurds in return for territorial concessions by the Iraqi government in the Shatt al-Arab River separating southern Iran from Iraq.
Turkey’s indifference and passivity in August when all of Iraqi Kurdistan came under existential threat by the IS jihadists reminded many here of the consequences of placing too much trust in their neighbors. The hoary proverb that “Kurds have no friends but the mountains” suddenly regained its currency.
IS’s siege of the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani—just one kilometre from the Turkish frontier—compounded that distrust, not only for Iraqi Kurds, but for Kurds throughout the region, including in Turkey itself.
Indeed, Turkey’s refusal to assist Kurdish fighters against IS’s brutal onslaught has made it harder for the KRG to initiate a reconciliation.
Although Ankara has now changed its position—under heavy US pressure—and is now permitting peshmerga forces to provide limited assistance and re-inforcements for Kobani’s defenders, the process of mending fences is still moving rather slowly.
While that process has now begun, it remains unclear how far both sides will go.
Will it be again a case of Ankara and Erbil jointly versus Baghdad, or will Erbil play the game differently this time, aiming for balance between the two capitals?
Indeed, the much-lauded oil deal struck Tuesday between Baghdad and the KRG may indicate a preference for the latter strategy, particularly in light of their mutual interest in both confronting the IS and compensating for losses in revenue resulting from the steep plunge in oil prices.
Still, given the history of deals sealed and then broken that have long characterized relations between the Kurds and Baghdad, nothing can be taken for granted.
Photo: KRG President Masoud Barzani at the official opening of the Erbil International Airport and Turkish Consulate in 2011. Credit: Official KRG Photo
Mohammed A. Salih is a journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. He has written for almost a decade about Kurdish and Iraqi affairs for local and international media.
]]>by Wayne White
The spike in discussion about partitioning Iraq into Sunni Arab, Shia and Kurdish states is hardly surprising given the sweeping success of what is now being referred to as the “Islamic State,” the initial collapse of Iraqi army units facing it, and bitter wrangling in Baghdad over a new [...]]]>
by Wayne White
The spike in discussion about partitioning Iraq into Sunni Arab, Shia and Kurdish states is hardly surprising given the sweeping success of what is now being referred to as the “Islamic State,” the initial collapse of Iraqi army units facing it, and bitter wrangling in Baghdad over a new government.
Yet, after encountering relatively light resistance in its first advance through mainly Sunni Arab areas, the Islamic State has run up against much tougher resistance from a mixture of Iraqi troops and Shia militiamen. In fact, front lines have mostly see-sawed indecisively through contested areas in heavy fighting over the past two weeks.
To improve Iraq’s military and political options to address the Islamic State’s challenge, the swift formation of an inclusive new government is needed. Instead, with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki defiant in his bid for a third term and no clear replacement emerging from the parliament’s Shia majority, there has been stalemate. Not unexpectedly, parliamentary sessions on July 13 and 15 failed to break the prime ministerial deadlock, although the traditional Sunni Arab speaker was chosen on the 15, which represented some movement.
Kurdish Opportunism
The Kurds had already enjoyed considerable autonomy as the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) while Arab Iraq endured 11 years of violence. Before that, a separate Kurdish region existed largely beyond Saddam Hussein’s reach during 1991-2003. Both experiences fueled the Kurdish yearning for independence.
The Islamic State’s surge prompted the Kurds to seize many mixed, disputed areas adjacent to the KRG, last week expanding to encompass key oilfields. Plausible Kurdish claims were made that real estate like the city of Kirkuk had to be occupied to keep it safe from the Islamic State.
Since then it has become clear that the KRG hopes to keep these territories. Kurdish President Masoud Barzani has also upped the ante by charging the KRG parliament on July 4 with preparing a referendum on Kurdish independence. The result was predictable: over 90% of Kurds voted for independence in an unofficial referendum a few years ago.
Maliki vs. the Kurds
Deepening Iraq’s ethno-sectarian crisis, Maliki on July 9 accused the Kurds of using the KRG capital Erbil “as a base” of operations for “the Islamic State, and the Baathists, and al-Qaeda, and the terrorists.” This wildly specious outburst probably relates to the KRG’s humanitarian gesture of opening its doors to hundreds of thousands of panicked Iraqi troops, Kurds, Shia, Christians, and Turcoman fleeing the Islamic State.
Maliki also criticized the Kurds for capitalizing on the crisis to make another bid for independence, which rings true, but his false accusations have taken to a new low his years of bitter feuding with the KRG over practically everything: oil exports, oil revenue sharing, and disputed territory.
Maliki’s allegations drew an angry response from Kurdish leaders. Barzani said Maliki is now “afflicted with true hysteria,” and on July 11 senior Iraqi Kurdish officials began boycotting Maliki’s government pending an apology. Kurdish lawmakers in Baghdad, however, remained at their posts (to continue opposing Maliki).
Maliki retaliated by cutting off cargo flights between Baghdad and Erbil. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari (Kurdish) warned ominously that if an inclusive government could not be formed, “the consequences are very dire; complete fragmentation and failure” of the Iraqi state.
Demographic Obstacles
Despite its superficial appeal and Kurdish ambitions, Iraqi partition could not be implemented as neatly as many non-experts believe. For starters, Iraq’s highly complex demographics represent a formidable obstacle.
The 2006-08 wave of ethno-sectarian cleansing considerably reduced Baghdad’s diversity, but from about 60 miles south of the city all the way to the Turkish border, large areas remain mixed. As noted earlier, the KRG controversially occupies disputed territories, but the entire 1,000 kilometer perimeter of a notional independent Iraqi Kurdistan runs along heavily mixed areas.
In fact, Diyala Governate, northeast of Baghdad, south of the KRG, and east of the Sunni Arab city of Tikrit, is an ethno-sectarian mosaic. There is also a large pocket of Sunni Arab population south of Baghdad (nicknamed the “Triangle of Death” because of the danger it posed to US and Iraqi forces during the heyday of the Sunni Arab insurgency).
So partition would require the uprooting of millions of Iraqis to clear the way for demographically homogeneous mini-states. In the inflamed atmosphere across the country, precise borders would also be extremely difficult to define, and population shifts would be accompanied by considerable looting and bloodshed.
Baghdad now appears to be about 20% Sunni Arab and 80% Shia (without factoring in tens of thousands of Kurds, Christians and Turcomen). That alone could involve conflicting Sunni Arab and Shia visions of Baghdad: the former of a common capital and the latter of an entirely Shia one.
Even if granted a slice of Baghdad, Iraq’s intensely nationalistic Sunni Arabs would find the division of the city from which they dominated the country from independence through 2003 a difficult pill to swallow.
Sunni Arab areas of Iraq are bereft of any key resource that could sustain a notional state. Compared to the Shia south and Kurdish northeast, the Sunni Arab region has little land suitable for irrigation and insufficient rainfall. Most importantly, there is no developed oil or gas. And even if there were limited revenue sharing in the context of a weak confederacy, Maliki has shown by sometimes withholding oil revenue from the KRG to express his ire that such an arrangement would be unreliable.
It is therefore likely that any purely Sunni Arab state would remain poor, encumbered with even more refugees evicted from mixed areas, and harboring profound grievances toward the other two states. Under those circumstances extremists could flourish in various forms threatening not only the other Iraqi states, but also its foreign neighbors.
One pressure point a notional Sunni Arab state does have concerning the Shia south is upstream control over the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. That would put a Sunni Arab state in a position to pressure or retaliate against the Shia by disrupting water flow to the rich agricultural south (something already in play as Baghdad fights desperately to defend a Euphrates dam near Fallujah that the Islamic State wants).
Should Maliki succeed in his bid to remain prime minister, a negative domino effect could be set in motion.
A Maliki 3rd term would mean, regardless of rhetoric, no credibly inclusive government in Baghdad. That would make splitting a large slice of Sunni Arab elites away from the Islamic State and recovering lost territory exceedingly difficult. Equally worrisome would be the very real possibility that the KRG could regard the extension of Maliki’s tenure as a pretext to set in motion an unambiguous bid for full independence from Iraq.
Photo: Residents of the Sunni city of Mosul protest against Iraq’s Shia-dominated government on April 3, 2013. Credit: Beriwan Welat/IPS
]]>by Shireen T. Hunter
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, there was hope that a main barrier to implementing the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter and creating a more law-based international system and order had been removed, offering the chance that states, both great and small, would endeavor to [...]]]>
by Shireen T. Hunter
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, there was hope that a main barrier to implementing the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter and creating a more law-based international system and order had been removed, offering the chance that states, both great and small, would endeavor to organize their relations on the basis of law and principle and not sheer power and ambition.
Perhaps those who nurtured such hopes were too naïve and let their desires for the future overshadow their experience of the past. Whatever the case, they were soon cured of their illusions by the turn of events. Instead of ushering in a new political order for the 21st century, the end of the USSR led to a revival of the politics of the 19th century. Those who had won the Cold War began to dream of global hegemony and reshaping whole regions according to an ill-defined program of democratization. The concept of humanitarian intervention, first advanced by one-time French Minister of Culture and later Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner, became the ideological vehicle for this new age of global intervention much as the Civilizing Mission (mission civilisatrice) had been for the colonial age. Ironically, those clamoring for this type of intervention dismissed so-called Christian ethics with their humanitarian components because these ethics were too soft and did not approve of the use of force. Instead, they called for a pagan ethos, which they saw as more muscular and uninhibited by the moral considerations of the supposed dawn of the new age.
Meanwhile, Russia, which as the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War, started to dream of resurrecting its lost empire instead of focusing on curing its internal ills. And other would-be imperial powers, such as China, were just waiting in the wings.
After the calamitous consequences of this new version of old mind-sets, one hoped that the allure of nineteenth-century politics, with its imperial divide and conquer propensities, would have subsided. Instead, some of the less powerful countries began to dream of empires and spheres of influence, and of manipulating existing states’ fault lines in order to achieve their goals; hence Turkey’s neo-Ottoman project, Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Khilafat, and the mirage of a Shia Crescent.
The latest development along this line has been the desire for a so-called new Sykes-Picot agreement, referencing a May 1916 Franco-British drawing of prospective borders in the Middle East, as modified by the San Remo Treaty of 1920. The new agreement would presumably remake the Middle East and possibly parts of South Asia’s political map, supposedly on an ethnic and sectarian basis that is more realistic than that which currently exists. In fact, such ideas emerged after 2001 and were reflected in articles such as Blood Borders, which showed how countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan could be divided into more homogenous ethnic and sectarian entities.
These themes, however, were never seriously pursued by any government until the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and the recent crisis in Iraq. Now some countries seem to be actively encouraging Iraq’s disintegration, or while officially opposing it, are secretly supporting it.
Yet these countries, most of which have their own disgruntled ethnic and religious minorities, do not realize that Iraq’s dismemberment would in all likelihood also encourage centrifugal tendencies in other neighboring states. For example, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thinks that somehow Turkey would remain immune to the impact that an independent Kurdistan in Iraq would have on the aspirations of Turkey’s Kurds. Yet, in all probability, an independent Iraqi Kurdistan would in due course seek to incorporate other Kurdish-inhabited areas into the new state, especially because of the Greater Kurdistan dreams of Masud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Region.
Nor would Kurds be the only minority in Turkey who might want to separate. For example, the disintegration of Syria and the emergence of a separate Alawite state might encourage Turkey’s Arab minority, many of whom are Alawites, to join that state. They have been subjected to pressure and discrimination, which has increased in recent years, and they live close to the Syrian border in lands claimed by Syria. A Shia state in southern Iraq, meanwhile, would become a magnate for Shias in Saudi Arabia, another persecuted minority, and in Bahrain, with its persecuted Shia-majority population.
What is more frightening is that this process of separation and realignment would be extremely violent and brutal. There would be no velvet divorces, as happened in Czechoslovakia in 1993. This process would also very likely lead to confrontation among current states. These upheavals ultimately could and probably would reach areas of crucial international importance due to their oil resources. So far, there has been a degree of nonchalance regarding regional conflicts because they have not affected the supply and/or price of oil and thus the interests of key international players. But there can be no guarantee that this would always be the case.
Moreover, the new states, which could emerge out of a disintegrative process, would not be viable, partly because even these supposedly more homogenous states would still be fragmented unless they took the form of Lilliputian entities. They would depend on their neighbors: some for access to the sea, others for resources, and hence would become extremely vulnerable to pressure. Certainly, the creation of these entities would not resolve such intractable problems as the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Kashmir problem, even if there were several states in Syria or an independent Baluchistan.
Thus the solution to current and potential problems should not be a new wave of semi-colonial gerrymandering. Instead, the international community should encourage wherever possible federal or semi-federal relationships and regional integration and cooperation. Certainly outsiders should not encourage the use of force to bring about change.
In Central Europe, with the exception of the velvet divorce of Czechs and Slovaks, the collapse of the Soviet Union’s external empire did not lead to the repeat of the injustices of the various treaties agreed to after World War I in 1919-20. Instead, one requirement for admitting Central European countries to NATO and the EU was that they would retain their existing borders and foreswear past territorial claims on neighbors. This approach has never been encouraged and tried in the Middle East and South Asia. The current unitary states might have run their course and Iraq may be the first of many facing the challenge of remaining intact. But the creation of other smaller and less-viable unitary states is no solution.
Instead, key international and regional players should resist fanning the flames of ethnic and sectarian discord, in hoping to benefit from them. They should focus on realistic arrangements that respond to the needs of various peoples, without dismantling the entire state system, because these flames will inevitably also engulf outside players. As the saying goes, those living in glass houses should not throw stones.
Photo: Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers near the northern Iraqi border with Syria Credit: Reuters
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more remarkable aspects of the recent news coverage of Iraq — the Maliki government’s loss of control over the northern region of the country, the deadly confrontations taking place between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, and the clashes between Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more remarkable aspects of the recent news coverage of Iraq — the Maliki government’s loss of control over the northern region of the country, the deadly confrontations taking place between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, and the clashes between Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL or ISIS) — is the absence of any mention of Israel.
Commonalities between the Kurdish quest for a long-denied state of their own and Israel’s struggle to survive in a sea of geopolitical enemies are ubiquitous in reports on the Kurdish struggle, both in the Israeli press and among Israel’s supporters abroad. Indeed, it’s not unusual to see Kurdish separatism invoked and idealized as a reflection of the quest to establish a Jewish state, underscored by imagined historical parallels between Jews and Kurds. For example, in an essay titled, “Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds,” in Middle East Quarterly’s Summer 2014 issue, Ofra Bengio, a senior research fellow specializing in Kurdish affairs at Tel Aviv University, points out several of these perceived parallels:
Both are relatively small nations (15 million Jews and 30 million Kurds), traumatized by persecutions and wars. Both have been leading life and death struggles to preserve their unique identity, and both have been delegitimized and denied the right to a state of their own. In addition, both are ethnically different from neighboring Arabs, Persians, and Turks, who represent the majority in the Middle East.
The idealized goals and strategies of sovereignty seeking Kurdish separatists are often contrasted with those of Palestinian Arabs, as illustrated by Victor Sharpe at the American Thinker:
…(A)fter the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom. How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip by Israel, chose not to build hospitals and schools, but instead bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have added the imposition of sharia law, with its attendant denigration of women and non-Muslims.
The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory’s current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world — and certainly anywhere else in Iraq, which is fast descending into ethnic chaos now that the U.S. military has left.
For decades, Israel has been a silent stakeholder in northern Iraq, training and arming its restive Kurds. Massimiliano Fiore, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, cites a CIA document found in the US Embassy in Tehran and subsequently published, which reportedly attested that the Kurds aided Israel’s military in the June 1967 (Six Day) War by launching a major offensive against the Iraqi Army. This kept Iraq from joining the other Arab armies in Israel, in return for which, “after the war, massive quantities of Soviet equipment captured from the Egyptians and Syrians were transferred to the Kurds.” Former Mossad operative Eliezer Tsafrir has described in detail the decade of cooperation between 1965-75 of Israel’s Mossad and Iran’s SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, in arming and training Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces. That cooperation ceased when, without warning, the Shah and Saddam Hussein made a secret deal that abruptly ended the Israeli-Iranian partnership in northern Iraq.
The First Gulf War in 1991 gave Kurds a safe haven with an unprecedented degree of autonomy in the no-fly zone enforced by the US-led Coalition. In oil-rich northern Iraq, Kurds held regional parliamentary elections in May 1992, establishing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Jacques Neriah, a retired colonel who served as foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and as deputy head for assessment of Israeli military intelligence, explains in a 2012 report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
After the collapse of the Kurdish uprising of March 1991, which broke out after Saddam Hussein’s defeat by the U.S.-led coalition, Iraqi troops recaptured most of the Kurdish areas and 1.5 million Kurds abandoned their homes and fled to the Turkish and Iranian borders. It is estimated that close to 20,000 Kurds died from exhaustion, hunger, cold, and disease. On 5 April 1991, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 688, which demanded that Iraq end its measures against the Kurds and allow immediate access to international humanitarian organizations. This was the first international document to mention the Kurds by name since the League of Nations’ arbitration of Mosul in 1925.
A decade ago, Seymour Hersh called attention to Israel’s close ties with the Kurds. Hersh’s “Annals of National Security: Plan B“, published in the New Yorker is noteworthy, particularly in light of mounting criticism against the Obama administration’s handling of the current crisis. US officials interviewed by Hersh told him that by the end of 2003, “Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options.” One of those options was expanding Israel’s long-standing relationship with Iraqi Kurds and “establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.” Although the reliability of Hersh’s sources was challenged at the time, they have been affirmed by more recent articles and reports. Neriah, writing in August 2012, cites numerous reports in the Israeli media about the activities of Israeli security and military personnel working for Israeli firms in Kurdistan:
According to Israeli newspapers, dozens of Israelis with a background in elite combat training have been working for private Israeli companies in northern Iraq, helping Kurds there establish elite antiterror units. Reports say that the Kurdish government contracted Israeli security and communications companies to train Kurdish security forces and provide them with advanced equipment.
Shlomi Michaels, an Israeli-American entrepreneur, and former Mossad chief Danny Yatom provided “strategic consultation on economic and security issues” to the Kurds, according to Neriah, although the Israeli government denied any official involvement.
Tons of equipment, including motorcycles, tractors, sniffer dogs, systems to upgrade Kalashnikov rifles, bulletproof vests, and first-aid items have been shipped to Iraq’s northern region, with most products stamped “Made in Israel.”The Kurds had insisted that the cooperation be kept secret, fearing that exposure of the projects would motivate terror groups to target their Jewish guests. Recent warnings that Al-Qaeda might be planning an attack on Kurdish training camps prompted a hasty exit of all Israeli trainers from the northern region. In response to the report, the Defense Ministry said: “We haven’t allowed Israelis to work in Iraq, and each activity, if performed, was a private initiative, without our authorization, and is under the responsibility of the employers and the employees involved.”
Laura Rozen, writing in Mother Jones in 2008, offered a less benign view of Michaels’ activities in Kurdistan. Besides promoting corruption through kickbacks, Michaels attempted to sell — for $1 million — a dossier to the CIA that would prove Saddam Hussein had met with Ukrainian officials in order to develop a covert chemical weapons program. Rozen also linked the 2005 AIPAC spy scandal to Israeli involvement in Kurdistan. In 2004, US intelligence agencies had heard rumors that Iranian agents planned to target Israeli and US personnel operating in northern Iraq. Larry Franklin, who worked for the Pentagon, had been caught leaking the intelligence to Washington hawks. That’s how he was was recruited by the FBI for a July 2004 sting operation that informed AIPAC officials about the alleged threat to Israelis operating in northern Iraq. Franklin pled guilty to leaking classified information and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In her Middle East Quarterly essay, Bengio also mentions many of Hersh’s claims about Israeli involvement in Kurdistan a decade earlier, which she cautiously avers “remain unproven,” drawing upon Neriah’s account of Michaels’ adventures (without naming names):
The Yedi’ot Aharonot newspaper published an exclusive regarding Israel’s training of peshmergas, the Kurdish paramilitary force. Another Israeli source mentioned the activities of an Israeli company in the construction of an international airport in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The same source revealed “For their part, Iraqi sources, especially Shiite ones, have published lists of scores of Israeli companies and enterprises active in Iraq through third parties.
Less than a year ago, Lazar Berman of the Times of Israel, under the optimistic headline, “Is a Free Kurdistan, and a New Israeli Ally, Upon Us?” quoted Kurdish journalist Ayub Nuri who argued that Kurds were “deeply sympathetic to Israel and an independent Kurdistan will be beneficial to Israel.” Fast forward a year later to Neriah’s article titled, ”The fall of Mosul could become the beginning of Kurdish quest for independence,” where he says nothing about the stakes for Israel. Would an increasingly independent Kurdistan continue to look to Israel as its patron?
Or will Kurdistan fully join an anti-ISIS Iraqi alliance, backed jointly, if discreetly, by Iran, with the approval of the US? Any scenario in which Iran is part of the solution, rather than the underlying problem, is a nightmare for Israel. “[W]e would especially not want for a situation to be created where, because both the United States and Iran support the government of (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri) al-Maliki, it softens the American positions on the issue which is most critical for the peace of the world, which is the Iranian nuclear issue,” Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli minister of strategic affairs, told Reuters.
After so many decades of trying to make use of the Kurdish dream of independence as a narrative and nuisance against its enemies, Israel stands at the cusp of being the biggest loser in whatever comes next in strife-ridden Iraq.
This article was first published by LobeLog. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
]]>by Henry Precht
A bunch of fanatic radicals is on the verge of inflicting grievous damage on the traditional states of the Middle East. Only sensible, but also radical changes in American policy can hope to arrest their advance. The first business is to understand what can’t be changed, what bits of [...]]]>
by Henry Precht
A bunch of fanatic radicals is on the verge of inflicting grievous damage on the traditional states of the Middle East. Only sensible, but also radical changes in American policy can hope to arrest their advance. The first business is to understand what can’t be changed, what bits of history can’t be rewritten:
- The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) cannot be caused to disappear. Its seizure of Mosul and other Iraqi and Syrian towns appears to be supported at least partially by their Sunni populations who bitterly resent their nation’s non-Sunni leaders. Their like has succeeded before in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
- President Bashar al-Assad’s hands are stained with too much blood of his countrymen. He must go, albeit with a measure of grace permitted in his exit. Elements of his regime might be combined with secular oppositionists in a new setup.
- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki also must stand aside. He, like other rulers (Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi) who were previously denied office, was too greedy and refused to share power with his competitors. Another Shia grandee willing to join with acceptable Sunni elders must replace him.
- The Kurdish occupation of Erbil should be ignored — especially if Peshmerga troops are to be helpful against ISIS.
Next we turn to changes that are essential if the ISIS uprising is to be managed:
- Washington must realize that it has been backing the wrong side in the Syrian civil war. We mistakenly thought that the moderate, free market democrats opposed to Assad could bring him down. They simply couldn’t compete and were outclassed by ISIS and like-minded Islamic extremists. Not so long before the strife began, Washington quietly applauded Assad’s struggle against al-Qaeda. As distasteful a dictator as he might be, he and we were brought together by a common enemy. Using an international front with Russia and others, the US ought to let it be known that Damascus deserves help in the fight against ISIS before a replacement government can be set up.
- Taking an even bigger bite of crow meat, the US should acknowledge Iran’s importance in bottling up ISIS with units of its armed forces. To secure further cooperation, Obama and Co. should accept a reasonable nuclear deal with Rouhani rather than insisting on deal-destroying, but unnecessary, terms favored by Israel.
- Egypt might also be enlisted in this effort.
- Saudi Arabia, which has supported Sunni fanatics against Shia across the region, should be told that such behavior is inconsistent with a close defense relationship. The same message should be delivered to other Gulf regimes and intended as well for their ISIS-funding private citizens.
- Turkey and Jordan must be led to see that their borders with Syria need to be closed to the movement of fighters and their armaments. Otherwise they could be future ISIS targets.
- Iraq and Syria should be strongly encouraged to move to a decentralized, federal system of government. Funds for humanitarian relief and reconstruction must be mobilized with cash coming from the Arabian Peninsula.
- Israel and its friends in Congress would be briefed on plans in general, but not allowed to impede them.
An alternative US-led plan to defeat or contain ISIS would involve supplying arms to the Iraqi forces (which have been proved to be in no shape to employ them) or mounting drone attacks and other surgical strikes — with the same probable results as seen on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. If US planes or troops are used against ISIS, their retaliation against American targets can be expected.
The guiding principle for America in this crisis ought to be to stay out and to remain as far back as possible, leaving the heavy lifting to those regional states — however previously repugnant — to do the needful.
This article was first published by LobeLog.
Photo: President Barack Obama convenes an Oval Office meeting with his national security team to discuss the situation in Iraq, June 13, 2014. Credit: White House/Pete Souza
]]>Here’s Mohammed:
At least one [...]]]>
Here’s Mohammed:
]]>At least one person died and dozens were injured Thursday in Iraqi Kurdistan’s second largest city as angry protestors attacked the local headquarters of one of the two ruling Kurdish parties, while an opposition building was set ablaze in the other major Kurdish city.
The violence broke out in Sulaimaniya following a rally organised by a number of civil society groups to express solidarity with protestors in Egypt and Tunisia and protest the poor state of public services and corruption in the autonomous Kurdish region.
A curfew has since been imposed in Sulaimaniya since 7 pm Thursday, and there is an unusually heavy presence of police and security forces.
Hours after the attack on the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) building in Sulaimaniya, the local headquarters of Gorran (Change) opposition movement in Erbil, Kurdistan’s capital city, was set on fire.
[...]
Thursday’s incidents in northern Iraq broke out amid a wave of mass protests that has galvanised several Middle Eastern countries in the recent weeks, leading to the collapse of two governments in Egypt and Tunisia.
Iraqi Kurdistan has witnessed several demonstrations in the last few years where people protested corruption and mismanagement. A number of people were killed and injured during those protests as well.
The organisers of the Thursday rally in Sulaimaniya had called on the protestors to disperse after a few speeches were read out in line with the protest’s objectives. But tens of protestors continued marching toward nearby Salim Street, where a number of high-profile government and party buildings are based.
Upon arriving at the local headquarters of the KDP, the protestors started chanting slogans against Kurdish rulers. Minutes later they began throwing stones at the KDP’s building, shattering its windows.
Eyewitness accounts say panicking guards of the building started opening fire on the demonstrators. Sulaimaniya’s top health official told the local media that one person died and over 50 others were injured as a result of the shooting.
“I could hear the sound of bullets whizzing by my head. At that second I thought that I was going to die. They were shooting right into the crowd,” Karzan Kardozi, a blogger who was among the protesting crowd Thursday, told IPS. “We hid in a parking lot for about three minutes and they were still shooting.”
“There should be an inquiry,” Kardozi said. “Those who shot the people should be brought to justice or the government will further lose credibility with its people.”
There are fears that increasing tensions in Iraqi Kurdistan might lead to serious instability, especially in light of the regional events and the prospect of further protests.