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Challenges to Kurdish Nationalism: The Future of the Continuing U.S. Support for the KRG
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the future of the U.S. support for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq in light of the increasing U.S. support for Turkey and the Baghdad Government in Iraq. How will this challenge the future development of Kurdish nationalism? Previously, the United States had encouraged Kurdish nationalism by encouraging the Iraqi Kurds to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and also then found the Kurds to be valuable assets in fighting against the Arab insurgents. Recently, however, the United States has tried to manipulate the KRG when it came under Turkish pressure to expel the PKK from the Qandil Mountain. Since their own forces were fighting insurgents in the center and south of Iraq, the United States and Iraq pressed the KRG to meet Turkey’s demands to oppose the PKK. KRG officials, however, feared that Turkey was more interested in opposing the further development of the KRG than in pursuing the PKK. After receiving the green light from Washington, Turkey sent 50 jets on December 6, 2007, to bomb suspected PKK targets, killing three people and displacing 1,800 villagers in the KRG area. The KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told reporters that it was unacceptable for “the United States, in charge of monitoring our airspace, to authorize Turkey to bomb our villages.” KRG officials were also upset by the U.S. military decision to create Sunni Arab militia (al-Sahwa) in Arabized Kurdish territories, fearing that would hamper the KRG’s efforts to implement Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution for a referendum on the future of Kirkuk. U.S. officials appeared to be appeasing Turkey and the Sunni Arabs by preventing the Kurds from reclaiming oil-rich Kirkuk, which Saddam Hussein earlier had “Arabized.” Indeed, since the Arabs established the al-Sahwa movement, the United States has been distancing itself from the KRG and allowing the Turkish and Iraqi governments to curtail the KRG’s nationalist goals. This paper will employ KRG documents as well as scholarly and media articles from all the various actors as sources. The paper’s methodology will employ objective criteria as a means of content analysis of the sources to develop its thesis and reach its conclusions.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Iraq
Kurdistan
Sub Area
None