Kurdish Sovereignty Still Not All That Clear

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Sep 10, 2014 at 19:08

This may be an oblique perspective of the Kurdish question; but does the dynamic the Kurds are utilizing to exert/exact a statehood not fully realized really have a chance to develop more fully when the rest of the region still has dreams of exploiting the territory occupied by the Kurds? This is still not all that clear, especially if the lack of strategy in the region, save that of the IS, allows any one of a group of ambitions an advantage if the IS finally implodes. Even if that happens, the territorial claims of the previous border groups are not going away so easily into the night.

The 1991 expectations of a Kurdish independent entity were dependent, not upon the establishment of a Kurdish state, so much as how did the international community perceive doing business with an Iraqi governmental establishment which was later thought to have control over its own sovereignty (now a foolish expectation, in retrospect to Dr. Pipes supposition) including the Kurdish region.

The region has been the heart of many imperial ambitions in the Fertile Crescent and allowing the Kurds to wrest away any of those influences of the greater powers that be seems to still be fairly problematic. Between Erdoǧan and al-Assad, it is highly unlikely that if somehow the United States beats the ISIL back into the corner, the others will see it as a vacuum once again, to be filled by the ambitions of the power that can make the more powerful argument of occupation. Iran has still to ring in their revised opinion.

To tactically ally with any of the former foes for an intermediate posturing opens the risk of the Kurdish forces being used for ulterior purposes, only to be rebuffed like they were when dealing with the Saddam Hussein backlash after the end of the First Gulf War. With the current dynamic in a more extreme situation with the peshmerga operating as if they are protecting homeland interests from ISIL, if and when the ISIL are pushed back, will there be actual territorial gains that can be protected by the Kurdish government from the aforementioned competing interests?

Prognosticating that an "autonomous Kurdistan has proved to be the most stable, prosperous, peaceful, and democratic part of Iraq" might actually be premature, for there are still forces at work that have yet to reveal all that might be gained from not be able to quell the violence that has simmered in the region; and the ultimate goal from a fundamentalists perspective is not yet achieved. No, from this perspective, the jury has more evidence to be considered before the final judgment can be possibly rendered.

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