The eleven reasons to explain Barzani’s decision of Kurdistan Region self-determination (and the backfire)

Not only bad tim­ing, but Barzani’s “Kurds self-determination” argu­ment in the Con­fer­ence of the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party started to back­fire, and the result is an agree­ment between Allawi and Maliki (among other rea­sons, such as Muq­tada Al-Sadr to trans­form Iraq to an Islamic State, there are reports say that the Lebanese Hizbollah’s mem­bers granted the Iraqi nation­al­ity). Signs show that Maliki started to ignore the Kur­dis­tan Alliance’s con­di­tions to sup­port his sec­ond term (accord­ing to Al-Qabas, the Kur­dis­tan Alliance renewed the call on Maliki to sign the conditions).

The agree­ment between Maliki and Allawi on the mech­a­nism to lift the De-Baathification ban on the four of Al-Iraqi lead­ers is already reported on the Iraqi media since three days ago (it was agreed that the National Alliance to attend the meet­ing but will not vote on the resolution).

But this means there will be a new cri­sis inside Al-Iraqiya polit­i­cal blocs, at a time when the debate within Al-Iraqiya List on who will occupy the vice-president still con­tin­ues, lift­ing the ban on Al-Mutlaq could pave the way for him to this post instead of Tariq Al-Hashimi, if the points sys­tem taken into account, since Al-Mutlaq Bloc inside Al-Iraqiya is much big­ger than this of Al-Hashimi.

The eleven reasons

1– The desire for split has gained a new spirit and momen­tum among the Kur­dish pub­lic opin­ion, effected by the inter­na­tional sep­a­ra­tion move­ments such the sep­a­ra­tion of Kosovo from Ser­bia, and the split dec­la­ra­tion of South Osse­tia and Abk­hazia from Geor­gia, or even the split of south­ern Sudan (chances of suc­cess are 100% if the process of vot­ing in the ref­er­en­dum 0f Jan­u­ary 11 2011).

2– The sep­a­ra­tion inten­tions did not take place dur­ing the past period, because of the lack of sup­port from Wash­ing­ton which would lead to strained rela­tions with Turkey. But after the recent ten­sion in Washington’s rela­tions with Turkey (because of Israel), Wash­ing­ton has given the green light to its ally Barzani in order to allow the U.S. to use the Kurdish-separation card to pres­sure Ankara.

3– Tel Aviv coor­di­nated with Irbil-Kurdistan to use the Kurdish-separation card to pun­ish Ankara. Among the most promi­nent signs, is that Barzani’s com­ments timed with the nor­mal­iza­tion of the Turk­ish — Israeli rela­tions, which is cur­rently cre­ated more dif­fer­ences than before.

4– Dur­ing the last period, Mas­soud Barzani, tried to keep the Kurdish-separation under reser­va­tion, because of the sense that he is unable to con­front Turkey, whom he bar­gained with on the PKK sep­a­rates issue. Barzani is no longer feared the Turk­ish threat, and thus he started to raise the sep­a­ratist inten­tions again.

5– The inten­tions of sep­a­ratism is linked exclu­sively to Barzani’s “charisma” and his polit­i­cal ambi­tions, he is no longer sees him­self sim­ply as the Head of the regional gov­ern­ment of Kur­dis­tan, but the Head of a State, and has decided to go a step for­ward in terms of call for a sep­a­rate state.

6– The Kur­dish — Kur­dish com­pe­ti­tion, is one of the rea­sons that prompted Barzani to high­light the sep­a­ra­tion issue, because of the increase in the Kur­dish polit­i­cal forces started to threat Barzani’s pop­u­lar­ity and his polit­i­cal party. Add to this that the new gen­er­a­tions that have growen in the Kur­dis­tan region dur­ing the past twenty years, have become more inter­ested in real­iz­ing the inde­pen­dent State of Kurdistan.

7– The sep­a­ra­tion issue is an another maneu­ver tried by Barzani aimed to cut a deal of freeze the sep­a­ra­tion issue in exchange for Kirkuk, and there­fore, it is likely that the com­ing period would wit­ness the offer­ing of con­ces­sions from Bagh­dad to Erbil, in Kirkuk.

8– Just an attempt to black­mail the three Iraqi fac­tions (State of Law — Iraqi National Alliance — Al-Iraqiya List) to get more gains. Par­tic­u­larly, in Kur­dis­tan region share of Iraq’s oil rev­enues, and allo­cate more of offi­cial posi­tions for the Kur­dis­tan Alliance.

9– The inde­pen­dent Kur­dis­tan is an issue required to deal with seri­ously. The eight years of Kur­dish self-rule have been exhausted its pur­poses, as a result, the tran­si­tion must go to a new for­mula indi­cates a new pro­gram for the Kur­dish polit­i­cal forces.

10– The polit­i­cal elite in Kur­dis­tan has real­ized that the inter­na­tional devel­op­ments are in favor of inde­pen­dent Kur­dis­tan. The Arab coun­tries and the Arab regional rul­ing sys­tem is very weak and in a state of power-decline, adding that Iran is engaged in how-to-cope with the increased inter­na­tional sanc­tions. with the U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence in Iraq,Turkey will not be able to act in a large-scale mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against the Kur­dis­tan region.

11– The sep­a­ratism inten­tions has been agreed upon in Wash­ing­ton and specif­i­cally among the Israeli-lobby cir­cles, the Kur­dish group, and the neo-conservatives-Republican lead­ers, in order to use the sep­a­ra­tion card to threaten and black­mail Bagh­dad to con­tinue the U.S. mil­i­tary pres­ence for an addi­tional period until the Repub­li­cans com­plete right­ing their grip on the White House, which has become possible.

Indi­ca­tions show that the Con­fer­ence of the Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party will undoubt­edly vote in favor of sup­port­ing the prin­ci­ple of self-determination for Kur­dis­tan, and the con­se­quences are:

- The Kur­dis­tan Demo­c­ra­tic Party will receive more sup­port from Kur­dish sep­a­ratists parties.

- Other Kur­dish polit­i­cal forces will try to take the same posi­tion of Barzani.

- Baghdad’s gov­ern­ment will work to put down of sep­a­ratism movement.

- The Iraqi polit­i­cal forces will try to tar­get the Kur­dish move­ments, which will lead to deepen the split among Iraqi polit­i­cal coalitions.

It is clear that the region will pick up the sep­a­ra­tion sig­nals com­ing this time from Irbil, and will try to read the codes of these sig­nals. There­fore, both Tehran and Ankara will try to the coor­di­nate to fail this separatist-ism project, espe­cially as its con­se­quences will not be con­fined to the ter­ri­tory of Iraqi Kur­dis­tan only.