Iraq and the Kurds: Resolving the Kirkuk Crisis

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

With every day and each exploding bomb that kills schoolchildren or shoppers, hopes for peaceful resolution of the Kirkuk question recede. The approach favoured by the Kurds, constitution-based steps culminating in a referendum by year’s end, is bitterly opposed by Kirkuk’s other principal communities – Arabs and Turkomans – who see it as a rigged process with predetermined outcome. Their preference, to keep Kirkuk under federal government control, is rejected by the Kurds. With all sides dug in and the Kurds believing Kirkuk is a lost heirloom they are about to regain, the debate should move off outcomes to focus on a fair and acceptable process. For the Kurds, that means postponing the referendum, implementing confidence-building measures and seeking a new mechanism prioritising consensus. The U.S. needs to recognise the risk of an explosion in Kirkuk and press the Kurds, the Baghdad government and Turkey alike to adjust policies and facilitate a peaceful settlement.

The studied bystander mode assumed by Washington, the Kurds’ sole ally, has not been helpful. Preoccupied with their attempt to save Iraq by implementing a new security plan in Baghdad, the Bush administration has left the looming Kirkuk crisis to the side. This neglect can cost the U.S. severely. If the referendum is held later this year over the objections of the other communities, the civil war is very likely to spread to Kirkuk and the Kurdish region, until now Iraq’s only area of quiet and progress. If the referendum is postponed without a viable face-saving alternative for the Kurds, their leaders may withdraw from the Maliki cabinet and thus precipitate a governmental crisis in Baghdad just when the security plan is, in theory, supposed to yield its political returns.

Vigorous international diplomatic efforts on the Kirkuk question are overdue. Along with its allies, and assisted by the UN’s political and technical expertise, the U.S. should forge an alternative strategy on Kirkuk that is acceptable to all parties. Given the complex regional situation, it will need to incorporate two additional critical elements: progress on Iraq’s hydrocarbons law (major parts of which are yet to be negotiated) to cement the Kurdish region securely within a federal Iraq; and Turkey’s concerns about the PKK, the Turkish-Kurd guerrilla group whose fighters are holed up in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, in order to remove Ankara’s potential spoiler role.

If a ray of hope shines through this dismal tangle, it is that all sides in Kirkuk currently seem to agree on the need for dialogue. This includes the Kurds who, having pursued single-mindedly for four years a strategy that, even if it were to lead to the acquisition of Kirkuk, offered no prospect of holding onto it peaceably, have come to recognise its futility. Some are signalling they may be prepared to try something new, even if they continue to insist on a referendum in 2007. The international community should build on this and encourage the Kurds, with a gentle but firm nudge, to step back from the referendum and embrace instead a deliberative consensus-based process that could produce far greater dividends – peace and stability in a shared Kirkuk – than the imposition of their exclusionary rule via an ethnically-based, simple-majority vote and annexation.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Iraq:

1.  Invite the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) to assume a greater role in mediating the Kirkuk crisis and invoke if necessary Article 58(B) of the Transitional Administrative Law, as absorbed into the constitution, to request the UN secretary-general to appoint an independent international arbiter for Kirkuk.

2.  Implement the decisions of the Article 140 Committee regarding normalising the Kirkuk situation with the proviso that any departure of Arabs settled in Kirkuk by the previous regime should be strictly voluntary.

3.  Agree with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and other Iraqi interested parties to an oil-revenue-sharing law that allows for the equitable distribution to all Iraqis of royalties from oil and gas sales.

To the Kurdistan Regional Government:

4.  Forge internal PUK-KDP unity on a new approach toward the Kirkuk question, including agreement to postpone a referendum and to start serious dialogue over status with other primary stakeholders, as outlined below, so as to prevent one party from undermining accommodating proposals offered by the other.

5.  Initiate serious dialogue at senior leadership level with the full spectrum of Arab, Turkoman and Chaldo-Assyrian parties in Kirkuk, as well as the Iraqi government.

6.  In return for U.S. guarantees that it will protect the federal Kurdish region, cancel or at least postpone the referendum planned for the end of 2007 until a mutually satisfactory arrangement for determining Kirkuk’s status is reached with all other interested parties.

7.  Implement confidence-building measures as serious negotiations begin, including release of prisoners held without charge in detention centres in the Kurdish region, return of confiscated properties to Turkoman owners and reallocation of administrative posts in Kirkuk to reflect the city’s and governorate’s ethnic balance.

8.  Prepare the Kurdish public for necessary compromises on Kirkuk and Kurdish national aspirations.

9.  Agree with other interested Iraqi parties to an oil-revenue-sharing law.

10.  State publicly that it will not tolerate the PKK in the Kurdish region unless it agrees to abandon its armed struggle and disarms, and in the meantime:

(a)  continue to contain and isolate it and deny it freedom of movement within the Kurdish region;

(b)  halt all supplies to it; and

(c)  shut down its media operations and prevent journalists from visiting it on Qandil Mountain.

11.  In response to a Turkish amnesty for lower- and mid-level PKK cadres, allow senior leaders, once disarmed, to integrate into the Kurdish region and similarly agree to absorb any refugees from the Makhmour camp who refuse to return to Turkey.

To All the Parties in Kirkuk:

12.  Reduce inflammatory rhetoric in public addresses and the media and agree to use dialogue and consensus as essential bases for resolving the Kirkuk dispute.

13.  Make a public commitment to refrain from violence and take all necessary measures to prevent others from carrying out acts of violence.

To the U.S. Government:

14.  Formulate and implement with full diplomatic and financial support a proactive strategy on Kirkuk that will enable a peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and consensus building.

15.  Promise to protect the Kurdish region in exchange for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s agreement to abandon, or at least postpone, its referendum bid.

16.  Continue to push the Baghdad government, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the various political parties toward a compromise oil-revenue-sharing law.

17.  Allocate significant funds to rehabilitate the Kirkuk countryside and reconstruct the city and governorate, making sure to fairly distribute such funds among all communities.

18.  Persuade the Kurdistan Regional Government to further restrict the PKK’s freedom of movement and Turkey to amnesty lower- and mid-level PKK cadres.

To the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq:

19.  Provide political and technical support, once the referendum has been postponed or cancelled, to pursuit of an alternative Kirkuk solution through dialogue and consensus building and begin discussions with the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government to delineate the Kurdish region’s boundaries.

To the Government of Turkey:

20.  Reduce inflammatory rhetoric and commit to the peaceful resolution of the Kirkuk question, including not to send military forces into Iraq or to undertake measures of coercive diplomacy.

21.  Issue an amnesty for lower- and mid-level PKK cadres, allow senior leaders, once disarmed, to be absorbed into the Kurdish region in Iraq and allow refugees from the Makhmour camp to return to homes in Turkey.

To the PKK:

22.  Extend indefinitely the unilateral ceasefire declared in September 2006 and agree to disarm in response to a Turkish amnesty.

Kirkuk/Amman/Brussels, 19 April 2007