The "Iraqi Army"

Tom Lasseter of Knight-Ridder continues to do heroic work digging into the reality on the ground in Iraq.  He paints a stark picture of Kurdish fealty to Iraq's central government when it comes to the hot-button issue of Kirkuk.  The whole piece is worth a read, but it's full of forceful quotes from Kurdish leaders making quite clear their intentions:

The [Kurdish] soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga - the Kurdish militia - and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many said they wouldn't hesitate to kill their Iraqi army comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.

"It doesn't matter if we have to fight the Arabs in our own battalion," said Gabriel Mohammed, a Kurdish soldier in the Iraqi army who was escorting a Knight Ridder reporter through Kirkuk. "Kirkuk will be ours."

[...]

Col. Talib Naji, a Kurd serving in the Iraqi army on the edge of Kirkuk, said he would resist any attempts to dilute the Kurdish presence in his brigade.

"The Ministry of Defense recently sent me 150 Arab soldiers from the south," Naji said. "After two weeks of service, we sent them away. We did not accept them. We will not let them carry through with their plans to bring more Arab soldiers here."

[...]

"Kirkuk is Kurdistan; it does not belong to the Arabs," Hamid Afandi, the minister of Peshmerga for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two major Kurdish groups, said in an interview at his office in the Kurdish city of Irbil. "If we can resolve this by talking, fine, but if not, then we will resolve it by fighting."

Then, this:

Jafar Mustafir, a close adviser to Iraq's Kurdish interim president, Jalal Talabani, and the deputy head of Peshmerga for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a longtime rival of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, echoed that.

"We will do our best diplomatically, and if that fails we will use force" to secure borders for an independent Kurdistan, Mustafir said. "The government in Baghdad will be too weak to use force against the will of the Kurdish people."

Admitting that elections are better than dictatorship only gets you so far, it seems.  This is a politics, yes, but it is a nasty, volatile, divisive politics.  Probably be better if we find a way to extricate ourselves from it before we're forced to take sides.

Comments

[anodyne]

Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination on my part, but aside from a sudden and unfathomable turn toward an extreme isolationist position, I don’t see how the US can avoid or would want to avoid supporting the solidification of Kurdish military, political and economic interests in Iraq, even at the expense short-term stability.

Notwithstanding the “nasty, volatile, divisive politics” involved (not to mention the actual violence), an independent Iraqi Kurdistan, whether wholly autonomous, in loose federation with other regions of Iraq, or part of an alliance of convenience that imposes a strong central government over the country’s current borders seems to be a lynchpin of any “sensible US interventionist policy” in Iraq (hopefully pure isolationists can get past the apparent oxymoron). I can see where Kurdish interests will be part of a delicate balancing act in our relations with Turkey and the EU, and to some extent part of a “carrot and stick” approach to dealing with Iran and Syria. However, for the medium term at least, clear subordination of Kurdish interests and/or extrication of a US military presence in Kurdish Iraq appear to be very unlikely options. Talk of withdrawal from Arab regions of Iraq is one thing, but talk of withdrawal of US (or perhaps eventually UN troops) from Northern Iraq in the medium term seems like a non-starter.

Can anyone provide citations to serious policy analysts who focused on US/Kurd relations prior to the invasion of Iraq and subsequent to it (no Hitchens links please)?