Kurdish independence vote puts Canadians in tough spot
Soldiers work side by side fighting ISIL
As Iraq’s Kurds prepare to vote on whether to declare an independent state, Canadian special forces — who work so closely with the Kurds in the fight against ISIL they have worn Kurdish flags on their uniforms — find themselves in a delicate situation.
With a Sept. 25 referendum looming, tensions between the Kurds and Iraqis are on the rise. Iraq’s Parliament voted Tuesday to “take all measures” to preserve the country’s unity, and there are growing concerns fighting could break out between the forces loyal to the Iraqi government, which has declared the referendum unconstitutional, and the Kurdish minority. There have already been some clashes between Iraqi militia forces and Kurdish troops.
In the turmoil of the war against ISIL, the Kurds have seized portions of Iraq including 40 per cent of Iraq’s oil, giving them a steady flow of cash, and the city of Kirkuk. On Thursday the Iraqi parliament voted to fire the governor of Kirkuk province after it decided to officially take part in the referendum.
Since the fall of 2014, Canada has been providing equipment and military training to Kurdish troops in northern Iraq as part of the coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In November 2015, Kurdish forces, with support from coalition fighter jets including Canadian CF-18s, helped push ISIL out of the city of Sinjar. The Kurdish flag — not Iraq’s — was erected over the city. “Long live Kurdistan,” Kurdish gunmen shouted as they fired their weapons into the air.
It’s unclear how the referendum — and any resulting Kurdish break with Iraq — will affect the future of the Canadian mission. For now, it is business as usual for the troops providing training to Kurdish forces.
But the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command did confirm Friday that Canadian commandos have removed the Kurdish flags from their uniforms. Concerns were raised last year about what signal the Canadian military was sending by allowing special forces to wear the flag. Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Vance decided at the time the practice would continue. However, that changed in May after the U.S. issued a decree that its special forces in Syria had to remove Kurdish insignia from their uniforms. Turkey had complained about the use of the insignia of a Kurdish separatist force that it and other nations have branded a terrorist group.
Peggy Mason, a former disarmament ambassador in Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney’s government, said Canada and its allies have failed to think beyond the next battle against ISIL and weigh the consequences of their actions in the region. “How much progress have we really made if Iraq is so riven by internal divisions that new civil wars erupt — between Sunni and Shia, between the Kurds and the central government, with ISIL or its successors taking advantage of the various schisms and weakness of Baghdad at every turn?” asked Manson, president of the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute.
In July, Gen. Raymond Thomas, head of U.S. Special Forces Command, suggested any moves toward independence by the Kurds will lead to conflict as the Iraqis would not stand by and simply allow them to become independent.
“I don’t think they’re going to say, ‘Sure, take the oilfields and Kirkuk and go your way,’ ” Thomas told a security forum. “It’s not going to go peacefully.”
In addition, Mason questioned why the offer of Canadian Forces training, and training provided by other western forces, hadn’t been made conditional on the Kurds remaining part of a unified Iraq.
The Canadian government has said it supports a unified Iraq and that its training of the Kurds falls within that objective. When asked directly last year about concerns that Canadian training and equipment could inadvertently aid the Kurdish quest for independence, Vance replied it was important to have political unity during the fight against the Islamic State. “Where, after, Iraq decides to go in terms of its political laydown is up to Iraq,” he said. Kurdish president Masoud Barzani has cited Quebec’s quest for independence as one of the reasons he and his fellow Kurds are entitled to their own country. The Kurds will never surrender any of the territory they now hold in Iraq, Barzani has insisted.
Turkey, Iran and Syria oppose the referendum, worried it would further fuel separatist actions among their own Kurdish citizens. But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday his country would support the creation of a separate Kurdish state.