Wisdom has been in short supply in the Kurdish referendum campaign

Whatever one’s view of the legality of the Kurdish referendum, holding it at this time remains unwise.

The Kurds risk losing international support and exposing political fissures within. More importantly, the move places the gains the Kurds have made over decades at risk.

Iraq, the Arab League, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United Nations, Turkey, Iran and most European states have urged the Kurds to postpone the referendum, which comes at a time when the Kurds have failed to establish the basic rudiments of a state.

The US has gone as far as to say that the Kurds’ actions will be destabilising. Given the threats being made by Iran and Turkey, that may be something of an understatement.

The Kurds themselves are not united. Their president is now in his fourth year past the end of the legal term of his office and has not faced the electorate in eight years.

Regional parliament was suspended two years ago.

It has not met since, with the exception of a few days ago, when two thirds of its members were recalled to give meek and obedient acquiescence to the referendum – without the right to debate the wisdom of holding it. Though most Kurds may have had their dreams of independence kindled, the political class is deeply divided in Kurdistan about the timing and the potential consequences of Monday’s events.

Iraq’s president, an ethnic Kurd, has said that this is the wrong time for the referendum, as has Gorran, the embattled opposition party that garnered the second-highest number of seats in the last regional parliamentary elections. There are reports that a controversy is raging within the ruling Kurdish parties as to whether the referendum should take place in Kirkuk.

Politics aside, the Kurdish region is in economic shambles. Government salaries have been slashed, notwithstanding accommodations from Baghdad.

Over the past two years, the government has been allowed by Baghdad to retain all revenues from Kirkuk’s oilfields even though their legal share is 17 per cent. This concession was made even as Baghdad has continued to pay the salaries of the oil workers in Kirkuk.

Moreover, Baghdad has not demanded accountability for the billions of dollars seized by the Kurdistan Regional Government since 2014. Still, salaries in certain sectors are as much as two years behind.

Baghdad, by contrast, has not missed a pay cheque.

The economic instability of the government augurs ill for independence, while also being a potential cause for instability that the region cannot afford.

The gains the Kurds have made in Iraq over the decades have been incredible. In the 1980s, they were the objects of genocidal treatment by the regime of Saddam Hussein.

After the invasion of Kuwait, the Kurds secured the protection of the US and the UK. The result was that they set up two governments, one in Erbil and one in Suleimania.

By the mid-1990s, the Kurds were fighting their own civil war, one that Suleimania, with the help of Iran, was on the verge of winning. Erbil allied itself with Saddam and beat Suleimania back. The two governments remained in place, even as the Kurds became isolated from Iraq.

Although the Kurds have given the appearance of unifying their two governments, the two Kurdish axes in Iraq remain divided. Still, they have been able to maintain stability within the region and have been re-engaged in Baghdad, where they have an important voice, since 2003.

Their gains on the international arena have also been impressive. Fifteen years ago, Turkey regarded a federated arrangement with Iraqi Kurdistan as a threat to its own unity. Now, Turkey is the Kurdistan region’s leading trading partner, as Turkey has seen that Baghdad has accommodated the federal arrangement.

The Kurds risk all these gains, as Baghdad predictably reacts with anger at being dictated to by Erbil and as Turkey and Iran look upon Kurdish independence as an existential threat.

A wise leadership would have sought to engage Baghdad and solve their problems without the unilateral declaration of a non-binding referendum.

The Iraqi prime minister, unlike his counterparts in Erbil, does not rule: he governs through a coalition and is ultimately responsible to the federal parliament. The referendum makes it far more difficult for him to resolve those issues. How, for instance, can Baghdad justify continuing to share the wealth of Iraq’s south, where 90 per cent of its oil reserves lie, after the Kurds declare themselves in favour of independence? How can Baghdad tolerate a Kurdish president, ministers, members of parliament and thousands of bureaucrats once the Kurds reject Iraq?

A wise leadership would have asked itself these and a myriad other questions before embarking on this ill-conceived and ill-timed course.

Politics aside, the Kurdish region is an economic shambles

Feisal Al Istrabadi is the founding director of the Centre for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University