Kurdish vote is a “nightmare” for Baghdad

After a century of conflict and mass atrocities, Iraq’s Kurds are on the verge of securing the independent Kurdistan they’ve long dreamed of, said Amir Sharifi in Rudaw (Erbil). The no-fly zone over their territory, imposed by the West against Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1991, enabled them to gain de facto autonomy from Baghdad. And this week they voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum. It isn’t legally binding – there’s no mechanism for a part of Iraq to secede from the rest of the country – but it has huge symbolic value. It’s also a “ghastly political nightmare” for the Baghdad government and for neighbouring Turkey and Iran, all of which have large Kurdish minorities. Even our friends in the West are nervous. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demanded the poll be scrapped, as did politicians in Brussels and Berlin.

“Hypocrites,” said Namo Aziz in Die Zeit (Hamburg). Western leaders were happy to let the Kurds’ peshmerga soldiers bear the brunt of the fighting against Isis: now this. But what on Earth do they mean by claiming the vote will “cause instability”? The Kurdish territory has been an oasis of calm even as killing and ethnic cleansing have ravaged the rest of Iraq and Syria. Besides, Iraqi Kurds are the only other people in the region to commit to democracy and the rule of law. Turkey is “turning into a dictatorship”; the Shia government in Baghdad is the “vassal of Iran”, which props up Assad in Syria and backs terror groups. You can see why Iran and Turkey are appalled by the vote result, said Ranj Alaaldin on Al Jazeera English (Dubai). The last thing Tehran wants is a state with strong ties to the US on its northwestern border; one that could fire up Iran’s Kurds. Turkey, too, fears its own Kurds will strive to be part of the new state. But “sensationalist” predictions of a domino effect are misplaced. The new Kurdistan faces too much resistance for it to spread beyond Iraq’s borders. Iran’s Kurds are too weak to bid for independence; Turkey’s are on the defensive against a brutal military crackdown. President Erdogan may fulminate about it, but he can’t be that concerned – Turkey has invested heavily in Kurdish Iraq as a source of natural gas and as a buffer against the Iran-dominated government in Baghdad.

A flashpoint will be the future status of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, said Raya Jalabi on Reuters.com. The city was left out of the no-fly zone and has a large, multi-ethnic population – not least because Saddam Hussein expelled many Kurds and “Arabised” it during the 1980s. But the Kurds claim it belongs to them, and the peshmerga, who took control in 2014 in the international pushback against Isis, won’t willingly let it go. Yet as a major oil centre, the city’s loss would be felt keenly by Baghdad, which could unleash the Shia militias stationed nearby against it. For all the promises the Kurdish leaders have made to their people, winning independence peacefully is not going to be easy.