Tag Archive for: Kurds

France is prominent in efforts to shape Syria’s future, again

As Syria and international partners negotiate the country’s future, France has sought to be a convening power. While France has a history of influence in the Middle East, it will have to balance competing Syrian and international interests.

After the fall of Damascus on 8 December 2024, Paris moved rapidly to personalise ties with factions in Syria that it wants to see accepted and engaged in Syria’s national reunification and reconstruction.

On 11 December, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot held talks outside Syria with the Syrian Negotiation Commission. The commission was set up in 2015 by Syrian opponents to Bashar al-Assad’s regime and was recognised by the United Nations as the official opposition and responsible for negotiating a political resolution in Syria, but it has since been largely sidelined.

On 17 December Paris followed up with a diplomatic mission to Damascus to meet the real figures of power in Syria: senior Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leaders, notably former al-Qaeda operative and jihadist Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, president of the interim government, who now goes by the name of Ahmed al-Sharaa. This French delegation was the first in 12 years to visit Syria.

Then on 13 February France convened an international conference to discuss Syria’s situation and outlook. Representatives of 20 countries, the European Union, the UN, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council attended.

Previously, France sought to shape the situation in Syria through its firm support through UN General Assembly Resolution A/71/248 for the 2016 creation of the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism. This mechanism supports justice by collecting evidence of war crimes and during the Syrian civil war was assisted by 28 Syrian civil-society organisations. It has been supported by funding from the UN and 32 countries.

France’s interest in the Levant dates back to its historical competition with Britain over access to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and overland trade from Antakya on today’s Turkish coast to Baghdad, Basra and the Indian Ocean. France tussled with Britain over the status of Antakya until Turkey annexed the region in 1939, generating a flight of Christians and local Alawites into Syria.

France also considers protection of Christians as part of its residual influence in the region. This is especially true in Lebanon, but francophone Christianity extends into Syria and remains a social and economic current with subsurface political links.

So, Paris convening of the 13 February summit is no surprise, as there’s currently no other high-level international activity on Syria other than by the UN Security Council.

But with several countries and international groups pushing their interests in Syria, France faces an uphill battle to set the agenda.

EU states are concerned that the potential loss of Kurdish control of foreign-funded camps housing thousands of Islamic State (ISIS) adherents may allow detainees to walk free and spread their destructive ideology across Europe and the Middle East. There are 800 Swedish citizens in detention as ISIS supporters, 6000 ISIS family members from 51 countries in al-Hol camp and 10,000 ISIS combatants in 28 prisons in northeast Syria.

Such detainment centres are controlled by the US-backed Syrian Defence Force, so the EU can’t suppress ISIS without full cooperation, if not leadership, from Washington.

The EU has some ability to influence the Syrian interim government led by al-Sharaa. The EU can use its sanctions-lifting power and aid delivery as tools to shape Syria’s approach to governance and the facilitate the return of Syrian refugees. Given the opportunities available in Europe and continuing instability in Syria, few Syrian refugees will rush to return. So, the EU must not lift sanctions without a significant deal with the new government.

Turkey wants to limit Kurdish organisations and military formations. Skirmishes continue between Ankara and the largely Kurdish Syrian Defence Force. Ankara sees the force as a cover for the Kurdistan Workers Party, which the EU, Turkey and the US consider a terrorist organisation. Limiting Kurdish power would grant Turkey full control along and inside Syria’s northern border. Al-Sharaa has agreed with Turkey, his major backer, that Kurdish separatism has no place in the new HTS-run Syria.

The United States supports Kurdish forces, whom it pays to keep ISIS-linked families and others in camps and to control captured Syrian territory. US bases such as al-Tanf in eastern Syria have acted as tripwires against Iranian efforts to supply weapons to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But US President Donald Trump may withdraw US troops. This would reduce US influence, strengthening Turkey’s position.

Religion plays a deep and unavoidable role in Syria. The EU has partially linked sanctions relief to al-Sharaa’s promise of freedom of worship for minority religions. The EU has also promoted the importance of women’s rights, freedom of expression and due legal process. Delayed lifting of sanctions and aid delivery threaten domestic upset, so HTS is under pressure to meet Western expectations.

Lifting sanctions too quickly may disincentivise HTS from maintaining engagement with international partners and instead allow it to suppress religious expression, squash political debate, shut down human rights organisations and reduce regime transparency.

However, Washington’s early easing of sanctions against certain HTS leaders made diplomatic talks possible.

It’s clear that few Syrian representatives reflect the kaleidoscope of interests in the country. The Turkish-backed National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, a cluster of players who aimed to rid Syria of Assad, is no longer visible; nor are its members. Turkey may back the new HTS regime at the cost of dialogue and the risk of reigniting civil war.

Policy, Guns and Money: Syria, the Kurds and nuclear strategy

Our two grumpy defence strategists, Michael Shoebridge and Marcus Hellyer, discuss the US withdrawal from Syria, debate Vladimir Putin’s role, and grapple with the complex issue of returning Australian foreign fighters.

Continuing our coverage of Syria, Elise Thomas and Tom Uren from our cyber team chat about different social media campaigns that are targeting the narratives surrounding Turkey’s offensive against Kurdish forces in the region.

Finally, Jack Norton interviews senior fellow Rod Lyon about his latest ASPI publication, Nuclear strategy in a changing world, featuring a selection of his Strategist articles on nuclear strategy.

The high price of Trump’s great betrayal

There are several reasons why US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American forces from northern Syria, and leave the region’s Kurds vulnerable to neighbouring Turkey’s military incursion, was a terrible one. The Kurdish forces in control of the region had been the principal US partner in the struggle against Islamic State. Trump’s abandonment of them reinforced already existing doubts in the region and around the world that the United States remains a reliable ally.

The decision also created conditions enabling hundreds, and potentially thousands, of IS terrorists in Kurdish-run prisons to go free—and presumably resume terrorist activities as soon as they’re given the opportunity. It’s more a question of when, not if, US forces will need to return to Syria to contend with a reconstituted IS (most likely without a local partner to bear the brunt of the fighting). In the meantime, the Kurds have turned to the Syrian government for protection against Turkish forces, a move that has allowed President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime (backed by Russia and Iran) to reassert its control over much of the country. For its part, the US has lost most of what leverage it had to influence a political outcome in Syria, despite the securing of a temporary halt in the Turkish offensive.

Trump’s flawed decision seems to stem from his desire to make good on the promise he made during the 2016 election campaign to withdraw the US military from Syria and the Middle East more broadly. But this raises a larger question: given the negative impact of the move, why would he believe that it would prove popular at home?

One explanation is that Trump is confusing ‘endless wars’ with an open-ended military presence. This confusion is costly. What the US was doing in northern Syria was smart and efficient. Kurdish forces assumed the bulk of the combat role against IS; the US contribution was modest and largely confined to advising and providing intelligence support. Moreover, the US presence restrained the actions of the Turks, Syrians, Russians and Iranians. With the withdrawal of US troops, that restraint disappeared overnight.

More fundamentally, Trump’s decision taps into an old American tradition of isolationism, which has a lineage traceable to America’s founding fathers. It was in remission during the Cold War, but it has recently re-emerged, fuelled by the ‘intervention fatigue’ triggered by the long and expensive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It gains additional traction from the widespread view in the country that many domestic needs—from infrastructure to healthcare and education—are going unmet. A lack of emphasis on foreign policy and the world in US schools and media is also contributing to this inward turn.

Trump’s ‘America first’ slogan is premised on the idea that the costs of US world leadership far outweigh any benefits. The resources spent on activism abroad, according to this view, would be better spent at home.

However appealing such arguments may sound, the notion that the US can safely turn its back on the world and still thrive even as global order declines is seriously misguided. Trump has repeatedly claimed that Syria is not critical to America’s security, noting that it is thousands of miles away. But Americans learned the hard way on 11 September 2001 that distance is no guarantee of safety. Similarly, infectious disease, the effects of climate change and efforts to subvert elections don’t stop at national borders.

The costs of America’s global role are considerable by any measure. The defence budget alone now totals US$700 billion annually, and intelligence, foreign aid, diplomacy and maintaining a nuclear arsenal bring overall national-security spending to over US$800 billion. But as a percentage of GDP, this is well below the Cold War average. And history shows that the US economy nonetheless flourished even with this high level of spending.

To be sure, the US has many domestic shortcomings, from public education to healthcare, but for the most part these problems are not the result of a lack of spending. The country spends more than twice the OECD average on healthcare, but Americans don’t lead longer or healthier lives. Similarly, high spending on education doesn’t yield better results than in countries that spend less. How money is spent is always more important than how much is spent.

But such facts are nearly irrelevant when it comes to the political debate. Many of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump for the presidency in 2020 share at least some of his isolationist views, and opinion polls reveal that many Americans do too. Trump is as much a reflection of America’s mood as its driver, and a certain degree of Trumpism—a desire to pull back from global commitments in general and military ones in particular—is likely to outlast the man.

At some point, things will change. History suggests that periods of retrenchment often end owing to some great geopolitical shock, followed by periods of exertion. The problem is that such shocks tend to be costly in terms of human lives and resources. But for now and the foreseeable future, the US is unlikely to conduct a foreign policy commensurate with its interests and strength.

Who gains from Trump’s sudden Syrian withdrawal?

President Donald Trump has upended American policy in Syria, and possibly in the entire Middle East, in one stroke. His unilateral decision to withdraw American troops from the Kurdish region of northern Syria, and thus give a green light for the Turkish invasion of the Kurdish enclave, has put all American goals in Syria in grave jeopardy. These included protecting the autonomous Kurdish enclave as a quid pro quo for the Kurdish militia’s singular military contribution in liquidating Islamic State and capturing its capital Raqqa at the cost of thousands of lives. They also included preventing the regime of Bashar al-Assad from reasserting control in northern Syria (a very important US objective in Syria was to circumscribe Russia’s and Iran’s reach and influence in the country). Finally, one of the principal aims of American policy in both Syria and Iraq has been to prevent the resurgence of the IS.

All of these objectives now lie in tatters.

The YPG, having been let down by the US, has in desperation entered into an alliance with the Assad regime to counter the Turkish invasion. Syrian government forces are reported to be rapidly moving into the Kurdish enclave and towards the Turkish border. The Kurds have justified their decision by declaring that it is the duty of the Syrian government to protect the territorial integrity of the state. This is a major reversal of the YPG’s earlier stance that was anchored in gaining autonomy from Damascus and, as a corollary, preventing the intrusion of regime troops into the Kurdish proto-state.

The YPG had bargained that an American military presence in the area would not only deter a Turkish attack but also discourage the Assad regime from sending its troops into Kurdish territory. The YPG and its political arm, the PYD, seem to have given up their goal of autonomy from Damascus in return for ensuring the survival of the Kurdish people in the face of the Turkish assault that they fear could take on genocidal proportions.

The YPG and the umbrella force that it led, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), were until recently perceived by decision-makers in Washington as a barrier to the intrusion of Russian and Iranian military and political influence in northern Syria. Now, with the YPG allied with the Assad regime, it’s only a matter of time before Russian military advisers and Iran-backed Shia militias start operating in the Kurdish enclave. Russia and Iran are the Assad regime’s principal supporters, and Damascus was able to turn the tide in the Syrian civil war largely due to the aid of Russian airpower and the military prowess of battle-hardened Hezbollah fighters supported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force.

Both Russia and Iran are interested in attaining footholds in northern Syria. Both would like to see the Assad regime consolidate its control in all of Syria. Russia is also interested in gaining access to territory close to the Turkish border in order to enhance its bargaining power with Ankara over the Idlib enclave in northwestern Syria. While the Idlib region is under the nominal protection of Turkey, several hardline Islamist factions that Turkey finds difficult to control infest it.

These Islamist groups are inveterate enemies of both the Assad regime and Russia. Moscow would like to either eliminate them completely or drive them out of Syrian territory. To that end, it has conducted several air attacks on the Idlib enclave in contravention of the Sochi agreement it signed with Turkey in September 2018. Russia has claimed, with a great deal of justification, that Ankara hasn’t been able to keep its part of the bargain by not disarming Islamist factions and being unable to impose order in Idlib. Russia’s strategic position vis-à-vis Idlib is likely to be buttressed once it gains access to the Kurdish region of northern Syria that borders Idlib.

Iran will also make major political gains through the reassertion of the Assad regime’s control of the Kurdish enclave. Iran itself is faced with its own problem of Kurdish secessionist aspirations: the Kurdish proto-state in Syria was a source of inspiration not only for the Kurds in southeastern Turkey, but also the Kurds in northwestern Iran who have been in a state of an on-again, off-again rebellion against Tehran. Eliminating Kurdish autonomy and bringing the Kurdish enclave under the control of Damascus therefore redounds to Iran’s benefit as well by eradicating this source of attraction for Iranian Kurds. The extension of the Assad regime’s control into the Kurdish areas would also mean the indirect spread of Iran’s influence and presence in a region of Syria, and that also bordering Turkey, from which Iran had been excluded. This would give Iran greater leverage within Syria as well as in relation to Turkey, with which its relations have been ambivalent.

Finally, the mayhem created by the Turkish invasion, combined with the withdrawal of the American military presence from northern Syria, will be a boon for Islamic State. IS not only has sleeper cells in the region, but also had thousands of fighters who were incarcerated in the Kurdish enclave and guarded by YPG/SDF forces. These forces are now required to fight the Turkish invasion and so are unable to guard IS fighters and their dependents, many of whom have already escaped from the compounds where they were housed. It’s almost certain that these fighters will regroup and could well form the kernel of a resurrected IS. Several terrorist attacks attributed to IS have already been reported from northern Syria, and instances of such attacks are likely to increase in the near future.

This could lead to a repetition of the situation in Iraq after the American invasion of 2003, which left large swathes of territory ungoverned and in chaos, allowing terrorist groups to mushroom. The Turkish invasion of the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria and the American complicity in this act could very well usher in a rerun of the Iraqi scenario that created al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia that eventually morphed into IS.

Even if a fraction of this scenario turns out to be true, it will mean further suffering and turmoil in a region that has already had more than its share of both. What’s absolutely clear is that the hasty decision to withdraw American troops from the Kurdish region of Syria, thus paving the way for the Turkish invasion, has not only left the Kurds with a tremendous sense of betrayal but also overturned most of the goals that Washington had set for itself in Syria and the rest of the Middle East.

The betrayal of the Syrian Kurds has sent a clear message to America’s allies in the region and beyond that they can no longer depend on Washington’s assurances regarding their security, and that they should search for other options to ensure their own safety.

America betrays the Kurds again

The US has done it again. It has once more betrayed Kurdish aspirations for autonomy, this time in Syria. This behaviour fits into a longstanding pattern of moves undertaken by Washington for the past four decades or more.

In the early 1970s, as a favour to the Shah of Iran, the Nixon administration cooperated with Tehran, which was on antagonistic terms with Soviet ally Iraq, to foment Kurdish rebellion in Iraq. However, once Baghdad and Tehran reached an agreement in 1975 on their mutual boundary in the Shatt al-Arab, the shah decided to withdraw his support from the Kurds and the United States did so as well. This led to brutal reprisal against the Kurds by the Iraqi regime.

In 1991 in the build-up to the first Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush called on the Iraqis to overthrow the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. The Kurds and the Shia took this encouragement seriously. However, in the aftermath of that war the United States stood by as Iraqi forces crushed separate Kurdish and Shiite revolts with great ferocity. The US did finally impose a no-fly zone on the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, thus facilitating the emergence of an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, but the memories of that betrayal continue to linger among Iraqi Kurds.

The latest American betrayal of Kurdish aspirations, while part of this pattern, stands out for several reasons. The YPG, the Kurdish militia in northern Iraq, was a crucial ally of the US in its fight against Islamic State. The YPG was the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces that was primarily instrumental with American air support in liquidating IS bases in Syria and capturing the IS capital, Raqqa.

It lost thousands of fighters in order to achieve not only its goal of an autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria but, equally important, to eliminate IS, the main successor of al-Qaeda as an international terrorist group, which Washington considered a major threat to its security.

At the end of the campaign against IS, the United States found itself in a catch-22 situation. Its NATO ally Turkey considers the YPG an arm of the secessionist PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish state for more than three decades in order to carve out a Kurdish state or at least an autonomous entity in southeastern Turkey. Ankara believes that the setting up of a Kurdish proto-state on its borders with Syria will give a fillip to the PKK and provide encouragement to Kurds in Turkey to accelerate their struggle for an independent Kurdish entity carved out of Turkish territory.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had made it clear to the US that this was unacceptable to him, and Turkey had engaged in several cross-border incursions in the past year to attack YPG forces in Syria. Now, with IS routed and the prospects of an autonomous Kurdish proto-state a distinct reality, Turkey has forced the US to choose between Ankara’s interests and Washington’s support to the YPG.

Faced with the stark choice and in view of the Turkish determination to drive the Kurdish forces out of a substantial area in Syria bordering Turkey, President Donald Trump has finally decided to abandon America’s crucial Syrian allies, the YPG. This decision reminds one of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s remark in 1975 while referring to the US betrayal of the Kurds at that time that ‘covert action should not be confused with missionary work’.

The major difference this time is that Washington’s support for the YPG was not a covert action but an explicit commitment to support and protect the YPG in return for its taking the lead in eliminating IS. The feeling of betrayal among the Kurds therefore runs far deeper as a consequence of Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from the border between Turkey and the Kurdish enclave who were supposed to act as a trip wire in case Turkey decided to attack.

While Trump has tried to fudge the betrayal by conveying vague warnings to Ankara about violating unspecified red lines, in effect the US withdrawal has given a free hand to Turkey to enter the Kurdish areas in Syria and clear large swathes of territory of YPG forces and control it indefinitely. While ostensibly this is meant to create a safe zone in which Syrian refugees now in Turkey can be resettled, in actuality it means the destruction of any dreams of autonomy if not statehood that Syrian Kurds have harboured.

Trump announced the decision to remove American troops at 11 pm on a Sunday after a telephone conversation with Erdogan. The decision was taken against the advice of the Pentagon and in utter disregard of the opinions of leading senators and members of the House belonging to his own party. The timing and idiosyncratic manner in which a decision of such import was announced bear Trump’s hallmark.

However, the message that it sends to America’s allies in the region in terms of America’s credibility could lead to a major blowback that Washington will have to face in the not too distant future.

Iraqi Kurdistan’s future on slippery ground

The campaign to drive Islamic State (IS) out of Syria stands weakened as thousands of Kurdish fighters have been drawn away to defend Afrin after Turkey sent troops across the border. In their absence, hundreds of foreign IS fighters escaped. Far from Donald Trump’s promise to fix relations between Turks and Kurds, Washington now faces greater disarray across Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Away from Syria, a US success story in Iraq may be in the process of coming unstuck. Under the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), the small pocket of Iraqi Kurdistan had been described as a ‘haven of religious tolerance and relative safety’ and a ‘sanctuary’ for refugees. Even Turkey has normalised its relations with the KRG, and is now its top external trading partner. Yet, as the region crumbles, Kurdish unity in Iraq appears to be unravelling as well.

After the disastrous referendum for Kurdish independence in Iraq last September, Baghdad recaptured Kirkuk in October and increased its military presence on Iraq’s Turkish and Iranian borders. Large population centres within Iraqi Kurdistan suffered during this reassertion of federal control. But it isn’t armed intervention that has undone Kurdish unity. It’s oil that’s the slippery issue.

Petroleum from Kirkuk’s rich oil fields dominates Iraqi Kurdistan’s economy. Losing Kirkuk meant losing control of the fields, and the revenue they provided. When Kurdish forces moved into Kirkuk in June 2014, the KRG all but stopped developing its own fields. Now KRG has nothing to fall back on.

The signs are everywhere. Kurdoil outlets on the peripheries of Kirkuk and Erbil are dwarfed by half-finished skyscrapers, remnants of failed attempts to diversify the economy and then abandoned when the money ran out. Abandoned too were the allowances paid to the population in a region of very high unemployment. A large section of then-President Masoud Barzani’s voter base disappeared as a result. His leadership severely undermined, he stepped down on 1 November last year.

Meanwhile, Iran welcomed Baghdad’s announcement last December that it would truck Kirkuk oil across the border into Kermanshah. Up to 60,000 barrels per day will be exported. That’s nearly half of the KRG’s previous output. Iran had been a staple ally of Iraqi Kurds, extending assistance after Saddam Hussein launched chemical attacks in Halabja in 1988, and again in 1991 after the Gulf War. But Tehran’s logistical support for Baghdad during the recapture of Kirkuk and its willingness to import Kirkuk oil has left Barzani feeling betrayed.

Baghdad’s oil exports through Sulaymaniyah also undercut Barzani and his party, the Kurdish Democratic Party, in another way. Sulaymaniyah, in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan, is the heartland of the Gorran Movement, the largest Iraqi Kurd opposition party. It staunchly opposed the independence referendum. Bolstering Sulaymaniyah’s oil economy spreads patronage to a different voter base, one that is much friendlier to Baghdad.

But most devastating is the effect that Kirkuk’s loss will have on Kurdish relations with Turkey. As the Kirkuk–Ceyhan pipeline runs dry, Turkey is likely to distance itself from the KRG. Turkey wants foremost to maintain the territorial integrity of Iraq. Relative to that aim, its formerly close relations with the KRG seem to be, at best, a fragile contractual agreement.

As the oil partnership dwindles, future relations between Ankara and the KRG will be dominated by Turkey’s dispute with what it calls the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Key PKK bases are located in the Qandil Mountains in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan. The mountains sit in a zone controlled by another Kurdish party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. To keep Ankara close, Barzani’s party will have to let Turkey pursue its burgeoning military and intelligence presence in the region despite the misgivings of an already-distrustful Iraqi Kurd population. This move will only deepen rifts among Kurdish factions.

As Iraqi Kurdistan falters, Washington may come to rue its handling of its relationships with the Kurds, Ankara and Baghdad. Iraq’s elections are fast approaching. Without a united Kurdish list in Baghdad’s election—one that can collectively support a pro-Western presidential candidate—Washington may find itself dealing with a government in Baghdad that’s either too weak or too malevolent to help realise US security objectives.

Aspirations for Kurdish statehood will continue to disrupt and divide Iraq. Kurdish military commanders have already become too powerful for Baghdad to contain. An even stronger Iraqi Kurdistan that threatens more sectarian violence won’t be welcome. Nor does the US want to become entangled in a conflict that’s less about defeating IS and more about navigating Kurdish rivalries.

Losing Kurdish forces in Syria was bad. But a crumbling Iraqi Kurdistan bodes even worse for US objectives in the region.

Iraqi Kurds’ referendum: a step towards independence, or regional chaos?

The Kurds are flavour of the month. We are now familiar with media coverage of Kurdish fighters, many of them women, pushing back the jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Pursuing separate political projects on either side of the Iraq–Syria border, Kurdish forces have won praise and considerable military support in the international campaign to unseat ISIS.

Boosted by surging goodwill and recent territorial gains, Iraqi Kurdish president Massoud Barzani has called a referendum to decide whether the semi-autonomous region that he heads should seek independence from Iraq. If jubilant rallies in Kurdish cities in Iraq are any indication, the ‘yes’ vote on 25 September will win emphatically.

The independence referendum, however, may well undermine the Kurds’ favoured status. Few Western governments would quibble with the Kurds’ right to seek self-determination. Deprived of a state at the carve-up of the Middle East after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurdish population was divided among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. In each of those states they’ve since suffered numerous humiliations.

Numbering around 30 million, Kurds argue they deserve a national homeland: ‘Kurdistan’. That the Kurdish peshmerga have played an instrumental role in the struggle against ISIS adds weight to that argument. In Syria, Kurdish militia, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces, form the backbone of the force to retake Raqqa, the seat of ISIS’s so-called caliphate.

On both of these fronts the Kurds have made considerable territorial gains with the military backing of the US and allies. Kurdish foot soldiers in the campaign against ISIS have saved Western governments from putting their own forces in the line of fire.

But any goodwill the Kurds have amassed doesn’t extend to Western approval of the independence referendum. Both the US and the UK foreign offices have voiced their dismay at this unilateral move. Western diplomats have made last-ditch efforts to get the Kurds to abandon the referendum.

Western concerns centre on any disruption to the anti-ISIS campaign that might result from a subsequent Kurdish declaration of independence. The emergence of a fledgling state is unlikely to go unquestioned in the region. It will inevitably have an impact on the geopolitical balance. Received wisdom holds that existing borders, which deprived the Kurds of a state, are sacred, and that any change could trigger a domino effect.

A prospective regional realignment also worries Turkey. Ankara maintains good relations with the Iraqi Kurds but is highly sensitive to the aspirations of its own Kurdish minority. The Turkish foreign ministry argues that the Kurds’ referendum will undermine Iraq’s territorial sovereignty (an issue Ankara glosses over when it ignores Baghdad’s demands to withdraw unauthorised Turkish troops stationed in northern Iraq). But Ankara clearly fears that an emerging Kurdistan will incite heightened separatist sentiments among Kurds in Turkey. That has given rise to extensive tub-thumping from Turkish politicians and recent military manoeuvres on the Iraqi border.

Iran is similarly concerned at the intentions of its fractious Kurdish minority. Tehran is also closely allied with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. Earlier talk of a ‘Kurdish corridor’ allowing Iran access to the Mediterranean through northern Iraq and Syria has proved nothing more than hyperbole, with Tehran firmly voicing its disapproval of the Kurds’ referendum. Military officials in Iran state that should the referendum proceed it would close its borders and terminate security agreements with the Kurdish regime. Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Revolutionary Guards, has gone further, saying Iran will occupy the Kurdish region.

Meanwhile, not unexpectedly, Baghdad condemns the referendum. The Kurds made gains at Baghdad’s expense by claiming the disputed city of Kirkuk when the Iraqi army fled before ISIS’s advance. The Iraqi army has since regrouped and, with ISIS on the ropes, is more assertive. Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi decries the referendum as an ‘invitation’ for others to violate Iraqi sovereignty. He has stated that any violence arising out of the referendum will provoke a military response from Baghdad.

Just how Ankara, Tehran and Baghdad will play this is difficult to determine. All have track records of brutal responses to Kurdish manoeuvring. Despite bellicose talk, none of them desires greater conflict, but the positions of all three mean that the Kurds are conducting their referendum in a highly charged atmosphere.

The Kurds have played a clever strategic game since the emergence of ISIS. In beating back the jihadists in Syria and Iraq, they have consolidated their own positions. Whether that means they are canny operators or shameless opportunists depends on one’s perspective.

It should be remembered that the Iraqi Kurds’ referendum is not an irreversible step towards independence. This may just be yet more jockeying to create political capital as the Kurds negotiate their place as a non-state entity living among overbearing neighbours.

Whatever the case, there’s little doubt the Kurds would like more diplomatic support from the West. Considering all they have endured, perhaps that’s not too much to ask.

The case for Kurdistan

The Kurds—who occupy a mountainous region that includes portions of Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey—are the largest ethnic group in the world without a state to call their own. It is time to change that.

The Kurds have been making bids for statehood—and having them brutally suppressed—since the early 20th century. But there is a strong case for the United States, in particular, to work towards securing a homeland for the Kurds—a case buttressed by Kurdish militias’ indispensable contribution to defeating the Islamic State.

To be sure, the establishment of a ‘greater Kurdistan’ that includes all areas where the Kurds comprise a majority remains impossible. If internal Kurdish politics were not enough to prevent such an outcome, geostrategic constraints certainly would be.

Kurdish independence is particularly implausible in Turkey. The Kurds’ main representative in that country, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—which champions a distinctly secular, Marxist brand of nationalism—has been fighting the Turkish government for decades. But, the government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has not wavered in its commitment to preventing the establishment of a Kurdish state, to the point that even the PKK’s founder, Abdullah Öcalan, now favors a resolution that falls short of independence.

Erdoğan’s commitment to ending the PKK’s quest is so strong that he is also working to prevent Syria’s Kurds from leveraging sovereignty from their military gains against ISIS. He fears that Kurdish success in Syria would inspire Turkey’s Kurds to revive their own fight for statehood in the country’s southeast. This fear of nationalist spillover has driven Erdoğan’s campaign to create a buffer zone along the Turkish border that extends well into the territory now controlled by Syrian Kurds.

But the Kurdish community in Iraq, represented by the Kurdish Regional Government, has a real shot at statehood. The KRG is a quasi-sovereign entity overseeing an efficient military and an independent economy. Although it is plagued by corruption and cronyism, like every other political organisation in the region, the KRG represents the only truly functional government in Iraq, presiding over the country’s most peaceful and stable areas.

The strength of the KRG’s position is not lost on its leaders. The ruling Kurdish Democratic Party plans to hold a referendum on independence this September. Yet even a resounding call for secession will not be enough to achieve success. For that, the US must throw its weight behind the pro-Western KRG and offer resolute support for the independence effort.

After 14 years of failed military intervention in Iraq, the US should recognise that ‘a unified, stable, democratic, and federal Iraq’, as a State Department spokesperson recently put it, is a chimera. Since the US-led invasion in 2003, Iraq’s political system has become highly polarised along sectarian lines, with the ruling Shia majority marginalising the Sunnis, including the Kurds. Indeed, Sunni exclusion was a key reason for the rise of ISIS.

Today, Iraq is effectively an Iranian trusteeship, not a US ally. To the dismay of the Kurds and other Sunni Iraqis, Shia militias controlled by the Iraqi and Iranian governments, such as Hashd al-Shaabi, are filling much of the void left behind by ISIS.

As the experience in Yugoslavia showed, when ethnic or religious cleavages explode, the most effective path to peace may well be separation. And a Kurdish state has a real chance of thriving: an independent Kurdistan could manage to combine natural-resource wealth with a tradition of stable and pragmatic governance, thereby creating a sustainable democracy. This would amount to a win for pro-Western forces in the Middle East.

Even Turkey may be willing to accept such an outcome. The US and Turkish governments agree on distinguishing the Kurds in Iraq from those in Turkey, for whom statehood is not an option. In fact, Turkey has strong relations with the KRG—bilateral trade has lately been expanding, and KRG oil pipelines extend into Turkish territory—because Erdoğan’s government views it as a counterweight to Turkey’s PKK.

Moreover, now that President Donald Trump, by ending US military support for Syria’s anti-government rebels, has effectively handed the country over to Russia and Iran, Sunni-led Turkey needs a strategic buffer against Shia-led Iraq and Syria more than ever.

As it stands, the Trump administration—not to mention Iraq’s national government, led by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi—claims that the Kurdish referendum, let alone secession, would destabilise Iraq. Some argue that it might even drive voters to choose a more radical Shia government in next year’s elections—one that would be far less accommodating towards the Kurds.

But, with US backing, such an outcome could be avoided. In fact, it is in America’s own interest to build a true Sunni alliance that includes an independent Kurdistan. The Palestinians, who have also spent far too long on the losing side of the Middle East’s strategic game, could enrich such an alliance further.

The Trump administration is eager to contain the influence of the Russia–Iran–Hezbollah axis in the Middle East. But it cannot achieve this objective by simply offering more arms to Saudi Arabia or its Sunni proxies. Respecting the yearning of disenfranchised and oppressed peoples—beginning with the Kurds—for freedom, democracy, and competent governance remains vital for a durable Western imprint on the region’s future.

Two conflicts, two enemies: Erdogan’s volatile security dilemma

Image courtesy of Flickr user United Nations Photos

While ISIS is clearly a complex thorn in the side of the Turkish government, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a broad range of interconnected problems related to Syria that are destabilising the nation’s security and reputation. He’s perceived by his population as a strong leader, but his brand of autocratic power politics has the potential to deteriorate the situation further.

Turkey is involved in two conflicts—one internally and one across its Syrian border, with two enemies, ISIS and Kurdish dissident groups. Internally, over the past 12 months Turkey has suffered 14 attacks, killing a total of 280 people, which have been attributed to both ISIS and Kurdish terrorists. The Turkish government and the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) have a 40-year-long history of fighting, but with a 2013 ceasefire breaking in 2015 this conflict has again intensified and threatens to spiral out of control.

In 2014, Turkey agreed to become part of the US-led operations against ISIS in Syria, but resisted becoming directly involved in the air campaign. Turkish involvement has been further complicated by the US reliance on Kurdish forces operating on the ground in Syria and Iraq.

The emergence of a self-governing Kurdish entity on Turkey’s southern border in 2014 was interpreted as a direct threat to Turkey by Erdogan. Having supported all manner of Sunni jihadist groups fighting Assad in Syria since 2011, including Jabhat-al-Nusra, the Turkish Government continued to allow support (foreign fighters, illicit goods and weapons transfers) to flow through Turkey’s southern border. This benefited Daesh among others, undermining the Kurdish groups on its southern border. Later that year, ISIS massacred Kurdish civilians in Kobani on the border with Turkey—with Erdogan’s failure to respond increasing his tensions with Turkish Kurds (who make up 20% of Turkey’s population), and frustrating the US.

Subsequent pressure from the US and the EU during 2015 resulted in Turkey stepping up its efforts to tighten control of the southern border, and opening up Incilik air base for use by US aircraft against ISIS. ISIS responded by conducting an extensive bombing campaign inside Turkey, including the suicide bombing of a peaceful Kurdish march in Ankara in October 2015, which killed over 100 people and injured hundreds more.

A 2013 ceasefire between Turkey and Kurdish PKK militants abruptly ended in July 2015 after a suicide bombing in the south-eastern Kurdish city of Suruc, which killed 32 people and was claimed by ISIS. Kurdish groups blamed Erdogan’s government for not doing enough to thwart ISIS’s operations inside Turkey. In an attempt to respond with a show of strength, the government launched airstrikes against ISIS in Syria but also against the PKK in Iraq. What’s followed has been a Turkish effort, in Erdogan’s words, to ‘liquidate’ the PKK and its associates.

The International Crisis Group has reported that since the fighting resumed in 2015, at least 281 civilians, 525 members of Turkish security forces, and 553 Kurdish militants have been killed. Turkish government reports estimate that 900 security force members have been killed and almost 3,000 wounded in that time; and more than 7,000 rebels have been killed by the military. That level of operation is unsustainable for the Turkish military, and is leading to a Kurdish terrorist campaign. Killing on that scale will lead to further radicalisation of Kurds living in those areas and an increased disconnection from the Turkish state.

Erdogan’s autocratic leadership style and heavy-handed military moves have politically isolated him, both domestically and internationally. He’s shut down dissenting voices against him, both within his own party and amongst the broader population, in an effort to consolidate power. He’s in an open power play dispute with former ally Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and has charged almost 2,000 people with the crime of insulting the President.

The US has become tired with him over his lack of a firm approach to counter ISIS. President Obama stated in an interview that he thought Erdogan would be a ‘moderate Muslim’ leader who could assist in ‘bridging the divide between East and West’, but had lost faith and considered him a ‘failure and an authoritarian who refuses to bring stability to Syria’. Even when Erdogan strengthened his arm against ISIS, he alienated Turkey from Russia by shooting down one of their aircraft. That isn’t a healthy political direction for a NATO member and potential member of the European Union. Autocracy isn’t on the ‘acceptable’ list for membership of either.

Erdogan’s finally being forced to act against ISIS, due to constant US pressure and the impact that inactivity against the group has had on Turkish internal security. We’re now seeing the government response to the recent attacks on Ataturk Airport, with 13 arrests made across Istanbul and a further crackdown expected, tightening security along its borders, and further raids on known terrorist cells. Erdogan will continue with his robust response, hammering down on suspected ISIS members, as his actions play to his image as a ‘strong man’ prepared to wipe out any that oppose Turkey. He’s capitalised on the growing nationalist sentiment and polarisation within his country resulting from the conflicts with ISIS and the Kurds to bolster his political position.

Many inside the country see him as the only solution to Turkey’s problems. However, the growing conflicts with ISIS and the PKK—along with Erdogan’s increasing centralisation of power—make it unlikely that Turkey’s security situation will improve rapidly over the coming months and years. The situation has genuine potential to unravel completely, the consequences of which will have far-reaching consequences for Turkey and its surrounding region.

The Strategist Six: David Kilcullen

This interview with military strategist David Kilcullen launches The Strategist Six, a new feature that will provide a glimpse into the thinking of prominent academics, reporters, government officials, military officers and discipline leaders from around the world.

1. Is the US-led military intervention in Iraq starting to produce the desired results?

Yes. We are starting to see slow but significant improvement on the ground in Iraq. The remaining key problems are primarily political, but it’s a slow process of trying to roll back a really resilient and dangerous enemy.

2. When do you think the Iraqi Army will be in a position to retake Mosul?

Best case, not before about September or October. More likely, into the new year.

3. Has Russian intervention saved the Assad regime?

Yes. Russian intervention stopped the rot last September. The Assad regime was losing ground all through last year and looked like it might collapse. Now there’s really very little chance that the Assad regime will collapse. Whether the Russians can roll that back and improve the Assad regime’s control, that’s a different question. They’ve certainly staved off the fall of the regime, and now it’s a question of what happens next, and everyone’s hoping that what will happen next is peace talks.

4. What is the future for the Kurds, given they’ve done most of the hard fighting against ISIS? Do you foresee the emergence of a Kurdish state?

Iraqis would dispute that the Kurds have done most of the hard fighting, I think the Kurds would agree with you. There certainly is already a de facto Kurdish state in the north, the question is what is the extent of that state, and how does it relate to other regional players. So there certainly is a move for the Kurdish state to expand into Syria, and there are elements within Iraqi Kurdistan that would love to see a closer relationship with, say, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, but it’s not a unified organisation. So you’ve got the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party increasingly at each other’s throats. I think it’s quite likely that we will see at the end of this process a de facto Kurdistan that is not actually particularly unified, and is very well armed compared to now, and may have territorial ambitions more broadly. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it’s just the symptom of the general breakdown of the geopolitical structure of the Middle East.

5. Is ISIS serious about extending its reach to Southeast Asia?

Yes. Absolutely. We’re going to see the emergence of a fully-fledged wilayah in Southeast Asia in the coming year, almost certainly. That doesn’t mean necessarily that existing jihadist groups in the region are going to welcome ISIS, necessarily, there’s likely to be competition. Unfortunately, that competition may take the form of each of them seeing how much damage they can do to regional governments in the west, so it may actually increase the terrorism threat. But certainly, ISIS has an agenda of creating these regional territorial possessions which they call provinces or wilayahs, and there certainly will be one, possibly more, within Southeast Asia in the next few years.

6. What do you think is the most significant threat to global security currently?

Right now, I would say it is the state-on-state conflict in the Middle East that’s generating population outflow in the shape of migrants to Europe and elsewhere that’s really doing significant damage to the geopolitical stability of the Middle East and North Africa. It’s contributing to this general set of economic problems including low oil prices and lack of state capacity that we’re seeing more broadly. So I would say that’s the biggest threat right now. Long term, it’s probably not the biggest threat, and certainly the terrorist element of ISIS is not the biggest threat, but the state-on-state conflict is pretty dangerous.