A negotiation to barter the referendum with sanctions

Written by Nasser Kandil,

All the available information from the scenes of the regional and the international relations that surround the project of the secession of Kurdistan ensures that the project was born dead, and that the stable convictions of the supports of the Kurdish leadership in the West in particular prove that the opportunities of success are nil, and that the ceiling of what can be done is the escalation to stop it by issuing a common international position that based on a bilateral; the unity of Iraq and the rights of the Kurds, through a negotiation that leads to an exit that face-saving those who got involved in the quest for secession in exchange of their smooth retreat of the sanctions which it seems that their continuation will drop all the gains achieved by the project of Kurdistan over the years.

The supporters of the secession were surprised at the size of harmony of the Turkish, Iranian, and Iraqi positions to the extent that some people described them with the ambush that was set for Al-Barazani to go in for the referendum and to fall in the trap through the standstill of Baghdad’s position throughout the period that separated between the declaration of the determination on the referendum, and the date of its holding. Baghdad did not show any vigor or determination, and there were not any indicators for Turkish- Iranian –Iraqi coordination as the size which appeared suddenly, after it was hidden for ten years at least, it appeared strongly contrary to all the expectations which depended on the apparent data, and which expected political warnings, mediations,  and admonition, they did not expect a decisive decision of suffocating blockade to the extent of threatening the state of secession by falling and maybe by the military invasion or at least extracting Kirkuk by force from it, along with Iraqi bordered line that links Iraq with Turkey and Iran, and besieges Kurdistan.

The supporters of the secession were surprised that the Russian position which supports the rights of Kurds considers that the unity of Iraq and the unity of Syria a red line for the stability in the region, and that the Turkish-Iranian understanding towards the state of secession constitutes a sufficient reason for the inclusion of Russia. It is the owner of a Russian- Iranian- Turkish- Syrian- Iraqi project that is achieved under the title of confronting the threat of the fragmentation of the region entities. Thus the understandings which the west  wants in Washington and the European capitals about Syria has become conditioned with the formula of the Turkish-Iranian understanding which is supported by Russia and which attracts Syria and Iraq. Its main condition is the fall of the state of secession.

The Europeans who sponsored historically and traditionally the Kurdish project in Iraq despite its political subordination to Washington and its distinctive relations with Israel and the Gulf have understood well the Syrian lesson. The goals on which Europe has drawn the foreign policy have changed. As the French President Emanuel Macron who called for a negotiation that preserves the unity of Iraq and the rights of the Kurds, and avoids the escalation said that the policies of spreading democracy and the human rights do not worth taking a risk of stability, because the generalization of the European values must not be at the expense of the security of Europe, the intension here surely is not the values but the colonial policies that are covered by these values. The war on Syria to overthrow the regime prove that the European cost was the dangerous population change through the flow of the displaced people, and the major security concern through the expansion and the rootedness of terrorism, in addition to the economic regression, the unemployment, and the recession. Those who concerned about the immigration of the Syrians will not take the risk of dismantling Turkey after Iraq and receiving tens of millions of the displaced people along with the chaos of the spread of terrorism.

The West which is preoccupied with the outcome of its long failed war on Syria cannot bear an adventure of ten years for another long failed war that dismantles Iraq and Turkey. The Gulf and Israel are incapable of providing the necessities for the continuation of igniting the war on Syria alone; they do not have what is needed to ignite other new wars. Thus the war of Syria seems to be the last war. It seems that the war of the Kurdish secession is weaker than to be born, but as a cold war of negotiation, in order to achieve the organized deterrence for hasty steps that lost the consideration of time and place.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,