Kerry Visits Iraqi Kurdistan To Recompose Iraq

Washington is seeking to avoid the rupture of the Persian Gulf country by any means. The Kurdish leader says, “Iraq is falling apart.”

On Tuesday morning, June 24, Secretary of State John Kerry travels to Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region, to convince its president, Massoud Barzani, not to seek independence. The mission of the Washington envoy is to avoid the final rupture between Baghdad’s central authority and the Kurdish autonomy, made up of three northern provinces rich in oil.

The Sunni Muslim uprising two weeks ago in the center of Iraq, monopolized by the armed group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has made this division deeper, emerging as it already was due to the recent fights for the benefits of black gold.

As a member of the American delegation put it, it is a very important visit “to confer with the Kurdish leadership and also encourage them to play a very active role in this government formation process, including choosing a very strong president who can represent both Kurdish interests but also Iraqi interests.”

Iraq has no government since the elections held last April. The fact that Irbil takes part in the new administration is, for the Americans, a way of bringing the country together. Before his arrival to the Iraqi Kurdistan, John Kerry was in Baghdad. There, the prime minister in office, Nouri al-Maliki, promised him to shortly form a new inclusive government.

“Iraq is obviously falling apart,” stated the Iraqi Kurdistan leader in an interview on CNN on Monday, June 23. “And it’s obvious that the federal or central government has lost control over everything. Everything is collapsing — the army, the troops, the police.”

The Turkish “Opportunity”

It is a chaotic situation turned into an opportunity that Kurds barely conceal: “We did not cause the collapse of Iraq. It is others who did,” recalled Barzani. “And we cannot remain hostages for the unknown,” concluded the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party during his TV interview.

Last week, the Kurdish army (the Peshmerga) occupied the town of Kirkuk after the security forces of Baghdad took flight following the ISIL advancement. This town has been the object of desire of Irbil’s government for years.

The huge amount of oil accumulated in Kirkuk’s subsoil enables the economic emancipation of the Kurds, who, for months, have been immersed in a battle with Baghdad with the purpose of increasing their share of dividends for the sale of oil.

To that, one should add that the recent agreement between the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous government and Turkey for pumping oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan was reached without Maliki’s knowledge, something that irritated him. According to Forbes magazine, Israel has joined the group of countries that purchase oil directly from Irbil, “ignoring”* Baghdad.

The United States considers the commercial transactions made without the Iraqi central government’s knowledge to be illegal, and prefers territorial unification to a rupture. “If they decide to withdraw from the Baghdad political process, it will accelerate a lot of the negative trends,” underlined a member of the American delegation to the press when Kerry landed in Irbil.

*This quotation appears to be for emphasis.