The Trouble With Kurdistan
I'm not normally in the habit of recommending Michael Rubin columns, and I'm not sure what I think of the overarching thesis of this one, but he does raise an important, delicate, and underdiscussed issue -- the dubious character of "democratic" Kurdistan:
Take the case of the Iraqi Kurds. Long championed as a model of liberalization, they are becoming a regional embarrassment. Rather than pursue democracy, the Iraqi Kurdish leadership is more consumed with self-enrichment. Following Iraq's defeat in 1991, the Kurds rose in rebellion against Saddam Hussein. The leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, Massoud Barzani, returned to Iraqi Kurdistan with little but respect for his family name. Fourteen years later, his personal worth is estimated at close to $2 billion. Corruption and nepotism are rife. No foreign businessman can strike a deal in his region without entering into partnership with Barzani or a favored relative. Human rights workers in Irbil say they have met Kurds imprisoned for failing to pay kickbacks. Across the region, the Barzani family conflates government, party, and personal property. Local militias uphold not the rule of law, but rather serve as Barzani's enforcers. The Kurdish Parliament, meanwhile, is flaccid; its power no greater than that of its Syrian or Libyan counterparts.
The cost of corruption goes beyond money. An embezzlement scandal sparked the 1994-97 Kurdish civil war between Barzani and his rival, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani, Iraq's current president. Barzani is not alone. With the complicity of United Nations officials and cynical politicians, Saddam Hussein siphoned off $1.8 billion from the UN's oil-for-food program. While children died for lack of medicine, he built palaces and his family members bought real estate in Amman.
This kind of thing offers a window into exactly how far-fetched hopes of Iraqi democracy would be. Kurdistan has effective security forces and there isn't much in the way of insurgent violence up there. Even so, a democratic model it isn't.
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Well, look at it this way.
It's better that the Barzanis rip off a couple billion and put it into Emirate and Southern California real estate than that the PUK rip off the same amount and put it into the PKK's dreams of glory.
November 18, 2005 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is an article in The Nation that covers a lot of the same stuff
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051114/parenti
November 18, 2005 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmm. So the Kurds haven't perfected democracy in 14 years? Wow, that's surprising.
November 18, 2005 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is disturbing, and I haven't read anything about this before. The administration always makes it seem like its great there. The implications for the rest of the region are stark. I don't think Turkey, Syria, or Iran will sit back and let an independent Kurdistan with territorial ambitions exist for long.
November 18, 2005 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think a slogan for the war should be:
Iraq- Where success is establshing Latin-American Sort-of Democratic Type Governments
November 18, 2005 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
The powers in the region have proven over and over again that they cannot be trusted to protect the Kurds and respect their cultural identity. This seems to me to be a very strong argument for granting them a homeland.
November 18, 2005 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, not to play the role of a neoconservative, but in any nascent democracy you re going to have blatant corruption.
Barzani ain't different than Walpole or Jackson.
There's a whole slew of problems in IRaq, corruption is down the list.
The rentier character of the state is much more important.
November 18, 2005 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rubin probably thinks that the Kurds chose not to go towards democracy once we decided not to install Ahmad Chalabi right after the invasion.
Rubin is one of the big Chalabiites.
November 18, 2005 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is funny to me that there has been so little attention paid to the kurd-ophile subtext of the liberal pro-war set. I'm pretty sure that Leo Strauss and the neo-cons had less to do with Hitchens, George Packer and Peter Galbraith's support of the invasion than the experience of Northern Iraq. In the twenties, the British foreign office used to have a distinct group of policy makers who, following in the footsteps of T.E. Lawrence, were completely in love with Arabic culture. This influenced policy towards, for instance, Greece and away from Turkey, and towards the Hashemites in Iraq and Jordan, etc. One of the pro-Arabists, Kim Philby's father, even ended up renouncing British citizenship, I believe, and became one of the most important advisors to the House of Saud.
Similarly, the pro-Kurdish set, justly traumatized by the history of atrocities committed against the Kurds, and the indefensible U.S. policy of using the Kurds as proxies in the 70s (another Kissinger idea, another betrayal of an ethnic group, another massacre), took it as their mission to become Kurdish apologists. So Peter Galbraith, for instance, in otherwise admirable articles about Iraq, continually distorts or covers up the recent history of Northern Iraq, which has not been a pretty one of a progressive people voting happily, but was one of civil war between warlords who were more than willing, in the 90s, to call in Saddam's aid if they needed it.
It is the old story of virtuous indignation about past injustices pushing one to the advocacy of present injustices.
November 19, 2005 7:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Anybody care to produce some evidence againat the CW propositions that de facto Kurdistan has a free press, doesn't oppress women, and lets people have a drink if they feel like it? Compare and contrast Italy; in spite of its kleptocrat, the country is surely a democracy. Compare and contrast too with the corruption in Washington ...
November 19, 2005 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink