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Category: Middle East

Turkey’s Camps Can’t Expand Fast Enough for All the New Syrian Refugees

The horrific statistical realities of the two-year conflict

ARMIN ROSEN

Syrian refugees in a refugee camp on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, near Idlib, on January 29, 2013. (Reuters)

The Syrian conflict escalated far faster than any of the world’s decision-makers anticipated. In January, a pledge conference in Kuwait raised $1.5 billion in humanitarian funding commitments for the conflict’s next six months, with the assumption that the war’s one millionth refugee wouldn’t be created until the middle of 2013. That grim threshold was cleared in March, which turned out to be the two-year-old conflict’s deadliest month .

With such little cause for optimism in an increasingly violent and multi-faceted conflict, the backlog of refugees on the Syrian side of the Turkish border seems like a portent of bigger problems to come.

Just six weeks later, there are 1.3 million Syrian refugees, although the international community seems to be adjusting its estimates to account for a situation that has slipped beyond any one actor’s control — and that likely wouldn’t be resolved even with president Bashar al-Assad’s ouster. In late March, Antonio Guterres, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, told a Congressional hearing that there might be as many as four million Syrian refugees by the end of 2013. In March, the UN estimated that there were 3.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Syria; the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is likely to revise that number upwards — perhaps as high as 4.5 million — in the coming weeks.

But the conflict’s severity doesn’t necessarily translate into greater political will, and it’s becoming apparent that the conflict has accelerated beyond the international community’s current ability to address it. “We are sleepwalking into a major disaster,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the European Union’s Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection. “The capacity to cope is outstripped by the intensified fighting … even if we all deliver on our pledges, it is now reaching the point where handling [the conflict] goes above and beyond humanitarian budgets.”

Simply, refugees are being created faster than even the best equipped of Syria’s neighbors can accommodate them. The starkest example of this is along the Turkish-Syrian border, where 100,000 people are estimated to be living between the conflict’s northern front lines and Turkish territory — partly because Turkey can’t expand its humanitarian capacity at the rate that refugees are arriving at the country’s doorstep. “The border remains fully open,” says Georgieva. “But it is not as freely possible to cross into Turkey as it was in the first months, or even the first year, of the conflict.” There are currently nine sizable (i.e., in the 15,000 inhabitant range) IDP camps on the Syrian side of the border. But by all accounts, the amount of aid reaching IDPs is less than what is available at official, UN-apportioned camps in neighboring countries — working across the border can be politically sensitive, as well as dangerous, for some governments and relief organizations. In total, the international community’s humanitarian safety net covers about 2 million people out of a total IDP and refugee population of nearly 5 million.

Turkey isn’t turning away refugees, which would represent a violation of standard humanitarian practice and perhaps even international law. But the country is currently in the process of building six new refugee camps, on top of the 17 that already exist. “Turkey for security reasons and absorption capacity reasons is now being more selective, prioritizing crossing for those who are at highest need,” says Georgieva, categories which include women, children, and the wounded.

Still, it’s notable that Turkey, which is both more developed and politically stable than Lebanon and Jordan, is facing these kinds of challenges with refugee absorption. “The Turkish border has at times seen numbers so overwhelming that they’ve had to slow down the flow in terms of accepting those crossing at the time,” says Kelly Clements, a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. She says that at least some of the IDPs along the border don’t want to enter Turkey at the moment. “They’re in a place where they can seek and obtain assistance more easily than in some of the more heavily bombarded and conflict-ridden communities,” she says. “So they’ve moved closer to the border. But not all of them have actually wanted to cross.” Overall, she says, “Turkey’s been managing exceptionally well.”

Even so, the full ramifications of a massive and perhaps semi-permanent population displacement in the heart of the Middle East might not be known for decades. For now, the numbers are jarring and suggest a resettlement of potentially historic proportions — for instance, the 440,000 refugees in Jordan represents about 6.5 percent of the already-fragile country’s population. The strain on neighboring states is an immediate, political problem with clear humanitarian consequences. The borders with Jordan and Turkey remain open. But it might not remain that way. “Jordan is now very close to saying, we cannot cope anymore, close down the border, create a buffer zone inside Syria,” says Georgieva. “A buffer zone is not an impossibility, but who’s going to protect it?”

It’s not just that more funding is needed — although the pledges from the Kuwait conference are proving worryingly inadequate. The humanitarian situation also has a clear diplomatic element to it. It might get to the point where keeping borders open and protecting Syrian refugees means reaching some kind of multilateral political accommodation with Jordan and Turkey — something that addresses concerns over the social and economic strain of hosting a large and perhaps long-term refugee population.

Humanitarian-related tensions between the international community and Syria’s neighbors might lie another couple million refugees in the future. But if the past year has proven anything, it’s that such moments could come sooner than world leaders want or expect them to. With such little cause for optimism in an increasingly violent and multi-faceted conflict, it’s possible to see the backlog of refugees on the Syrian side of the Turkish border as a portent of bigger problems to come. At least for Clements, it’s difficult to overstate the anxiety of the present moment. “We’re already at worse case scenario,” says Clements. “We’re there.”

April 19, 2013
Turkey plans refugee camp for Syrian Christians, Ecumenical News

Syrian refugees are seen in a refugee camp on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, near Idlib January 29, 2013, in this picture provided by Shaam News Network. Picture taken Jan. 29, 2013. ReutersPHOTO: REUTERS / MUHAMMAD NAJDET QADOUR / SHAAM NEWS NETWORK / HANDOUT

The Turkish government is setting up a refugee space specifically for displaced Christians, two years after the civil war in Syria began.

Not all Christians are, however, welcoming the move.

The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management (or AFAD) announced it will separate Christians into their own camp near Mor Abraham Syriac Monastery by the town of Midyat.

The area is located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the Syrian border.

“A month ago, some churches met with the Turkish foreign minister, and they requested that for Christians it would be better to open another camp,” Metin Corabatir, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Turkey said Tuesday.

Corabatir said the camp is likely the response to a series of meetings between Turkish officials and churches in the area.

The plight of Syrian Christians has become increasingly glaring in recent months.

Christians make up about 10 percent of the 22 million people in Syria.

In March, the U.S. Bishops’ Catholic Relief Services reported that about 200 Syrian Christians were seeking shelter in local Turkish churches, out of fear of intolerance at the 17 relief camps near the border.

The Turkish disaster agency estimates that there are about 200,000 refugees near the area in dispute, most of whom are predominantly Sunni Muslim.

Some Christian leaders are, however, not welcoming the separation of Christians from other Syrians.

Father Francois Yakan, the patriarchal vicar of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Turkey, was quoted by the Catholic Herald in the UK as saying that while he was unaware of any such plans that they would not be good.

The Catholic leader worries that such a move would segregate Christians in the area.

“These are people who have been living together for centuries. To be separating them now is not a good idea,” Yakan said.

Reuters news agency reported that the Turkish government strongly denied a sectarian or ethnic agenda.

A Turkish foreign ministry official said the two tented camps, to be completed in less than a month, are being built in Midyat, a town in southeastern Mardin province some 50 km (30 miles) from the Syrian border.

The U.N. estimates that up to 70,000 people have been killed in the Syrian Civil War and the carnage has displaced 1 million refugees between Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon.

Half of those refugees, the U.N. estimates, are currently residing in Turkey.

via Turkey plans refugee camp for Syrian Christians, Ecumenical News.

April 18, 2013
Turkey Is the Model for Arab Spring Nations

Aki Peritz is the senior policy adviser for national security at Third Way and author of Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda.

The political advances Islamist parties have been making across the Middle East have caused a lot of uneasiness in Washington. From Egypt to Tunisia, religiously conservative Islamist politicians are leading major countries, complicating an already complex narrative for U.S. policymakers. But is this worry justified?

Time will tell, but at least we have one decent example of an Islamist party taking power and not crashing the government or the economy: Turkey.

The “Turkey Model”—how moderate Islamist parties could govern Western-oriented, Muslim-majority countries—was on everyone’s lips during the Arab Spring as the new Middle Eastern paradigm. But the Turkish model will only succeed if these countries can build secular states with strong governmental institutions, and only if the U.S. backs these efforts, as it has strongly supported Turkey over the past 70 years.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Middle East.]

From the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey has been the beneficiary of almost a century of secular rule. Generations of Turks have lived in a modern secular state, so much so that women in headscarves even today cannot enter government buildings. The Turkish military is the primary enforcer of secularism, forcing out one government in 1997 the generals deemed too religious. While ugly, it cemented the notion that there are limits to how far religion can advance in the public marketplace.

As a secular-oriented nation, Turkey is bound to the West in many ways. The shopworn phrase that Turkey sits at the crossroads of Europe and Asia is not just a throwaway line for the country’s tourism industry. As a NATO member since 1952, Turkey is integral to the American-European military alliance, even if the European Union continues to give Ankara the cold shoulder. And NATO needs Turkey, for the country has the second largest military in the alliance.

Here at home, U.S. policymakers since World War II have seen Turkish stability as a core national security imperative. After all, the 1947 Truman Doctrine was founded specifically to assist Turkey against communist aggression. President Truman provided aid to the “freedom-loving” people of Turkey, for it was “necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.”

[See a collection of political cartoons on defense spending.]

Even now, Turkey is critical, and the US is deeply invested in the country. Turkey hosts U.S. troops at Incirlik Air Base and Izmir Air Station. 400 U.S. troops man Patriot missile batteries in the south, and the nation hosts an X-band radar system at Kürecik Air Base that keeps an eye on its irascible neighbor, Iran. Turkey is also critical to solving – or at least containing – the civil war in Syria.

Despite some rocky stretches, such as when the Turkish parliament denied the U.S. an invasion route in the run-up to the Iraq War, the U.S. assiduously cultivates Turkey because it remains in Washington’s best interests to do so. As Kim Ghattas noted in “The Secretary,” Secretary of State Clinton saw her Turkish counterpart as “one of her more consequential counterparts even if she didn’t always agree with him. Developing a relationship with [Foreign Minister] Davutoglu was also a way of keeping Turkey close, in the orbit of the West.”

And this rapport continues to pay dividends: During his latest trip to the region, President Obama brokered a rapprochement between Turkey and Israel renewing the two countries’ strategic partnership.

This is all accomplished with religious conservatives dominating parliament. Despite some misgivings, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been in power for a decade, and so far they’ve been successful in guiding the economy, growing it at almost 6 percent a year.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the European debt crisis.]

Still, all is not all rosy in Anatolia. In 2010, Turkey voted against UN sanctions against Iran. A recent scandal named Ergenekon has placed numerous top military men behind bars. Turkey remains on edge with its Kurdish population. And simmering historic tensions with Greece threaten to erupt over Cyprus.

From a larger perspective, Turkey shows that religious parties and democratic rule are not inherently incompatible. However, a country requires a foundation of stable, credible civilian institutions and a history of citizen-state interactions for this to work—combined with a close and continuing interest from the world’s remaining superpower. This successful recipe could be replicated, over time, across the Middle East.

When the master Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan designed the magnificent Süleymaniye Mosque in the 1550s, he let the structure’s foundations settle for three years in the earthquake-prone city before beginning the mosque’s actual construction. If the nations of the Middle East had time and patience to let their political foundations become strong and independent enough to withstand periodic shakeups, they too can be like Turkey.

It remains to be seen whether the leaders guiding the new Middle East have this perseverance—and whether America has the attention span to follow through on our side of the bargain.

via Turkey Is the Model for Arab Spring Nations – World Report (usnews.com).

April 18, 2013
The Daily Worry: How I Learned to Live with Bombs in Turkey and Israel

URIEL SINAI / GETTY IMAGESEmergency services work the scene of an explosion on a bus in Tel Aviv on Nov. 21, 2012

It is unsettling the first time the doors of a shopping mall glide open to reveal a magnetometer, an x-ray machine, and a person wearing a holster. Less so the second time, and the point quickly arrives when it’s no more remarkable than finding a maze of chrome posts and retractable belts standing between an airport’s ticket counters and the boarding gates. Put your phone, keys and coins in the tray and get on with it.

I first acclimated to the diffuse background threat of urban bombing in the summer of 2002, when I moved to Istanbul, where small explosives had become the weapon of choice for assorted separatists and radicals in the 1990s. Turkey was a fine preparatory course for life in Israel, which on Tuesday celebrated 65 years of existence, not one passed in peace. Security is a way of life here — most famously at the airport, where the solemn questioning and extraordinary inspections are almost a feature of a tourist visit, one that visitors often relate afterward with the specificity of a lion sighting after a drive through a game park. But the preoccupation is scarcely less present in Israel’s cities, where a decade ago, storefronts would from time to time disintegrate in the same burst of ignition and billowing dust that rose over Boylston Street on Monday afternoon.

There are different ways to go afterward. The British “Keep Calm and Carry On,” as the sign says, the London subway bombings of July 2005 stiffening the upper lip that remained in place from the Blitz of World War II through the IRA attacks of a quarter century ago. London barely missed a beat. Jewish Israelis take some pride in cultivating the same attitude. During the Second Intifadeh, which at its height in March 2002 meant something exploding somewhere inside Israel almost every day, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon asked the social psychologist Reuven Gal to measure how the Israeli public was bearing up under the stress. Politicians love anecdotes, but Gal went about it methodically, gathering metrics via objective indicators, such as movie attendance. What he found was a striking resilience. After an attack, attendance dipped, but always came back.

Still, the memory of explosions changes things. A shadow appears, like a penumbra, around a café that someone mentions in passing was once hit by a suicide bomber; photos of the carnage are available online for those who did not see them at the time. City buses hove into view bearing a specific menace, the entirely reasonable apprehension that accumulates watching untold hours of news footage panning the blackened skeleton belonging to the Egged or Dan lines. A No. 142 bus went up in Tel Aviv, in November, the first in years. The bomb was small, had been left under a seat, and no one was killed. But shock waves really are invisible, and can carry far. On an intercity bus approaching the city the day of that attack, cell phones rang with the news, and a woman, not saying a word but only hearing, burst into tears. Glenn Beck was in Jerusalem a year earlier, doing his shtick as featured guest at a Knesset committee. Beck said the first time he came to Israel it was after a long talk with his wife about risk. The assumption, he said, was that he’d be “roasting my dinner over the flames of a burning bus.” Nobody laughed. I saw one tight smile.

The fact is it’s quite safe here, and feels so. Part of it is the visible precautions, the magnetometers at the malls (here too, of course), the doormen with side arms. At some point Jerusalem required restaurants to post a security guard at the front entrance; they’re still there, though at some of the glossier addresses they now wear short black skirts. It doesn’t matter terribly because of the other, larger part of security in Israel, the part that’s less visible and quite possibly not suitable for export.

That would be “internal security,” or “Shin Bet,” also known as “Shabak,” the Hebrew acronym for Israel Security Agency. The agency’s thousands of secret police keep watch on the Jewish State, monitoring suspicious behavior, monitoring cell phones and coercing Palestinians. The work carries moral risks mulled absorbingly in the documentary The Gatekeepers, made up entirely of interviews with men who used to run the organization; it was nominated for an Academy Award. But Shin Bet’s work is made infinitely easier by the fact that the agency is protecting something discreet. The Jewish State may have no shortage of enemies, but in a fight at bottom over land and ethnic identity, the process of screening who to watch for trouble starts with an almost binary equation: Us and Them. In a nation of immigrants, say, the United States, divisions will never be so clear, leaving aside the crucial question of civil liberties.

Which leaves what in Turkey at least we called “hard security.” Inside the mall, beyond the x-ray machine and the man in blue, was a food court, a huge one. But no rubbish bins. Men and women with carts circulated among the tables, busing trash and collecting trays. It may have been an employment scheme, but it also obviated the need for a place where a bomb could be deposited and walked away from without raising any suspicion.

Outside, when I finally did find a place to drop trash, it was a plastic bag hanging from an iron ring – clear, so you could see what was in there. Looking askance at a trash can turns out to be like flinching at the approach of a city bus: Odd, and not a little insidious. But here we all are.

Karl Vick @karl_vick

Karl Vick has been TIME’s Jerusalem bureau chief since 2010, covering Israel,the Palestine territories and nearby sovereignties. He worked 16 years at the Washington Post in Nairobi, Istanbul, Baghdad, Los Angeles and Rockville, MD.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/04/16/life-during-wartime/#ixzz2QgytR3Ap

April 17, 2013
Al-Khatib against calls for “Islamic state”

Syria is a country where moderate Islam dominates, said Khatib, President of Syrian National Coalition.

ISTANBUL — President of the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib said that Syria was a country where moderate Islam dominated.

A conference on “Islam and Just Transition in Syria” began in Istanbul so the Syrian Muslim scholars could put forward their approaches to the transitional process in Syria.

A high number of Syrian Muslim scholars and important names of the Syrian opposition attended the conference.

Speaking at the inauguration of the conference, al-Khatib underlined that in order for Islam’s real message to be understood, a revolution must take place in human’s understanding of religion.

Due to wrong methods, small problems occupy more time than greater problems, al-Khatib noted.

The aim of the revolution was to free humans, al-Khatib stated.

“Everyone should receive just treatment. Otherwise, anarchy would prevail and humans, based on certain reasons, would cause the spill of blood of others. There is tyranny in our country (Syria) as never seen before. A serious danger awaits us in the future. There is need for serious works so humans do not violate each other’s rights,” al-Khatib underlined.

Criticizing Al-Qaeda’s call to establish an Islamic state in Syria, al-Khatib advised those fighting in Syria not to listen to thoughts coming from outside.

” Syria was a country where moderate Islam dominated.Syria is the center of enlightenment. Syria has a large number of scholars. Scholars of Syria can help each other,” al-Khatib said.

“Revolution to continue until victory arrives”

Chairman of the Syrian National Council (SNC), George Sabra underlined that the Syrian regime persecuted its own people and the world acted as if they were blind.

“Revolution will continue until victory arrived. Justice will come with victory. Unless there is just punishment, justice can not be established. There will be a just constitution in new Syria and there will not be discrimination against any person or group. We will not treat those guilty with revenge. There will be just trials. Upcoming days would be nice,” Sabra stated.

”Syria will belong to all Syrians”

Prime Minister of the Syrian interim government, Ghassan Hitto emphasized the importance of Islam’s message while moving to a state of law with justice and equality from a regime which placed pressure on people.

A consensus will take place in Syria on a strong societal structure, Hitto said.

“Syria will belong to all Syrians. Damages incurred by Syrian people would be compensated. The Justice Ministry would be restructured and just trials will take place,” Hitto noted.

The conference will end on Tuesday.

Islamic NGOs reject al-Qaeda announcement for “Islamic State in Iraq and Damascus”

Syrian Islamic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rejected announcement made by “Iraqi Islamic State” organization, the Iraqi wing of al-Qaeda, on the establishment of an “Islamic State in Iraq and Damascus”.

In a joint statement made, the Union of Syrian Muslim Scholars, Union of Damascus Scholars, Union of Syrian Revolutionary Ulema and Inviters, and Syrian Islamic Forum underlined that al-Qaeda organization did not represent the people of Syria.

“It is unacceptable to see a group, without a government or a certain territory, to announce the establishment of a state by not consulting with the relevant people and the scholars of the region and forcing the people to obey them. Our people have the strength to establish their own state with their own power and means,” the statement said.

Referring to the Nusra Front in Syria and comments made by leader of the Nusra Front Abu Muhammad al-Golani that they were attached to al-Qaeda, the statement said “your struggle along with other armed groups in Syria is known and your support to the struggle is well appreciated. The people’s calling themselves ‘We are all Nusra Front’ on a Friday is an indication of the appreciation”.

“Nusra Front’s declaration of attachment to al-Qaeda strengthens the hands of the Assad regime, presents the justification foreign powers need to intervene in Syria, and gives the excuse to the Syrian government to react against those ‘terrorists’ fighting in Syria. We call on our brethren at the Nusra Front to end obeying al-Qaeda and consult with those warriors on the field and scholars,” the statement underlined.

“There is no bigger terror than that applied by the Syrian regime”

“Our people will consider it a conspiracy against itself if an intervention takes place targeting the groups fighting in Syria or if the Syrian people were placed under a blockade with an excuse of ‘struggling against terrorists’. There is no bigger terror than that applied by the Syrian regime. We reject the intervention of all forms of organizations to determine the future of the Syrian state as well as any imposition from the international community to us to sit down with the Syrian regime at the table. The future of Syria will be determined by those who love Syria,” the statement also said.

Al-Qaeda’s Iraqi wing, “Iraqi Islamic State” organization on April 9 had announced that they united with the Nusra Front.

Nusra Front leader Abu Muhammad al-Golani had said that they had not taken a joint decision with the “Iraqi Islamic State” organization but that they were attached to al-Qaeda.

16 April 2013

Anadolu Agency

April 17, 2013
Jackson Diehl: Iraqi Kurdistan in bloom

In Iraq, an Kurdish renaissance

By Jackson Diehl, Published: April 15

By now it’s obvious that “spring” is the wrong description of the political turmoil and civil war that have followed the Arab revolutions of 2011. But for one nation in the Middle East, it’s beginning to look like freedom and prosperity just might be blooming. “People are beginning to talk about the Kurdish Spring, not the Arab Spring,” says a grinning Fuad Hussein, a senior official in the government of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Hussein and a delegation from the Kurdistan Region Government, which controls a strip of northern Iraq slightly larger than Maryland, were in Washington last week to talk about where their country stands a decade after the U.S. invasion. From Irbil, Kurdistan’s capital, the war looks like an extraordinary success.

Jackson Diehl

The Post’s deputy editorial page editor, Diehl also writes a biweekly foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

Kurdistan is a democracy, though an imperfect one; the territory is peaceful and the economy is booming at the rate of 11 percent a year. Foreign investors are pouring though gleaming new airports to invest, especially in Kurdish-controlled oil fields. Exxon, Chevron, Gazprom and Total are among the multinationals to sign deals with the regional government. A new pipeline from Kurdistan to Turkey could allow exports to soar to 1 million barrels a day within a couple of years.

There was one university for the region’s 5.2 million people a decade ago; now there are 30. “Our people,” says Hussein, the chief of staff to President Massoud Barzani, “did quite good.”

The bigger story is that Kurds, a non-Arab nation of some 30 million deprived of a state and divided among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, are on the verge of transcending their long, benighted history as the region’s perpetual victims and pawns. Twenty-five years ago, Kurds were being slaughtered with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein and persecuted by Turkey, where nearly half live. A vicious guerrilla war raged between Kurdish insurgents and the Turkish army.

Now Turkey is emerging as the Kurds’ closest ally and the potential enabler of a string of adjacent, self-governing Kurdish communities stretching from Syria to the Iraq-Iran border. Having built close ties with the Iraqi Kurdish government, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now negotiating a peace deal with the insurgent Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) — a pact that could mean new language and cultural rights, as well as elected local governments, for the Kurdish-populated areas of southeastern Turkey.

Meanwhile, Barzani and the Iraqi Kurds have been trying to foster a Kurdish self-government for northern Syria, where some 2.5 million Kurds live. Syrian government forces withdrew from the area last year, giving the Kurds the chance to set up their own administration. Until recently, the principal Syrian Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), was supporting the PKK’s fight against Turkey and leaning toward the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Now, thanks to the nascent peace deal, it may be switching sides: Earlier this month its fighters joined with Syrian rebels to drive government forces out of a Kurdish-populated district of Aleppo.

Middle Eastern geo-politics, which for so long worked against the Kurds, is now working for them. The sectarian fragmentation of Syria and Iraq has created new space for a nation that is mostly Sunni Muslim, but moderate and secular. Suddenly the Kurds are being courted by all sides. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki this month sent a delegation to Irbil to propose that the Kurds return the parliament deputies and ministers they withdrew from the national government last year. Barzani’s government declined but agreed to send a delegation to Baghdad for negotiations.

As Hussein portrays it, the talks may be a last chance to avert a breakup of Iraq into separate Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish areas — a split he blames on Maliki’s attempt to concentrate Shiite power. “Either we are going to have a real partnership, or we are going to go back to our own people,” he said, adding that the result could be a referendum on Kurdistan’s future.

It would make sense for the United States to join Turkey in backing this Kurdish renaissance; the Kurds are a moderate and pro-Western force in an increasingly volatile region. Yet the Obama administration has consistently been at odds with the Iraqi Kurdish government. It has lobbied Turkey not to allow the new oil pipeline that would give Kurdistan economic independence from Baghdad, and, in the Kurds’ view, repeatedly backed Maliki’s attempts to impose his authority on the region.

“The administration sees us not as a stabilizing force, but as an irritant, as an alien presence in the region that complicates matters, another Israel,” one of the visiting Kurds told me. That, like so much of the administration’s policy in the Middle East these days, is wrongheaded.

via Jackson Diehl: Iraqi Kurdistan in bloom – The Washington Post.

April 16, 2013