Sergey Shakaryants: Games with the Kurdish factor
Against the background of the dramatic development of the situation in Syria and Iraq, the Kurdish problem “escaped” almost all the world's leading media outlets, although in 2013, many experts allowed themselves to show incorrect tactlessness and “bet”: independent Kurdistan? The reason for this was the well-known statements of the President of the Kurdish Autonomy in Northern Iraq, Masud Barzani, that by the Nowruz holiday (Iranian New Year) 2013, the independence of Kurdistan will occur on the territory accountable to it. Another reason was also the well-known events already in Turkey - when Ankara entered into behind-the-scenes negotiations with the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, who is in life imprisonment on the island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara. One of the interim results of those negotiations was the agreement of the PKK warlords to retreat from Turkey to the Iraqi Kandil mountains.
Thus, some experts from the United States were broadcasting, given that in most of the Kurdish-populated regions of Syria, real power passed into the hands of the “local branch” PKK - Party of Democratic Union (PYD), and the regime of Bashar al-Assad does not control “Syrian Kurdistan”, in the very near future, the Global Middle East region will experience an inevitable transformation and “reset”. Of course, all previous years, especially from January on 2013, added fuel to the fire by the well-known US military and diplomat, former adviser to the Kurdish regional government (KRG) in Erbil, Peter Galbright, who openly called for Kurds in Iraq to be independent, even with territorial concessions to Baghdad in the form of the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
Barzani has not proclaimed the independence of Kurdistan in Arbil on Navruz. However, since the summer of 2013, the slow but sure political and military torpedoing of the theme of creating Kurdish independent statehood begins its countdown. Galbright is a well-known personality, in vain some Kurdish circles desired more than this former US ambassador to Croatia guaranteed them. But the detachments of the Kurdistan Workers' Party suddenly stopped leaving Turkey for Northern Iraq - the commander-in-chief of the PKK forces, Murat Karayilan, then accused Ankara of disrupting the peace accords. And most of the Kurdish parties and organizations of Syria, following the leadership of the Party of the Democratic Union, concluded an agreement with the ruling Baath party, that is, with Bashar al-Assad, who, in fact, granted the Kurds of Syria the broadest autonomy.
It would seem that the next act of the Kurdish tragedy in the region begins in the summer of 2014, when troops of the suddenly intensified and emboldened Islamic State (IS, the former Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL, or Islamic Caliphate) immediately seized Iraqi Mosul and launched active hostilities on three fronts. The first front is against the Shiite south of Iraq, the second is against the Kurdish autonomy of northern Iraq, and the third is against the Kurds of Syria.
But this is a simplification. The IS fighters killed 2014 Kurds, including 15 children, in an attack on a village in the area mostly inhabited by Kurds of the city of Ras el-Ain in the north-eastern oil-producing province Hassek in northeastern Syria 7 at the end of May. By the way, in close proximity to the Turkish border. Not less committed atrocities against Syrian Kurds and other "opposition groups" of Syria, using, as well as IS, a "strange attitude" from the United States - and in 2012-13. And so the statement of the municipal council of the Kurdish-populated Turkish province of Hakkari (bordered by Armenia, Nakhichevan, Iran and Iraq) of 18 in August 2014 put something in its place. A statement by one of the leaders of the Municipal Council, Lokman Ozdemir, states that the IS, which seized a number of territories in Iraq and Syria, has become a "tool for the destruction of the Kurds," and this tool is "actively used by the United States, Israel, the Arab world, Azerbaijan and Turkey." These states, as noted, arm the militants of the Islamic Caliphate, and weapon "Comes daily through the territory of Turkey." The Turkish government, according to the authors of the statement, does nothing to fight the terrorists, other countries are also watching in cold blood about the “genocide of the Kurds,” which was launched by the extremists of the “Caliphate”.
However, this is not the whole palette of the mosaic of the situation in the Kurdish question. After 5 days after Ozdemir’s accusations, the influential Iranian newspaper Tehran Times, referring to the Islamic State, also openly accused Turkey of involvement in the crimes not only of IS militants in Iraq against Kurds and Yezidis, but throughout the Middle East: “Qatar and Turkey , the main culprits of issuing a diploma of a non-state actor to takfirist rapist terrorists ... Turkey serves as the primary technical base through which most of the ammunition, materials and "labor" go for foreign mercenaries in Syria " . And then the Iranians in general revealed both the mechanism and the reason for the participation of Erdoganov's Turkey in crimes in the region: “At a press conference in August 2009 with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, the ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al- Tani expressed a desire to pave the route of the pipeline through Syria to Turkey for the export of natural gas of his country. ” It is clear that the role of Qatar, like the Saudi family, is very important.
The Tehran Times has further aggravated all possible ideas and concepts about the current state of the Kurdish issue. With reference to a source in Iranian intelligence, this newspaper reported that the origins of the IS group were in some insignificant Kurdish insurgent group that formed after the American invasion of Iraq 2003 and was headed by former “architect” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It is not explicitly said, but there is reason to believe that the US intelligence services participated in creating the IS precursor of the Kurdish group, and their goal could be to create a strong counterweight to the clans (Kurdish) Barzani and Al-Talabani, who had long divided spheres of influence and positions in Iraqi Kurdistan . After the death of al-Zarqawi, there was a surge in 2007, and the program of this group was to bribe the Sunni tribes to give up resistance to the American occupation.
We believe that this may well serve as indirect evidence of the relevance of the version of the involvement of US intelligence services in the creation of this Kurdish group. Then there was a period of decline, quite understandable - the At-Talabani clan got all-Iraqi confession, and its leader Jelal was proclaimed president of Iraq, the Barzani clan got all the powers in Northern Iraq.
But IS recovered after the start of Western operations to change the regime in Syria in 2011, when the leader of the group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ousted by the militants of the Syrian terrorist group "Dzhebhat al-Nusra", renamed its Iraqi contingents in the Islamic State of Iraq ( ISI). Secondly, Iranian intelligence claims, and in this case, the revelations of Edward Snowden, the so-called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi - in fact, Shimon (Simon) Elliot, an agent of Israeli intelligence MOSSAD, are mentioned. The real plan, according to Iranian secret services, was to invade countries that pose a threat to the Israeli project in order to create a "biblical Great Israel." And it turns out that there are a lot of photos in which the widely and notorious US Senator John McCain is captured next to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
If we assume that the Iranians are right, then the sense of their summer warning is even more profound: “Iran’s goal is to thwart the Israeli plan for dismembering Iraq” (Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African countries Hossein Amir-Abdollahiyan). And it becomes clear why even 17 July 2014 Mr. Ocalan, as stated by the leader of the political wing of the PKK, Murat Garilan, sent a letter to Barzani and Jelalu at-Talabani, in which they demanded that they be careful, attentive and unite their positions and efforts. attacks by Islamist militants and take a nationwide stance. ” Personally, Garilan added that IS "is an international tactic and scheme" that poses a threat to the Kurdish people.
And the ongoing tragedy of another Syrian Kurdish-populated town on the border with Turkey - Ain al-Arab (in the Koban Kurdish toponymy), as well as the ongoing, genocide of Iraqi Yezidis in the Sinjar mountains (Shangal), confirms the concerns of Ocalan and Garilan. By the end of January, however, the Kurds seemed to have finally forced out the IS fighters from Ain al-Arab. But - for how long, and what fate awaits other Kurdish populated cities and regions of Syria and Iraq?
By the end of February, 2015, the situation in the Kurdish problem has acquired additional alarming nuances. This, of course, is about the unprovoked and seemingly “temporary” Turkish aggression into Syria, ostensibly in order to “save the grave of Suleiman Shah”. It is also about Washington’s intention to create its permanent military base in the oil and gas-bearing region of Northern Iraq. As the press secretary of the Armed Forces "Peshmerga" of the Kurdish regional government Helgurt Hikmet recognized February 13, the Americans will deploy their base in Erbil. The draft agreement with the US government, which is now being prepared by lawyers on both sides, provides for 15-year lease of land “for the needs of the US Army,” emphasizes the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet with reference to diplomatic sources in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Finally, we are also talking about the upcoming combined tripartite attack on territories controlled by terrorists IS, which provides for an attack on Mosul by the Kurdish Peshmerga, the army of Iraq and the militia of the Iraqi Shiites. Somewhere indirectly related to this preparation and the decision of Iran to return to the project to build a gas pipeline through Iraq to Syria, but not through the north, but through the Shiite Basra.
The question of the possible emergence of a permanent American military base in Kurdistan is clear and without explanation - the United States will gain control and physical presence in a crucial region. But two other factors are explained as follows: the Turks marched to the grave of Suleiman Shah (grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman dynasty) ... with the consent of the Kurds Ain al-Arab, the Kurds apparently “returned the debt”, because in previous months, with the consent of Turkey, Kurdish troops were going to liberate This town from the militants IS. And this may mean that there is some unofficial agreement of this part of the Syrian Kurds to interact with the Turkish armed forces.
How it can turn out tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, given that neither the West nor Turkey removed the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from the agenda, it is difficult to predict, especially if you consider that Damascus openly accused Ankara of aggression. Consequently, in the future we can expect corrections in the attitude of the Syrian authorities towards those Kurds who cooperate with Turkey.
Further, sources in Baghdad report that Iraq still has (and the first reports are dated July 2014) military units of the Al Qods Special Forces Division of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps of Iran headed by Special Envoy of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei - the commander of the Al Qods division, the legendary Major General Kasem Soleimani. And this is a factor. No wonder in October, finally, the leaders of the IS announced that they intend to fight with Iran. And then there was a “case”: not that wounded, not that killed Abu Bakr - Eliot. However, hundreds of thousands of Kurds have already been squeezed out of Iraq and Syria into Turkey. And the impending attack on Mosul from all sides, one way or another, is supervised by the Iranian military of the IRGC, they are also actively helping Syria. For example, at the end of January, under the guise of "fighting terrorists", Israel launched a powerful air strike on the Quneitra region on the Golan Heights in Syria. Quite a few members of the Lebanese Hezbollah party were killed, injured and General of the IRGC of Iran Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was injured.
However, there are other nuances of the Kurdish issue, given, say, the unshakable positions of the so-called Kurdish clan of the Eyubov brothers in Azerbaijan. 5 July 2007 Baku journalist Eynulla Fatullayev was convicted by an Azerbaijani court as “a terrorist and instigator of discord”, and his newspaper “Gundelik Azerbaijan” (“Real Azerbaijan”), in fact, was closed. The fact is that it was in “Real Azerbaijan” that the secret program for the resettlement of Kurds from Iraq and Turkey was discussed ... to Nakhichevan, to “continental” Azerbaijan itself, including to the conflict zone with Nagorno-Karabakh.
One way or another, there is no doubt that the transformation of the daily life of the modern Kurdish communities of the Global Middle East into a coordinate system and a zone of permanent risks is both a matter of the physical security of the Kurds, and the problem of collisions of various strategic plans and programs that exist in capitals. a large number of states that have and are related to the Kurdish problem throughout the years after 1945.
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