Are The Kurds Ready to Bolt?

Moustaffa Barzani, Victim of Saddam

and Father of Kurdistan

For more than a decade, Iraq's northerners, the Kurds, have been teetering on the edge of secession. They've remained in Iraq reluctantly probably as much out of concern of triggering an angry Turkish response as any other factor.

According to Peter Galbraith, who has had more than 20-years involvement with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, America went into Iraq expecting the Kurds to be grateful and compliant. Those expectations weren't met. The Kurds were grateful, to a point, but hardly willing to give up the autonomy they had developed and enjoyed in the years during which America held Saddam at bay.

When Saddam fell, American proconsul Paul Bremer took it for granted that the Kurdish leadership would sign on to the new Iraqi federation, whatever that happened to be. Instead they moved to draft their own constitution and presented it to the Shia and Sunni leadership on a 'take it or leave it' basis. Either the Kurdish constitution would be recognized in the new Iraqi constitution or the Kurds were going to walk. In the end the Kurds got their way.

In the past weeks tensions have been rising, as they were bound to, between the Kurdish leadership and the Baghdad government. It's all over a controversial provision embodied in the Kurdish constitution reserving to the Kurds exclusively all benefit and control over the largely untapped oil reserves within their territory.

Angry words have been exchanged between Kurdish prime minister Barzani and Iraqi oil minister Shahristani. The Kurds have even raised the suggestion they'll secede if they don't get their way. This has finally caught the attention of Washington.

Yesterday U.S. state secretary, Condoleeza Rice, paid a 'surprise' visit to Baghdad following which she flew up to Kurdistan for a meeting with Barzani in his capital of Erbil. What brought Rice to Barzani was the fear of a breakup of Iraq.

At a joint press conference after their talks, Rice and Barzani appeared before a backdrop of American and Kurdish flags. Missing was the flag of Iraq which Barzani has banned from Kurdistan.

This is a tense, and potentially high-stakes, situation. If the Kurds were to secede, they would need protection, some muscle. Recent statements out of Erbil suggest that Turkey, rather than being a threat to a sovereign Kurdish state, might actually support it - for now. It would also send tremors through Baghdad where Shia and Sunni Arabs are already waging a low level civil war. If the Kurds go there would be powerful motivation for the Shia to go their own way, under the protection of their ally, Iran.

Washington dreads the idea of Iraq's southern oil fields falling under the influence of Iran. That would create a huge oil source threatened by and hostile to the United States.

What happens in Erbil in the coming months may alter the Middle East from Turkey to Iran. It may even reshape America's war in Iraq.