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Arab World Studies, No. 1, 2022
Executive Summary
The independence referendum held in The Kurdish region of Iraq in September 2017 showed that Kurdish nationalism with independent tendencies has become a prominent political trend within Iraqi Kurdish society. However, this is not an inevitable consequence, it is essentially the product of the failure of modern Iraqi State capacity and the consequent deformity of iraq's modern State-building process. Therefore, only from the perspective of modern state construction can we understand the origin background of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, the basic premise of the modern State structure of Iraq as the framework for development, and the historical turning point exacerbated by the collective punishment measure "Operation Anfar" and the practice of Kurdish autonomy after 1991, and then grasp the limits of its development in different periods.
keyword
Iraq; state-building; Kurdish nationalism
About the Author
Ruiheng Li, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Arabic Language and Culture, School of Foreign Chinese, Peking University
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Image credit: The Independent
The changing situation brought about by the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War gave the Iraqi Kurds rising status and rights of autonomy, and their national consciousness also strengthened, which once evolved into a referendum on independence in the Kurdish region of Iraq in September 2017. Judging from the 92.73% approval result of the referendum, Kurdish nationalism with independent tendencies has become a political trend with great influence within iraqi Kurdish society. Mas'ūd al-Barzānī, the former chairman of the Kurdistan region, went so far as to say that "we have not been part of Iraq since the First World War". To be sure, iraq's modern state has been challenged to varying degrees by the Kurdish nationalist movement's authority over its central government since its founding in 1921. For a long time, the international academic community's sympathy for the historical suffering of the Kurds, the political agenda setting of the West to contain the Iraqi Ba'ath Party regime after the 1991 Gulf War, and the international image construction after the legitimate autonomy of the Iraqi Kurds have made the academic community and the media internalize to a certain extent a perspective that the Kurdish political elite has long been committed to shaping the outside world, that is, Kurdish nationalism is collectively shared within iraqi Kurdish society and runs through the development of the problem.
According to Michael Hector, when attempts by multi-ethnic governments to construct national nationalism fail, "peripheral nationalism" that refuses to be assimilated may arise within national borders. In other words, the political tendency of minority nationalization within a country is not an inevitable consequence, but is largely closely related to the process of state-building. According to this article, whether out of ideological identity or compromise with political reality, not all Kurds and even national movements regard independent statehood as the ultimate goal of their recourse. Therefore, the definition of the "stateless national theory" of the Kurdish issue in the academic circles actually internalizes the perspective of Kurdish nationalists and does not fully possess the objectivity of reality; the "theory of internal political issues" is closer to reality, but it is too prominent in the conflicting characteristics of the Kurdish issue. And for a given period, the Kurds do not necessarily challenge the political stability of the country. On the contrary, the structure of the state will bring about a major change in the political philosophy of the Kurds. The definition of the "regional issue theory" is more an extension of the "theory of internal affairs" and does not have a clear demarcation of boundaries. On the basis of the "theory of internal political issues", this paper defines the Kurdish issue as a problem of political identity and social order arising from the failure of the state and the central government to deal with the relationship between the construction of the modern state and the political, social and cultural demands of the Kurds in China in the process of modern history in the relevant countries. Based on this, the Demands of the Kurds should not be represented solely by the most destructive demands for the establishment of independent states, but need to be analyzed in stages and subjects.
In addition, the reality of the Division of Kurds into Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria after World War I determines that while sharing a generalized Kurdish national complex, the Kurds of the four countries are affected by the special national conditions of their respective countries, resulting in four different paths of Kurdish nationalism. Therefore, only by introducing the macro-structural factor of the Iraqi state-building process can we more objectively and accurately understand the development limits of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism in different periods. Based on this, this article uses The English literature of western academic circles and Arabic literature of Middle Eastern academic circles, and relies in part on the North Iraq Dataset (Hiẓb al-Ba'th al-Arabī al-Ishtirākīin Iraq Archives) published after the 2003 Iraq War. Try to sort out and analyze the evolution of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq from the perspective of state construction.
I. Imperial Legacy: The Origins of Kurdish Nationalism
In exploring the origins of nations and their relationship with the state, it is inevitable that discussions about nationalism will be involved. Modernist scholars believe that the emergence of nationalism and the nation-state is the result of the rise of modernization and capitalism, and the nation is thus the product of a recent construction of nationalist ideas, an "imaginary community." Pristine scholars believe that although nationalism is a modern political phenomenon, the nation has long existed in history in the form of "ethnicity" (ethnie). In a concordant manner, some Iraqi historians argue that the two schools of thought actually emphasize the two faces of national formation, namely the two processes of "natural" and "artificial." In the process of "autogeneity", common historical and cultural elements and the gradually emerging capitalist commercial system enable the nation to spontaneously generate from the bottom up; in the process of "artificiality", the political system that matches the aforementioned "autogenous" nation needs to be organized and forced to promote the formation of the nation from top to bottom in order to realize the expansion of the capital market. In the process of the development of the European nation-state, the capitalist commercial system connected the two processes, but the Middle East in the same period did not form a similar capitalist trade system, and the generation path of its nation and nation-state showed more "artificial" characteristics. The Kurds, the fourth largest people in the Middle East, are naturally no more than that.
According to Anthony Smith's definition, the Kurds fit the basic characteristics of an "ethnicity.". Their long-standing residence on the lands of Kurdistan, due to the geographical characteristics of isolated mountainous areas, formed a unique cultural and linguistic system, and the experience of autonomy of the Kurdish principality from the 17th to the 19th century further strengthened these existing attributes of the Kurds. At the end of the 16th century, the Kurdish prince Sharafkhān emphasized the difference between the Kurds and the Turks in his book Sharafnāma, depicting the oppression of the former by the latter. In the mid-17th century, the Kurdish poet Aḥmadi Khānī began writing in Kurdish, calling on the Kurds to unite against turkic and Persian rule in his epic poems. Based on these writings, some Kurdish scholars believe that the destruction of Kurdistan caused by the Battle of Chaldilan between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire in 1514, and the partition of Kurdistan by the Treaty of Schillingborg signed by the two empires in 1639, in fact gave rise to feudal Kurdish nationalism in the 17th century. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire forged a relatively stable cooperative relationship by reducing taxes on the Kurdish Principality, granting it internal autonomy, and emphasizing a common Muslim religious identity, which enabled the Kurds to recognize the authority of the imperial central government. Therefore, it is more reasonable to define the ideas of some of the Kurdish elite of the period in terms of national consciousness or the germination of national ideas rather than nationalism itself.
After the 19th century, in response to the growing imbalance of power between itself and the West, the Ottoman Empire began to implement the "Tanzimat" reforms, which followed the despotic rule of Abdul Hamid II. On the one hand, the authoritarian actions of the imperial government greatly undermined the internal autonomy originally enjoyed by the Kurdish principalities, and modern reforms weakened the religious legitimacy of the imperial rule, which was essentially a loose political alliance based on tribes and Sufi orders, which gradually disintegrated in the late 19th century and disintegrated into Kurdish tribal rebellions of varying sizes. This, in turn, intensified the Ottoman Empire's efforts to suppress and directly rule the Kurds, whose sense of humiliation and national consciousness increased in the process. On the other hand, some elite groups such as Kurdish intellectuals were influenced by nationalist ideas when they received Western education and began to create relevant newspapers and cultural organizations to promote the kurdish national autonomy or independence. It can be seen that although the Kurds may have formed a potential "nation" in the long-term historical process, whether it was the national consciousness that was in its infancy in the 17th century or the nationalist ideas that began to emerge in the late 19th century, the national identity of the Kurds was more a reaction to changes in the external situation and was confined to a small elite. This is both the historical basis for the evolution of Kurdish nationalism and the limitations of its historical development.
The defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I further broadened the space for the development of Kurdish nationalism. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the principle of "national self-determination" proposed by US President Wilson became the basis for the victorious powers to deal with the problems of the peoples under the Ottoman Empire. On March 22, 1919, the Kurdish leader General Sharif Pasha led a delegation to attend the peace conference and submitted a bill for the independent establishment of Kurdistan, which was agreed in principle by the peace conference. Articles 62, 63 and 64 of the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres provide that the Kurds have the right to establish their own state "on the east bank of the Euphrates, in the north-western part of Turkey and north of the Turkish border with Syria and Iraq"; The provisions of the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Sèvres have since become the source of international legitimacy for Kurdish nationalists to claim their right to independent statehood.
However, the plan was strongly opposed by turkey's Mustafa Kemal government. In 1923, Turkey converted the battlefield advantage gained in the Greek-Turkish War (1919-1922) into negotiating capital, replacing the Treaty of Sèvres with the Treaty of Lausanne and deleting the content of the independent establishment of the Kurdish state. Of course, this was not decided unilaterally by Turkey. From Britain's point of view, its willingness to recognize the national rights of the Kurds in the aforementioned document was, on the one hand, to respond broadly to the principle of "national self-determination" at the Paris Peace Conference, and on the other hand, under the international pressure that the Sykes-Picot Agreement, secretly formulated by Britain and France, was made public by the Soviet Union, which Britain hoped to use to downplay the negative impact of the events. In fact, the British government at the time did not reach a clear and unified policy on Kurdish statehood: pro-country officials were more based on sympathy for the Kurds, while the anti-founders believed that "restrictive racial and geographical difficulties" would not allow the Kurds to build an effective state, and that the rich farm areas and oil resources in the Mosul region were of great significance to the nascent Iraqi state. British policy ambiguities largely contributed to the lack of timely and effective implementation of the Kurdish commitments in the Treaty of Sèvres.
As anti-founding officials gradually gained the upper hand, britain decided to include the province of Mosul in the map of modern Iraq, and in 1925 declared itself opposed to the establishment of "any autonomous or independent Kurdish state." In the same year, the British used the Turkish government to suppress the Sheikh Said rebellion, forcing Turkey to abandon its territorial claim to The Mosul province. In December, the League of Nations ruled to assign Mosul province to Iraq. In June 1926, Britain, Iraq, and Turkey signed the Ankara Treaty, agreeing that the province of Mosul would become part of modern Iraq and be under British international trusteeship. At this point, the possibility of Kurdish statehood was officially destroyed, and they fell victim to great power politics. From the Kurds themselves, two levels of factors have contributed to this result.
First, the isolation of the Kurds from the mountains for a long time made them insensitive to the evolution of the surrounding situation, and they were exposed to nationalist ideas relatively late, failing to be deeply aware of the essential changes in the international system and taking timely action. In addition, the Ottoman Empire's emphasis on Islamic ties with the Kurds in response to Russia's policy of pro-Armenians during World War I, and the failure of the post-war Turkish government to mobilize the Kurds against Greece quickly abolished the caliphate, which further hindered the Kurds' grasp of the trend of post-war national nation-building. Abdul Rahman Kasemru quoted a British official at the time as saying: "When we told the Kurds to build a country, they didn't try hard for it. And when they suddenly asked for 14 o'clock (principles) in 1922, it was too late. ”
Second, the internal diversity and differentiation of the socio-political situation makes it difficult for the Kurds to form a joint force and jointly pursue the goal of nation-building. It is true that the unique historical and cultural system of the Kurds is enough to distinguish them from the "other", but it is unable to shape a homogeneous and unified "self". In terms of society and politics, Kurdistan was still dominated by the social structure of the tribe, the tribe was an effective form of social organization for political mobilization and resource integration, and the political elite's action was based on the protection of narrow tribal interests, rather than serving a broad "Kurdish nation". This makes it impossible for Kurdish nationalists to mobilize society to implement their political ideals, while external forces can easily provide benefits to buy, intervene and divide short-lived alliances between tribes, unable to defend established political advantages. Culturally, dialects in different regions, unregulated written languages, backward publishing, and limited literacy rates have hindered the spread of nationalist ideas at the bottom of society, let alone the bottom-up political movements that appeal to nation-building.
Although from the perspective of historical experience, the Arabs, Turks and Persians are more organized than the Kurds, and have a long and rich practice of imperial rule, the establishment of the Middle East nation-state system is the product of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Western colonial policy, which is essentially an export-type political system, which has a pluralistic and differentiated social and cultural subsystem to varying degrees, and lacks elements such as modern industrialization to promote the formation of the nation, so it has inherent vulnerability. The difference is that the Kurds did not, as the Arabs or Turks did, have formal state systems after the war to integrate these scattered elements and thus reverse shape their own people. Thus, if the Kurds are granted the right to statehood under the terms of the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Sèvres, the negativity of the above-mentioned internal Kurdish factors may be greatly diminished, and the history of the Kurds will be a different picture. From the kurds' own conditions at that time, it is estimated that if the Kurdish nation-building plan is put into practice, it will mean that the various factions within the Kurdish society will compete for the dominance of the country and the consequent turmoil, or that the will of the great powers will be needed to promote the process, both of which will lead to the excessive cost burden of Britain in the Middle East, which is not in line with its original intention of indirect colonial rule. In this sense, Britain prefers to rely on more internally integrated Arabs than to support a Kurdish state.
Since then, the Kurds have not only lost the opportunity to self-integrate, but they have also begun to be affected by the structural influence of the national conditions of their respective countries, deriving four different paths for the development of national movements. Iraq's modern state framework determines the peculiar trajectory of the development of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq.
The Modern State: The Framework for the Development of Kurdish Nationalism in Iraq
Understanding the unique impact of iraq's state framework on the development of Kurdish nationalism requires an examination of the way in which Iraq's modern state was formed. Founded in 1921, modern Iraq is the product of an artificial construction by British and French colonists after World War I and consists of the former Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. Historically administratively independent and demographically diverse, the three provinces were dominated by Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds, with diverse cultural and social subsystems within the provinces. The merging of three heterogeneous governorates into one state meant that Iraq's path to a modern state would be difficult to integrate peacefully, and the central government would thus resort to coercive military tactics or soft political compromises.
This inherent defect of iraq's modern state has brought a wider space for the Kurds in its territory. In addition to suppressing tribal rebellions by force, the British adopted a divide-and-rule policy to balance Turkey over the ownership of the Mosul province, supporting its own Iraqi Kurdish tribes and suppressing the Turkish-backed Kurdish tribes. At the same time, King Faisal, who had just arrived in Iraq to rule, lacked a local ruling base and actively co-opted the Kurdish tribes in an attempt to promote the incorporation of Mosul province into Iraq, increase the Sunni population, and balance the predominantly populous Shiite forces. This gave the Iraqi Kurds a more relaxed political and cultural environment from the start. After the formal incorporation of the province of Mosul into Iraq in 1926, the Iraqi government also promulgated the Local Language Law at the request of the League of Nations, allowing parts of Sulaymaniyah and Erbil to carry out primary education and publishing in Kurdish, and appointing Kurds to some ministerial positions. This recognition of the kurdish cultural identity and even political rights was also inherited by successive Iraqi governments (at least at the theoretical or legal level), and the Iraqi Kurds embarked on a very different trajectory from the Kurds of the other three countries.
However, these advantages enjoyed by the Iraqi Kurds are not sufficient to overcome their own pre-existing historical shortcomings. As early as May 1919, the Kurdish tribes in Iraq's Suleimaniyah region and Sufi leader Sheikh Maḥmūd al-Barzinjī launched an anti-British uprising, under the banner of "Jihād" rather than nationalism, and he wanted the Kurds to free themselves from British rule, but not from his personal rule. The uprising was quickly suppressed by the British army, and Sheikh Mahmoud was subsequently offered a British offer and was appointed Governor of Sulaymaniyah. Kurdish nationalists, in reconstructing their national narratives, tend to characterize the Sheikh Mahmoud rebellion as a nationalist movement. But his compromised political behavior shows that the tribal elite, the dominant force in Kurdish society, did not have a clear nationalist appeal at the time, and that rebellions or uprisings were more driven by tribal, religious, and even personal interests.
In fact, the national consciousness of the Kurds in the early days of the Iraqi state was very weak, and there was no Kurdish nationalism in the strict sense. Taking, for example, the August 1921 referendum on whether to agree to Faisal as King of Iraq, in addition to the sulaymaniyah region's opposition, the Kurds in Mosul and Erbil expressed their support. Kirkuk initially suspended his stance, and eventually supported it in 1923, but on the condition that Kirkuk become a Separate Kurdish province and refuse to integrate with the Kurds in the Sulaymaniyah region. This amply demonstrates that the Kurds are not inadmissible to foreign domination. At the same time, the Kurds are deeply divided within themselves, and political thinking dominated by tribal and regional consciousness makes it difficult to unite and cooperate for an abstract concept of "nation", and the position of the Kurds in the Kirkuk region is a clear evidence of Sheikh Mahmoud's limited influence. It is true that in Kurdish towns of the same period, a small number of educated groups and a gradually emerging professional class began to develop an interest in nationalism, but it was limited in size and lacked organization.
After the mosul province was resolved, Sheikh Mahmoud realized that there was no hope of nationhood. At the end of 1926, he launched another uprising, but ultimately failed, and was arrested and placed under house arrest in 1927. Britain and King Faisal then used the tactics of buying interests, dividing and ruling, and suppressing by force to basically maintain order and stability in Iraq's treasury areas. In 1928, the Iraqi government even assessed that the Kurdish problem had been largely resolved. However, it should be pointed out that the development space given by the Iraqi state based on short-term ruling interests is also a problem faced by the long-term process of integrating Kurdish society into Iraq's national identity, and historical issues such as tribes have been instrumentalized by the central government while objectively surviving and even solidifying.
In 1930, Iraq and Britain signed a new Anglo-Iranian Treaty, which ended Britain's international trusteeship of Iraq and Iraq would gain independence in 1932. Correspondingly, the central government tightened its grip on local power, raising concerns among Kurds and leading to a renewed deterioration in bilateral relations. On the one hand, King Faisal tried to establish central authority, establish a police system and levy taxes in remote Kurdish areas, posing a threat to the vested interests of local Kurdish tribes; on the other hand, in the 1930s, pan-Arab nationalist ideologies swept through both Iraqi political and military circles. Fearing that Iraq would merge with other Arab states after the end of the British Mandate, Iraqi Kurds tend to believe that any policy of pan-Arabization "needs to produce a divided Kurdish entity, both within and outside the framework of this Arab superstructure." For example, Kurdish politicians such as Majid Mustafa and Dawes Heidari and many Kurdish tribal leaders have argued that the Kurds should choose to work with the Iraqi central government to jointly construct "Iraq first" nationalism, but because of the principle of exclusivity among pan-Arab nationalists in sharing power with non-Arab nations, they believe that it is necessary to continue to maintain the British mandate on Iraq to protect the interests of the Kurdish minority. In this sense, the Iraqi state programme is not the worst or most unacceptable option for the Iraqi Kurdish elite, which also shows that they have begun to think about their own status within Iraq's national framework.
In September 1930, Sheikh Mahmoud escaped house arrest, the tribes whose interests had been damaged by the coalition resorted to force again, and workers, students and businessmen in Sulaymaniyah also staged strikes, strikes, and demonstrations. The uprising was violently suppressed, and Sheikh Mahmoud eventually surrendered and was placed under house arrest until his death in 1956. Many Kurdish historians believe that the 1930 uprising was a turning point in the history of the Kurdish nationalist movement, and the addition of urban groups expanded the extension and connotation of Kurdish nationalism. Jalāl al-Tālabānī further argues that the political base of the Kurdish nationalist movement has shifted from the countryside to the cities, with the leadership shifting from religious and tribal chiefs to the urban petty bourgeoisie. It is true that intellectuals and urban dwellers have begun to play a role, but they have not subverted the social foundations on which the Iraqi Kurdish nationalist movement is based, but have only changed and enriched its development picture. Based on the agricultural-dominated economic structure of the Iraqi Kurdistan region at the time, tribes were still a form of social organization that effectively mobilized politically and integrated resources, so the Kurdish rebellions of the period were "superficially nationalist, but essentially tribal and religious in nature."
After the fall of Sheikh Mahmoud, the Balzani tribe from the Barzan region of the Ku region gradually rose to prominence, led by Sheikh Aḥmad al-Barzānī and his brother Mulla Musṭafa al-Barzānī (hereinafter referred to as "Mullah Mustafa"). In 1932, the Iraqi government and the British Sheikh Rashid, who had propping up the Shalvani tribe, attacked the Barzani tribe in an attempt to promote control of the Barzani region, triggering an armed revolt by the Barzani tribe. The Barzani tribe did not escape the same fate as Sheikh Mahmoud, who both Sheikh Ahmed and Mullah Mustafa were placed under house arrest. It was not until during World War II that Mullah Mustafa took advantage of the turmoil and revolted twice, in June 1943 and August 1945.
Unlike in the past, the 1943 uprising is considered the first uprising in which Kurdish tribal leaders have made a clear nationalist slogan. This is largely due to the establishment of ties during Mullah Mustafa's house arrest with early Kurdish political organizations such as the Darkār and Hīwā. These groups, made up mainly of city officers, government officials and teachers, believe in communism, have close ties with the Iraqi Communist Party, and participated in two uprisings. After the failure of the uprising, in October 1945, Mullah Mustafa went into exile in the Iranian Kurdistan. Influenced by the Republic of Mahabad (January–December 1946) and iran's Kurdish Democratic Party, Mullah Mustafa realized that the success of the uprising required tribal alliances with educated urban parties. On August 1946, he united several political organizations to form the Kurdistan Democratic Party (16 al-Ḥizb al-Dīmqurāṭī al-Kurdistānī, hereinafter referred to as the "KDP"). According to the party program, the KDP uses Marxism-Leninism as its political ideology, emphasizing the unity of the Kurds and arabs to jointly overthrow the dynastic rule of Iraq and get rid of imperialist control.
The establishment of the KDP for the first time set a framework for the partyization of the Iraqi Kurdish nationalist movement, and more importantly, it was also the first time that the Kurdish nationalist movement explicitly proposed the principle of independent party building according to the country, further demonstrating the role played by Iraq's modern state system for its own Kurds, that is, the Kurds can only pursue the so-called pan-Kurdish national interests if they first meet the political real needs of their host country. It is important to be clear that the KDP is essentially a temporary marriage of the urban left forces and the rural tribal forces, which are a minority. The Barzani tribe plays a leading role, the left forces provide a framework for political ideology and political action, the two lack mutual trust, use each other, and The Mullah Mustafa plays a key role as a link. Cooperation and competition between the two forces constitute an important driving force for the development of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq.
With the fall of the Mahabad Republic in exile in the Soviet Union, the left-wing forces left alone in Iraq were unable to exert substantial political and social influence, and in the 1950s the KDP was closely linked to the Iraqi Communist Party, placing more emphasis on class struggle and anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism in ideology, diluting the elements of nationalist ideas. Realizing that the great powers had no intention of changing the Middle East's state system, the KDP began to gradually reduce its national aspirations from independent statehood to the right to regional autonomy. The Kurdish issue in Iraq remained generally calm at this time, and it was not until the outbreak of the "July Revolution" in 1958 that this situation was changed.
The July Revolution of 1958 overthrew the Hashemite dynasty and Iraq's regime was transformed into a republic. The government of Abd al-Karīm Qāsim chose to unite with the Kurds to counter pan-Arab nationalists. The Interim Constitution, promulgated on 26 July of the same year, states: "The Arabs and the Kurds are partners of this country. The Constitution guarantees their rights within the framework of the Republic of Iraq. "This is the first time that the Iraqi constitution has recognized the national rights of the Kurds, provided that the unity and integrity of the Republic of Iraq are preserved. Qasim gave many Kurds high offices and invited the exiled Mullah Mustafa to return to china to participate in politics. Correspondingly, Mullah Mustafa also cooperated with the Qasim government to suppress political opponents and vigorously expanded his power with the help of a relaxed political environment.
However, as Qasim's power cemented, the mullah mustafa's power gradually recovered and grew, which raised concerns about Qasim. In July 1961, Mullah Mustafa demanded that the Iraqi central government grant substantial autonomy to the Kurds, which was rejected. In September, relations broke down, Mullah Mustafa revolted, and the "First Iraqi Kurdish War" (September 1961 to March 1970) broke out. During this period, iraqi Kurds have experienced many political changes, such as the first time the Ba'ath Party came to power, the Arif brothers came to power, and the Ba'ath Party came to power for the second time, and the two sides have been in a continuous military confrontation and intermittent negotiations on autonomy. The volatility and repetitiveness of Iraq's political situation has led the Kurds to believe that there is room for a turnaround in relations with the central government.
In July 1968, after the Iraqi Ba'ath Party came to power for the second time, it granted amnesty to the Kurds and recognized their national and cultural rights, and in 1970 the two sides reached the Bayān Ādhār (March Declaration), in which the Kurds were promised autonomy, the Kurdish problem was greatly alleviated, and the war between the two sides lasted for nearly 10 years ended. To be sure, the March Statement's endorsement of the Kurdish right to self-government has led to a surge in kurdish national consciousness, with the KDP widely appealing to the Kurdish populace under Mullah Mustafa, but parallel developments including kurdish society's national identity of Iraq.
Lisa Bretz, an American political scientist, points out that the material distribution and rewards of the state often influence the political behavior of citizens in two ways. First, individual citizens are less dissatisfied with the government as a result of the state's high welfare policies; second, this will also enable individual citizens to actively evaluate the existing system psychologically and in terms of future expectations, and increase their "investment" in order to obtain more material returns. After the nationalization of Iraqi oil in 1972, the growing number of public employment opportunities, urban salaries, and continuous improvement of housing, education and medical facilities attracted the rural population of the reservoir area to continue to migrate to the cities and towns. This is partly indicative of the baathist government's high welfare policies that have had an impact on the socio-economic fabric of the Kurds, with Kurdish civilians beginning to abandon their dependence on traditional tribal structures in favor of the Iraqi state-driven urbanization process. This is further suggestive that they may have shifted in the direction that Saddam Hussein called for, no longer seeing themselves as Kurds, but as Iraqis with a Kurdish national identity.
Regardless of whether the urbanization process promoted by the Ba'ath party government in the Kurdistan region has changed the identity core of the Kurds, the high welfare policy brought about by oil wealth has indeed increased the "investment" and recognition of the Baath party power by the Kurds. The Ba'ath Party archives of the second half of the 1970s provide extensive documentation of cooperation between Kurds and the Ba'ath party government, as well as of kurdish civilians being troubled and even hurt by the Kurdish movement at many times. For example, a 1977 document noted that the Kurdish village chief (mukhtārūn) was an important source of knowledge of grassroots affairs in the north by the Iraqi central government. These village chiefs submit regular reports to the Government on the status of the Kurdish movement's weapons, financial resources and communications equipment. Another example is a 1976 Ba'ath Party minutes discussing local discontent with the Kurdish movement when kurdish forces entered villages in the reservoir area for money, stole livestock and threatened villagers. Even during the Iran-Iraq War, there were still many reports that Kurdish civilians were haunted by the activities of Kurdish "saboteurs" (i.e., the Kurdish movement), believing that they were undermining their own stable lives, and advised the government to effectively address these issues so that it "does not discourage the enthusiasm of the Kurdish people to voluntarily confront Iran."
The extent to which the rise in "investment" by Kurdish citizens in the Ba'ath party regime can be seen as evidence of iraq's national identity remains in doubt. But at least it can be argued that at the level of civil society, the Kurds' understanding of their national identity has not been fully politicized, rising to the point of national self-determination or opposition to the Iraqi state. During the Second Kurdish War from 1974 to 1975, the anti-war stance within the Kurds, the KDP's external calls for help, and the cessation of external support led to the collapse of the Kurdish battlefield, all largely reflected the weak civilian foundation of the Kurdish nationalist movement. In stark contrast to the climate of despair that pervaded the Kurdish movement after the defeat, Iraqi troops recaptured cities in April 1975 and were warmly welcomed by local residents. Of course, this may be their helpless move forced by reality. But what is certain is that Iraqi Kurdish nationalism, which has developed here, has not reached a consensus among the Kurds that runs through the elite and the bottom. For political movements, this means autonomy and eventual independence for the Kurds; but for tribal forces and the populace, it may only mean a rich and effective material life, and a national consciousness and ideas that float with the historical situation.
Collective Punishment and the Practice of Autonomy: A Historical Turning Point in Iraqi Kurdish Nationalism
After the collapse of the PDP in 1975, the Iraqi central government continued to promote land reform and Arabization policies in the Kurdish region, and achieved control over the bottom of Kurdish society by consolidating the aforementioned asylum network, thus establishing a pro-central government autonomous government in the Kurdish region and maintaining nominal Kurdish autonomy. As the main leaders of the Kurdish nationalist movement are in exile, the resistance in Iraq's Kurdistan region has largely ceased, with only some Kurdish guerrillas carrying out sporadic small-scale attacks.
Academic research has pointed out that the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) opened up new space for the development of the Kurdish nationalist movement, and the damage caused by the war made nationalist sentiment popular among the ordinary Kurdish people in Iraq. The archives of the Dataset on Northern Iraq show that the Iraqi Kurdish nationalist identity, which runs through the elite and the bottom, actually originated in the "Amaliyat al-Anfāl" launched by the Iraqi central government at the end of the Iran-Iraq War, and was established and solidified in the practice of Kurdish autonomy after the establishment of the no-fly zone in northern Iraq in 1991.
After the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, the leaders of the KDP and the Al-Ittiḥād al-Waṭanīal-Kurdistānī ,hereinafter referred to as the "Kurdistānī" (hereinafter referred to as the "Kurdist Alliance"), which was formed in 1975, returned to Iraq with the support of Iran to oppose the Iraqi Baath Party regime. In response, the Baathist government took a roughly triple approach to the Attack of the Kurdish Nationalist Movement on the Northern Front of the War.
First, a subdivision policy towards the Kurds. According to Baath Party archives, the KDP and PKK are referred to as "zumrat salīlī al-khiyānah" and "zumrat 'umalā' Īrān" (the army of Iranian proxies) and are collectively referred to as "zumrat al-takhrīb"; the two parties, unlike the "kurdish people of our Kurdish people" (sha'bunā al-kurdī), cannot truly represent the KUR. According to an internal report of the Erbil Provincial Security Service in June 1980, baath party further distinguished between pro-government and opposition parties in the Kurdistan district, asking security personnel in the northern region to keep this information in mind and apply it to practical work to combat "saboteurs" and protect the "Kurdish people", saying that their information mastery would be assessed in the future.
As the situation evolved, the Ba'ath Party government also made policy break-downs within opposition personnel. For example, on the question of how to deal with defectors from Iran in Sulaymaniyah Province, the regulations issued by the Iraqi General Directorate of Military Intelligence in June 1983 provide for the detention or house arrest of all family members of the defectors until the escapees are arrested upon their return. However, the Sulaymaniyah Provincial Security Service found that this not only did not effectively induce defectors to return home to confess guilt, but would exacerbate the defection of other family members. In March 1985, the Iraqi General Directorate of Military Intelligence made adjustments to the regulations, which included: punishing only the families of defectors after 1979; detaining only important persons in the families of defectors, such as fathers, brothers or sons; detaining defectors' families for no more than 1 year; detaining females, minors and adult males who are members of the state's military and security forces; suspending detention of detainees in case of special circumstances such as illness; and those who have participated in the war martyrs or received the "Medal of Courage" in their homes. Exemptions are available at their discretion, among others.
Accordingly, in January 1985, the 12 Qar Dāgh Security Centre in Sulaymaniyah province, when reviewing a PDP fugitive alias Āẓār al-Dāghī, decided not to take any further measures against his family, as it was discovered that he had defected to Iran in 1975. In fact, as early as December 1983, a decision by the Karadag Security Center reflected in part the segmentation of the Ba'ath party government's policy towards the Kurds. Azar Daji's uncle, although an important figure in his family, was not affected by the political trial before he took office in a government office, and was judged a political independent by the security center, and finally allowed for appointment.
Secondly, the existing shelter network in the reservoir area should be further consolidated and expanded. Beginning in 1983, the Ba'ath Party government, while intensifying its Arabization policy, also relaxed its control over the economy and addressed huge war costs by leasing and buying land to private enterprises and individuals through privatization. A large number of Kurdish tribal chiefs with close ties to the government regained land and entered the commercial sphere, becoming landowners and urban contractors, and rising into the urban rich, and the Surchī and Zibārī tribes are typical examples. This essentially continues the baathist government's original policies, further building the political loyalty of the Kurdish people through oil wealth, limiting the development of the Kurdish nationalist movement and making it difficult to gain support from the bottom of society.
Third, it emphasizes Iraqi patriotism and recruits Kurdish militias to participate in combat. In the early stages of the war, the Baathist government formed a series of Kurdish light weapons regiments (al-Afwāj al-Khafīfah), followed by the Kurdish Defence Corps (Afwāj al-Difā' al-Waṭanī) during the war, which at one point numbered 250,000. These Kurdish militias have played an important role in coordinating the Iraqi army's campaign against the KDP and PDU.
The implementation of the three measures has contributed to a large extent to extensive cooperation between the Kurdish tribes and the population and the Ba'ath Party government. From July to August 1983, Saddam Sent a high-level government delegation to Sulaymaniyah Province to conduct research, and in the minutes of dozens of talks with the Kurdish people, although many delegates expressed their dissatisfaction with the Arabization policy, an important premise of his discussion was to emphasize that the "saboteurs" could not represent the Kurdish people, and hoped that the government would crack down on the "saboteurs" as soon as possible and negotiate peace with them, with a view to effectively solving the problem and enabling the displaced Kurdish people to return to their homeland as soon as possible. The rest of the discourse focuses mainly on improving people's livelihood. All this demonstrates the limits of the support that the Kurdish nationalist movement has in Iraq. Even in the early days of Operation Anfar, such cooperation was relatively common, and the number of Kurdish militias remained at around 150,000.
It is important to note that a key factor in sustaining the above three measures by the Ba'ath Party Government is its high-cost financial input. For example, Kurds who join the Defence Corps are paid 85 IQD per month per soldier and IQD 200 per month for officers. However, iraq's fiscal position deteriorated as a result of the collapse in international oil prices in 1986 and the Government significantly reduced public spending. As a result, the original ties of asylum became loose or naturally broken, greatly limiting the actions and tactics of the Ba'ath Party government in the reservoir areas.
Taking intelligence verification as an example, on 2 April 1987, the Sulaymaniyah Provincial Security Service received a reliable intelligence showing that 8 members of the 79th Defence Corps had secret cooperation with the CDU, and the Baath Party headquarters requested that the information be verified. On the same day, the Sulaymaniyah Provincial Security Bureau issued an inspection order to the Sulaymaniyah City Security Sub-Bureau, which belongs to the 79th Defence Corps. However, due to the delay in obtaining valid information, the Sulaymaniyah City Sub-Bureau did not respond to the provincial bureau in a timely manner. On April 28, the Sulaymaniyah Provincial Security Authority again sent a telegram requesting the sub-bureau to reply to the intelligence verification within 48 hours. After a new round of interrogations, the Sulaymaniyah City Bureau did not formally reply to the provincial bureau until May 31, saying that of the 8 verified personnel, 2 confirmed that they had secret cooperation with Kuaimeng, 2 could only determine their home addresses, and the remaining 4 could not find relevant information.
The slow efficiency of intelligence verification and the lack of local information directly confirm the limited rule of the Ba'ath Party government in the reservoir areas and the negative impact of the collapse in oil prices. At a deeper level, this as a whole is the modern state-building process in which the Iraqi Ba'ath Party regime relies solely on the oil economy to establish its political legitimacy, and the resulting low state capacity. In fact, only a very small number of Ba'ath Party officials can fluently use Kurdish, and few are willing to take up posts in the Kurdistan, and the Ba'ath Party can only succeed in its entry by adopting incentive policies such as high salaries, short tenure and quick promotions. According to a 1986 report by the Central Organizing Committee of the Baath Party, only 1,694 Baath Party cadres served in the northern region between 1980 and 1986, of whom 503 were "sacrificed at the hands of saboteurs". According to the Northern Iraq Dataset archives, although the local security services in the reservoir area have collected a large number of Kurdish documents related to the Kurdish movement, only a small number of them have been translated into Arabic. This further makes it more difficult for the Baath Party government to correctly judge the situation and to formulate rationalization policies on that basis. Against this backdrop, fiscal contraction has directly led to a shrinking pool of Kurdish collaborators and bureaucrats, weakening the Al-Baath Party's already limited control over the Kurdistan region.
It was the Ba'ath Party's lack of understanding of the situation in the Kurdish areas and the limitations of its rule at the end of the Iran-Iraq War that prevented it from continuing to maintain its established tactics, especially its subdivision of measures against the Kurds. As mentioned earlier, as privatization policies of the 1980s allowed many tribes to regain land, baath party suspected that these rising villages provided logistical supplies for the Kurdish nationalist movement, but was unable to identify and distinguish these remote areas. From 1987 to 1988, Saddam Hussein ordered Operation Anfar, imposing indiscriminate collective punishment on the Kurds, even many Kurdish advisers who worked with the Ba'ath party government. Between 3,000 and 5,000 Kurdish villages, along with their agricultural land, were attacked by chemical weapons, and 1.5 million Kurdish civilians were displaced or forcibly moved into cities, under the centralized control and management of the government. Operation Anfar dealt a fatal blow to the Kurdish economy, with Iraq's kurdistan "turning into a fragmented land, social development rapidly losing its economic base, weakening political parties, demoralizing, and exhausting Kurdish populations.". Multiple Baath Party security intelligence shows that the Kurdish parties are overwhelmed by the economy and have persuaded their fellow refugees to accept a political amnesty and return to Iraq.
It is true that the Iraqi Kurdish movement suffered as much as its defeat in 1975 as Operation Anfar, but this does not necessarily mean the triumph of Iraqi national identity, patriotism or Baath socialist philosophy. On the contrary, the indiscriminate collective punishment of the "Operation Anfar" has made the Kurdish society also lose faith in the Iraqi state, and the Kurdish movement and the Iraqi state are actually facing a "lose-lose" situation in the Kurdistan region.
This is largely reflected in the changes in the KDP's registration form in the 1980s, for example. The header of the registration form for the period 1982-1985 reads: "We are striving to complete the democratic and socialist construction of our Iraqi homeland, strengthen the unity of the Iraqi state and develop the autonomy of Kurdistan in accordance with the glorious revolution of 17-30 July". On the one hand, this reflects the Kurdish nationalist movement's recognition of The Iraqi state premise; on the other hand, it may be motivated by the need for mobilization. For ordinary Kurdish people, nationalism beyond the Framework of Iraq was not a solution to the problem that they could identify with and accept at the time. It was not until 1988 that this situation in the registration form changed, first with the expression "in accordance with the glorious revolution of 17-30 July" being deleted, and by 1990 the entire sentence at the head of the table had been completely deleted.
It is worth noting that the weakening of the Kurdish movement has promoted the unity of internal forces to some extent. In May 1988, with the support of Iran, the KDP and the KDU decided to abandon confrontation, emphasize national unity, and unite with other political parties to declare the formation of the Iraqi Kurdistan Front (al-Jabhat al-Kurdistānīyyat al-Irāqīyyah), declaring a unanimous opposition to the Baathist regime. While this alliance is insignificant in the face of the "mighty" Iraqi state, and the Baath Party has pointedly point out that "the so-called Kurdistan Front is just a propaganda signboard", ironically, it is this weakness that will shape the strength of the Kurds in the future. In line with the later changes in the situation, the historical trauma caused by operation Anfar began to play a role, becoming a valuable historical material for the Iraqi Kurds to build an imaginary community.
In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In January 1991, the United States launched Operation Desert Storm, and the Gulf War broke out. In February of the same year, then-US President George W. Bush called on the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime. In the three weeks that followed, Kurdish forces controlled nearly three-quarters of the territory of the Kurdistan region. But from mid-March, the Iraqi army began to turn to the counter-offensive. On 27 March, Saddam Hussein sent elite units of the Republican Guard to launch airstrikes and ground advances into northern Iraq, recapturing the territory in a short period of time and successfully suppressing the uprising. Fearing further retaliation by the Iraqi government, a large number of Kurdish refugees flocked to the Iranian-Turkish border. Under enormous humanitarian pressure, in April of the same year, 11 countries, led by the United States, sent 20,000 troops to the Iraqi reservoir area in the form of a United Nations peacekeeping force to carry out "Operation Provide Comfort" to establish a no-fly zone north of 36 degrees north latitude in Iraq. The no-fly zone includes areas such as Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Zahu and Duhuk, and any Iraqi aircraft flying into it will be targeted by the multinational force.
As punishment, the Ba'ath Party government withdrew all party, government, and military personnel from the Kurdistan and imposed economic sanctions on the Kurds, which subjected the Kurds to both international and domestic sanctions. The salaries of 300,000 Kurdish civil servants were suspended, the reservoir area was cut off from electricity and water, and the local public health and basic service conditions deteriorated sharply. Fearing that the Ba'ath party government would step up its retaliation, 200,000 Kurdish refugees once again flocked to the border. Saddam Hussein hopes to cause chaos in the Kurdistan region, put the Kurdish parties in a difficult position to rule, force Kurdish civil servants and civilians to move to government-controlled areas as soon as possible, and make them realize that at least the Iraqi central government can provide a better material life than the Kurdish movement.
However, most Kurdish civil servants and civilians resisted Saddam Hussein's threat and refused to move to government-controlled areas. Ofra Bengio said: "The (Kurdish) civil servants and the population as a whole are prepared to endure such hardships, which is indeed a barometer of the formation of Kurdish nationalism. It can be said that the undifferentiated collective punishment behind the "Anfar Operation" actually intensified the national identity consciousness of Iraqi Kurds, so that the common imagination of a "Kurdish nation" political identity began to run through the Kurdish political elite and the bottom of society. In this regard, Serku Kermanchi pointed out that the Kurdish uprising was not only the result of Iraq's military defeat in Kuwait, but also the result of the Ba'ath Party regime's years of oppressive Kurdish policies. Massoud Barzani also admitted in an interview: "The uprising originated from the people themselves. This is something we did not expect. ”
But the defeat of Baathist rule in the Kurdish region does not necessarily mean victory for the Kurdish movement. In fact, the Ba'ath Party government's policy of pushing back and exerting pressure by retreating to advance has achieved some effect, and mass protests and demonstrations have broken out in Duhuk, Sulaymaniyah, Panjewen and other areas, accusing the Kurdish Front of being unable to effectively safeguard the livelihood interests of Kurdish civilians. The demonstrators even put up slogans that read, "We want bread and butter, not Saddam Hussein and no Kurdish front." The "lose-lose" situation between the Iraqi state and the Kurdish movement has once again been staged, the survival of refugees needs to be solved urgently, and the Kurdish Front urgently needs to fill the power and order vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Baath Party.
It can be seen that although the "Anfar Operation" provided the necessary historical memory material for the Iraqi Kurds to build an imaginary community, it is difficult to spontaneously transform this memory into political identity in the absence of corresponding event-inducing mechanisms and institutional arrangements. With the establishment of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (Ḥukūmat Iqlīm Kurdistān) in 1992, this national consciousness of the Iraqi Kurdish people began to be further institutionalized. The Kurdish government provided economic and livelihood resources, political and security shelter to the people, broke the administrative and asylum system established by the Ba'ath Party in the Kurdish region, and strengthened the national identity of the Kurds through educational and cultural measures such as teaching Kurdish language and adapting history textbooks, which actually promoted the process of "de-Ba'thification" in the Kurdish region in advance.
After the 2003 Iraq War, the status of Iraqi Kurds improved significantly. In March 2004, Iraq promulgated the Transitional Administrative Law, which established Kurdish as one of Iraq's two official languages, recognized the kurdish right to self-government and the status of the Kurdish government as the legitimate government of the three provinces of the Kurdish region, and the Kurdish armed forces were retained. The law also provides for the veto of the Constitution if two-thirds of the population of any of the three governorates of Iraq opposes, effectively giving the Kurds the right to veto the Constitution. These Kurdish rights were finally formalized in the Permanent Constitution of Iraq, adopted in October 2005. In addition, informal political arrangements such as a fixed annual allocation of 17 per cent of the central budget to the Kurds in the Kurdish presidency are all manifestations of the political status of Iraqi Kurds after 2003. Economically, the lifting of international sanctions and the abundance of oil resources have promoted the rapid economic growth of the Kurdistan region; in terms of security, the relatively stable situation has formed a huge contrast with the rest of Iraq, making it gain the praise of "another Iraq" in the international community; correspondingly, at the cultural and ideological level, the success of the Kurdish government has a demonstration effect on the Kurds in neighboring countries, making the Iraqi Kurds believe that the cause of Kurdish national independence will be completed by themselves. These set the stage for the Kurdish independence referendum in September 2017. In fact, as early as 2005, in an informal independence referendum initiated by the Kurdish folk movement, the number of participants and 98% of the independence support rate fully illustrate the transformation of the nationalist nature of the Kurdish in Iraq.
IV. Conclusion
The current independent tendencies of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism are not a predetermined outcome, but essentially a product of the failure of modern State-building in Iraq. In other words, the national environment and ethnic policies faced by Iraqi Kurds largely determine the limits of their nationalist development.
First, the germination of Kurdish national consciousness or nationalist ideas was in fact a response to the historical inter-imperial wars and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, and was confined to the Kurdish elite. The multi-polarized cultural system and tribal social structure within the Kurds did not lead to a generalized concept of "nation", and they could not grasp the trend of changes in the situation in a short period of time, and then became a victim of great power politics.
Secondly, the Iraqi national framework has long constituted the basic premise for the development of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq. Based on the special form of generation of modern Iraq, the Kurds enjoyed a relatively relaxed space for development after being classified into Iraq. On the one hand, this makes it easy for the dominant Kurdish tribe to compromise for immediate interests, limiting its pursuit of nationalism; on the other hand, it also allows a new generation of left-wing Kurdish urban elites to develop slowly, injecting new vitality into the development of Kurdish nationalism in Iraq. However, their respective historical flaws have led to a complex competitive relationship between the two, and they cannot form a synergy and consistency. At the societal level, strong tribal traditional identities and the drive of the modern state's high-welfare economic policies have led to a weak national consciousness among the Kurdish populace and a reluctance to provide practical support to the elitist nationalist movement. After a long period of interaction, the search for national autonomy within the framework of the Iraqi state has become a manifestation of the political maturity of the Kurdish elite, and the Concept of the Iraqi State has been largely accepted by the ordinary Kurdish people.
Third, Iraqi Kurdish nationalism, which runs through the political elite and the bottom of society, is a political phenomenon that has only occurred in the recent past. As mentioned earlier, since its inception, Kurdish nationalist ideas have long been limited to the elite, which has greatly limited the development of the Kurdish nationalist movement. The baathist government at the end of the Iran-Iraq War pursued a policy of indiscriminate collective punishment, which intensified the common imagination of the Iraqi Kurdish people for the "Kurdish nation" and expanded the extension of Kurdish nationalism. With the evolution of the situation in Iraq and the region in the later period, the national identity of the Iraqi Kurds has been further established and deepened at the institutional level due to the practice of autonomy.
The historical evolution of Iraqi Kurdish nationalism shows that the emergence of a prominent national consciousness and independent tendency of iraqi Kurds is not an inevitable consequence, but essentially the result of the failure of Iraqi State capacity and the consequent deformity of Iraq's modern nation-state-building process. However, based on the profound impact of Iraq's state structure on the Kurdish issue over a long period of time, as well as the fundamental limitations of the regional and international environment, the settlement of the Kurdish issue in Iraq is not without room for turnaround. Therefore, the practical experience and historical lessons of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party government in dealing with the Kurdish issue in the 1980s show that how to build a strong and stable national capacity and build An Iraqi national discourse and institutional arrangement that is inclusive of the characteristics of a multi-ethnic-sectarian society is the key to Effectively Resolving Iraq's National Identity Dilemma and the Kurdish Problem. At the same time, in the fierce great power game and the geostrategic competition in the Middle East, Iraq should also find a balance of interests and avoid the External Exploitation of the Kurdish Issue as a domestic issue and then evolve into a regional or international issue.
(The views in this article are only the personal views of the author and do not represent the position of the Shanghai Foreign Middle East Research Institute and this WeChat subscription account.) ）
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