Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

Tensions between the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) under Masoud Barzani have been rising since at least 2009 over the disputed Kirkuk, Diyala, and Saladin governorates, which both sides seek to control.  The tensions have escalated with the sending of heavy weapons, including tanks, to Kirkuk.  Turkey, historically no friend of the Kurds, has bolstered the KRG by signing oil agreements with the KRG without the consent of Baghdad.

Last Friday, 16 November, there was an incident in Tuz Khormato (in Saladin Governorate) between Kurdish peshmerga forces and Iraqi troops in which two people were killed and 10 wounded.  Then on Monday, 19 November, 12 Iraqi troops were killed by peshmerga forces near the Iraqi city of Tikrit.  This is the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein that Kurdish forces and Iraqi troops have clashed so seriously.

Turkey is supportive of the KRG because it is allied to the Sunni Arabs who oppose the al-Maliki government, including the fugitive Vice-President Tareq al-Hashimi, who is currently in Turkey.  The added complication is that the disputed regions are home to a large population of Sunni Arabs.  This is the heartland of the Arab Sunni-based Al-Iraqiyah party, which in the 2010 elections shared the electoral spoils in Kirkuk equally with the Kurds.  Then, to pile complication upon complication, the Kurdish areas in the disputed region have traditionally supported the Iranian-leaning Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, rather than Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic party (KDP).  Talabani has tried to keep relations with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is a pro-Iranian Shia Arab, on an even keel.

All of this means that if the conflict escalates in the disputed regions, then the PUK is likely to split with the al-Maliki government.  The PUK could also unite with the KDP, which might not be to Turkey’s liking.  But this could play into al-Maliki’s hands by turning the dispute into an Arab-Kurdish one and thereby boosting al-Maliki’s standing with the Arab Sunnis at the expense of Al-Iraqiyah – and of Vice-President al-Hashimi in his Turkish exile.