In the Middle East, a region known for its many challenges, one issue has recently come to the forefront that has the potential to pose the greatest challenge of them all: the Kurds. If you have been following developments in Syria and Iraq recently, then this name will be familiar to you. In the battle against ISIS, the Kurds have been some of the U.S.’s closest allies. In Iraq, it was Kurdish fighters who halted ISIS’s advance on Kirkuk, a major oil hub, and who liberated the Sinjar, where ISIS committed the genocide against Yazidis that first lead President Obama to declare war on the caliphate. In the Syrian town of Kobani, the world watched as Kurdish fighters, with U.S. air support, delivered the first major blow to ISIS in Syria. This weekend, the Syrian Democratic Forces, lead by the Kurds, managed to retake Raqqa, the de-facto capital of ISIS’s caliphate, as well as Syria’s largest oil field from the Sunni militants. The Kurds, with U.S. support, have turned the tide in the war against ISIS from Manbij to Mosul. They are the group fighting hand in hand with U.S. special forces, calling in U.S. airstrikes, and attracting volunteers from across the western world.
However, this is only part of the story of the Kurds. This ethnic group of roughly 20 million people is the largest group without a state in the world. A people with their own language and culture, the Kurds were separated by the artificial lines created during the imperial scramble for the Middle East, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Today’s Kurds are spread across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and, in each country, the Kurds are a major ethnic minority who have faced systematic repression. In Syria, officially an Arab Republic, Kurds were never granted citizenship by the Arab leaders. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein lead a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands and expelled Kurds from parts of their traditional homeland. In Iran, a short lived Kurdish Republic was violently destroyed. Most importantly, in Turkey, where up to 15 million Kurds live, the Kurdish language and any other markers of Kurdish identity have long been banned. As a result, Kurds across the Middle East feel little loyalty to the states in which they live. The Turkish Kurds began an insurgency in 1978 that has killed thousands over the past 40 years while the Kurdistan Workers Party, which leads the insurgency is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the E.U., and the U.S.
In Syria, the civil war has resulted in an opportunity for Kurds to fill a power vacuum in their region and to gain international recognition. When the war began in 2011, Assad’s forces quickly withdrew from the Kurdish region of northeast Syria in an attempt to bring force to bare on the centers of the uprising in southern, central, and northwestern Syria. The result was the growth of Kurdish militias which quickly took full control over most Kurdish majority areas. Then, when ISIS rose to power in 2014, it cut off the Kurdish region from the rest of Syria, further isolating the area. ISIS’s advance then became an existential threat to the Kurds, and they began a concerted effort to roll back the insurgent’s gains and to unite the Kurdish areas. The U.S. saw this effort as one of its only viable ways to fight ISIS and exert influence in Syria. Since then the effort has grown into a major US operation in Syria and the Kurds have created an umbrella group, the Syrian Democratic Forces, which they hope to use to bring Arabs and others into their fold. The stated goal of Syrian Kurds is a renegotiation of the Syrian constitution in order to create a federal system under which the Kurds can enjoy a level of autonomy. With the land and arms they now possess, Syrian Kurds just may be able to make this happen.
Meanwhile in Iraq, Kurds have sought to create an autonomous province ever since gaining U.S. protection in the wake of the Gulf War and then the Iraq War. By building a pipeline through Turkey, the Kurds of Northern Iraq managed to create a stable and economically successful proto-state, even as the rest of Iraq was consumed by internal divisions throughout the 2000s. After the expansion of ISIS in 2014, the Kurds took control of the city of Kirkuk as well as major Iraqi oil fields and suddenly found themselves in the position to create a fully viable state. On September 25 of this year, they held a referendum on complete independence and the result, with 80 percent participation, was a resounding yes. However, the government in Baghdad, as well as the leaders of Turkey and Iran, called the referendum illegal and threatened military action in the Kurdish region if they moved towards full independence. Perhaps most importantly, the U.S. also refused to back the referendum. After days of standoff, post referendum, the Iraqi military, with the support of Iranian backed Shiite militias, made a surprise assault on Kirkuk and other contested areas. Over the course of this past week, Iraqi forces have continued their advances and now Iraq’s Kurds have been forced to freeze the referendum results and reenter negotiations with Baghdad.
While the future of the Kurds in the Middle East is unclear, the events of this past week have shown that these people have become a force that cannot be ignored. They have the potential to shatter four major Middle Eastern states, and should the Kurds ever achieve full independence, Kurdistan could be one of the largest countries in the region. Kurdish armed groups have halted ISIS and now have their sights set on greater control over their own destiny. With regional powers united against them, and the U.S. only providing lukewarm support, it is hard to see the emergence of any truly world-shaking changes. However, for the first time, Kurdish power appears to be on the rise across the Middle East, and who knows what this will bring.