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Police hold back a crowd of
people waiting to vote
at a polling station in Erbil
on Sept. 25LightBox
Kurds must now give up control of
their border crossings and airports,
his government said, and the region’s
lucrative oil revenues.
Al-Abadi’s aggressive response
was matched by Iraq’s neighbors,
many of whom are grappling
with their own Kurdish separatist
movements. In Iran, where some
Kurds celebrated in the streets in
defiance of Tehran’s government, the
authorities have closed the airspace
to flights heading to the Kurdish
region. Turkey staged joint military
exercises with Iraq in response to the
vote, and President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan issued a dark warning of an
“ethnic and sectarian war.”
That may be an exaggeration
aimed at Kurdish separatists in Tur-
key, but a political crisis is certainly
brewing within Iraq’s borders, as the
standoff between Kurdish President
Masoud Barzani and al-Abadi deep-
ens. The extraordinary success of the
yes vote among 3.3 million voters will
surely embolden Barzani to resist the
economic pressure and saber rattling
from Baghdad. Claiming victory on
Sept. 26, he said, “Negotiations are
the right path to solve the problems,
not threats or the language of force.”
The Kurdish separatists and the
central government each have much
to lose and gain in the dispute. At
stake is more than 15,400 sq. mi. of
disputed territory, including the
city of Kirkuk, now controlled by
Kurdish militias after Iraqi soldiers
deserted it when Islamic State forces
advanced in 2014. Tensions among
the city’s Kurds, Sunni and Shi‘ite
Arabs and ethnic Turkmen were
already high before the vote. Now
there is a virtual tinderbox sitting
on top of oil reserves that produce
up to 400,000 barrels a day—an
economic prize for whoever ends up
controlling it.
Whatever happens next, the unity
that briefly held sway across this
country as ISIS was driven out of
its mainstay in Mosul has gone, and
Iraq’s future once again is an open
question.—JARED MALSIN