Barzani and the Middle East’s new Kurdish player

Inset is Massoud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan

My paraphrasing of today's leader comment penned in Arabic by Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of al-Hayat:

A new player has entered the terrible Middle East field, where regimes, governments, maps and minorities are either crumbling or shaking like a leaf.

That’s the Kurdish player.

In the last century, Kurds were roughed up in the game of nations, which dispersed them, independently of their will, as minorities in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Geography sentenced this people without the right to appeal, and history endorsed the ruling.

Today, we’re talking of nearly 25 million Kurds.

A decade ago many believed Kurds were destined to simply pass on story lines about their sufferings in rugged mountains and about scenes of Halabja and the Anfal Campaign.

Many also believed Kurds would forcibly swallow unjust Turkization and Arabization drives.

Denial of Kurdish rights was a fixed but tacit government policy clause in all four countries despite their claims to the contrary.

Suddenly, the crazy American adventure of invading Iraq brought this dirty game to a close.

The invasion would not have taken place had the Kurdish-Shiite alliance not made a pitch for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime by any means and in whatever way possible.

That’s how the Shiites pocketed Baghdad and the Kurds bagged Iraqi Kurdistan under the federal constitutional republic of Iraq.

The Kurds have now had a decade of stability for the first time in their blood-soaked history.

They’re living under their own flag, though they’ve not ditched Iraq’s.

They teach their children in their native tongue and sing their ballads in their squares. They are building roads and setting up universities. They are also attracting investors and tourists.

The past decade was full of scenes as well.

Massoud Mustafa Barzani is the elected president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, managing it with the competence of a statesman after having led the Peshmerga with the astuteness of a freedom fighter-cum-politician.

Jalal Talabani sits in Saddam Hussein’s office as the president of Iraq.

Hoshyar Zebari shepherds Iraqi diplomacy, trying to uphold the interests of Iraq while walking a tightrope between America’s shadow and Iran’s clout.

Another scene is no less important.

The plane of someone named Recep Tayyip Erdogan landed in Erbil to open its international airport.

In a historic message, the visitor said the day when Kurdish rights were ignored is gone forever. Barzani struggled to conceal his delight, choosing instead to build on the phrase.

I asked Massoud Barzani about Erdogan’s Turkey and the Kurds of Abdullah Ocalan being on the same page now.

He acknowledged in his answer that he encouraged the two sides to bury the hatchet and seek a political solution.

He said success of the Turkey-PKK deal would be “a historic event inducing a sea change in the region.”

He said the two sides showed a sense of realism by kicking off implementation of the agreement to end a conflict that drained Kurds and Turks correspondingly.

I also asked Barzani if stability and prosperity in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region could incite Kurds in neighboring countries to use it as a template.

He replied: There is absolutely no need to clone the Kurdistan Region’s experience. There are circumstances, particularities, power balances and equilibriums. Chronic injustice should not stir up rashness.

“We’re not seeking to tear up maps and redraw borders. We don’t want clashes. We want to live in peace with the Turks, Arabs and Persians. We want to be a stability-and-prosperity factor.

“Surely, however, the times of usurped rights, exclusion and marginalization are defunct. Non-recognition of the ‘Other’ is a destructive culture.”

Barzani felt aggrieved by the mass killings and horrendous destruction in Syria, “which is on our doorstep.” He feared a prolonged split that would create an environment for extremists.

He precluded any role by Iraqi Kurdistan in arming Syria’s Kurds. He also hoped democracy and respect of all constituents would prevail in neighborly Syria.

Barzani refused to “personalize” his current dispute with Nouri al-Maliki, recognizing at the same time that links with Baghdad’s prevailing course of action were “nearing the point of no return.”

He stressed (Iraq’s) Kurds are not asking for more than a respect of the constitution and agreements signed, indicating at the same time that Baghdad’s course of action provoked a deep crisis with Iraq’s Arab Sunni component as well.

Turkey chose a new approach to deal with its Kurds.  Once the guns fall silent in Syria, its Kurdish component will be seated at the reconciliation table. Watching and waiting for their appointment will be Iran’s Kurds.

The triumph of Iraqi Kurdistan has helped change the way the ball bounces.

I asked Barzani, “What do the children of Peshmerga fighters yearn for?”

He grinned and replied, “They want computers, technologies, universities, job opportunities and hospitals. But, in this intricate Middle East, you have to remain on your guard. You must be prepared for war to ward it off.”

I asked, “Why do Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Nouri al-Maliki, Bashar al-Assad and Recep Tayyip Erdogan seemingly lack an esprit de corps?”

Barzani smiled again, saying only, “We want to turn borders into prospects to cooperate, not clash. We have to bank on human dignity, the economy and education. There’s no turning back.”

“Chemical Assad” evokes Iraq’s “Chemical Ali”

View interactive map of Syrian chemical weapons and production sites

Ali Hassan Abdelmajid al-Tikriti was Iraq’s one-time defense minister and a first cousin of Saddam Hussein.

He was dubbed “Chemical Ali” for using chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in the 1987-1988 Anfal offensive culminating in the infamous attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja, which killed more than 5,000 people.

He was captured after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, tried, sentenced to death and hanged in 2010.

The Syrian regime yesterday started to lay claim to a new title for its president – namely, “Chemical Assad.”

It threatened to unleash its chemical and biological weapons if the country faced a foreign attack.

During a televised news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi stressed the weapons are secure and would only be used in the case of an external attack.

“No chemical or biological weapons will ever be used, and I repeat, will never be used, during the crisis in Syria no matter what the developments inside Syria,” he said. “All of these types of weapons are in storage and under security and the direct supervision of the Syrian armed forces and will never be used unless Syria is exposed to external aggression.”

It was the regime’s first acknowledgment that it possesses weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

“Given the regime's stockpiles of chemical weapons,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a foreign policy speech to veterans in Reno, Nevada, “we will continue to make it clear to Assad and those around him that the world is watching and that they will be held accountable by the international community and the United States should they make the tragic mistake of using those weapons.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was “working with allies to monitor the situation” and to send the message to both Syria’s government and opposition about the importance of protecting unconventional weapons.

A “Reuters Factbox” on Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal says, “Syria appears to have acquired the ability to develop and produce chemical weapons agents including mustard gas and Sarin, and possibly also VX nerve agent…

“According to Global Security, there are four suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria - one just north of Damascus; the second near the industrial city of Homs; the third in Hama, believed to be producing VX agents in addition to Sarin and Tabun; and a fourth near the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

“Analysts have also identified the town of Cerin, on the coast, as a possible producer of biological weapons. Several other sites are monitored by foreign intelligence agencies and are listed only as suspect…”

The most senior Syrian politician to defect to the opposition told the BBC last week the regime will not hesitate to use chemical weapons if it is cornered.

Asked if he thought the Syrian president might use chemical weapons against the opposition, Nawaf Faris, ex-ambassador to Iraq, told BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner in an interview in Qatar that he would not rule it out, describing Assad as "a wounded wolf and cornered.”

The opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) yesterday said the chemical arsenal had been moved in a bid to pressure the international community.

“We in the joint command of the Free Syrian Army inside the country know very well the locations and positions of these weapons,” the statement said.

“We also reveal that Assad has transferred some of these weapons and equipment for mixing chemical components to airports on the border.

“According to our information, the regime began moving its stocks of weapons of mass destruction several months ago ... to put pressure on the region and the international community.”

Maj. Gen. Adnan Nawras Salou, a Syrian Kurd who defected to the FSA and was chief of staff of the chemical warfare authority for five years until 2008, will no doubt have vital intelligence to share about the regime’s WMD. (See my July 15 post, “Syria’s ex-chemical war chief to head military opposition”).

Minimizing the dangers posed by Syria’s chemical weapons is a challenge of considerable complexity, Leonard S. Spector, deputy director of James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute in Washington, told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last week.

You can press here to read the full text of his testimony before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade. But following are some salient snippets from Spector’s testimony:

# Outside Syria, I believe our core objective is to ensure that Syria's various assets do not find their way to parties, such as Hezbollah, anti-government insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban, or al-Qaeda… Assad has been warned not to take this step, which would certainly lead to calls for military intervention against him that even Moscow would find hard to oppose.

# [Within Syria] our most urgent goal is to ensure, for humanitarian reasons, that these weapons are not used in the current conflict.

# Timing is another key parameter to bear in mind as we develop strategies to reduce the risks from Syria's arsenals. Broadly speaking, we need to think in terms of three time frames: the current period of increasingly violent hostilities; the period of transition to a post-Assad government of one type or another; and the period after the authority of that government has been established within Syria.

# It is my understanding that CW storage facilities were deliberately built outside major population centers, probably to enhance secrecy and as a safety precaution. Production facilities are likely outside city centers. Thus it is possible that as the current phase of the conflict unfolds, such facilities may fall within insurgent-controlled territory. Although it has been reported that Syria has recently moved some of its chemical weapons, possibly to more secure locations, some chemical assets, such as large stocks of bulk agent may be difficult to relocate and may remain in situ and at risk of diversion.

# One measure that should be implemented immediately is to make clear that chemical weapon custodians who find themselves behind insurgent lines and who peacefully relinquish formal control over these stockpiles and then stay in place to protect them from misadventure, will be protected, and even rewarded, by the post-Assad government.

# Syria is one of a handful of states that have not joined the 1997 Chemical Weapon Convention, which prohibits parties from possessing these weapons and requires parties to destroy existing stocks. A key goal for the United States, which would be widely supported by other nations, would be to orchestrate Syria's commitment to eliminating its chemical arsenal and joining the Convention.

# The Syrian government that replaces Assad must be pressed to take similar steps as a condition for recognition and sustained support.

# To avoid such a relapse to the status quo, as the Free Syrian Army seizes territory where chemical facilities are situated (see map attached to this testimony) in coming weeks and, thereafter, as the Assad regime approaches collapse, with neither the regime nor the insurgents fully controlling the state apparatus, Washington and its allies must take steps to negotiate international monitoring and security arrangements for these sites. It may be best for us to do this with another country taking the lead, such as Turkey, the Netherlands, or Sweden. Access to sites would be negotiated with the Free Syrian Army for facilities within territory it controlled and, clandestinely, with site managers for facilities nominally remaining within Assad's chain of command.