Oil and Borders: How to Fix Iraq's Kurdish Crisis
Publisher: Crisis Group
Date: 2017
Topics: Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Extractive Resources
Countries: Iraq
In the early hours of 16 October, Iraqi federal forces launched a drive toward Kirkuk city that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said was aimed at retaking oil fields, an air base, the airport and federal installations lost in June 2014 when the Iraqi army collapsed in the face of an onslaught by the Islamic State (ISIS). The military move, which met with relatively little resistance, reportedly was enabled by a deal between the Abadi government and a faction of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The PUK mostly withdrew, while forces of the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region, who staged a popular referendum on Kurdish independence in late September, fled. In the end, federal forces established control not only of the oil fields, but of an even more emotional prize, the city of Kirkuk.
At the root of the conflict in Kirkuk – and potentially in other parts of the disputed territories as well – is the failure to resolve the status of these areas through negotiations since 2003. A constitutional article (Article 140) that prescribed a process by which to do so never was implemented. This triggered great frustration with Kurdish leaders, who long had laid claim to these areas. Their acquisition of Kirkuk and its oil fields and other strategic installations in June 2014 was a windfall. They filled the security vacuum and continued to entrench their positions for the next three years. Barzani repeatedly declared that these areas were now “Kurdistani” and would stay in Kurdish hands.