Opinion
It was, rather, aimed at strengthening his own domestic political position as well as that of other leading politicians of the Barzani family and of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Iraq, currently leading the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).
The referendum aggravated the persisting constitutional crisis in Iraq since 2005 over as-yet unresolved crucial questions, above all regarding the status of Kirkuk and other "disputed territories". The Iraqi Kurds lost to a great extent their influence over Kirkuk and about 40% of other "disputed territories" they were controlling before.
On the regional domestic front, it polarized antagonisms among rivalling Kurdish parties, threatened to split the KRI again into two separate administrations, and also deepened the ongoing severe economic KRG crisis.
In geostrategic terms, it enabled the Islamic Republic of Iran to further extend its influence on Iraq and beyond effectively towards the eastern Mediterranean via pro-Iranian Shia-proxy-militias and, last but not least, it also intensified various crises in the Middle East and Eurasia.
Iraqi Kurds are now deeply insecure, divided between haves and have-nots, their society estranged and fragmented, consigned to a "twilight", "divided future?".
They are victims of shock, frustration, and disappointment of being let down again by the rest of the world. They also blame each other for dangerous miscalculations and acts of treason. Once again, there are protests and riots by unyielding young activists demanding democracy and social justice.
In 2011, young people were getting killed. There are urgent warnings of a new civil war. Hope is fading for the vision of an independent Kurdistan. Fears are growing about escalating tensions, division, and recent armed conflicts.
The Independence referendum of September 25, 2017, initiated by Masoud Barzani, triggered aftershocks in the entire Middle East.
The Iraqi Kurds themselves lost almost 40% of the territory they held in northern Iraq before the referendum. They were de facto partly thrown back to where they had started in the early1990s, a good quarter of a century earlier: limited federal, regional autonomy, and freedom.
Iran managed not only to control large parts of Iraq via Shia proxy militias but, for the first time to establish a direct land bridge across Syria and Lebanon to Israel and towards the eastern Mediterranean. Unbridgeable differences between leading Iraqi Kurdish parties threaten to divide the Kurdistan Region again in two.
This time, under Iran's influence, the governorates of Halabja and Sulaimaniyah and parts of Kirkuk and other "disputed territories" could be formed into a second Kurdistan region.
This would mean a renewed partition of Iraqi Kurdistan into a northern autonomous region under the leadership of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP) and with dominant Turkish influence, and a southern part under the control of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Reform Party "Gorran" ("Change"), Barham Salih's new "Coalition for Democracy and Justice" set up in 2017, as well as smaller parties dominated by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
If this comes about, there would be unpredictable consequences. All the grave problems that brought about this development, including dangerously unresolved issues relating to the 2005 Iraqi constitution, would remain as explosive as before.
Two recent publications have fueled debate about democratic cooperation with autocratic governments in general, particularly Saudi Arabia, in the wake of the Ukraine war.
It is a debate that challenges US President Joe Biden's framing of the conflict as a struggle between good and evil, democracy and autocracy.
The commentaries by prominent geopolitical analyst and travel writer Robert Kaplan and former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House raise multiple, and perhaps troubling, questions that go to the core of culture wars in the United States and other Western countries.
The absence of parallels between the brutality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and similar events in the Middle East and North Africa spotlights the seeming blindness, if not the adoption of double standards, by the United States and Europe.
These parallels include the equally brutal Russian intervention in Syria, the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen, and Israel and Morocco's occupation of conquered lands.
"Stunning that an entire article at WSJ blaming US, and Biden in particular, for undermining the US-Saudi relationship can be written without highlighting the seminal destructive role played by ruthless, reckless MBS in that undoing," tweeted Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former US Middle East negotiator. Mr. Miller was referring to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
"Read the WSJ piece and weep. Billions spent literally teaching hate, forcing monolithic Islam, destroying cultural heritage, and that is just some of the damage caused globally. How many children have been infected by hate?" added Farah Pandith, the former US State Department's Representative to Muslim Communities.
The two former officials took exception to Ms. House's suggestion that Mr. Biden should "seek forgiveness for a growing list of Saudi grievances" that have strained relations between the kingdom and the United States.
They probably would have also taken issue with Mr. Kaplan's simplistic portrayal of Mr. Bin Salam as a social reformer who promotes "personal freedoms."
Neither author mentioned Saudi responsibility for Yemen becoming one of the world's worst humanitarian crises or the lack of accountability and transparency in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi crew with close ties to Mr. Bin Salman.
Ms. House, the author of a book on Saudi Arabia, focused instead on the US refusal in recent years to respond more forcefully to attacks on critical Saudi and Emirati infrastructure by Houthi rebels in Yemen and Iran, the US backpedaling on arms sales, and Mr. Biden's refusal to engage Mr. Bin Salman because of the Khashoggi killing.
The gap between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates has widened with the two Gulf states refusing to back sanctions against Russia or increase oil production to stop prices from further spiraling.
"In the 40 years I have been visiting this country, never has anger at the US been so visceral or so widespread," Ms. House wrote. She argued that it was up to Mr. Biden to repair relations with the kingdom rather than putting at least part of the onus on the crown prince. He has cracked down brutally on any perceived dissent.
Ms. House frames her argument regarding the larger rivalry between the United States and China. "Saudi pique is dangerous. The kingdom's relations with China are strong and getting stronger," Ms. House said.
While Ms. House acknowledges that, in contrast to the United States, "Beijing can't protect Saudi oil fields or the sea lanes that allow its oil to reach world markets." She seems to overlook that Saudi Arabia and the UAE may have overplayed their hand in the Ukraine crisis.
The fact that China is a long way away from being capable or willing to replace the United States militarily in the Middle East. It may prove to be a more difficult ally means that Saudi Arabia and the UAE's options to hedge their bets may have narrowed, giving the US more rather than less leverage.
That suggestion is reinforced because the Ukraine fiasco has effectively cost Russia a seat at the top table in an emerging, more multi-lateral world order.
Mr. Kaplan puts the Ukraine conflict and the issue of cooperation between democratic and autocratic states in shaping a new world order in a broader context that complicates the terms of the debate.
The author correctly rejects the notion that the Ukraine conflict is a battle between democracy and autocracy. Instead, he frames it as a struggle to maintain the rule of law, uphold international law, and ensure the inviolability of internationally recognized borders.
While Ms. House's argument is based on cold geopolitical realities, Mr. Kaplan seeks to redefine liberalism and personal freedoms. In his mind, they are exemplified by Mr. Bin Salman's social rather than political liberalization.
"If you survey the world beyond North America and Europe — giving the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America the same importance — it becomes unclear whether parliamentary democracy is an absolute necessity for the general spirit of liberalism to develop," Mr. Kaplan asserts.
In doing so, Mr. Kaplan reduces human rights to enhance women's rights. For example, in Saudi Arabia, personal freedoms to "protecting minorities, freedom to travel or to order any book from abroad, etc." Freedom of expression, the media, and assembly are glaringly absent in Mr. Kaplan's definition.
Mr. Kaplan asserts that Saudis don't want elections because they could be won by "Muslim fundamentalists." He goes on to argue that "Saudis make a distinction between liberty and democracy."
It doesn't strike Mr. Kaplan that if Islamists were to win a free and fair election in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Bin Salman's far-reaching social reforms might be less popular than is widely assumed.
Mr. Kapan makes a fair point that there are absolute and more benign autocracies and that the more enlightened autocracies may be acceptable partners.
Yet, there are at least two problems with his argument. Saudi Arabia may have enacted long-overdue social and economic reforms needed to diversify its oil-dependent economy. Still, the kingdom is anything but an absolute, harshly repressive autocracy ruled by one man.
Saudi Arabia last month put 81 people to death in one of the largest mass executions in the kingdom's recent history. Many of the executed were Shiite activists convicted for their dissent and non-violent protest.
" Saudi Arabia is not really becoming a freer country. It is simply becoming a different kind of repressive police state with more of an emphasis on nationalism and a willingness to provide the people with bread and circuses," said pundit Daniel Larison in a blistering criticism of Mr. Kaplan's argument.
Moreover, few autocracies in the past seven decades have left a positive legacy. Among the few, some, like Chile and South Korea, have done so at a steep human price.
The fact that Chile and South Korea are exceptions that confirm the rule is not to argue that all cooperation with autocracies is wrong.
In a criticism of prominent historian of the Soviet bloc Anne Applebaum's assertion that autocracies are out to destroy democracies, Eldar Mamedov, political adviser for the social-democrats in the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, notes that many authoritarian or semi- authoritarian states such as Turkey, Qatar, Vietnam, Venezuela, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan seek cooperation with the United States and Europe.
"Should they all be rebuffed due to their lack of democratic credentials?
Can't conditions exist under which engagement with authoritarian states may foster positive change — if not outright democratization, then at least some forms of liberalization and openness?" Mr. Mamedov asks.
He points out that "historically, engagement with authoritarian regimes in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile prepared the ground for imperfect, but workable democratic transitions."
That said, it's unlikely that Saudi Arabia will follow the example of Spain, Portugal, or the Latin American states any time soon.
Liberalism is in peril. The fundamentals of liberal societies are tolerance of difference, respect for individual rights, and the rule of law, and all are under threat as the world suffers what can be called a democratic recession or even a depression. According to Freedom House, political rights and civil liberties around the world have fallen each year for the last 16 years. Liberalism’s decline is evident in the growing strength of autocracies such as China and Russia, the erosion of liberal—or nominally liberal—institutions in countries such as Hungary and Turkey, and the backsliding of liberal democracies such as India and the United States.
In each of these cases, nationalism has powered the rise of illiberalism. Illiberal leaders, their parties, and their allies have harnessed nationalist rhetoric in seeking greater control of their societies. They denounce their opponents as out-of-touch elites, effete cosmopolitans, and globalists. They claim to be the authentic representatives of their country and its true guardians. Sometimes, illiberal politicians merely caricature their liberal counterparts as ineffectual and removed from the lives of the people they presume to represent. Often, however, they describe their liberal rivals not simply as political adversaries but as something more sinister: enemies of the people.
The very nature of liberalism makes it susceptible to this line of attack. The most fundamental principle enshrined in liberalism is one of tolerance: the state does not prescribe beliefs, identities, or any other kind of dogma. Ever since its tentative emergence in the seventeenth century as an organizing principle for politics, liberalism deliberately lowered the sights of politics to aim not at “the good life” as defined by a particular religion, moral doctrine, or cultural tradition but at the preservation of life itself under conditions in which populations cannot agree on what the good life is. This agnostic nature creates a spiritual vacuum, as individuals go their own ways and experience only a thin sense of community. Liberal political orders do require shared values, such as tolerance, compromise, and deliberation, but these do not foster the strong emotional bonds found in tightly knit religious and ethnonationalist communities. Indeed, liberal societies have often encouraged the aimless pursuit of material self-gratification.
Liberalism’s most important selling point remains the pragmatic one that has existed for centuries: its ability to manage diversity in pluralistic societies. Yet there is a limit to the kinds of diversity that liberal societies can handle. If enough people reject liberal principles themselves and seek to restrict the fundamental rights of others, or if citizens resort to violence to get their way, then liberalism alone cannot maintain political order. And if diverse societies move away from liberal principles and try to base their national identities on race, ethnicity, religion, or some other, different substantive vision of the good life, they invite a return to potentially bloody conflict. A world full of such countries will invariably be more fractious, more tumultuous, and more violent.
That is why it is all the more important for liberals not to give up on the idea of the nation. They should recognize that in truth, nothing makes the universalism of liberalism incompatible with a world of nation-states. National identity is malleable, and it can be shaped to reflect liberal aspirations and to instill a sense of community and purpose among a broad public.
For proof of the abiding importance of national identity, look no further than the trouble Russia has run into in attacking Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine did not have an identity separate from that of Russia and that the country would collapse immediately once his invasion began. Instead, Ukraine has resisted Russia tenaciously precisely because its citizens are loyal to the idea of an independent, liberal democratic Ukraine and do not want to live in a corrupt dictatorship imposed from without. With their bravery, they have made clear that citizens are willing to die for liberal ideals, but only when those ideals are embedded in a country they can call their own.
LIBERALISM’S SPIRITUAL VACUUM
Liberal societies struggle to present a positive vision of national identity to their citizens. The theory behind liberalism has great difficulties drawing clear boundaries around communities and explaining what is owed to people inside and outside those boundaries. This is because the theory is built on top of a claim of universalism. As asserted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”; further, “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Liberals are theoretically concerned with violations of human rights no matter where in the world they occur. Many liberals dislike the particularistic attachments of nationalists and imagine themselves to be “citizens of the world.”
The claim of universalism can be hard to reconcile with the division of the world into nation-states. There is no clear liberal theory, for instance, on how to draw national boundaries, a deficit that has led to intraliberal conflicts over the separatism of regions such as Catalonia, Quebec, and Scotland and disagreements over the proper treatment of immigrants and refugees. Populists, such as former U.S. President Donald Trump, have channeled that tension between the universalist aspirations of liberalism and the narrower claims of nationalism to powerful effect.
Nationalists complain that liberalism has dissolved the bonds of national community and replaced them with a global cosmopolitanism that cares about people in distant countries as much as it cares for fellow citizens. Nineteenth-century nationalists based national identity on biology and believed that national communities were rooted in common ancestry. This continues to be a theme for certain contemporary nationalists, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has defined Hungarian national identity as being based on Magyar ethnicity.
Other nationalists, such as the Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony, have sought to revise twentieth-century ethnonationalism by arguing that nations constitute coherent cultural units that allow their members to share thick traditions of food, holidays, language, and the like. The American conservative thinker Patrick Deneen has asserted that liberalism constitutes a form of anticulture that has dissolved all forms of preliberal culture, using the power of the state to insert itself into and control every aspect of private life.
The first wave of shock and fear that hit us has quickly changed to rage. Binary thinking is the most prominent right now - it’s all just one side or the other.
I find myself dissociating while reading the news or the stories of people from Mariupol or Kharkiv who managed to escape the horrors. It feels surreal and unfathomable as if this never could’ve happened in Ukraine, in the middle of Europe, in the 21st century.
I feel its realness when hearing sirens (it’s been a couple of missile attacks in my region this week), hearing the planes above my roof, and seeing hundreds of cars with refugees going by my village.
War also gave us something beautiful, indeed. The unity and togetherness are tangible. We all breathe for the same purpose. This feeling existed in 2013 and 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv, but it’s all over Ukraine now. And we feel the support of the world with it
It’s not only a war of territory, economy, and membership in NATO or EU. It’s also a cultural, national and ideological battle in which every one of us is taking part.
We speak our distinctive language. We refuse Russian information space and content. We represent an image of Ukraine in other countries. Russian propaganda and occupation desperately tried to erase our identity for ages, but they never could. And never will.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Kurdsat News.
A major producer of natural gas, the tiny Gulf state is under the magnifying glass as it enters the final phase of hosting the 2022 World Cup later this year and emerges as a potential part of efforts to reduce European dependence on Russian energy.
On balance, Qatar looks like it has already succeeded, as much on its own steam as with the help of its erstwhile detractors in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Arab world, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Over the past decade, much of the attention has focused on labour rights in the Gulf state as a result of world governing soccer body FIFA’s awarding of the 2022 World Cup hosting rights to Qatar in 2010.
Qatar remains a target of criticism by human rights groups, despite implementing far-reaching reforms of its kafala or labour sponsorship system that long put workers at the mercy of their employers.
The criticism is rooted in the Gulf state’s weak implementation of the reforms; a problematic judicial system; a top-down, centralised decision-making process; and poor handling of World Cup and sports-related incidents.
In the latest incident, The Guardian newspaper, a pillar of critical coverage of the Qatari World Cup, reported that migrant workers, a majority of the population, had collectively paid billions of dollars in illegal recruitment fees over the last decade. Qatar outlawed burdening migrant workers with recruitment fees as part of its reforms.
Qatar opened recruitment centres in eight labour-supplying countries to ensure that recruitment would meet ethical standards in line with recommendations made by a Qatar Foundation study. The centres have reduced the risk of employment terms in workers’ contracts being unilaterally changed but have been unable to curb the levelling of recruitment fees.
To compensate for their inability, the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, the Qatari organizer of the World Cup, has obliged companies it contracts to repay the fees without workers having to provide proof of payment. Companies have so far pledged to repay roughly USD$28.5 million to some 49,000 workers, $22 million of which have already been paid out.
It is a step the government could apply nationally with relative ease in an effort to demonstrate sincerity and, more fundamentally, counter the criticism. Similarly, in response to complaints raised by human rights groups and others, the government could also offer to compensate families of workers who die on construction sites. None of these measures would put a dent in Qatari budgets but would earn the Gulf state immeasurable goodwill.
“The migrant workers injured or families of those who died in the build-up to the World Cup should be cared for,” said Lise Klaveness, the newly-elected president of the Norwegian Football Federation, at this week’s FIFA Congress in Doha.
Ms. Klaveness’ stirring speech drew a fiery response from Supreme Committee secretary-general Hassan Al-Thawadi. “We’re not seeking validation. Legacy is being delivered as we speak. We’ve showcased to the world what tournament hosting can do,” Mr. Al-Thawadi said.
Nevertheless, Qatar hasn’t done itself any favours with its handling of the case of Abdullah Ibhais, a Jordanian-Palestinian Supreme Committee communications executive, who opposed putting a spin on a strike by migrant workers, including some assigned to World Cup-related projects. The workers were on strike because their salaries had not been paid.
Mr. Ibhais was subsequently accused of leaking state secrets and awarding a social media tender to a Turkish bidder in return for Turkish citizenship. He asserts that he was forced to sign a confession and was initially refused access to a lawyer.
Mr. Ibhais was sentenced to five years in prison based on evidence that, according to Human Rights Watch, was “vague, circumstantial, and in some cases contradictory.” However, an appeals court subsequently reduced his sentence to three years in jail.
In a statement, the Supreme Committee insisted that the allegations against Mr. Ibhais had “merit. The committee contended that the assertion that the charges constitute retribution for “raising matters pertaining to workers’ welfare is absolutely false.”
In contrast to recurring rights issues that cast a shadow over the Qatari World Cup, Qatar garnered substantial goodwill during the 3.5-year-long United Arab Emirates-Saudi-led diplomatic and economic boycott designed to force the Gulf state to subjugate itself to the will of its detractors.
Perceived as the underdog confronted with demands that would have de facto deprived it of its independence, Qatar was lauded for its resilience and steadfastness that ultimately persuaded the UAE and Saudi Arabia to end the boycott in January 2021.
Since then, Qatar was awarded for its key role in assisting the United States in its bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan with the US nominating it as a ‘Major Non-NATO Ally.’
Qatar is the only Gulf state to enjoy that status. It ranks Qatar among the United States’ closest allies alongside Australia and Japan and opens the door to more joint military exercises and potential arms sales.
The nomination takes on added significance at a time that Gulf states worry about United States efforts to rejigger and reduce its security commitments in the region and strike a deal with Iran on reviving the 2015 nuclear agreement that curbed the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
The deal would lift many US sanctions against Iran and return it to the international fold without addressing Iran’s ballistic missiles program and support for militias in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen – issues that are major concerns for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel.
Meanwhile, Qatar has earned brownie points in the Ukraine crisis despite keeping its lines open to Moscow and refraining from adopting US and European sanctions against Russia.
In contrast to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which refused US requests to increase oil production to stop prices from spiralling out of control, Qatar has started talks with Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy about long-term liquified natural gas supplies that would help Europe reduce its dependence on Russian energy.
"For the US, it is now all about Qatar and being friends with Qatar. What about your allies that have been by your side for years?" complained a Saudi official, clearly upset that Qatar was succeeding where the kingdom had failed.
"The Qataris are in a unique spot as a trusted player to a spectrum of actors that is almost unparalleled, from the White House to the Taliban to Iran to European gas consumers," said Middle East scholar Adel Hamaizia.
All in all, Qatar has, in many ways, already put its best foot forward.
Nevertheless, human rights groups will view the final stretch to the World Cup scheduled for the end of the year as an opportunity to increase pressure on the Gulf state to address their remaining concerns.
The final stretch is not only an opportunity for activists. It also is an opportunity for Qatar to put its best foot forward on labour issues that it already acknowledges and has made significant strides in addressing.
Russia has failed to defeat the Ukrainian army despite maintaining a whopping 22 thousand armored vehicles, twice as many as United States’ which possesses the largest military in the world.
What role does a tank play in battle? It is essentially a mobile infantry and artillery combined. Most Russian tanks date back to the soviet era. Although some of its T-72, T-80, AND T-90 tanks have been upgraded, most Russian tanks date back to the 1970s and 1980s. Only a few of Moscow’s cutting-edge T-14s have rolled into service. As such, its tanks cannot do what they are expected to do.
The Kremlin knows that nukes are their best deterrent rather than their 22 thousand strong armored vehicle arsenal. It explains the Kremlin’s insistence on using nuclear weapons if there was an existential threat to Russia.
Russian tanks have suffered one of the heavy losses in recent history, with almost 600 tanks destroyed.