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Kurdistan Rising? Considerations for Kurds, Their Neighbors, and the Region

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Kurdistan Rising? Considerations for Kurds, Their Neighbors, and the Region AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE KURDISTAN RISING? CONSIDERATIONS FOR KURDS, THEIR NEIGHBORS, AND THE REGION DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS: LUKMAN FAILY, IRAQI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES; JAMES F. JEFFREY, FORMER US AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ AND TURKEY MICHAEL RUBIN, AEI MODERATOR: DANIELLE PLETKA, AEI 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 2016 EVENT PAGE: http://www.aei.org/events/kurdistan-rising-considerations-for- kurds-their-neighbors-and-the-region/ TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY DC TRANSCRIPTION – WWW.DCTMR.COM DANIELLE PLETKA: Good afternoon, everybody. I thank you so much for your patience. We had some logistical issues getting into the room. So it’s a pleasure for me to welcome you. I’m Danielle Pletka. I’m the senior vice president for foreign and defense policy studies. And we are here to talk about Michael Rubin’s new report, but also about a whole variety of issues surrounding it. For those of you who don’t know why you’re here, this is it. There are copies outside, “Kurdistan Rising: Considerations for the Kurds, for Their Neighbors and for the Region,” a really important and I think incredibly timely new report from Michael Rubin. But, first, let me introduce the panelists who are sitting to my right. I’m sure most of them are known to you, but we’re really honored to have with us Ambassador Lukman Faily. Ambassador Faily is the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. This is his last public appearance as ambassador. And so it’s really with a great deal of sadness, actually, but gratitude for having had you that you join us here today. He was the Iraqi ambassador to Japan. He had a distinguished career in the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. And before that, during the bad times, he was an Iraqi exile living and working in industry in the United Kingdom. Ambassador Faily is a Faily Kurd, so not only do we have an opportunity to talk to you about Iraq but also about some of the Kurdish issues that are raised. So I’m delighted to have him. Just moving, I think everybody knows Michael. Michael Rubin is a resident scholar here at the American Enterprise Institute. He writes on a whole variety of issues, obviously, also including Iraq and regional questions. He was with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Pentagon before that. He teaches for the US military as a valued instructor on aircraft carriers and for the Naval Postgraduate School before that. So, Michael. And now least but certainly last, Ambassador Jim Jeffery who is currently with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I’m going to mispronounce this, Jim, the Philip Solondz Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute, previously ambassador to Iraq, ambassador to Turkey, special assistant and deputy assistant to the president, also a very long and distinguished career in the Foreign Service. We did — I want to make a note — invite somebody from the Kurdistan Regional Government, their representative in Washington, to join us on the panel. We really had hoped to have somebody to discuss the Kurdish viewpoint. Unfortunately, they didn’t want to join us. So we’ll have to talk without them, but perhaps if there’s somebody in the audience, we can include a bit of that perspective. Michael, I’m going to ask you to start, just for everybody’s understanding, we’re going to have a conversation here. The person who gets to talk the longest is always me because I hold the mic. But we’re really going to have a conversation. We don’t have a set piece of presentations. Michael, maybe you’d just like to start a little bit, just talk about what the big takeaways are that you want people to have just in case they haven’t read this several times cover to cover. MICHAEL RUBIN: No, I mean, it probably makes sense not to wait for the movie version. But basically the point of the monograph and the point of the work was to basically go beyond the value judgment about whether or not Kurdistan should become independent in any of its constituent parts. Ultimately, I’d say that’s a decision for the Kurds, not a decision for me, but rather to look at some of the complexities that we’re really not talking about. And if we just look at the most recent secessionist states, South Sudan, Kosovo, East Timor, Eritrea, Montenegro, not necessarily in order there — FORMER AMBASSADOR JAMES JEFFREY: United Kingdom. MR. RUBIN: Well, perhaps, most of those, and the United Kingdom’s probably not an exception here, haven’t exactly been resounding successes. And oftentimes people could see the slow motion train wreck well ahead of time simply because many of the internal problems were being ignored as people waved the flag of nationalism rather than addressed head on. So the question is — I mean, if the Kurds become independent, or if there’s a broader confederation of regions, for example, how would some of those issues play out? For example, I mean, just very briefly, and we’re talking about rewriting 70 years of water-sharing agreements in the Middle East, and that’s something that people in the United States don’t often talk about but should raise concern given the fact that we’ve had — that at various times in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, some of these threatened to go kinetic. Other issues — if you don’t have a unified government, how does that play out against the backdrop of independence? What should the basis of Kurdish citizenship be in any Kurdistan that forms? Is it going to be geographic or is it going to be ethnically based? If it’s going to be ethnically based, how do we define what is a Kurd? If it’s going to be geographically based, well, if it’s going to be a broader geography or ethnicity, I’m sorry, what does this mean for dual citizenship? What happens if some of that dual citizenship — I mean, Kurds want dual citizenship, but Turkey, Iraq, Iran, or Syria don’t want dual citizenship. And one of the broader things, because I don’t want to monopolize this, is also some of the economic discussions. Many people would look at Iraqi Kurdistan and say that the blessing of oil has turned to some degree into a curse. Things haven’t gone as smoothly as people hoped for a variety of reasons. But when you read some of the Kurdish writing specifically coming from Abdullah Öcalan, for example, the leader of the PKK, there seems to be a lingering hostility to free market capitalism and investment. So if you’re going to have a situation like that, how are you going to actually fund and encourage investment into a new Kurdish state if there’s a perception that there’s a hostility towards corporations, for example? Let me leave it there. I’m throwing out the kitchen sink, but should be a lot to discuss. MS. PLETKA: There is a lot to discuss there but I want to ask one quick question before I turn to the ambassadors because we have a tendency to talk about the Kurds as if somehow, you know, it is a finite group. And I think when most people say the Kurds, what they actually mean is the Kurds of Iraq and the Kurds that are in the region of Kurdistan in Iraq. They don’t mean the Kurds of Southern Turkey or of Northern Iran, of Northern Syria. That’s actually not what they’re talking about. But when we talk about this, when you examined this in your book, what were you looking at? MR. RUBIN: Well, I mean, ultimately, of course, just by terms of access, most people start with looking at Iraqi Kurdistan. It has been the greatest success of any of the Kurdish regions to date. I mean, people forget, but the Kurdistan Regional Government is going to be nearing its 25th, quarter century anniversary next year from the time it was formed. And, of course, the uprising in 1991 were about — I mean, we’ve marked the 25th anniversary of that already. But one of the things that struck me was — I mean, I’ve written a lot over the years about some of the internal divisions in Iraqi Kurdistan, but how much broadly they exist as well as some of the indecision about — some of the internal, I guess you will, logical walls. For example, while many people want Kurdish statehood, when it comes to tough questions about, OK. Iraqi Kurdistan and to some degree Rojava, Syrian Kurdistan, have oil. Would you be willing to share that to subsidize Kurds in other regions across borders? The answer becomes no. So some of those, I mean, practical issues that sometimes hide behind the emotional response of we want a state and we want it now. MS. PLETKA: So, Ambassador Faily, just to sort of bring you into this conversation, I think there’s no doubt that what Michael says about how Kurds, sort of the Kurds are perceived in Washington as in fact that they’re perceived as Iraqi Kurds. Is it your sense, just sort of speaking from the Baghdad perspective, that there is a push away from or to dismember Iraq? And what is the thinking? AMBASSADOR LUKMAN FAILY: From a US — how the US — MS. PLETKA: No. How does the — yes, is the US pushing for that, for sure? AMB. FAILY: Well, there is a recognition in Baghdad that the Kurdish KRG government, the Kurdish entity in the north, have lobbied for independence in Washington.
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