By Hemin H. Lihony
British academic says Kurdistan cannot follow Kosovo model due to war zone environment.
A British academic and author insists that the US-led war on Iraq was a “mistake”, citing among other reasons the lack of international legitimacy.
Also, despite some improvement in the security conditions due to the recent surge, he believes that a stable Iraq is not possible in the short or medium term because of the multiple power struggles taking place across the country and the absence of institutions.
Dr. Philip Robins, a fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a university lecturer who has published various academic and policy-oriented journals on the contemporary Middle East, said: “Even though the security situation has improved in Iraq somewhat as a result of the surge, the decision to go to war in 2003 was a mistake.”
He cited four reasons in support of his claim: “One, there was no bedrock of international legitimacy for it; two, most of the Western allies were warning against it; three, war is a sledgehammer with many unforeseeable consequences; four, public opinion, certainly in the UK, was against it meaning that there was no domestic democratic underpinning for it.”
Dr. Robins, who served for eight years as the head of the Middle East program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in Britain’s leading foreign affairs think tank Chatham House, added that a stable Iraq is possible but not probable in the short to medium terms.
“How can we expect such a near term outcome when Iraqis have been brutalized for many years, institutions either do not exist or are very weak, primordial affiliations dominate as part of the coping mechanism that Iraqis have developed, and there are multiple power struggles taking place across the country?” he asked.
According to Dr Robins, ‘Project Iraq’ is a long term ambition, which must be thought in approximation of 20 years from today. “We have to think in terms of 20 years. We need to create benefits for ordinary people that will make them want to be part of a new Iraq. That means reconstruction, prosperity and safety. Not until we can get these three goals feeding off each other will a vicious circle be replaced by a virtuous one,” he explained.
With regard the Kurdish question, Dr Robins specified two dimensions: the Kurds in the states that they inhabit and the Kurds as a collectivity in the region as a whole.
“Global standards of good governance require that the Kurds be treated humanely and equally. Human rights abuses and similar examples of bad practice are no longer acceptable, if they ever were. What should the arrangement be between Kurdish communities and the central states in question? That’s a matter for discussion and negotiation in the individual states,” he said.
“I fully understand why Kurds in Iraq, for instance, are pushing so hard for a decentralized constitutional system given their experiences of the recent past… I doubt that the worlds, let alone the Arab, Turkish and Iranian worlds, are ready for a Greater Kurdistan.”
Likening the Kurdish question to that of Kosovo’s independence, he stressed that at this time Kurds cannot follow those steps primarily due to the fact that Kosovo lies in Europe, which for the most part is a zone of peace.
Moreover, he said, the bellicose powers on the ground in the Balkans are small and relatively weak. He contrasted this to the Kurds as they live in a region which is for the most part a zone of war.
“The bellicose powers in their neighborhood are much larger and better armed,” he said. “The risks of failure are therefore much, much greater.”
Asked why the US and UK have not set clear policies regarding the Kurds, Dr Robins replied simply that “we live in a world of nation-states.”
“States like Iran and Turkey are strong states that can cause a lot of problems on the ground. The Kurds in Iraq do not have a state, which reduces their influence. I think that people in the US and Britain who know the contribution of the Iraqi Kurds to the international effort to bring down Saddam Hussein and his regime are very grateful,” he said.
“They [US and Britain] want there to be a positive outcome for the Iraqi Kurds however they cannot make policy in a regional vacuum.” |
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