How the map will look

Also seen in The Strategist—The Atlantic Monthly has an amazing article by Jeffrey Goldberg titled “After Iraq.” Subtitled “a glimpse of its possible future,” Goldberg writes that the intentional shake-up resulting from the invasion of Iraq, to transform the region, may ultimately be one far different than that envisioned by the administration, with an independent Kurdistan as just the start. Goldberg writes: “Given the preexisting sensitivities in the Middle East to white men wielding crayons, it’s not surprising that this map would be met with such anxiety.”

Although the article makes some broad claims about a geographic crack-up from Ethiopia to Tajikistan, as frequently discussed on this blog, while there is a large basis for this in the “ethnoliguadata,” I just don’t see evidence for many of the fractures happening anytime soon. Nonetheless a large portion of the article is dedicated to Kurdistan, for which Goldberg cites ample evidence of growing social and political independence:

To the Kurds, the Arabs are bearers of great misfortune. The decades-long oppression of Iraq’s Kurds culminated during the rule of Saddam Hussein, whose Sunni Arab–dominated army committed genocide against them in the late 1980s. Yet their unfaltering faith that they will one day be free may soon be rewarded: the Kurds are finally edging close to independence. Much blood may be spilled as Kurdistan unhitches itself from Iraq—Turkey is famously sour on the idea of Kurdish independence, fearing a riptide of nationalist feeling among its own unhappy Kurds—but independence for Iraq’s Kurds seems, if not immediate, then in due course inevitable.

In many ways, the Kurds are functionally independent already. The Kurdish regional government has its own army, collects its own taxes, and negotiates its own oil deals. In the two main cities of the Kurdish region, the Iraqi flag is banned from flying; Arabic is scarcely heard on the streets (and is never spoken by young people, who are happily ignorant of it), and Baghdad is referred to as a foreign capital.

At a conference in 2004, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice stated, “What has been impressive to me so far is that Iraqis—whether Kurds or Shia or Sunni or the many other ethnic groups in Iraq—have demonstrated that they really want to live as one in a unified Iraq.” As Peter Galbraith, a former American diplomat and an advocate for Kurdish independence, has observed, Rice’s statement was disconnected from observable reality—shortly before she spoke, 80 percent of all Iraqi Kurdish adults had signed a petition calling for a vote on independence…

For the moment, the Kurds of Iraq are playing the American game, officially supporting the U.S. and its flawed vision of Iraqi federalism, in part because the Turks fear Kurdish independence. Turkey has been an important American ally except for the one time when Turkey’s friendship would have truly mattered—at the outset of the Iraq War, when Turkey refused to let the American 4th Infantry Division invade northern Iraq from its territory. The U.S. does not owe Turkey quite as much as its advocates think. The Kurds, on the other hand, are the most stalwart U.S. allies in Iraq, and their leaders are certainly the most responsible, working for the country’s unity even while hoping for something better for their own people. “If Iraq fails, no one will be able to blame the Kurds,” said Barham Salih, a Kurd who is Iraq’s deputy prime minister.

Fun fact: Kurdish independence was no. 12 of President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and the only one that remains unfulfilled today.