A Kurdish woman flashes a victory sign on September 22, 2013, during a demonstration in Istanbul. (AFP/OZAN KOSE)
Tuesday saw a trio of panelists — Michele Wucker of the World Policy Institute, Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, and Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont – gather for a discussion on turbulence in the Middle East, and the West’s role in the region, moderated by World Policy Journal Editor (and Blouin News correspondent) David Andelman. The discussion covered a lot of ground geographically — spanning Syria, Israel, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo (cited for comparison’s sake to conflict in Syria) — and temporally, as the panelists traced the emergence of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world in the 1970s to the present day sprinkling of Arab monarchies and not-quite democratic democracies (i.e., Egypt).
Amid such diversity, Gause noted a recurring element in the region: the “collapse of space,” which has played a driving role in the resurgence of ethnic and sectarian divisions. This is especially pertinent in Syria, and applies well beyond the current battle raging between President Assad’s Alawite-dominated regime (a minority sect of Shiite Islam) and predominantly Sunni rebels. On the sidelines, in Syria’s so-called “Western Kurdistan,” the country’s Kurdish minority is clashing with Islamist rebels in its struggle for independence and territory. One of the few players to profit from the country’s two-year civil war, Syrian Kurds have gained an unprecedented level of autonomy thanks to a tacit live-and-let-live understanding with Assad’s regime.
Asked about the potential for such gains in Syria to affect regional stability, Pipes responded that “the emergence of Kurdistan is one of the most interesting and perhaps exciting positive pieces of news”. Especially with most of the Kurdish diaspora — currently spread across four countries, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Iraq – in “flux.” After legislative elections this weekend — the first in four years — Kurds in Iraq are cementing a mini-statelet formed in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Their Turkish brethren are also making inroads thanks to a historic ceasefire signed this spring. Given such progress, Pipes noted, “it is possible to imagine that they will work more and more together.”
Andelman, too, was (guardedly) optimistic. Though circumvented in 1919 Paris, when world powers drew up arbitrary boundaries around Iraq, Syria and across the region, the Kurdish state had the potential to be “one of the most viable and important countries in the Middle East.”
True, the path towards a unified Kurdistan remains fraught — littered notably with infighting between factions, and obstruction from host nations vehemently opposed to a Kurdish state — but the potential remains. Pipes added that in the rocky post-Arab Spring climate, “the Kurds so far, especially in Iraq, but also elsewhere, have shown a political maturity that is greater than their neighbors.”
