Kurds in Iraq Hold Referendum on Independence

In the provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan and disputed territories claimed by both Baghdad and Kurdish authorities, a referendum on independence began this morning, reports Patria News Agency.

The referendum is being held despite the opposition of Baghdad and the international community. The United States has warned that the referendum could destabilize the region amid the fight against the Islamic State, writes the newspaper Danas.

Organizers of the referendum expect a high turnout. Millions of voters are expected to express their views in the referendum, which is historically significant but not binding.

Official Baghdad also strongly opposes the referendum and on Sunday demanded that control over all airports and border crossings in the Kurdish regions be returned to federal authorities.

- If the disintegration of Iraq begins, it will spread to other countries in the region, warned high-ranking Iranian official Mohsen Rezai, secretary of the main arbitration body advising Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

- A separatist war will break out, pushing the region into 20 years of uncertainty, Rezai told Iraqi journalists in Baghdad.

Rezai, a retired general, is well-versed in security assessments. During the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, he was the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian armed forces.

He was in Damascus with the head of the Arbitration Body, Ayatollah Seyyed Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to persuade local Kurdish politicians to abandon the idea of a referendum on the possible independence of what is perhaps the largest ethnic group in the world today without its own state.

Officials in the region warn that the referendum vote could have serious consequences. The international community, the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League, and the United States are increasing pressure to halt the referendum.

A delegation from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) held talks with Iraqi officials in Baghdad on Saturday, and according to unofficial news reported by Iranian media, KRG representatives agreed to suspend the plebiscite.

Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani (71), whose father Mullah Mustafa Barzani began an armed struggle against Iraqi authorities for independence in the 1930s, postponed his scheduled press conference. However, the High Referendum Council, which Barzani oversees, has rejected rumors of withdrawal, media in Erbil, the capital of the KRG, reported.

On the other hand, the main institutions of the Iraqi state, parliament, Supreme Court, and government have declared the referendum in Kurdistan unconstitutional. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called the referendum "playing with fire" and rejected it "today or in the future." He even threatened military intervention in case the vote led to violence.

The planned referendum has caused fear of a new conflict in the region, which is trying to emerge from years of a campaign of death and destruction waged by the so-called Islamic State (ISIL, or Daesh). UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that a unilateral decision by Iraqi Kurds to hold a referendum would hinder efforts to defeat Daesh.

The international community and regional countries are loudly warning that the division of Iraq would ignite a new fire of violence in the region. Last week, ethnic Turkmen in the city of Kirkuk, with a population of millions, clashed with Kurds before the Peshmerga, the armed forces of the KRG, intervened.

Kirkuk, an oil-rich area, is a point of serious discord between the Iraqi government and the KRG. The situation in the city north of Baghdad is tense, and according to Iranian media, the population is hoarding food supplies, the price of which has already risen by 20 percent.

Kirkuk is not one of the three provinces that make up the semi-autonomous KRG, established in 2003, but which has essentially existed since 1991 and the first Gulf War by a US-led international coalition against the regime of long-time Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, Kurdish forces occupied Kirkuk in 2014 when Iraqi soldiers fled before the Daesh offensive.

The issue of the referendum has divided the Kurds themselves, as well as their main political parties, Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the former president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani. Mudah Bakhtiar, a member of the PUK's Politburo, stated on Saturday that the party "believes that the alternative proposed by the UN and major powers is acceptable."

Western countries publicly support the UN's "alternative plan" for immediate negotiations on future relations between Baghdad and Erbil in exchange for rejecting the referendum. So far, only Israel has publicly supported the vote of the Kurds in Iraq.

Ibrahim Kalin, press representative for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, wrote on Twitter on Saturday:

- If the referendum is not stopped, there will be serious consequences. The Kurds must immediately abandon this serious mistake that will cause a new crisis in the region.

The Turkish army began maneuvers on the border with Iraq last week, and President Erdogan announced that units would also be sent to the Kurdish region in northern Syria. Iranian media reported on Sunday that IRGC artillery exercises have begun on the Islamic Republic's northwestern border with the KRG.

Respected Iranian analyst Sadegh Maleki said:

- Iraq is neither Czechoslovakia nor the Middle East Europe. The division of Iraq will be comprehensive, pervasive, and a scene of absolute bloodshed - Maleki concluded apocalyptically.

The Kurdish Institute in Paris stated that according to 2016 estimates, there are between 36 and 45 million members of this ethnic group in the world. The institute took into account the population statistics of the authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan and estimates of Kurds living in other parts of Iraq and other countries.

Other estimates suggest there are nearly 30 million Kurds in Southwest Asia and one to two million in the diaspora. According to data from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for 2015, rough estimates are that 14.3 million Kurds live in Turkey, 8.2 million in Iran, between 5.6 and 7.4 million in Iraq, and less than two million in Syria. Less than half a million Kurds live in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.