Foreign Policy reports: Amid the rubble left in Iraq by the rampage of Islamist insurgents, one group seems poised to benefit: the Kurds. Baghdad’s flailing response to the offensive launched by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham opens the door to greater geographical reach for the Kurdish region, greater leverage over the central government, and a stronger possibility of becoming a big energy exporter in its own right.
The Islamist insurgents, known variously as ISIS and ISIL, continued their drive south toward the Iraqi capital on Thursday after having captured key northern cities, including Mosul. No less vigorous has been the Kurdish response: In sharp contrast to the Iraqi military forces, which evaporated despite outnumbering ISIS fighters, Kurdish military forces on Thursday took Kirkuk, an important city straddling the Arab and Kurdish parts of Iraq and the centerpiece of the northern oil industry. The Kurdish occupation, in a matter of hours, of a city that has been a bone of contention between Arabs and Kurds for centuries — and especially during Saddam Hussein’s rule of Iraq — underscores how dramatically the ISIS offensive is redrawing the map of Iraq.
“This may be the end of Iraq as it was. The chances that Iraq can return to the centralized state that [Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki was trying to restore are minimal at this point,” said Marina Ottaway, a Middle East specialist at the Wilson Center.
The contrast between robust security in Kurdish-ruled parts of the country and the security vacuum left by fleeing Iraqi troops could ultimately roll back decades of Iraqi history and put Kurdish leaders in Erbil in the catbird seat, especially when it comes to a contentious tug of war over energy resources.
“The strategic failure of Iraqi forces has really shifted the entire balance of power between the Kurdish Regional Government and Baghdad,” said Ayham Kamel, Middle East director at the Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy. “It really allows the KRG to negotiate with Baghdad on entirely different terms” when it comes to a fight over the Kurds’ right to export oil directly.
For years, Kurds in northern Iraq sought to benefit more from the region’s abundant oil and gas resources, but energy exports were centralized in Baghdad, with export revenues shared among Iraq’s regions. Kurdish leaders argued that the deal shortchanged them because they never got the 17 percent of revenues they were promised.
As a result, the Kurds decided — in the face of a barrage of threats and intimidation from Baghdad — to build their own energy-export infrastructure, enabling them to transport oil directly to nearby Turkey. That pipeline opened this year and energy firms operating in the region say that it will be fully operational later this year. Getting the export pipeline up to cruising speed is important for the Kurdish government. It needs to export about 450,000 barrels of oil a day to earn what it received from the central government. By the end of next year, the KRG hopes to be exporting as many as 1 million barrels a day. [Continue reading…]
