The disclosure of British confidential documents from the Kurdistan Region's civil war; Strategic analysis of a crisis in "Independent" report

Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government Service - A re-reading of British Foreign Office diplomatic and confidential documents (available in the National Archives of this country under FCO 160/339) recently revealed by the Independent newspaper, reveals London's realistic, complex and at the same time self-interested view of the structural crises in northern Iraq in the 1990s. This report, prepared on January 5th, 1995 by John Golden, the then British ambassador in Ankara, and sent to Douglas Heard, the then foreign minister of this country, explains the analysis of the political, security and economic geometry of the Kurdistan region at the height of the civil war between the two main parties (Patriotic Union and Democratic Party).

According to Kurdpress, the leaked document shows that Britain was closely monitoring the escalation of the internal crisis in Iraqi Kurdistan; So that after the December 1993 conflicts between the Patriotic Union and the Islamic Movement subsided in January 1994, the core of the crisis was formed in May 1994 with the explosion of territorial disputes between the Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union, and these local tensions quickly turned into a "all-out war for power". Despite Turkey's temporary mediation in July 1994 and the failed "Paris" plan to appoint an interim president, the bloodiest period occurred in August of the same year, during which more than 2,000 people were killed, and the British analyst in this document clearly lays hands on the main root of the continuation of the war in late 1994.

These documents depict the bitter economic reality of that period, during which the Kurdish local administration was in a state of economic suffocation due to two layers of sanctions (international sanctions against the whole of Iraq and Baghdad's counter-sanctions against the north), and the British ambassador's report emphasizes that the region was completely dependent on cross-border aid until the end of 1994, and the blockage of economic arteries and the non-return of public revenues to the common treasury brought the local administration to the brink of complete bankruptcy and any chance of industrial revival or reconstruction. It destroyed an infrastructure, to the extent that the central government in Baghdad cut off electricity to Dohuk province and Aqra region, an example of this war of attrition, which the Kurdish administration tried to compensate by relying on limited local hydroelectric projects.

An important part of the report of the British Embassy in Ankara is dedicated to describing the regional dimensions of the crisis, which shows the balance of power in the borders of the Kurdistan region; According to this document, the party's relations with Ankara were based on common interests against the PKK and the Kurds had come to the realistic understanding that "independence" was an impossible option, which pleased and reassured Turkey, which was extremely afraid of the consequences of the Paris Agreement, although Ankara was still suspicious of the relationship between the Patriotic Union and the PKK and wanted a Kurdish compromise with Baghdad.

The British ambassador's strategic vision for 1995 contains the most important historical admissions about the end of the separatist project and frankly assesses that northern Iraq may be able to survive with humanitarian aid in the short term, but in the medium and long term, as an independent political and economic entity and structure, it lacks stable factors for survival, although he admits that after three years of self-government exercise, its reintegration into a unified Iraq requires complex formulas. The document reveals that since 1995, Britain has been seeking to develop a strategy for a "dignified exit" from military peacekeeping operations, as the costs of military intervention for London were increasing, and the report clearly reveals the conundrum of difficult balances.

The wide distribution of this annual report at the highest levels of British decision-making in 1995, from the Ministry of Defense and the International Development Organization to the London embassies in Washington, Paris, Tehran, Ankara, Baghdad and the headquarters of NATO and the United Nations, validates the historical fact that the Westerners, from the very first years of the experience of the Kurdistan region, were well aware of the impossibility of forming an independent Kurdish state due to geopolitical requirements, strong economic dependence and internal structural conflicts. have been This document revealed by the Independent proves once again that the view of London and Washington on the Kurdish issue was instrumental, partial and subject to the balance of power with regional capitals.

News ID 161047

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