The Kurds: fighting the good fight?

23 September 2014

Recent commentary has rightly highlighted the potential dangers and long-term implications of US President Obama’s decision to go to war against the ISIS. Tony Abbott’s portrayal of Australia’s involvement as a ‘fundamentally humanitarian mission’ is perhaps an attempt to downplay some of those concerns.

What remains unequivocal is that ISIS is a clear and present danger to its immediate neighbourhood, and potentially far beyond, and that compachecking its advance sooner rather than later is crucial. Obama and his secretary of state appear intent on building a coalition, including Middle Eastern countries, to take it on. But the two major regional powers against whose borders ISIS jostles, namely Turkey and Iran, have, each for their own reasons, declined to participate militarily.

The likelihood or benefits of working in concert with Iran can be debated long and hard, but in the meantime the Kurds clearly emerge as the immediate go-to allies in the forthcoming struggle.

Of course, the Kurds are not novices when it comes to tackling ISIS. The YPG militia of the Syrian-Kurdish enclave of Rojava have been fighting ISIS for almost two years, and, it might be added, making a good fist of it. It was also units of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that came to the aid of the Yezidis who were stranded and at the mercy of ISIS on Mt Sinjar in early August.

The wisdom of supplying and enlisting the Kurds to be the foot soldiers in the battle against ISIS raises spectres for some. Comparisons are drawn to the West’s courting of Saddam Hussein during the 1980s and of the Islamic militia that preceded the Taleban in Afghanistan. Here were two little-known entities, chosen as allies on an enemy-of-my-enemy basis. Engaging with both had spectacular, unforeseen, negative repercussions.

The Kurds are an entirely different kettle of fish. The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) based in Erbil in northern Iraq, through which aid and munitions will be channelled, is a legitimate political entity. Over two decades the KRG has established a functioning, if not flawless, democracy in its autonomous region, while also maintaining constructive relationships with Turkey, Iran and Baghdad.

For all that, the KRG understands that in a tough neighbourhood its existence is precarious and is dependent on support from the West. It was the no-fly zone imposed by the US and the UK after the first Gulf war in 1991 that allowed the Kurds to forge and consolidate their regime in Erbil. The

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The Kurds: fighting the good fight?

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