Iraqi Kurdistan defies Baghdad with independence vote

Iraq’s Kurdistan region heads to the polls today in a non-binding independence referendum that’s going ahead despite Baghdad’s threats that it won’t recognise the outcome or part with the region’s oil revenues.

Masud Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Regional Government, has called the vote the first step in a process to negotiate independence in a region that has played a major role in the campaign to drive Islamic State militants out of northern and western Iraq.

About 5.3m voters are registered. While preliminary results are expected early on Tuesday, there appears to be “little doubt that the result will be an overwhelming ‘Yes’”, Radio Free Europe reports. The bigger question is whether the voting results will destabilise the region.

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“More than 30 million Kurds are dispersed across the borders with Syria, Iran and Turkey, which fear that the vote will embolden secessionist movements among their own minorities,” says Bloomberg.

The UK, US, Iran and Baghdad, as well as the UN, are concerned that the referendum could take the focus off Iraq’s war against extremists. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says the vote would “distract from the more urgent priorities” of defeating Islamic State and stabilising liberated areas.

The fight for control of the oil-rich region is also a battle about money. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s office issued a statement on Sunday urging foreign governments to stop importing crude directly from the Kurdistan region and restrict oil trading to the Iraqi government.

Disputes over land and oil resources are among the main reasons cited by the Kurdish government in its bid for independence, says Reuters.

Iraqi Kurdistan produces around 650,000 barrels per day of crude – 15% of Iraq’s total output. Much of that comes from Kirkuk province, which falls along the border in an area bitterly contested by Kurdish and Iraqi forces.

Why is the vote being held now?

The area known as Kurdistan, which consists of portions of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, was carved up by British colonial administrators and divided between the four countries after the First World War.

For Iraq’s brutalised Kurds, the lure of a free Kurdistan is particularly potent. Under Saddam Hussein’s Arab nationalist regime, upwards of 180,000 Iraqi Kurds are thought to have perished in mass executions, bombings and chemical attacks on civilians.

The impetus for the latest call for independence came from an unexpected quarter – Islamic State’s invasion of northern and western Iraq in the summer and autumn of 2014.

When government troops pulled back in the face of the IS onslaught in the summer of 2014, Kurdish militias seized the opportunity to fill the vacuum and take over the fight to liberate the region.

Now with the militant group on the verge of defeat and forced to surrender most of its territory in Iraq, the Kurdish Regional Government controls an area of land far beyond its official boundaries.

Beyond the territorial gains, the prominence of the Peshmerga at the head of the charge has played a valuable propaganda role, cementing the notion of Kurdish autonomy in the region and reinvigorating separatist sentiment.