The Next Administration Needs a Kurdistan Policy Review
American policy is strongest when governed by bipartisan consensus and consistency. For decades, Israel and Saudi Arabia were twin pillars of American policy in the Middle East, while there was widespread consensus to condemn Iran-sponsored terror. Partisanship eroded the consensus regarding relations with all three countries, undermining policy effectiveness. When partisanship dominates foreign policy formulation, success is short-lived as partners and adversaries avoid commitment in anticipation of a new administration and politicians use national security as a political football.
American policy flounders for other reasons. As diplomats rotate every year or two, temporary policies can become ossified reality. Consider Lebanon: Four decades ago, civil war ravaged the country and Iranian-backed militias targeted American diplomats. Embassy security officers dictated strict security regimens that effectively prohibited American officials from traveling freely. Three decades after the civil war’s end, the same security restrictions apply. For diplomats rotating through Beirut, it is now simply the way it has always been, even as Americans and Lebanese both visit Starbucks along Beirut’s famous Corniche or shop in swanky pedestrian malls along what once was the kill zone of the Green Line that divided the city between warring factions.
The State Department and Pentagon also can be slow to recognize partner policy pivots. A quarter-century ago, Turkey was a force of stability in the region. It cooperated actively with Israel to counter terror and extremism, and worked to enhance NATO. Today, the opposite is true; Turkey is a terror sponsor in all but formal designation and undermines NATO’s mission, if not the organization itself. Qatar is another case in point. When U.S. Central Command embraced Qatar in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, it was a neutral outpost in the Persian Gulf; today, the Pentagon continues its embrace of Qatar for access to the Al Udeid Air Base even though Qatar has become the enabler for Islamist and radical groups diametrically opposed to the liberal order.
The Strategic Incoherence of U.S. Kurdistan Policy
From the standpoint of what confuses American policy, the Kurds tick all the boxes. First, they span four countries while, too often, compartmentalized American diplomats deal with each component country in isolation. While an assistant secretary coordinates within each bureaucracy and a National Security Council senior director coordinates across bureaucracies, in practice the Kurds seldom reach that level of policy attention and so each bureaucracy—State Department, Pentagon, Department of the Treasury, and Central Intelligence Agency—often pursue their own policies in isolation to dynamics just across the international border. Add into the mix the fact that the United States has often lacked diplomatic relations with one or more of the countries involved, and complications grow even greater.
The legacy of U.S. deference to regional governance exacerbates inconsistency. Consider Iraq: In 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brokered a deal between Iran and Iraq in which each would cease supporting insurgency in the other. Almost overnight, Iraq’s Kurdish revolution collapsed. As fear of Iran rose following its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Washington sought to reconcile with Baghdad. Both the Reagan White House and State Department cast Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a moderate and embraced his view that Kurds were terrorists. Such views continued to permeate the bureaucracy. After the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Congress tweaked the Immigration and Nationality Act to consider terrorism so broadly to slap membership in almost any armed group resisting governments as a “Tier III” terrorist designation. Overnight, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) became terrorist groups, at least for the purposes of U.S. immigration law; it took a decade after the U.S. formally allied with the KDP and PUK to resolve the issue.
U.S. policy toward the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) remains incoherent. Abdullah Öcalan founded the PKK in reaction to Turkey’s repression of its Kurdish population. The group waged a violent insurgency and conducted terror inside Turkey; the Turks responded in kind. By the early 1990s, though, Turkish President Turgut Özal was ready to negotiate peace. A fatal heart attack ended that initiative, and Turkish rejectionists gained the upper hand. Through it all, the PKK did not kill Americans and rarely targeted foreigners. Perhaps this is why the United States did not designate the PKK as a terrorist group from its founding through the height of its insurgency. That designation came in 1997 as a sweetener against the backdrop of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to win a lucrative helicopter sale to Turkey. The PKK has abandoned separatism in favor of federalism (much as in Iraq). Today, there is little difference between the PKK, KDP, and PUK to merit different treatment by Washington. While Ankara and its lobbyists in Washington argue the PKK remains a terrorist group, the reality is that much of the violence surrounding Kurds and Turks is unidirectional, from the Turkish military toward the Kurds. Turkey has changed, not only in its antagonism toward the West, but also in its internal motivations. Today, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s hatred of the Kurds has less to do with nationalism and more with PKK rejection of Erdoğan’s Islamism.
Across the four regions of Kurdistan, the PKK and its offshoots are the most popular for a simple reason: KDP and PUK tribalism limit their appeal, and Barzani and Talabani corruption repel ordinary Kurds. The PKK, by contrast, is egalitarian and more transparent. The Öcalan personality cult the U.S. condemns is little different than the Barzani or Talabani personality cults the KDP and PUK promote. When American officials take at face value falsely received wisdom about the PKK, whispered into their ears by Turks or the KDP, the Americans seldom recognize one faction seeks to use Washington to bludgeon its competition.
Turkey, too, uses the United States for its own purposes. The U.S. Department of the Treasury designates senior PKK leaders as drug lords, based solely on intelligence provided by Turkey, yet ignores growing evidence documented in the Kurdistan Victims Fund lawsuit that KDP leaders engage far more directly in illicit drug smuggling. In effect, Washington now slams the door on effective partners while working with others who indirectly kill American kids in exchange for cartel cash.
U.S. incoherence continues. The U.S. military partners with all three Kurdish Peshmerga: two Kurdish tribal parties in Iraq and the PKK offshoot Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria. In each case, the goal of U.S. collaboration is to constrain the Islamic State. In Syria, this partnership is especially important because the Syrian Democratic Forces control the prison that holds the defeated Islamic State fighters. While Turkey was perhaps the top state sponsor of the Islamic State, leading a U.S.-Syrian Kurdish alliance to defeat the group, the State Department continues to define Turkey as a critical ally and the PKK as terrorists. Policy confusion increases as the U.S. allows Turkey to bomb the same PKK affiliates inside Iraq as it allies with them in Syria.
U.S. commitment to the Kurds is also unclear. U.S. officials reinforce partnership with Iraqi Kurds as Washington also maintains a positive relationship with Baghdad, while both the Trump and Biden administrations signaled a desire to withdrawal U.S. forces from Syrian Kurdistan.
The Need for a Policy Review
Such incoherence confuses partners and encourages adversaries. Kurds who see the United States as a superpower but do not realize the sausage making at the heart of policy interpret the strategic confusion with cynicism and hedge their own commitments to Washington based on what they perceive as American insincerity and untrustworthiness.
As the Kurds become central to U.S. strategic interests, it behooves Washington to set a deliberate, proactive strategy.
The next national security advisor might convene a multidepartment review to reconsider decades of received wisdom. Turkey’s turn has highlighted the flaws, gaps, and cynicism of its intelligence. The Central Intelligence Agency today would not take Turkish intelligence at face value, but it has not reassessed the information that an equally cynical Ankara provided when Washington was a closer ally. When it comes to PKK terror and alleged criminality by PKK leaders, it is time to take a fresh look and, when necessary, offer an apology to the victims of Turkish defamation. Simultaneously, the CIA should reassess information gleaned from its partnership with both the KDP and PUK, because inconsistency and a desire to use the United States in their own tribal disputes pollute the partnership.
The State Department also should determine whether it favors tribal parties over ideological or nationalist ones. This need not mean abandoning the KDP or PUK but, rather, working to professionalize party structure or, alternately, support parties like the Nationalist Stance Movement or New Generation. Put another way, the State Department and CIA should determine outright whether their goal is a democratic Kurdistan or a patchwork of family fiefdoms.
Militarily, the Pentagon should assess honestly the effectiveness and role of the Peshmerga. The United States has sought to unify Iraqi Kurdish militias for more than two decades without success. While Kurdish lobbyists praise the Peshmerga as defense against terrorists, the peshmerga’s recent record is less clear. Poor leadership and KDP Peshmerga cowardice allowed the Islamic State to seize Sinjar after the KDP fled their posts in their middle of the night. The KDP, meanwhile, spent more effort on public relations firms singing their own praises than on actually fighting the Islamic State: Whether Tikrit, Baiji, Kirkuk, Fallujah, or Mosul, it was the Hashd al-Shaabi and PKK-affiliated Peshmerga that defeated the Islamic State, not Barzani’s militia. Absent a conclusion that continuing subsidies to tribal militias work, could there be another model? Is it time to rebuild a Kurdish Peshmerga from scratch, recruiting men directly while excluding political and tribal hacks whose personal interests run counter to broader Kurdish defense?
Finally, the National Security Council must determine across departments how it will integrate Kurdish policy across their countries of residence. In Turkey and Iran, the United States opposes federalism while it does not in Iraq and remains agnostic in Syria. The next White House should determine whether that posture should change.
Once U.S. policy has a broad structure, both Democratic and Republican foreign policy leaders might map out future U.S. support. If the United States, for example, decides to support Iraqi Kurdistan and the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, how will it enable each region to defend itself against Turkish bombardment? Should the United States, for example, provide the Syrian Democratic Council or Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga with drone-jamming and anti-aircraft missiles? If the United States delists the PKK from its terror lists, should it support the opening of a PKK office in Washington and welcome PKK leaders at the same level as their KDP and PUK counterparts?
The questions might cause consternation in some capitals and outrage in Washington think tanks. This is natural. Government and individuals benefit from the status quo and loath change. Dysfunctional status quo, however, is not a U.S. interest and that must trump the feelings of U.S. defense attaches who took Turkish wives or former ambassadors who derive lucrative consulting gigs. Kurds deserve more and U.S. strategy requires it.
