The Kurdish Question and the New Great Game for Oil and Gas in the Near East.

The siege of the Kurdish city of Kobani in northern Syria demonstrates the futility of thinking air strikes alone could decisively make a difference to the war on the ground. Sunni jihadists are advancing as opposed to retreating in the absence of any coordinated political response to defeating 'Islamic State'.

The US was prepared to launch air strikes in Syria because it regards defeating 'ISIL' in Iraq as the overriding priority. Britain, however, has been reluctant to because, far more than Washington, London is very anxious about pleasing Qatar and so its main regional ally in Turkey.

The US is mostly concerned with ensuring Iraq does not collapse because that would endanger Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as well as defeating the main strategic aim and gain of the Second Iraq War in ensuring increased Iraqi oil production, stable oil prices and relatively cheap consumer goods imported from Asia.

While most western states share US energy interests in this regard, Britain and France are far more beholden to Qatari-Turkish geopolitical strategies which seek to rival Russia and Iran in Iraq and especially Syria where there is competition for influence over the gas reserves of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Discovered in 2009-2010, the Levant basin has led to renewed regional rivalries which cut across the old Cold War lines and led Turkey into increased hostility towards Greek Cypriot claims to the Aphrodite gas fields lying off the coast of Cyprus as well as the enmity shown towards Israel.

Turkey has clashed with Israel over its wars against the Sunni Palestinian Muslims of Gaza, one which is crucially concerned with protecting Israeli gas interests as well as over the way Israel has shown interest in cooperating with Russia to exploit its gas and pipe it via Cyprus and so by pass Turkey completely.

Turkey and Qatar from the outset of the conflict in 2011 between Assad and Sunni rebel groups backed the latter so as to realise such designs such as a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline and to exert more control over the development of Syria's offshore gas against Russian influence and domination.

Turkey has developed what Norman Stone calls a 'neo-Ottoman' policy, one in which Sunni Arab and Sunni Muslim interests are courted by Erdogan to win domestic support and that of regions with the oil and gas resources Turkey lacks and would like to control from Lebanon to Syria and into Iraqi Kurdistan.

Yet Ankara, in fact, has shown reluctance to be involved in any military effort to defeat ISIS that would empower the Kurdish YGP fighters in Syria. Yet it is courting Barzani's Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq so as to draw it into an economic partnership based on Turkey becoming an major energy export route.

The double game played by Erdogan is about benefiting from Kurdish oil while trying to keep a lid on moves for independence to the west in Syria, where the YGP is in battle with ISIS over border regions with oil, and southern Turkey, where there is little oil and every benefit in unifying with regions which have it in abundance.

The worst scenario for Turkey would be that their support for Barzani in Iraqi Kurdistan and the fate of the Kurds in Syria fighting ISIS along with the US could lead to demands for a Greater Kurdistan, one reason Erdogan and Turkish government officials have compared the terrorist threat of ISIS with that of the PKK.

Kurdish Iraq with its capital Erbil has become one of the globe's most lucrative oil regions and the increased wealth it has developed and its ability to defend itself against ISIS is bound to be regarded as an indication of the sort of security and prosperity the Kurds in Syria and Turkey could have as well.

Already Kurdish Iraq is moving ever closer towards independence from Baghdad and wanting something in return for hosting western multinational oil corporations such as Exxon Mobil and beating back ISIS from the Mosul Dam and so saving the Iraqi state from potential destruction.

The Kurds consist of up to thirty million people spread across the Middle East from Turkey, through Syria and Iraq into the western parts of Iran. They could well be regarded as the world's largest ethnic group without a state in an age when the West has supported self-determination in places such as Kosovo.

As the states of Iraq and Syria created after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War by France and Britain disintegrate, Turkey has moved towards asserting its influence in both in opposition to ISIS which has countered the neo-Ottoman strategy with its own version of the Caliphate.

While Turkey's claims as a regional power depend upon retaining a 'state-nation' based on ethnic and religious diversity, ISIS detests the Ottoman Empire as a fake usurper of the caliph's position which became an office absorbed into the Sultan's power when it the 'real' Islamic empire was essentially a Sunni Arab one.

The Caliphate was abolished in 1924 but for Sunni Arabs in Iraq who lost out to the Shia and the Kurds after Saddam Hussein was deposed in 2003, the symbol of lost unity and the fact ISIS is using oil revenues to fund welfare for Sunni Arabs in Syria and Iraq is giving it some appeal.

Saddam's regime was one dominated by the Sunni Arabs. ISIS is ruled and run by former members of the secular Baath Party who converted to radical jihadi-Islamist in American prisons where the Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdad was also detained. In a sense, ISIS is the expression of a radical Sunni Arab nationalism.

The Kurds are Sunni Muslims but would prefer the promise of self determination to be realised in their case as one of the USA's most steadfast allies in the region, one reason Israel as a non-Arab state has gone further than America in calling for Kurdistan to be a made an independent republic.

Turkey, however, has little interest in supporting any western military effort that would end up empowering the Kurds in Syria such as arming or training their troops. Arming them would mean the weapons could be turned against Turkey. But Kurdish fighters are the only force that could defeat ISIS in northern Syria.

The Free Syria Army is, as Patrick Cockburn has pointed out, nothing more that a CIA led group since Sunni militants splintered off from it to fight against both it and Assad and the Kurds. The idea it could act as a 'third force' to destroy ISIS or Assad's military is a piece of abstract geopolitical fiction.

The only way to defeat ISIS has to involve a truce between Assad and the FSA and Syrian National Council or else, by default, ISIS and Sunni militants such as Al Nusra are bound to be the only powerful ground force in northern Syria apart from the Kurds whose fighters are deeply distrusted by Turkey.

Indeed, in the summer of 2013 the FSA and ISIS were aligned in fighting against the Kurds as the YGP had gained strength from Assad's decision to withdraw government forces from the north as part of a strategy to divert Sunni forces away from advancing on to Damascus-and it worked.

Consequently, the YPG and the FSA regard each other as enemies. The Syrian National Council and its backers regard all oil and gas resources in Syria as theirs to develop. They have no interest in either the Kurds or ISIS gaining the Rumelian oil field both are battling to control.

Moreover, neither Qatar nor Turkey have any interest in ISIS being destroyed if Assad benefits because of the ongoing proxy conflict between them and Iran because it seeks a rival pipeline route from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean and then on to global markets to export gas.

Britain and France, the two foremost military powers in the EU, would still prefer Assad to be overthrown. They have lucrative arms deals with Qatar and would benefit from a gas route which avoided the export of LNG via the Iranian controlled Straits of Hormuz and reduced EU dependence upon Russia gas.

That threat of dependence has increased since the fall of Tripoli in Libya into the hands of Islamist militants. It was increased also by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the potential break away of the eastern regions of Ukraine which has removed from potential western control a major east-west transit zone.

Turkey's attempt to become a southern energy corridor, now that Ukraine has descended into conflict is, however, endangered by a similar problem of ethnic irredentism among the Kurds who are fleeing into Turkey in large numbers from Syria as ISIS drives them from their villages and towns.

The Kurds are growing increasing outraged at Ankara's double standards in having allowed jihadists as violent and fanatical as those fighting for Al Nusra to enter Syria from Turkey but trying to prevent Turkish Kurds fighting in support of those being menaced by ISIS in Kobani. This has caused riots on the border

So the west is hamstrung by Turkey being a NATO member which has no interest in the Kurds gaining the upper hand in Syria over ISIS. At the same time it remains the only military force in practice which could repel the jihadists back away from the border with southern Turkey.

One reason why Turkey created a 20km security zone in Syria was to protect a NATO border from Sunni Islamist militants and be in a position to defend the highly symbolic tomb of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, from being destroyed by ISIS which have threatened it several times.

However, Kurdish factions, especially the PKK with whom Turkey had a conflict with from the 1980s until recently, regards the Turkish security measures as an attempt to create a 'buffer zone' between Turkey and the Islamic state at the expense of the Kurdish people who they are allowing to be ethnically cleansed.

As a consequence, if the Kurdish enclaves fall, not only would NATO and the west be seen as 'doing nothing' about the slaughter of Kurds in northern Syria while arming them in Iraq. ISIS could well advance up to the border with Turkey and try to provoke the ground jihad with the west they want in Syria and Iraq.

The sad reality is the suffering of civilians in Syria has always been a secondary consideration to geopolitical energy interests on all sides in this conflict. The emergence of ISIS would have led all external powers to unite in defeating it if a ruthless geopolitical competition over access to resources were not at stake

All these factors have made for a protracted multi-faceted conflict in which the most brutal and effective force can win out if it controls Syria's resources and finance itself to get the weapons and recruits that it needs to have towards fighting towards that end. There is no end to the bloodshed in sight.

The Third Iraq War: Syria, Turkey and the Kurdish Condundrum.

Britain's decision to join the US in bombing ISIS would appear belated and token. The US started bombing back in August 2014 yet ISIS is reported already to have come within a mile or so of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Whether for or against military intervention, experts consider air power alone as insufficient.

Britain's contribution of only six Tornado jets to attack ISIS positions is more about demonstrating that Britain remains at the forefront of combating terror in the Middle East and defending against the potential threat ISIS poses to the oil producing regions of Iraq from Kurdistan down towards Kuwait.

The aim of  'degrading and ultimately defeating' ISIS is about preventing the phantom caliphate from consolidating its position in Iraq and Syria through the exploitation and sale of the oil which it could use to fund its military operations and greater expansion in the region.

Having started with the mission to take on and destroy 'ISIL' in a long war or a 'generational struggle' against a 'global threat' that is mostly regional and confined to the Middle East, politicians such as Cameron seem intent in giving ISIS the sort of global power status the 'Islamic State' has sought out.

The dangers of 'mission creep' are inherent in the rhetoric about 'ISIL' since it is considered an organisation with which no accommodation can be made and so once the war has started, it follows that it would have to be finished or else the initial and costly bombing campaign would have been to no avail.

The main problem is not even the supposed 'allies' in the Greater Middle East are acting in concert because of shadowy geopolitical interests and the fact Qatar and Turkey are as concerned ( in fact pathologically obsessed ) with overthrowing President Assad in Syria as they are with defeating ISIS.

Qatari and Turkish intransigence on Assad's position in Syria remains one reason why there could not have been a negotiated political settlement between the Free Syria Army and Damascus and, as a consequence, why ISIS remains entrenched in its capital Raqqa as the most powerful 'third force' opposed to them both.

Without a truce between Syrian government forces and the FSA, ISIS, even if defeated in Iraq and rolled back from Sunni Arab regions through the action of Iranian backed Shi'ite militias and the Kurdish peshmerga, would always be able to to retreat and regroup in Syria before attacking once more.

While the US and Britain were prepared to engage diplomatically with Iran over the ISIS threat to Iraq, Qatar and Turkey would be hostile to any attempt to do a deal with an Iranian backed Assad which would affect their regional geopolitical interests. But without it, ISIS in Syria would be difficult to defeat.

Qatar and Turkey would remain reticent about any attempt to roll back ISIS in Syria that would entrench Assad and both Iranian and Russian influence. The Syrian National Council opposed Russian involvement in exploiting Syria's offshore gas in the Eastern Mediterranean and an Iran-Iraq-Syria 'Shi'ite' gas pipeline.

Turkey, a main backer on Sunni Muslim opposition to the Alawi administration of Assad, would like to become an east-west energy hub. A Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline would reposition it in a stronger position against Russia which would prefer to retain its predominance as Turkey's main source of gas.

Turkey has held back from joining in the military effort against ISIS because it President Erdogan wants to make that conditional upon the west renewing its pressure upon Assad to be replaced by a Sunni dominated government led by the Syrian National Council that would ensure Syria's territorial integrity.

Far from being the eastermost outpost of the west through NATO membership, a Cold War hangover, Turkey under Erdogan has reimagined its role as a 'neo-Ottoman' regional power and maintained an open border policy with Syria so as to facilitate the formation of Sunni militant forces.

Turkey was half-hearted about supporting the battle against ISIS at the Paris talks because it remains concerned arming the Kurds in Iraq could stimulate a wider Kurdish irredentist movement in Kurdish Syria and across the border where the PKK has had an uneasy peace with Ankara after a decades old conflict.

Erdogan has sought to draw Kurdish regions closer in the Turkish sphere of influence but not so far as to lead to calls for a separate state enjoining Kurds in southern Turkey, northern Syria and the already autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq, a valued special partner as it has the oil riches Turkey lacks.

Turkey has an oil pipeline stretching from Iraqi Kurdistan in Kirkuk to the port of Ceylan that it would like to make fully operational and has lucrative construction contracts with Erbil. Yet, at the same time, it opposes the wishes of those Kurdish groups in Syria and Turkey with far lessoil wanting to join it as part of one state.

On the contrary, there is reason to think Ankara would prefer these regions as a buffer between it and ISIS, one reason a motion in the Turkish parliament to create a 20km buffer zone in Syria between Turkey and Syria to secure passage for both foreign troops and for Turkish troops to secure Syrian-Kurdish enclaves.

While Turkey would be prepared to intervene militarily to secure its borders from ISIS, it would be more unwilling to contribute towards defeating ISIS without Assad being removed because that would free up the Kurdish fighters in Syria to demand an independent state that could stretch into southern Turkey.

Part of US-British strategy to relieve the Kurds in north-west Iraq from the onslaught of ISIS ( Tornados are bombing ISIS positions to this end ) and arming the peshmerga has already led to demands for the same for those Kurds being cleared from northern Syria and military action to defend Kobani.

While Turkey is a staunch ally of Barzani's KNC in Iraq it is concerned about arms falling into the hands of the 'wrong' Kurdish rebels of the PKK which is a major fighting faction of the YPG. Ankara's attempts to block Kurdish refugees from entering and Kurdish fighters from entering Syria has caused riots

As Turkey has no real interest in assisting the fight against ISIS if it would mean a greater impetus towards Kurdish secession in Turkey itself there have been accusations that Ankara could be in league or plotting with ISIS in order to use it as a tool to keep the Kurds divided and ruled from elsewhere-including Iran.

That Iran backs Assad as a Shi'ite co-religionist and a client prepared to accede to grand designs for a gas pipeline through Iraq and Syria to be completed by 2016 is seen as a direct threat to the Qatar-Turkey scheme for a Sunni axis of influence and one reason why Assad was plotting with the Kurds of Syria.

None of the contending regional powers in Syria has any interest in any one of the contending forces with military power gaining the upper hand. As that by default allows the most brutal warring Sunni militant force to win out, the danger is that the failure to destroy ISIS could lead eventually to greater western intervention.

The western states could hardly intervene to assist the Kurds against ISIS in Syria where Turkey regards the the PKK, the largest and most militant faction in YPG struggling against ISIS, as a threat to its territorial integrity of Turkey and one that is growing angry at Ankara's attempt to stop Turkish Kurds fighting in Syria.

The double standard is resented by the Kurds because prior to April 2014, fighters going to assist the Free Syria Army, even the most militant Al Qaida affiliated groups such as Al Nusra, had been facilitated and tolerated throughout 2012 and 2013 before ISIS turned its guns against the Sunni states and the west.

The battle between ISIS and the YPG is critical because, despite Prime Minister Cameron's claim that ISIS makes money from sales of oil to Assad, most of the Islamic State's revenues come from illicit sales of oil across the long Turkish border, a strategic area through which foreign Sunni militants are recruited.

More than that, the borderlands with Turkey contain some of Syria's richest oil reserves such as the Rumeilan oil fields to the east of Serekaniye which are mostly in Kurdish hands: who control these resources also controls the illegal fuel trade which runs through pipelines built during the sanctions on Saddam in the 1990s.

From Ankara's perspective it benefits its security if neither the YPG nor ISIS could win definitive control over these oil resources with which to buy weapons because it regards both the YPG and ISIS as both dangerous terrorist threats and, if anything, the PKK as far more dangerous to it than ISIS.

Turkey's conflict with the PKK date back to 1984 and they were aligned with Assad's Syria: even in 22013 the Kurds of Syria were in league with Damascus because Assad wanted to divert the Free Syria Army northwards away from the capital and both they and the Kurds squabbled over the oil reserves.

The reticence of the Syrian Kurds to either want the restoration of rule from Damascus or to remain within a Sunni Arab dominated Syria being fought for by the Free Syria Army or, of course to an insane degree by ISIS and Al Nusra, means it is highly unlikely either Turkey or Qatar could get their way in Syria.

Yet it is precisely just such a foreign policy which is bound to provoke the Kurds in Syria into further resistance that makes a political settlement difficult to acheive : if the Kurds are thwarted in their quest for autonomy they would align even with Assad against Turkey meaning it would back Sunni militants against it.

The Third Iraq War: Continuity and Change between 2004-2014

“This is a galvanizing moment for NATO and our partners”-US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel

President Obama is finalising plan to 'degrade and destroy' the Islamic State which he and other leaders refer to as ISIL in Iraq. However, there are hawkish voices demanding that air strikes should be broadened out into Syria and that would not mean involving Assad's permission though he is still officially head of state.

The call to go in and bomb IS in Syria where it has its base in and around Raqqa reflects the fact that despite the emergence of IS out of the Sunni militant groups, which were being backed until late 2013, the aim of US strategy in the longer term is to remove Assad in continuity with the demand made by early 2012.

The goals of the Second Iraq War in 2003, launched by the Bush administration, were energy security and to create a domino effect of democratisation across the region from Iraq into Syria so as to reduce US dependence upon Saudi Arabian oil in the period before the shale oil revolution in North America. 

Needless to say, the democratisation of Iraq by 2005 had got under way but in the context of a collapsed state. Sectarian and ethnic tensions shattered Iraq and the created chaos and conflicts that have gone on ever since: IS in Iraq could only gain ground in 2014 as Sunni Arabs were prepared to align with it.

Sunni Arabs were marginalised by the dominance of the Iraqi Shi'ites in Baghdad, who lean towards Iran, and the development of an ever more autonomous Kurdish region prepared to sell oil and strike oil contract deals with global energy giants ( such as ExxonMobil ) without the permission of the central government.

Yet the energy security issue remained unsolved because IS has gained what Obama euphemistically termed 'resources'. That means, of course, oil. From oil revenues IS could sustain attacks on the Kurdish oil rich region or even to surge south towards Baghdad or around it down further.

Such a disruption to the oil supply would create a severe increase in global oil prices at a time when the US and especially other NATO nations are experiencing very slow economic growth or have had stagnating economies in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

One reason the US is going in with air strikes, and is due to step them up with NATO nations playing a possible auxiliary role, is to give NATO nations a new sense of mission against a threat to the southern border and to gear it towards the main challenge of the 21st century: resource wars.

Such air strikes would be partly about showing NATO 'credibility' on the borders of southern Turkey and starting to recreate NATO definitively into an organisation that could use military power to defend energy interests and uphold its alliances in the Middle East by protecting Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Even though both these energy rich Gulf states could defend themselves with the state-of-the-art military equipment sold to them by the US, Britain and France, these powers are reluctant to be seen attacking other Sunni Muslims in lands not so far away lest it cause resentment among the people. 

Islamic State is a primarily a regional threat. Though the gory spectacles, mass killings of minorities and ambition to expand the Caliphate is real, the US and other western powers only started to act when it was clear IS posed a threat to the oil producing regions of Kurdistan, hitherto thought of as relatively secure.

That strategy against Islamic State mean rolling back IS in Iraq and broadening strikes into Syria too if necessary because the 'game plan' as regards it is still as it was before to impose a 'moderate' Muslim Brotherhood government on Damascus, overthrow Assad and check Iranian and Russian influence.

The last thing the US, Britain and France would want is to destroy IS only to empower and embolden Assad and Iran so they could realise the plan to build the 'Shi'ite Islamic' gas pipeline from the South Pars gas field to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Already Russia has a naval presence at the Syrian port of Tarsaus and permission to drill and exploit the gas reserves in the Syrian part of the Levant Basin. A gas pipeline linking Iranian gas through Syria as an alternative to the Qatari -Turkish one to the EU is this to be blocked off and thwarted at all costs.

In this sense there is a certain connection between the conflict in Ukraine and in Syria. If the US or NATO were to bomb positions in Syria, even if held by IS, this would be a violation of sovereignty by NATO far more than Russia's incursions into Eastern Ukraine and the backing given to "pro-Russia rebels".

Yet Syria's territorial sovereignty was effectively violated when Turkey started arming and training Sunni jihadists to go across the border to overthrow Assad and there is evidence Turkish forces in March 2014 had planned military incursions into northern Syria to protect the tomb of Shah Suleiman.

The protection of the site where the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire was under threat by ISIS was important to Erdogan who has pursued a neo-Ottoman strategy towards both Syria and Kurdistan, both former provinces before World War One and valuable for recreating Turkey as an east-west energy hub.

It is is clear, therefore, that energy security and control over oil and gas transit routes are the predominant factor in  contemporary geopolitical struggles in the Greater Middle East and the quest for both regional and global hegemony. Any account which omits mention of these factors ignores reality.

Arming the Kurds and the Danger of Spreading Regional Conflict.

While the strategy of arming the Kurds and trying to draw the Sunnis into a unity government would appear to be one way to check the spread of IS in Iraq, one danger would be that it could give impetus to the cause of arming the Free Syrian Army across the border.

The FSA, in its propaganda, has already accused President Assad of secretly plotting with ISIS so that they could divert the FSA in northern Syria away from taking Damascus. The problem is that official Western policy is still the one framed by Hillary Clinton and William Hague-'Assad must go'.

When it comes down to it Western policy 'remains contradictory and self-defeating', to use veteran Middle East correspondent Patrick Cockburn's words, because of the seldom mentioned matrix of energy geopolitics that dominates Western policy ( and the regional powers ) with regards the Middle East.

The US and EU powers would like to tacitly work with Iran in Iraq so as to bolster Baghdad against IS. Yet in Syria the West wants to remove Assad so as to check the expansion of Iranian interests towards the Eastern Mediterranean and the possibility of a gas pipeline stretching there from the South Pars gas field.

As Qatar becomes a regional power and a major economic partner of Western powers, and a vital supplier of liquefied natural gas to stave off potential energy shortfalls in Britain and France, Western foreign policy has increasingly aligned itself to a Qatari-Turkish Sunni axis of influence.

Not only does Qatar host a US Gulf air base, Qatar’s al-Udeid air field, used for strikes against IS, Qatar has tried to extend its regional reach into energy and infrastructure projects, signing a Memorandum of Understand with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) back in 2009.

With Qatar and Turkey aligned in checking Iranian interests in Syria, having their own scheme for a gas pipeline between Qatar's part of the South Pars gas field and Turkey, Iran could get more concerned that both in Syria and Kurdistan, the West is plotting to contain and encircle it further.

The strategy of providing arms to the Kurdish peshmerga is being balanced with one of trying to shore up Iraq as a 'unitary state'. The problem would be if Kurdistan would then regard that as a signal that it could and should break from Baghdad, not least over rows over oil revenues and contracts.

Despite being regarded as opposed to Kurdish independence, Erdogan's government is prepared to see greater autonomy and, in May 2014, Turkey started officially to export Kurdish oil on to the international market as part of his grand design to position it as an east-west energy hub.

Turkey's geostrategy could only raise tensions with Baghdad and especially with Iran, historically its regional competitor in the Kurdish borderlands and, to the north, in the Caucasus where a shadowy New Great Game for pipeline routes also contains the potential for war and destabilisation.

Iran would fear what Norman Stone calls Erdogan's 'neo-Ottoman' strategy as it would act as a magnet in drawing the Kurds into a prosperous economic block driven by oil wealth and could lead to Kurdish irredentist tendencies and even uprisings within Iran as happened back in 1946.

Set against a background of continued sanctions on Iran, the attempt to block off Iranian gas exports to the east via Pakistan, through trying to cajole the latter into accepting gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan ( the proposed TAPI pipeline ), the failure to take Iranian interests into account could be dangerous.

One way to avoid the intensification of a regional proxy war, indeed of the escalation into a wider regional war in which even the global powers would be sucked in deeper towards a greater collision would be to involve Iran directly in diplomatic talks over Syria instead of ignoring them as as been hitherto the case.