The Kurdish State

"This is a security measure. We are dealing with a serious threat. We are neighbours to a terrorist state -- the Islamic State -- and we have to take measures to ensure our safety."
Falah Bakir, Kurdish region foreign policy official

"If the Shiite forces and the Sunni forces don't abide by this pact between the sides, to draw the borders of Iraq, to draw the borders of the province of Kurdistan, so it is the right of the Kurdish province to take the areas that were taken away from it."
Kurdish deputy head, Kirkuk Provincial Council, Rebwar Talabani

In this picture taken on Monday, June 30, 2014, a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter takes his position behind dirt barriers built along the front line with militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in Mariam Bek village, between the northern cities of Tikrit and Kirkuk, Iraq. Demonstrating their growing independence from the rest of Iraq, the largely-autonomous Kurdish regional government is setting up dirt barriers that they hope will ultimately set the borders of their future state. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

In the past week the Kurdish military Peshmerga have busied themselves feverishly against time. They have erected a border-barrier to safeguard the territory they claim as their own. That barrier has taken the form of dirt barriers outside Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul, now in the possession of the Islamic State. The barriers, though hastily built, are serviceable in defining the borders of a future Kurdish state.

Mounds of earth and rows of concrete barriers stride alongside the highway where the last Peshmerga checkpoint before Mosul exists. "We are drawing the border on the disputed areas, which is our right", explained a Kurdish fighter in beige military fatigues standing in the back of a jeep, his binoculars scanning the horizon. Reminded of the objections by the government in Baghdad, the soldier laughed: "What government in Baghdad?"

A Kurdish Peshmerga fighter cleans his weapon on his position behind a dirt barrier built along the front line with militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Mariam Bek village, between the northern cities of Tikrit and Kirkuk, Iraq. Demonstrating their growing independence from the rest of Iraq, the largely-autonomous Kurdish regional government is setting up dirt barriers that they hope will ultimately set the borders of their future state.   Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Politicians allied with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemn the Kurdish assertion of control over areas outside their semi-autonomous region. They are exploiting the security breakdown in a deliberate push to advance their long-held aspirations of greater autonomy or outright statehood, claim the Iraqi Shiite politicians. Well, most certainly this is what the Kurds are doing. Why would they not? It is time and past time that the Kurds, representing the largest ethnic group in the world without a geography of their own, laid claim to their own.

They insist they assumed control of the disputed territory in and around Kirkuk, a city the Kurds feel would complete their geographic hegemonic plans quite nicely -- with its invaluable oil resources to which they feel quite entitled -- because they meant to prevent the city from occupation by the Sunni Islamists in the face of the Iraqi military simply abandoning their posts and leaving that opportunity to ISIS; an incident that represented a mirror image of the Mosul takeover and occupation.

Members of the Kurdish Special Forces stand over the deserted helmets of Iraqi military - which were dropped and left when they fled during fighting against the ISIS. (Photo by Rick Findler)

So the still-emerging landscape of sand berms, trenches and roadblocks have that definite purpose, to embrace areas that Kurdish fighters took control of in preventing the Sunni terrorists led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant from occupying as they routed the regime's Shiite-led government forces. The Kurdish defence of the 12,000-kilometre frontier was a requirement to prevent Kirkuk from being subsumed into the transnational Islamist state occupying land in Syria and Iraq.

Members of the Kurdish Special Forces walk toward the front lines where they held off the ISIS. (Photo by Rick Findler)

The Kurds point to their failed efforts over the years to reach an agreement with Baghdad on the frontier of their semi-autonomous region. The Shiite-led government and Sunni leaders were disinterested in formalizing that border that might lead to statehood for the vast Kurdish population which had, in any event, formed its own state infrastructure and represented the most social and economically successful portion of the country.

While a constitutional amendment requiring that the fate of Kirkuk be decided by referendum was in the planning stages it never managed to go beyond the initial stages to implementation. A few kilometres outside Kirkuk near the village of Mariam Bek the border was marked with a muddy canal, the half-dozen bridges crossing the canal, blocked to ensure suicide bombers were prevented from entering the city, according to General Shirko Fatih, commander of Kurdish troops in Kirkuk.

Islamic State fighters built their own dirt barrier just up the road, and 80 kilometres further along stands the city of Tikrit, now held by the Sunni insurgents. While the Kurds state they are protecting everyone in Kirkuk from the depredations of Islamic fanatics, an Arab official stated his community would reject the defensive fortifications being transformed into a border. "This for us is rejected"; there was a difference between defending a city and seizing it, said Rakan Ali, deputy governor of Kirkuk.

But Kurdish foreign policy director Bakir stated that any final borders would come about by referendum. "Now that our forces are in this area, we will make a referendum to determine if the people want to be part of Kurdistan", he explained. Since the Kurds make up a sizeable proportion of the population in Kirkuk, and the Sunni Arabs fleeing Mosul headed directly for haven in Kurdish territory where they knew they would be safe, a referendum outcome seems predictable.

A member of the Kurdish Special Forces is shown positions of ISIS on the front lines near Kirkuk. (Photo by Rick Findler)

But other Kurds believe given the instability and lack of security in the region calls for them to seize the opportunity to press south to the Hamreen hills, 200 kilometres from Kirkuk, which represents a natural frontier. "If we go to history, the border is not here, it is further away in Hamreen. This is not my border. We want more", said a Kurdish commander in Mariam Bek, surveying the territory from a sniper tower.