Barzani rejects Arab League call to ‘reconsider’ referendum

Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani has declined a request from the head of the Arab League to reconsider the independence referendum of Kurdistan Region, saying that Iraq is moving towards “a great danger” if the current arrangements between the Kurdish and Iraqi government remain.

“We have come to the conclusion that we are not welcomed and not accepted as citizens and real partners,” Barzani said in a letter, listing a history of genocide and denial at the hand of successive Iraqi governments since its foundation in 1920.

“That is why we do not accept subordination, and marginalization; and therefore, our friends in Iraq should be blamed [for this], not us, because they are the ones who pushed us [towards holding the referendum],” the letter continued.

Ahmed Aboul Gheit the Secretary-General of the Arab League had sent a letter to Barzani calling on him to re-think plans to hold the September 25 referendum, as reported by Asharq al-Awsat newspaper on Thursday.

Iraq is a founding member of the Arab league, and the current Iraqi constitution that came in effect in 2005 stipulates that it “commits to its charter.”

Iraq considers the referendum unilateral and unconstitutional.

Barzani said in response that staying in Iraq based on the current arrangements “poses a great threat, because we are moving towards conflicts that do provide comfort for either our Kurdistani and Iraqi nations,” the letter said, adding that the referendum will prevent this from happening. And it instead will result in a “fruitful cooperation, and we will become neighbors, allies and will become strategic depth for one another,” with Iraq.

According to Rudaw Barzani said the agreement that resulted in the creation of Iraq after the World War I is called in the Arab literature a “colonial agreement,” and as such is also disliked by Arabs.

Barzani said that the Iraqi state since its foundation in 1920s until the fall of the Baathist regime in 2003 and then for the last 14 years has offered the Kurds only suffering and genocide.

He reminded the Arab League that the Iraqi government killed 182,000 Kurdish people as part of the infamous genocide against the Kurds, Anfal, and 5,000 people in the chemical attack in Halabja, and destroyed 4,500 villages inhabited by Kurds.

Barzani said even after all these losses, the Kurds tried in 1991, when Kurds stated an uprising against the then Iraqi regime, and in 2003 to reach a new settlement with the Iraqi government, but that Baghdad continued on the same path against the Kurds.

He added the people of Kurdistan decided to take part in the new Iraq that came about after the US-led invasion of Iraq, including rebuilding the Iraqi government, its army, and the writing of a new constitution for Iraq. But Baghdad has since declined to implement all articles of the constitution that concern the Kurdistan Region.