Negroponte: Kurdistan's independence will evolve gradually

Former US Ambassador to Iraq

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan24) – John Negroponte was America’s first ambassador to Baghdad, after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. He held that post from June 2004 to April 2005.

The former ambassador, now a Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University, discussed the upcoming referendum on Kurdish independence with Kurdistan24.

He spoke carefully, first expressing his satisfaction at Mosul’s imminent liberation from the vicious grip of the Islamic State.

“Now that Kurdistan has decided to proceed to a referendum,” he continued, “I’m sure that is a situation which will evolve very gradually and that people will reflect very carefully on exactly what course of action they wish Kurdistan to take.”

Negroponte is a cautious man, known for his courtesy and civility—ever-vanishing qualities in contemporary Washington, and his strategic perspective is shaped by America’s unhappy experience in Vietnam.

In early 2002, as President George W. Bush began moving toward war with Iraq to overthrow Saddam, Negroponte told the Washington Post, “If you're asking me my view based on the most important experience I have had with regard to the use of force, which was Vietnam, it is one of caution."

When Kurdistan24 asked Negroponte whether the US should support an independent republic of Kurdistan, because the Kurds are—and will be—strong allies of the US, he answered carefully.

“We still consider Iraqi Kurdistan as part of Iraq,” he replied. “But we’ll have to wait and see how things evolve. My own view has always been that these are matters that need to be dealt with very carefully, very cautiously, and people have to consider all the factors involved.”

“My friends in Kurdistan have always told me that the independence of Kurdistan was a long-term vision,” he said, “but that for the time being, they were prepared to work within the framework of the Iraqi state. That was the situation that I was dealing with, when I was there.”

Indeed, the Kurdish leadership says much the same. President Masoud Barzani, in an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Wednesday, explained that after Saddam’s overthrow, “The Kurds worked hard to build a new Iraq, including drafting a constitution that guaranteed Kurdistan’s autonomy and protected the rights of all Iraqis.”

“Fourteen years later,” however, the Kurdish president explained, “Baghdad has failed to implement key provisions of that constitution, and we have good reason to believe that it never will.”

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to Washington, recently briefed journalists on the upcoming referendum in similar terms.

Kurdish optimism about beginning “a new chapter in Iraq” peaked in 2005 with the drafting of a new constitution, she explained. However, as the years passed, “all of that began to unravel.”

When Negroponte arrived in Baghdad in the summer of 2004, Iraq was already beginning to experience significant violence.

Over the previous year, Paul Bremer, a former State Department official, had been the top US civilian in Iraq, as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Bremer’s appointment followed just days after Bush, speaking from the deck of a US aircraft carrier bearing the banner, “Mission Accomplished,” announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

At that point, Iraq was relatively quiet. US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, dismissed the budding insurgency as “pockets of dead-enders.” A year later, however, as Negroponte assumed the position of ambassador to Iraq, a genuine insurgency had taken hold.

Negroponte took up his post as UN ambassador at a remarkable point: a week after the 9/11 attacks. Subsequently, he became a key figure in mobilizing international backing for the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed.

He is credited with gaining unanimous support at the Security Council for the demand that Saddam had to comply with the UN resolutions requiring Iraq to disarm and which later became the basis for Bush’s casus belli for Operation Iraqi Freedom.