Zakho, one of Iraqi Kurdistan’s northernmost towns, is both a commercial center and a tourist hub. With the border crossing between Iraq and Turkey just seven miles away, Zakho is a major market town. Just outside the town’s center is the thousand-year-old Delal Bridge. Many Iraqis, both Arabs and Kurds, flock to Zakho and nearby resorts for its cool weather and mountain streams. It is normally a region of peace where Iraqi Kurds and Arabs meet and socialize, especially during summer’s school holidays.

That calm was shattered on July 20, 2022, when Turkish artillery strike killed eight and wounded 20 at a crowded resort just outside the town. Among the dead were three women and two children.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi immediately condemned the attack. His words are empty. Turkey regularly targets Kurdish and Yezidi regions of Iraq with airstrikes and artillery. Rather than defend Iraqi sovereignty, Kadhimi supplicates himself to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

There should also be introspection in the White House. Turkey interpreted President Joe Biden’s endorsement of the F-16 sale to Turkey as a greenlight to continue its aggression in Iraq and Syria.

That is not the whole story, however. While Turkey justifies its
bombardment in its right to defend itself from the Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK) terrorism, the reality is that cross-border operations from both Iraq and
Syria stopped more than a decade ago. The PKK also dropped its separatist
demands and no longer seeks to carve out an independent Kurdistan; rather, they
seek “confederation” in which a special relationship exists between federal
units across international borders.

Within Iraq, the PKK and affiliated groups have gained popularity
not as a fighting force but rather as a political movement. Unlike the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) which has become less a political movement than a
Barzani family business empire, the PKK does not organize itself around tribe.
Iraqi Kurds also pivoted toward the PKK when the KDP fled in the face of the
Islamic State, throwing the Yezidis to their fate, while the PKK stayed and
fought. To this day, the Barzani family refuses to release the airport
manifests to show which KDP officials or Barzani family members fled as the
Islamic State marched on Erbil.

Because the Barzanis do not believe they can outcompete the PKK—to
do so would mean tackling corruption and eschewing nepotism—they instead seek
to counter them through an alliance with Turkey. In practice, this means that
the KDP security service under the command of Prime Minister Masrour Barzani
provides intelligence and targeting data to the Turks prior to their
airstrikes. More often than not, this intelligence is flawed: The KDP will use
Turkish warplanes or artillery to take out business and political rivals who
have nothing to do with the PKK or, as in Sinjar, they will simply use Turkish
bombardment to punish a population for insufficient fealty to the Barzanis.

This is the real scandal that should be investigated in the
aftermath of the Zakho massacre. The Turkish bombardment was an atrocity, but
the Kurdish political figure who provided Turkey with the targeting information
is just as guilty of murder. As for Kadhimi, the primary job of Iraq’s leader
is to protect its sovereignty. If he is not up for the job, he should resign.

The post Who Is Responsible for the Zakho Massacre? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.