The Goat and the Butcher: Nationalism and State Formation in Kurdistan-Iraq since the Iraqi War (review)

Authored by Robert Olson, University Research Professor in Middle East History and Politics at the University of Kentucky, The Goat and the Butcher derives its title from a Turkish proverb: "The goat desires its freedom, the butcher its meat." Olson goes on to explain that "the goat is a metaphor for the lower intelligentsia and bureaucratic classes supported by popular nationalism while the butcher is a metaphor for the emergent bourgeois class that is always looking for a market, preferably a national market," an apt description, he says, of Kurdish nationalism in northern Iraq today, or "Kurdistan-Iraq" in this study. The dynamics of Kurdish politics in occupied Iraq come primarily from three actors, the Kurds, Turkey, and the United States, with the Kurds themselves divided, not very rigidly it appears, between those involved in nationalistic aspiration (goats) and those looking at national autonomy/independence from an economic perspective (butchers).

This book examines the interaction among the above three actors from 1 March 2003, when the Turkish parliament refused the United States access through Turkey, until the aftermath of the 30 January 2005 national assembly elections in Iraq—the period of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq to mid-February 2005, when the author finished his manuscript. It is an exceedingly complicated story involving other nations and political groupings in supporting roles: the Iraq Interim Government, Shiite and Sunni forces in Iraqi politics, Iran, Israel, and other Arab countries, as well as the United Nations and European Union.

In line with Olson's extensive writings, this book focuses, in near-microscopic detail, on interaction between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds and their relations with the American occupying forces in Iraq beginning with Ankara's 1 March 2003 decision not to join the US invasion. The author details the torments of Turkey, as a so-called medium power (Olson uses the theory of medium powers from the academic field of international relations here) wrestling with its own ongoing battle with the Kurdish PKK/Kongra-Gel (Kurdistan People's Party), which operates under the protection of Kurdish leaders in Iraq. At the same time, Turkey is coping with constant pressure from the EU and the United States to distance itself from outright military oppression of Kurdish independence in Turkey and even to abjure temptations to move forces into northern Iraq to protect a Turkoman population subject to Kurdish harassment and to interdict the PKK/Kongra-Gel there.

Olson also closely examines the external and internal relations of Kurdistan-Iraq with heavy emphasis on its interactions with Turkey but not to the exclusion of its dilemmas in occupied Iraq itself. Here the Turkish proverb of the goat and the butcher becomes central to both Kurdish and Turkish calculations, with the so-called forces of moderation among Iraqi Kurds leaning toward a business-as-usual approach (whatever "usual" means in this context) while more militant voices put national autonomy—if not outright independence—in the forefront. For all their differences over Kurdistan-Iraq's future, the United States and Turkey seem to agree that the butcher's approach will yield happier results for settling both Ankara's own Kurdish problem and Washington's preoccupation with stability in tumultuous Iraq.

But the ultimate direction of Kurdish leadership in Iraq is not so clear. It is interesting that decisions by these leaders tend more often than not to be determined by factors internal to Iraq and to the Kurdish population itself. Here the steady parade of milestones in Iraq's move away from Baathist rule have special significance: elections; parliamentary votes; constitution-making; the political process at national, provincial, and local levels; security and law enforcement; government and economy; and the freeing of Iraq from its past through strengthened institutions of a civil society. In the American sponsorship of this constitutional evolution, the Kurds have proven to...