'Isil will return in Iraq', warns former counter-terrorism commander

Western governments must help put out the “fire” of the Kurdistan crisis before the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant regroups, a senior Kurdish leader has warned. 

Bafel Talabani, a former commander of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga counter-terrorism forces and son of the late Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, said that celebrating the defeat of the terror group was “simplistic” and called on Britain to negotiate an end to a months-long confrontation between Iraqi and Kurdish forces previously allied in the fight against the terror group.  

“Daesh is not gone. That issue is not defeated," Mr Talabani said, using the Arabic acronym for the group. "All you will see is asymmetrical warfare increase - they will stir up racial hatreds and terrorism will increase.” 

“There is always this thing. It never goes away. It comes back with a different name harder and harder and harder. And Daesh is not finished in the slightest,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Telegraph. 

“I am in London to persuade the international community to help start negotiations between the Kurdish regional government and  Baghdad as soon as possible - before the situation deteriorates,” he added. “We have to put this fire out to move the country forward.”

The fire he refers to was ignited on September 25, when Masoud Barzani, the then president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)and a political rival of Mr Talabani’s family and party, called a referendum on full independence from Iraq. 

Kurdistan had operated as a de facto autonomous region since the Iraq war of 2003, and the outcome of the vote was a foregone conclusion - over 90 percent of ballots cast voted yes.

But the move provoked near universal condemnation in the international community and sparked a confrontation with Baghdad that culminated with Iraqi troops and allied Shia militia groups storming into disputed areas in mid-October. 

In a few days, the Iraqi Kurds lost swathes of territory including the city of Kirkuk and key oil fields that they had controlled since the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003.  

Mr Talabani believes the episode set the cause of Kurdish independence back at least a decade. 

A month on, the KRG's status as the kernel of a future independent Kurdistan is in the balance. 

Direct international flights into Erbil, the capital, remain suspended. Kirkuk, a city the Kurds see as integral to a future state and had controlled since 2003, is under the control of the Baghdad government; and several thousand families have been left homeless in what has been described as an emerging humanitarian crisis. 

The loss of key oil fields has left the region to the brink of economic collapse. The government in Erbil has already run out of money to pay wages this month, Mr Talabani said. 

In a meeting with Alastair Burt, the foreign office minister for the Middle East, he called on Britain to push Baghdad to share oil revenues with the region - preferably the full 17 percent of oil revenues the KRG is guaranteed in the Iraqi constitution. 

“Everything else can be discussed in detail as part of a grander solution. But we need the wages to be taken care of, people need wages,” he said.  

“Its not fair to starve the Kurdish people for the political mistakes of certain politicians.”

Born in Baghdad but raised in Britain, Mr Talabani has emerged as something of a Western face both for the cause for Kurdish independence, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party his family founded.

The scion of an Iraqi Kurdish political dynasty, he headed an anti-terrorism unit of Peshmerga fighters he was involved in intelligence and counter-insurgency warfare alongside American troops for much of the 2000s. 

He went on to serve as chief of staff to his father, and has since emerged as a kind of roving statesman who delights in telling tales of delicate meetings and frantic telephone diplomacy with a who’s who of Middle Eastern and international figures.

Mr Talabani insists he holds no grudge against the international community. Everyone, from London and Washington to Tehran and Baghdad, had been “crystal clear” about the consequences of the referendum. 

“All the cards were on the table and you told us this would happen. If you hadn’t told us, I would have called them a betrayal. But everyone told us what would happen,” he said.

Instead, he levels much of his criticism at the Kurdish leadership - including, he judiciously adds, in his own party - for bullheadedness and division. 

And he reserves particular ire for a number of foreign consultants and advisers who he says pushed Mr Barzani into a “massive error.”

Mr Talabani also claims the Kurdish leadership ignored an 11th hour deal he negotiated with the Americans, who, he said, agreed to endorse an independence referendum if it was postponed two years so as not to interfere with the fight against Isil or Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s chances of winning elections in 2018. 

Mr Talabani flatly denies allegations against himself and some other Kurdish commanders of cowardice or complicity in the military disaster that followed the referendum. 

“It was a simple mathematical problem,” he said. “There were x amount of vehicles that needed y number of this weapon system to defeat, and we didn’t have enough of those weapon systems.”

“And I told them before the fighting, ‘please at least take care of this.’ And I was told: ‘the Peshmerga are brave.’”

“Well, the Peshmerga are brave. But there’s not much I can do with bravery against a tank,” he said. 

He said it should serve as a wake-up call to bury historic divisions, including between his own family and Mr Barzani’s, which dominates the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party. The two parties fought a civil war in the 1990s. 

“We need to get our house in order first. We need a united Kurdish voice,” he said. 

“If we lose the Kurdistan region as a region, if Iraq divides us and starts playing us governate for governate, frankly it doesn’t matter who is in charge of what.”