A Bleak Scenario If Iraqi Kurds Declare an Independent State

Iraqis are seeking a referendum from the U.N. to have Iraqi Kurdistan recognized as an independent Kurdish homeland.

Meanwhile, Kurdo has been increasingly dubious regarding the feasibility of the Iraqi elections, and has been hinting that postponing them might not be a bad idea.
(here and here)

The Iranian Kurd Medya is saying flat out that permitting a Shi'a majority democracy is a bad idea, and he is openly calling for a partition of Iraq:

If Sunni [Arab], Shiite and Kurds can't live toghether why should we make them to do so ?

Medya considers the Unified Iraq policy to be a Turkish plot to keep Kurdistan bottled up.

I think some elements among the Iraqi Kurds have decided they don't want to be part of a democratic Iraq (in which they are a minority among a Shi'a majority) any more than radical Sunni Arabs do.

To be fair, there are plenty of Kurdish voices that are openly backing the elections, even if they are distressed at the current events:
Dilnareen
Sami
Yad

I'm sympathetic to the Kurds in their asperations for an independent state. They've wanted it for a long time, and one can imagine that after being driven from their homes and gassed by an Arab-dominated government, they would not see themselves as patriotic "Iraqis".

But here is the reason why (for the time being) the Iraqi Kurds must remain part of Iraq.

If they break loose of Iraq, the first question to be settled will be their exact borders. This brings up the question of Kirkuk, but it puts in dispute places like Mosul which also have large Arab populations. When the Kurds break loose, three things will happen:

• The government of Iraq will lose its core fighting-force in the form of the Peshmurga, making it less able to to fight insurgencies within its non-Kurdistan areas

• The Sunnis will seek their own homeland separate from the Shi'a -- and the battle for Baghdad will begin.
  
  
• The Arabs and Kurds will start fighting over Mosul, Kirkuk, etc.

What is the next thing that will happen? Turkey, Syria and Iran will clamp down on their own Kurdish populations to premptively prevent similar independence actions in their own countries. This means the hard-won (albeit insufficient) liberties recently secured for Kurds in Turkey will be lost. These clamp-downs will probably not succeed in preventing revolts and there will be multiple Halabjas within those countries.

Simultaneously, each of these countries also will move into portions of the new Kurdistan (as well as Iraq) to secure real estate as a buffer to the chaos that will swiftly envelope all of Iraq.

So the new Kurdistan will be at war with the countries on its West, East, North, and South: Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq and the attempted independent Sunni state.

At the same time, each of these entities will begin handing out money and supplies to secure aliances with the local Arabs and other ethnicalities, and with rival Kurdish groups within the new Kurdish state. So in addition to fighting a war on every front, the new Kurdistan will be engaged in a no-holds-barred civil war with itself. Not to mention that it will have an increasingly radicalized Arab failed-state(s) on its southern border -- it's only path to a port. Kurdistan will become the center of a maelstrom with a maelstrom.

The result? Tens of thousands of dead Kurds throughout the Middle East. At least four Middle East nations in flames. Iraq becomes a black-hole. The surrounding dictatorships smugly assure their citizens of the dangers of liberty, and hold up the Iraqi Kurdistan as proof that the Kurds can't be trusted with self-governance.

For now the Kurds need to concentrate on keeping Kurds free in Iraq.

As George Packer said in his New Yorker article,

Fanaticism is the legacy of Saddam’s Arabization policy.

We must not let Saddam win.