Why U.S. support for the Kurds is more important than ever

One of the primary tenets of a foreign policy defined by realism goes as follows: States do not act based on moral considerations. Instead, foreign policy is crafted and carried out in accordance with the national interest. There are times, however, when the two of these overlap, giving the state a rare window of opportunity to promote its national interest while simultaneously taking action because it’s the right thing to do. Today, the United States has such a window, but it looks to be closing rapidly. Enter the current case of the Iraqi Kurds.

The Kurds are facing a complex of crises, each one inextricably intertwined with the others. The following challenges have put one of the most successful democratic projects in the Middle East in jeopardy and threaten to unravel all of the progress the Kurds have made in recent years.

{mosads}Baghdad budget cuts. In the spring of 2014, then Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cut the Kurdistan Region’s constitutionally guaranteed 17 percent of the national budget. The Kurds haven’t seen any of that money since.

The rise of ISIS. In the summer of the same year, the world witnessed the meteoric rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Since then, the Kurdish Peshmerga (or “those who face death”) have faced the extremist group head-on, holding a frontline of roughly 700 miles. With U.S. coalition support, the Peshmerga have often pushed beyond the frontline in the fight against ISIS, with recent success in Sinjar and a commitment to be part of the impending liberation of Mosul. According to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the cost of this important fight has arrived at two billion dollars a year. The KRG hasn’t been able to pay the Peshmerga in four months, meaning that despite having shown extreme bravery, effectiveness and resolve in countering ISIS, the Kurdish fighters are now faced with the daunting reality of not being able to properly feed or clothe their children.

Waves of refugees and IDPs. The fall and winter brought thousands of internally displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees (joining the ones that have been there since 2011), anxious to escape the grip of ISIS. All told, the KRG estimates that there are over 1.8 million refugees and IDPs being hosted in Kurdistan, causing the population of the region to expand by 27-30 percent. A large number of the displaced belong to ethnic and religious minority groups, such as Yezidis and Christians, in addition to Shia and Sunni Arabs.

The drop in oil prices. The most recent hardship facing the Kurds is the worldwide drop in oil prices. The KRG began exporting oil independently as its main source of revenue when the Iraqi government began withholding its share of the budget. Since that time, the price of oil has gone from over $100 a barrel to where it stands now, at roughly $30 a barrel.

The cumulative effect of these challenges — what Minister Falah Bakir, head of the KRG Department of Foreign Relations, calls “shocks” — is a financial crisis that threatens the very existence of one of the most vibrant, exceptional democracies in a wider region mired in conflict and uncertainty.

A KRG delegation, made up of Minister Bakir and Dr. Fuad Hussein, Chief of Staff to President Barzani, was in Washington last week advocating passionately for greater support from the U.S. Government.

The U.S. should provide this support for two reasons.

1) It is morally the right thing to do. In the wake of ISIS attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, President Obama stated that the U.S. would be on “the right side of history” in the mission to defeat the terrorist group. So far, the Kurds have been shouldering too much of this burden on their own without adequate U.S. support, fighting the war on the ground and providing a home for the displaced.

2) It is in the U.S. national interest. Geopolitically and geostrategically, the U.S. would be hard-pressed to find a better ally than the Kurds. They represent both an integral element to achieving lasting peace in the region, and the best safeguard against ISIS being able to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

As Hussein recently said; “Helping the Kurds means helping yourself.” The time has come for U.S. officials to realize his message in a concrete and decisive way, taking advantage of the convergence of moral imperative and the national interest. If they can do this, the direction of the narrative has a chance to turn in a significantly more hopeful direction, both for the Kurds and Americans.

Jacobsen is an MA candidate in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs at American University’s School of International Service and a Barzani Peace fellow, a fellowship focusing on Kurdish studies.