Reassessing A Post-Coronavirus-19 World: Long Live Independent Kurdistan!

 

Reassessing A Post-Coronavirus-19 World: Long Live Independent Kurdistan!

                                                                           by Gerald A. Honigman

Hopefully, the horror of  the current Coronavirus-19 pandemic will come to end in the not-too-distant future, and the world we be back on track tackling some of its lingering other problems and issues. One of those has been largely neglected for far too long, especially when compared to some other well-greased concerns which never seem to leave center stage. Hence this current analysis.

Try as one may to paint a nicer picture, the threatened and subsequent Turkish invasion of heavily Kurdish northern Syria, which prompted President Trump to withdraw American forces last autumn, brought back bad memories…

Unfortunately, for over a half century, America has replaced Great Britain as the primary outside user and abuser of the Kurds.

Inside, Kurds have let their own internal divisions, rivalries, and shortsightedness to allow Arab and Turk conquerors of their own millennial geographically majority territory to do this to themselves as well. Some Kurds even allied with Saddam Hussein, responsible for Operation Anfal and other Arab genocidal actions, which ultimately took some 200,000 Kurdish lives–including many gassed to death.

I had hoped that this time, in Syria, it would be different.

Yes, I knew of President Trump’s promise to disengage from the region militarily during his first election campaign. However, I also hoped, with his own “thinking out of the box” moves already having a positive impact elsewhere, that he would rethink the nasty State Department-driven policies towards our loyal friends and allies, who suffered tens of thousands of dead and wounded fighting for America’s own causes as well. The late great William Safire of The New York Times wrote a series of articles about this Henry Kissinger-led travesty and disgrace in the ‘70s  https://kurdistantribune.com/henry-kissinger-realpolitik-genocide/.

President George H.W. Bush would repeat this use and abuse, “no friends, just interests,” policy less than two decades later which also resulted in numerous thousands of Kurdish dead, wounded, and displaced refugees in the first Gulf War waged to liberate that giant oil well also known as Kuwait.

I will never forget General Schwarzkopf pathetically claiming that Saddam tricked America into allowing for this slaughter with the terms of the ceasefire. Bush I had told the Kurds to revolt. They listened…and were thanked by being abandoned and massacred (“When Norman Wasn’t Stormin’”: https://www.mideasttruth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25129&sid=16a65b2ef43ab4147d35822f2b60ba4d).

And, unfortunately, America recently repeated this yet again–regardless of various attempts at whitewashing. 

In order to prevent another wholesale slaughter of their people, Syrian Kurds–who struggled so long to gain political rights from their Syrian Arab subjugators–had to re-invite the latter, along with their Russian allies, back into Kurdish areas to counter Ankara’s assault. A hint of what this situation was like can be found in the scholar, Ismet Cherif Vanly’s earlier book, The Syrian Mein Kampf Aagainst The Kurds.  Among other things, Kurdish children were routinely forced to sing songs in schools praising their “Arab” identities.

For years, Kurds in northern Syria have been leading the battle against ISIS and other Jihadis, prompted by Washington for both of their interests, and now–after thousands of additional dead Kurds, and with ISIS largely defeated due to Kurdish blood and courage–yet another American leader pulled the rug out from under them.

Some additional background information is useful…

As National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice spoke at the US Institute of Peace on August 19, 2004. Some of what she said was morally indefensible, realpolitik at its worst. Henry Machiavelli von Bismarck Kissinger approved, no doubt https://ekurd.net/jews-should-not-henry-2019-07-14.

While she was delivering what would increasingly come to be her (and others’) favorite words of wisdom regarding creating a 22nd state for Arabs (and second, not first, in the original borders of the Palestine Mandate as Britain received it on April 25, 1920, with Jordan birthed on almost 80% of the original total area in 1922) at the Institute of Peace, Rice totally shot down questions relating to Kurdish anxieties and national aspirations in Iraq, the former post-World War I British Mandate of Mesopotamia. Kurds had been promised independence there earlier. 

Keep in mind that before the imperial Arab conquests in the 7th century CE, and Turkish and others’ invasions afterwards, the non-Semitic Kurds as Hurrians, Guti, Kassites, possibly Medes, etc. had lived and ruled in Mesopotamia for millennia.

In contrast, however, to her disdain for Kurdish hopes in the new age of nationalism after the breakup of empires in the region, here’s some of what Rice had to say about her and the State Department Arabists’ good buddies: “The President believes that the Palestinian people deserve not merely their own state, but a just and democratic state that serves their interests and fulfills their decent aspirations.” 

Score: Arabs 22, Kurds 0.

Regardless of the very likely murderous effects that this would have had then, and will still likely have now, on the sole, minuscule State of the Jews, Dr. Rice, true to Foggy Bottom form–simply brushed aside the Jews’ real existential concerns as she did with those of the Kurds. Recall that similar State Department and like-minded gems fought President Truman over Israel’s very rebirth in 1948. 

Despite frequent bloodshed and turmoil in the Arab Sunni and Shi’a areas of Iraq; despite hundreds of thousands of Kurds having been killed, maimed, turned into refugees, and the like by both Iraqi and Syrian Arabs over the decades; despite Kurds having been marked as traitors because of their close ties to America; despite that the most stable and relatively democratic areas in both Iraq and Syria are in the Kurdish areas…indeed, despite all of this and more–Rice simply brushed off a question regarding Kurdish independence with the following remarks: “It’s the role of leadership to convince people that they really ought to stay in the same body.” 

Worse yet, her thoughts were simply a typical reflection of Washington’s approach to our Kurdish friends and allies…a nauseatingly duplicitous disgrace–whatever the excuse. 

Do Secretary Rice and her ilk–including Presidents–tell Arabs that they already have the bulk of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine, and that other peoples besides themselves are also entitled to a reasonable share of justice in this multi-ethnic region? Did they also tell them that more than mere lip service is required to obtain and maintain that justice? Or, consider the following as well…

Did Secretary of State Rice (who had an oil tanker named after herself in the Chevron fleet–guess why?) advise a post-Tito Yugoslavia to remain as one? https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Critics-Knock-Naming-Oil-Tanker-Condoleezza-2935114.php

America had earlier led the pack in bringing about Yugoslavia’s dismemberment, virtually promoting a jihadist Dar ul-Islam agenda that had been knocking at the Balkans’ gates for centuries. But it won Washington needed Brownie points when it bombed other Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Regardless of the various Henry Machiavelli von Bismarcks in Government, America can and should do better than this.

Sadly, however, it seems that we opted to coddle up to and appease the Kurds’ assorted enemies yet again…this time Turks and inadvertently Syrian Arabs as well. Yes, as almost an afterthought, Washington took some steps to somewhat limit the damage, but much damage was done–and to American interests as well as that of the Kurds. Did we really want  Russia and Assad’s Alawi Shi’a Arab regime to come back into the light years more democratic Kurdish autonomous areas as saviors?

There are today some twenty-three million Kurds just in Turkey alone–about one fourth to one fifth of the entire population of the country.

After the breakup of the Turks’ Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War I, Ataturk’s new Anatolian Turkish nation was in no mood to see additional geographic losses. This resulted (among other things) in ruthless measures taken against any and all others who might even just potentially stake their own claims in the new age of nationalism 

Ankara thus renamed Kurds “Mountain Turks,” and outlawed their language and culture. It has murdered, suppressed, and oppressed them and others as well. Think Armenians and Assyrians, for starters.

And hence the Turks’ extreme sensitivity to any movement towards autonomy or independence for Kurds in neighboring Iraq and Syria, and less so (for several reasons) in Iran.

Currently, since a would-be Sultan Erdogan and his political party are borderline Islamists themselves, forget about any real attempt to control the more dedicated al-Qaida and ISIS-type folks whom the Kurds–at great sacrifice–largely defeated. 

Indeed, an additional worry now is that, in the wake of America’s withdrawal and the real time, “on the ground” implications which that has, thousands of ISIS fighters, captured by Kurds (instead of killed, as ISIS did with them, will subsequently be released on Erdogan’s watch, regardless of Turkey being a NATO partner).

As will likely be witnessed following Trump’s decision in Syria, earlier pressure coming to bear for premature American withdrawal from Iraq also led to a series of negative consequences–not the least being the probable, not-too-distant future, emergence of the “Shi’a Islamic Republic of Iraq–the likely soon-to-be next door Atomic Ayatollahs’ little brother. 

In Iraq, as with the Kurds, Shi’a Arabs once needed American help to contain various Sunni Arabs who blew/blow both of them up. But after America toppled Saddam and his Sunnis, the majority Shi’a no longer needed Washington nor the Kurds’ military prowess as much. 

Shi’a Arabs thus picked up their own version of the “purely Arab patrimony” banner and resumed voicing the same disdain for Kurds as Sunni Arabs have done.

 “Internal” users and abusers, the Shi’a were just biding their time. Pathetically, Saddam had his own Kurds too…Divide and keep conquered.

Given all the above, it’s long past due that some forty million truly stateless people–who pre-date, by millennia, Arab and Turk invaders from the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia respectively–get their own independent nation on at least some of historically predominantly Kurdish territory.

If Arabs are entitled to almost two dozen states carved out of mostly non-Arab peoples’ lands, how is it that Kurds–admittedly with their own imperfections considered–are nevertheless still being denied their one? 

Show me the perfect Arab, Turk, or Iranian nation which surrounds them…

Where are the countless demonstrations on campuses being led by chapters of Students for Justice in Kurdistan and supported by starry-eyed youths and activist professors? 

SJP—Students for Justice in Palestine–has almost two hundred of such chapters and a vast army of duplicitous professors who’ve historically not uttered a word about the plight of the Kurds… If alleged sins could not be laid at Hebrew doorsteps, they’ve not even been worthy of discussion in the vast majority of classrooms.

With the future of both Iraq and Syria largely in doubt and/or still highly problematic regardless, the existential needs of the Kurds demand that they must be masters of their own destiny–regardless of how difficult that will be considering competing virtual Kurdish fiefdoms, and the opposition of folks like Arabs and Turks.

There are barely any other real democracies in the region (besides Israel), and it will take time for a decent one to emerge in the new State of the Kurds as well. 

However, I have no doubt that if America and other democracies support the Kurds with just a fraction of what they have done for Arabs, the results will shine vastly brighter as a result. 

The Kurdish areas in both Iraq and Syria, even with their problems, are still light years ahead of that which surrounds them. Consider the role of women in Syrian Kurdistan, and the safe haven for religious minorities in the KRG areas of Iraq as just two examples. 

Iraq was an artificial state to begin with, no more real than Yugoslavia. Like the latter, Iraq’s opposing ethnic groups were forced together for others’ interests, especially those of the Arabs and the British after World War I. 

British petroleum politics colluded with Arab nationalism to shaft the Kurds out of the one best chance they had at independence. My own doctoral studies on this subject is on recommended reference lists of leading universities all around the world, like Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politiques/Sciences Po (“British Petroleum Politics, Arab Nationalism, and the Kurds”) https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=IzZ_XuyaJKvn_Qb00qKIAQ&q=%22british+petroleum+politics%2C+arab+nationalism…%22+by+gerald+a.+honigman&oq=%22british+petroleum+politics%2C+arab+nationalism…%22+by+gerald+a.+honigman&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzoCCAA6BggAEBYQHjoCCCY6BQghEKABOggIIRAWEB0QHjoFCCEQqwJKBggaEgI5MFDQD1io6gFg4e0BaABwAHgAgAF2iAG7M5IBBTQ2LjI1mAEAoAEBqgEHZ3dzLXdpeg&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwisuOK-ib3oAhWrc98KHXSpCBEQ4dUDCAg&uact=5.

Among other opportunities lost, President Wilson’s famed Fourteen Points had earlier addressed the self-determination of these folks.

The fears of Ankara that Kurdish independence elsewhere will spread to Turkish Kurdistan must be addressed–and they can be. But consider the following:

The proportion of Kurds to Turks in Turkey is about the same as Arabs to Jews in Israel proper, one-fourth to one-fifth of the population. Turkey also totally dwarfs Israel geographically. 

Yet, none of the above stops folks in the American State Department and elsewhere from insisting that another, hostile, adjacent, Arab state emerge right on Israel’s doorstep, in close contact with that Arab one fifth of the country, a very real, potential “fifth column” in Israel. 

The State Department has routinely used the above as a key argument, however, against the birth of a Kurdish state in Turkey, which Ankara also employs to invade neighboring nations to prevent the potential spread of the Kurdish “disease” to its own “Mountain Turks.” And it’s opposed an independent Kurdistan anywhere else as well, as seen earlier.

Regardless, Turkish fears cannot condemn forty million other people to perpetual subjugation and statelessness.

If there’s a parallel to a pre-resurrected Israel’s oppressed, stateless Jews, it’s the Kurds–not Arabs…anywhere or whatever “subspecies” they only recently have claimed membership to beyond their family, clan, and tribe. 

Again, for all the attention Arabs get on this issue, they already have some two dozen states. Justice in the realm of man is relative–not absolute. Some Arabs renamed themselves “Palestinians” late in the game so they could argue the point better.

As just one of other examples, Zuheir Mohsein, an official with the PLO’s military wing and Executive Council, in his interview with the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, on March 31, 1977, stated, “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, etc…. It is only for political reasons that we now carefully underline Palestinian identity… this serves only a tactical purpose… a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.”

Using this same Arab line of reasoning, Kurds could thus rename themselves after geographical regions in Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria and so forth that they live in and demand multiple states, as well. And likewise for the Jews… Get the picture?

This won’t happen, of course, for lots of reasons, but if justice demands yet another Arab state–and second, not first, in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine–America must also finally demand a share of justice for its strangely loyal Kurdish friends.

Leaving them high and dry once again, instead, as the Syrian withdrawal represents, and saying we’ll slap economic penalties on Ankara if its Kurdish victims exceed a supposedly “more acceptable” amount, fools no one…certainly not the Turks. 

No matter what we’ve done or will do, America remains largely despised in that region anyway. And it’s due to the age-old clash of the Dar ul-Islam with the Dar al-Harb…not to a tiny, resurrected Israel which requires a magnifying glass to locate on a world globe, as some folks assert.

As I’ve written before, and unlike in most other places elsewhere, think about such things as the fact that American bases will actually be welcome in Kurdistan–the KRG area in Iraq to be more precise–which may also serve as a refuge for Kurds elsewhere for those who need it…if the Kurds can collectively better get their own act together, that is. Depending upon what else transpires, additional adjacent historically Kurdish areas may later be added to this as well.

America’s hope for a federal, more tolerant, united Iraq was a noble one. But it will most likely be unattainable given the bloody realities at hand, realities that date back many centuries and are still out of our control. 

The plain fact of life is that Arabism has repeatedly trumped Iraqi and Syrian multi-ethnic nationalism in the region.

Ankara also still eyes the oil of the heavily Kurdish north. It has always believed that it was robbed of it by the League of Nations when the area was attached to the British Mandate of Mesopotamia in the Mosul Decision of 1925 instead of becoming part of the new Turkish nation.

Again, think one more time about Yugoslavia and the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Albanians, and so forth, who were held together only by the likes of an iron-fisted Marshal Tito. 

Saddam was Iraq’s Tito…

As we can see now with Syria, and as we experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan starting even earlier, how much longer will we be willing to expend American blood and treasure on behalf of seemingly endless problems in that perpetually troubled region.

Regardless, the fate of the Kurds must not be forcibly tied, as Condoleezza Rice & Co. insisted back in 2004 (and others still do today), to Turks, Iranians, or Arabs of either Sunni or Shi’a stripe who have repeatedly slaughtered and oppressed them.

Civil wars in both Arab Iraq and Syria should not result in even further suffering of America’s strangely loyal Kurdish friends and allies. Their fate should not remain forever in assorted subjugators’ hands.

The birth of an independent Kurdistan is long overdue…

And it’s also time for Washington to gain another potentially powerful friend, besides Israel, that actually likes America, in that strategically important part of the world. 

Fearing an increasingly more powerful Shi’a Crescent led by Iran, the Sunni Arab Gulf States may actually rethink their previous “purely Arab patrimony” ideas as well on the Kurdish Issue.

http://q4j-middle-east.com