There are two very important points enunciated in this article
- Every single Kurd houses aspirations for an independent Kurdistan, to be respected as a Kurd not an Iraqi, Iranian, Turk or a Syrian but as a Kurd. This is a basic human right that has somehow been taken away from the Kurds and the Kurds have been told to stay happy with the status quo.
- The Americans will eventually abandon the Kurds much the same way they did in 1991 (Gulf War) and in 1975 (Henry Kissinger and the Algiers Accord).
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‘We Can’t Solve This’
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But other countries in the region would rather not wait that long …
There's nothing that unites countries [in the region] more quickly than fear of Kurdistan. Syria has its own Kurdish minority, at 5 percent of the population. It would like to see Kurdish aspirations placed in the icebox. All these countries are terrified at what they've seen in the last decade: the rise of this semi-independent Kurdish state. They all see this as a threat to the territorial integrity of their own countries. The more [Iraqi] Kurdistan is a success, the more it is seen in Ankara, Damascus, and Tehran as a danger.
What can the United States do to defuse the situation now?
In this case my view is we can't solve this. We can't fix these problems. In the short term, what the administration should do is what it has been doing: pressuring the Iraqi government and Kurdish leadership. I'm just skeptical that this will have anything but a Band-Aid effect. By toppling the Baghdad government we have set a train of events into motion that we can't control—one of which is Kurdish nationalism. It's very hard to be in control of what 95 percent of Iraqi Kurds want. The other alternative of just telling the Turks to live with it and get over it doesn't work either. The Turkish government has a lot more leverage with us these days than we have with them. We desperately need access to their bases. And we also want the Turks to play a role in Afghanistan and a constructive role in NATO. Just like with the Armenian issue, we want to try to find some way to accommodate their concerns. This puts the U.S. in the middle of one of the Middle East's most unresolved—and irresolvable—national identity problems. The history of America's relationship with the Kurds is a pretty sad one. And I suspect there will be another sad chapter—when we abandon the Kurds at the end of the day. I hope not. They deserve better. But I'm afraid that's where it will end up.
© 2007
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