Kurdistan
When the autonomy minded Kurds and a Norwegian company announced their joint oil exploration deal was under way in November 2005, the Shiite and Sunni Iraqi political leaders, not to mention U.S. career politicians and Iraq’s neighbors, were shocked. Why? Because they all fear the possibility of Iraqi Kurds using revenue generated by the oil to fund an independent state that might lead the roughly 20 million Kurds living in Turkey, Iran and Syria to revolt. Now what is wrong with this picture?
The Sunnis are stunned at the results of the election and the minority status they are in again and the persecution they are being subjected to at the hands of the Shiites and Kurds. Most of the armed and police forces being trained by the U.S. led coalition forces are Shiite.
If there is any doubt in anyone’s mind of how the Kurds are thinking, think about this. The Kurds have inserted more than 10,000 of their peshmerga militia members into the Iraqi army divisions in Northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, to seize the oil-rich city of Kirkkuk, the seat of a province and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan. Kirkuk’s Kurdish population was driven out by Saddam Hussein, whose “Arabisation” program paid thousands of Arab families to move there and replace recently deported or murdered Kurds. The Iraqi army’s 2nd Division which oversees the Arbil-Mosul area, has about 12,000 soldiers, and at least 90 percent are Kurds. They, like all Kurds, believe “Kirkuk is Kurdistan.” No central government in Baghdad can stop them without America there. The more the U.S. military hands over prematurely, the more it will be handing over to these militia members that are bent more on advancing ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency and preserving national unity. The soldiers admit that while they wear Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the peshmerga and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many admit they won’t hesitate to kill their Arab Iraqi army comrades if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.
The Kurds have no doubts the Shiites in the South are doing the same. The Shiites have stocked Iraqi army and police units with members of their own militias and have maintained a separate presence throughout Iraq’s central and southern provinces. The Shiites plan to create their own independent religious fundamentalist democratic state. Any wonder there are so many Shiite dominated Iraqi forces carrying out death squad style executions in Sunni neighborhoods – before and after the highly publicized historical vote in response to the Sunni insurgent attacks on the Shiite government forces? It should therefore have been no surprise when tortured Sunni prisoners were discovered in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. American and Iraqi officials acknowledged that Sunni inmates had been tortured.
The Kurds historic reluctance to be part of an Arab dominated Iraq, and their U.S. protectorate after the 1992 Gulf War, is going to make it impossible in the long term to form one central government in Iraq for several reasons. They are afraid of losing their cultural identity and a majority want full independence. Over 1.75 million Kurds – half the population in North Iraq – have signed a petition demanding a referendum on Kurdish independence.
The Kurds, who speak their own two, mutually intelligible languages, are one of the world’s largest peoples without a state, counting 25 million people whose mountainous homeland is split among Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Armenia and Azerbajian. They are ancient people whose ancestors were mentioned by Greek historian Xenophon. Most Kurds are Sunni and secular.
The Kurds were promised self-determination during World War I if they helped the Allies defeat the Germans and the Ottoman Turks. The victorious powers reneged on that promise at the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Then both President Richard M. Nixon and George H.W. Bush double-crossed the Kurds, encouraging them to revolt, then withholding the support they needed.
The first major clue that America’s attempt to force the Kurds to live in a united Iraq would fail came on July 15, 2004 – in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A film crew from Kurdistan, Iraq TV (KTV) arrived to film a panel discussion of Native American tribal leaders hosted by the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. The tribal leaders were interviewed by KTV because the Kurds want to learn more about Native American tribes and American Federalism. The key questions? What is sovereignty? What does sovereignty mean to your community? How does your tribal court function? The lessons they learned from the interview are surely ones they do not want to repeat.
Article 6 of the U.S, Constitution honors and preserves the treaties America has signed. America signed 371 treaties with Native Americans – most of which have been breached and egregiously violated. Native American activist Russel Means, justifiably says “America is the biggest reservation in the world” dependent on Washington D.C. because We the Apathetic People are not living life according to the ideals of America’s Founding Fathers, but just surviving on the reservation off the government’s handouts. America has become in the words of Means a perfect one party system of “Demopublicans,” something the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis do not want to replicate.
The cultural sentiment of the Kurds is shared by the Shiite Arabs who, like the Kurds, were persecuted for more than 1,500 years by their Sunni brethren. The sect was born of defeat in 661, when the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law, Ali, was killed and Sunnism became the dominant political and religious force in Islam. To think that the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq can forget their history and embrace the Sunnis in one central government is delusional and defies reality.
The Sunnis are stunned at the results of the election and the minority status they are in again and the persecution they are being subjected to at the hands of the Shiites and Kurds. Most of the armed and police forces being trained by the U.S. led coalition forces are Shiite.
If there is any doubt in anyone’s mind of how the Kurds are thinking, think about this. The Kurds have inserted more than 10,000 of their peshmerga militia members into the Iraqi army divisions in Northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, to seize the oil-rich city of Kirkkuk, the seat of a province and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan. Kirkuk’s Kurdish population was driven out by Saddam Hussein, whose “Arabisation” program paid thousands of Arab families to move there and replace recently deported or murdered Kurds. The Iraqi army’s 2nd Division which oversees the Arbil-Mosul area, has about 12,000 soldiers, and at least 90 percent are Kurds. They, like all Kurds, believe “Kirkuk is Kurdistan.” No central government in Baghdad can stop them without America there. The more the U.S. military hands over prematurely, the more it will be handing over to these militia members that are bent more on advancing ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency and preserving national unity. The soldiers admit that while they wear Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the peshmerga and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many admit they won’t hesitate to kill their Arab Iraqi army comrades if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.
The Kurds have no doubts the Shiites in the South are doing the same. The Shiites have stocked Iraqi army and police units with members of their own militias and have maintained a separate presence throughout Iraq’s central and southern provinces. The Shiites plan to create their own independent religious fundamentalist democratic state. Any wonder there are so many Shiite dominated Iraqi forces carrying out death squad style executions in Sunni neighborhoods – before and after the highly publicized historical vote in response to the Sunni insurgent attacks on the Shiite government forces? It should therefore have been no surprise when tortured Sunni prisoners were discovered in an Interior Ministry building in Baghdad. American and Iraqi officials acknowledged that Sunni inmates had been tortured.
The Kurds historic reluctance to be part of an Arab dominated Iraq, and their U.S. protectorate after the 1992 Gulf War, is going to make it impossible in the long term to form one central government in Iraq for several reasons. They are afraid of losing their cultural identity and a majority want full independence. Over 1.75 million Kurds – half the population in North Iraq – have signed a petition demanding a referendum on Kurdish independence.
The Kurds, who speak their own two, mutually intelligible languages, are one of the world’s largest peoples without a state, counting 25 million people whose mountainous homeland is split among Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Armenia and Azerbajian. They are ancient people whose ancestors were mentioned by Greek historian Xenophon. Most Kurds are Sunni and secular.
The Kurds were promised self-determination during World War I if they helped the Allies defeat the Germans and the Ottoman Turks. The victorious powers reneged on that promise at the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Then both President Richard M. Nixon and George H.W. Bush double-crossed the Kurds, encouraging them to revolt, then withholding the support they needed.
The first major clue that America’s attempt to force the Kurds to live in a united Iraq would fail came on July 15, 2004 – in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A film crew from Kurdistan, Iraq TV (KTV) arrived to film a panel discussion of Native American tribal leaders hosted by the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. The tribal leaders were interviewed by KTV because the Kurds want to learn more about Native American tribes and American Federalism. The key questions? What is sovereignty? What does sovereignty mean to your community? How does your tribal court function? The lessons they learned from the interview are surely ones they do not want to repeat.
Article 6 of the U.S, Constitution honors and preserves the treaties America has signed. America signed 371 treaties with Native Americans – most of which have been breached and egregiously violated. Native American activist Russel Means, justifiably says “America is the biggest reservation in the world” dependent on Washington D.C. because We the Apathetic People are not living life according to the ideals of America’s Founding Fathers, but just surviving on the reservation off the government’s handouts. America has become in the words of Means a perfect one party system of “Demopublicans,” something the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis do not want to replicate.
The cultural sentiment of the Kurds is shared by the Shiite Arabs who, like the Kurds, were persecuted for more than 1,500 years by their Sunni brethren. The sect was born of defeat in 661, when the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law, Ali, was killed and Sunnism became the dominant political and religious force in Islam. To think that the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq can forget their history and embrace the Sunnis in one central government is delusional and defies reality.
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 4:06 AM
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