Friday, March 31, 2006

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.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Fusion

The British encountered hundreds, make that thousands, of “Custer’s last stands” in New Zealand against the Maoris. This allowed the Maoris to retain their dignity and be true to their heritage more than the rest of the colonized world. What amazed me in New Zealand was how European white Kiwis with no Maori blood consider their heritage Maori. The New Zealand Maori values are very strong. That is why they all do the Hakka at any All Blacks rugby game or rowdy drinking session anywhere. The European and Maori values and mutual respect are totally fused. From the road signs and other fundamental documents that are written in both English and Maori, to the all inclusive history classes taught in the schools.

The same holds true for Iraqis and Kurds in a modified fused kind of way because of their longer history together. Iraq’s multiethnic mosaic not only includes Arabs and Kurds, but Turkmen and biblical Assyrians. More than 60 percent are Shia Muslims who resented Saddam Hussein’s Sunni domination. The Maoris and Shia Muslims do share this mutual bone of contention: both have experienced ethnic cleansing and a common vision. Both insist on truth and reconciliation committees to spotlight abuses and promote national healing.

The Kurds, like the Maoris, have a long and proud history of integrating and dominating the new kids on the block. The Kurds did it with Saladin, who recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders, and the Maoris did it by holding off the British Empire’s expansion plans and recapturing their cultural heritage by having it fully acknowledged by their European and Asian career politicians.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Bushfires

The Oxford Dictionary defines bush as “wild uncultivated land, especially in Africa and Australia.” Two places where bushfires are common. Unfortunately, they are also common in the Middle East, Far East and the rest of Asia where the Bush Doctrine is burning itself indelibly into the minds of future modern-day arsonists – terrorists. The only difference is that these bushfires are started because of Bush and oil. Not the traditional dry brush and high winds. Granted, there are a lot of high-winded career politicians and their bureaucrats stoking the fires to make sure they keep burning.

America’s political bushfire doctrine is nothing new. It is just finally being openly admitted to because America is the world’s sole arrogant superpower and unrestrained arsonist with the most incendiary firepower ever known to humanity. The problem is the firepower is creating bushfires our firefighter children have to put out. As a father of a former U.S. firefighter, I’m not convinced it is a good idea. Especially if the fires are biological or nuclear.

Bushfires and the empire-building firefights they create are nothing new in American history. The Mexican, Spanish and other firefights in America’s young history were an earth-scorching foundation for today’s bushfires.

My personal favorite is the one America set in Hawaii, America’s recreational playground and Missile Defense Shield frontiers. In 1873, Gen. John Schofield visited Hawaii as a tourist and while there identified Pearl Harbor as “the key to the Central Pacific Ocean.” Thus, Hawaii was invaded by thin-lipped, morally oppressive Calvinist missionaries who kicked out the queen of the indigenous population, decimated the people with disease and consigned the population to virtual slavery on sugar plantations. Hawaiians were caught up in the U.S. 19th century bushfire of empire-building that made them “American citizens by force, not by choice.”

The Hawaiin Kingdom, known by some as the Hawaiinas Hawaii, being rebuilt by “Bumpy” Kanahele, is a place where “Haole, go home!” and variations of whites-aren’t welcome are shouted from the front porches. Locals rule there – a government of Hawaiians for Hawaiians. It is a place where Hawaiian is taught as a first language in some schools and spoken among neighbors. People openly accuse America of stealing Hawaii and believe that someday their lands will return to the Kanaka Maoli, the ancient Polynesians who settled the islands.

Noam Chomsky, a renowned professor of linguistics at MIT, and author of books ranging from mathematics to politics, wrote that the bushfires in the Middle East were first started when FDR and the House of Saud signed their treaty on a U.S. aircraft carrier. “The State Department recognized in 1945 that the Middle East was the main energy resource of the world and that Saudi Arabia alone was a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history,” wrote Chomsky. “They immediately moved to kick out France and to reduce Britain to a kind of junior partner. Controlling Middle East energy reserves has been a centerpiece of U.S. policy since the 1940’s.”

America has won significant military advantage by starting bushfires to further its economic and political gains. Following the bushfires of Iraq in 1991, the U.S. had military bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The bushfires of Serbia eight years later netted bases throughout Europe and the Balkan region, most notably in Hungary, Macedonia, Kosovo and Bulgaria. From the bushfire in Afghanistan came military installations in 10 locations, including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan.

The first millennium bushfire in Afghanistan was a rehearsal to the second one started in Iraq. Hopefully, it won’t burn out of control as bushfires are known to do.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Farming, the Road to Peace

Religious extremists, be they Christian missionaries or Muslim fundamentalists, have known this for centuries and captured the minds and souls of the hungry and homeless children. The Mormons do it in Utah. The Taliban do it in Pakistan. The Muslim madrases funded by Saudi Arabia in Pakistan and the rest of the world provide room, board, education and clothing for thousands of boys who would otherwise be left out on the streets due to the gradual collapse of Pakistan’s secular state education system. In 1978 there were 3,000 madrases in Pakistan. In the first year of the 21st century, when the war on terrorism started, there were 39,000. The boys are taught extreme fundamentalism and many become suicide bombers because they believe they will be assured a place in paradise. Why can’t they be taught how to find paradise here on earth?

The combination of rage and despair, regardless of economic means, creates individuals prepared to die for their cause without any fear or regrets. They can be suicide bombers nurtured in the religious schools in Palestine, Pakistan – or America.

Robert S. McNamara, who presided over the war in Vietnam as secretary of defense, knows first hand the mistakes and horrors of war and how they must be replaced with wars on poverty. “Events since September 11 have driven home more than ever the linkage between issues of poverty and peace. Poverty in itself does not immediately and directly lead to terrorism, but we know that exclusion, hopelessness and lack of opportunity can breed conflict. Today the greatest challenge for the international community in building a better world is that of fighting poverty and promoting inclusion,” the anti-war convert now preaches. Donald Rumsfeld, his 21st century successor, should take serious note.

When the Cold War ended in 1990, we expected an era of peace. What we got instead was a decade of war. A report sponsored by Future Harvest and generated by the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo examines conflicts around the world and finds that most of today’s wars are fueled by poverty, not by ideology or religion. The devastation occurs primarily in countries whose economies depend on agriculture but lack the means to make their farmland productive. These are developing countries, such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Congo, Colombia, Liberia, Peru and Sierra Leone – places with poor rural areas where malnutrition and hunger are widespread. The report found that poorly functioning agriculture in these countries heightens poverty, which in turn often sparks conflict and breeds future malcontents.

This suggests an obvious but often overlooked path to peace: Raise the standard of living of the millions of rural people who live in poverty by increasing agricultural productivity. Not only does agriculture put food on the table, but it also provides jobs, both on and off the farm, which raises incomes. Thriving agriculture is the engine that fuels broader economic growth and development, thus paving the way for prosperity and peace. Always has since the beginning of time.
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