Will an independent Kurdistan emerge from Syria-Iraq chaos?
Next year in Kurdistan?
We’ve been writing about the lack of a free and independent Kurdistan for years, It’s time for a free and independent Kurdistan.
While the Palestinian agenda has dominated every international forum, the much more populous and ethnically distinct Kurds have been mostly ignored. In part, this is because the Kurds span several nation states created by colonial powers after the implosion of the Ottomon Empire. Turkey particularly has threatened war if a Kurdish nation emerges.
In part it is because creating an independent Kurdistan does do not serve a political purpose of snuffing out the only Jewish state in the region.
Developments are moving fast that could change everything.
Syria lost control of its Kurd territory during the ongoing civil war, and the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan has operated independently for years.
With Iraq losing control of vast territory, and the U.S. not anxious to do anything to help, the Kurds have claimed Kirkuk for their own, as the BBC reports, Iraqi Kurds ‘fully control Kirkuk’ as army flees:
Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have taken full control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk as the army flees before an Islamist offensive nearby.
“The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga,” Kurdish spokesman Jabbar Yawar told Reuters. “No Iraq army remains in Kirkuk now.”
Kurdish fighters are seen as a bulwark against Sunni Muslim insurgents.
The NY Times further reports:
Unlike the Iraqi national army, the Kurdish forces, known as pesh merga, are disciplined and very loyal to their leaders and their cause: autonomy and eventual independence for a Kurdish state. The Kurds’ allegiance to the Shiite Arab-led Iraqi central government is limited, but neither are they known to be allied with the Sunni Arab militants. Many of the tens of thousands of Mosul residents who fled the militant takeover of the city have sought safety in Kurdish-controlled areas.
With its oil riches, Kirkuk has long been at the center of a political and economic dispute between Kurds and successive Arab governments in Baghdad. The disappearance of the Iraqi army from the city on Thursday appeared to leave Kirkuk’s fate in the Kurds’ hands.
Some Kurdish politicians quickly sought to take advantage, arguing that it was a moment to permanently seize control of Kirkuk and surrounding lands they have long regarded as part of a Kurdish national homeland.
“I hope that the Kurdish leadership will not miss this golden opportunity to bring Kurdish lands in the disputed territories back under Kurdish control,” Shoresh Haji, a Kurdish member of Iraq’s Parliament, was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera. “It is a very sad situation for Mosul, but at the same time, history has presented us with only one or two other moments at which we could regain our territory, and this is an opportunity we cannot ignore.”
Next year in a free and independent Kurdistan? Would Turkey allow that to happen?
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Comments
What has Turkey done for us lately?
Turks have Miss Muffet’s problem: the Kurds are in the way
I can tell you what they did for us, here in Israel. They sent a terrorist organization on the Mavi Marmara, which knifed one of our soldiers in the stomach and threw him overboard. It was a miracle that he survived.
And then we let them go. AND THEN WE APOLOGIZED! This is the trouble with not being an 800 pound gorilla.
I hear they took the Turkish Consulate. Good!
Well, one thing we can say with some certainty…
Kurds will not be dropping their weapons, stripping off their uniforms and running.
They are tough, and have had to be in the face of decades of oppression by every micky-mouse dictator state in the region.
Including the Turks.
Yes and no.
Yes the Peshmerga will fight should the ISIS be foolish enough to open another front prior to claiming Baghdad. They will fight because they are defending home and family.
But do not doubt for a second that there were Kurds in the Iraqi army who evaporated when they heard the ISIS was approaching.
They weren’t there to fight, they were only there for a paycheck to send back home.
It’s basically the same reason the rest of the Iraqi army disintegrated – they were mainly Shiites, and were not about to be the ones to die saving a Sunni town.
More than anything else these latest developments are a confirmation that our attempt at nation building (agree or disagree with it) was effectively doomed from the start because Arab religious and tribal systems simply do not allow for any notions of patriotism or nationalism necessary to have a cohesive, much less effective military.
Which does not mean going in there was a bad thing. We at least owed it to the Kurds.
No. An independent Kurdistan is not in the interest of Turkey, and would likely be met with a crushing military response, which the US would be obliged NOT to get involved in given Turkey’s status as a NATO member.
This is especially true now that Turkey is alleging that militants are taking Turkish citizens hostage.
Any “independence” vote by northern Iraq to become an independent State would be seen as a vote to create a haven for terrorism against Turkey (regardless of if it would or not.
Also, if Norther Iraq breaks away, there really isn’t any reason not to split the remainder of the country and for Saudi Arabia to take the Western half and for Iran to absorb the Easter half, with a likely short, bloody civil war taking place along the middle and near the oil fields as the nations jockey for geography.
What a complete charlie foxtrot.
Iran to absorb the Easter half
Absorb? not a chance. They maybe co-religionists, but they are not the same tribe. Arabs live there, not Persians and will not willingly submit. They may have no choice, but with ISIS threatening to take the holy sites at Karbala and Najaf, they may find the will to fight.
I agree with most, other than the part about the Saudis assuming control of Sunni Iraq.
No chance. Iraqis, seeing themselves as the some of the original civilized people, would rather deal with lunatic Islamists than make themselves vassals of those they view as gold plated desert gangsters.
And the Saudis know how they are viewed, and it does not sit well with their severe inferiority complex (because for all their putting on of airs, deep down they know it is all true.)
Plus, while they don’t mind the paying for</i., they are not big on the doing of the dirty work.
The Kurds are the red-haired stepchildren of the world.
In the post-WWI partitions and those redrawn lines after WWII, the Kurds were the only people outside communist control who had no homeland, no autonomy, and were subjected to rule by traditional enemies.
The Kurds deserve a homeland, but Turkey will not permit it. They fear them for some reason, and there is oil in the Kurdish areas.
I’m not sure that the Kurds have the hardware to defend themselves but if it comes down to a matter of spirit, there are no fiercer fighters in the world.
When the northern no fly zone existed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein we should have fully armed the Kurds and given them the support they deserved. It is long overdue with numerous missed opportunities.
The Kurds should seize every piece of American hardware the Iraqis drop and then have at it. We lost the opportunity to nullify Iran because the feckless leadership of Obama in 2009, the Kurds even partially supplied would have sliced off the northern half off Iran in exchange for deposing the Mullahs. Our problems would have been solved with the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism out of the way. Go for it Kurds, take it all!
No more considering the Turks feelings, the Kurds are the only responsible group in the region beyond Israel. Let Iraq fall, let the Iranians waste their manpower and money trying to save their Shiite spiritual cousins Maliki and Assad from the bloodthirsty Sunni radicals.
Would Turkey allow that to happen?
Not a chance. Neither will Iran. It may become a situation where they can’t do so without going to war and in the end they may not prevail over the Kurds.
But it will take more time than a year, if it does happen. Perhaps in 20. The Kurds have patience, tho. How long have they sought an greater Kurdistan?
Who would Turkey rather have at its southern border, ISIS or the Kurds who have been living there in relative peace? Pretty simple question.
How big is the Turkish Kurd population and territory?
According to the graphic above, 22.5 million Kurds in Turkey. I don’t know how accurate that is, but the number of Kurds in eastern Turkey is large.
The Kurds know how to fight and will fight, and more power to them. They have done wonderful thing with the assistance they got from the USA, and their women are freer than those in other places in Iraq.
One of the excellent benefits of the cowardice of the Iraqi army is the liberation of the Kurdish lands.
Militarily, the Persians, the Kurds, and all of the primarily Arab states are simply not in the same league as the Turks. Although Erdogan has undoubtedly done considerable damage to the Turkish military, it’s hard to see any of them, alone or even in combination, besting the Turks in a genuine slug-fest.