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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