Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the contemporary prospects for an independent Kurdistan:
The Kurds in Kurdistan are surely capable of figuring out for themselves how to proceed, and what will most likely promote, and possibly ensure, their long-term desires. 98% of the Kurdish voters who voted for independence when they took part in the January 2005 referendum. Many have expressed great anxiety about their representatives in Baghdad being insufficiently tough in standing up for Kurdish rights. The Kurds have been the only signficant part of the population in Iraq that the American military have been able to count on, the only people exhibiting unfeigned support for the Americans.Kurdistan was promised independence by the Great Powers after World War I, but that promise was quashed by a combination of Turkish pressure and the British desire to incorporate the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul into an "Iraq" that was created (with an out-of-work Hashemite, looking for rule in all the wrong places, plumped conveniently onto the throne) through the forced yoking together of the former vilayets of Mosul, Baghad, and Basra. The promise of a Kurdish state was entirely omitted from the Treaty of Sevres. The Kurds never forget that promise. It was one of several made by the Great Powers after World War I, in the first flush of Wilsonian "self-determination." There were promises that the collapsing Ottoman Empire would result in an "Arab state," a "Jewish state," an "Armenian state," and a "Kurdish state." Had they realized what pressure the Christians in the Middle East would come under, they might have designated Lebanon as a "Christian state" and, in North Africa, had they foreseen the French exit, possibly as well a "Berber state."
In any case, it was not wrong to promise or foresee the creation of such states. What was wrong was to ignore the Armenians and the Kurds. What was wrong was for Great Britain to accept the Mandate for Palestine, and to solemnly commit itself, thereby, to ending all barriers to Jewish immigration and to faciliating "close Jewish settlement on the land," so as create a Jewish National Home -- but then, having pocketed that Mandate, having done everything possible to make that goal more difficult rather than less. This began with the unilateral amputation of all of Eastern Palestine to form the Emirate of Transjordan, and with limiting rather than encouraging Jewish immigration (Macdonald's White Paper of 1939). Finally there was the British training and equipping of the armies of several Arab states -- Egypt, Jordan, Iraq -- while imposing a complete arms embargo on the Jews at the time of maximum peril, in the months before and then during the Arab attack of May 1948.In passing, one might note that while the Jews did, through their own efforts, obtain a state on 20% of the territory originally contemplated by the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, and while the Armenians did get something rather imperfect within the Soviet Union, that single "Arab state" became, in time, what we see today, with 22 members of the Arab League. But there has never been a Kurdish state, not even a small and permanently imperilled one like Israel, or one under Soviet control, like the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. Nothing. But now that situation can be changed.
But it cannot be changed as long as people meet that suggestion of American support for a "free Kurdistan" with the mechanical response that "Turkey will never allow it." The Americans have not yet made clear to Turkey just how angry they are. They were denied the use of their own bases -- what are those bases for, now that the Cold War is over? -- to send a fourth division into Iraq from the north. The Americans have seen Turkish parliamentarians describe American soldiers in Iraq as "worse than Nazis." They have seen how Mein Kampf has become a best-seller in Turkey. They have seen how the new Turkish movie, depicting those American soldiers as "Nazis," and adding in, just for fun, a Jewish American doctor who harvests organs from prisoners killed at Abu Ghraib (this movie has everything -- everything that Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered) has done boffo all over Turkey, and with Turkish audiences in European countries. They have seen, and finally are beginning to recognize, that "Kemalism" is under assault and Islam is resurgent. They have realized that the love affair with Turkey was based on the permanence and continued vitality of that Kemalism. It was assumed Turkey's secularism was not only here to stay, but would continue to strengthen its hold on the Turkish population. The reverse has happened.
But we don't need Turkey. We don't need Turkish help, Turkish bases, Turkish listening-posts against Russia. If such bases are not to be available for use against Islmaic states (and Turkey has flatly turned down American requests for the use of such bases against, for example, Iran) then what good are they? And just how is Turkey our "ally" in the way it was in 1960 or in 1950? Countries change. In 1944, the Soviet Union was our ally -- but not in 1946, or 1956. If Turkey has changed, that change should be recognized. If Islam is a permanent feature of Turkey and there is little from the outside that can be done about it, then that should be recognized. Our interests, the interests of Infidels, and those even of Turkey, not only are not the same, but they clash. We should be promoting our interests, and there are ways to make Turkey listen.
As for the belief that Russia’s $3.2 billion pipeline through Turkey demonstrates Turkish power, that is nonsense. What it demonstrates, if anything, is the fact that Russia, the historic enemy of Turkey, the Russia that in 1914 still coveted Constantinople, or Tsargrad (at a time when 50% of that city's population was non-Muslim, it did not seem fantastical) can now turn on or off that pipeline. A story published at the time of the pipeline’s inauguration explains that "Washington had balked at proposals to build the pipeline and has warned Turkey about its dependence on Russia, which now supplies 60 percent of the country's gas and 20 percent of its oil."
Does that new dependence suggest a strong Turkey, or a weaker one, vis-a-vis Russia?
I repeat: the most intelligent people in Turkey now realize that the E.U. dream is over. Turkey has no chance of being admitted, now, or in ten years, or in twenty years, to the E.U. The beneficiaries of secularism, promoted systematically by Kemal Ataturk, and then by the Cult of Ataturk that followed upon his death, cannot want Turkey to turn to Iran or to the Arabs out of spite. They sense, rightly, that that would completely undo Kemalism and drag Turkey down to the level either of the despised Arabs or to the level of the despised Islamic Republic of Iran. What to do? Return to some kind of understanding, and help, from the Americans. And the Americans, in turn, are the only ones who can force an independent Kurdistan not to make territorial claims on the parts of Anatolia where the Kurds dominate. The Turkish government will have to listen if the American government insists that it do nothing to squash an independent Kurdistan. Will it necessarily obey? No. But it will have to factor into its calculations what it means if it permanently alienates the United States -- no favored-nation, no resupply of military equipment, no nothing.
And Russia is so very close, and now the Russians control the supply of energy to Turkey. Even Brent Scowcroft, now the head of some U.S.-Turkish group (and how much is he paid? Was he working for Turkey, or other Muslim countries, at Kissinger Associates? Is he now a Registered Foreign Agent? Congress should find out, for Scowcroft is quite free with his supposedly disinterested influence -- is he being paid, directly or indirectly?) was not able to prevent this, nor others like him.
Let the Kurds themselves figure out whether they are happy with this "Federal democracy under construction" in "Iraq" that so many people still have such faith in. If they are, fine. And if they aren't -- then help them achieve that independence, instead of lecturing and hectoring them on every occasion, as Condoleeza Rice has been wont to do.
It is she, in her refusal to see the larger anti-Jihad picture, and her inability to comprehend how leaving Iraq and exploiting the ethnic and sectarian divisions within Islam exposed there will aid that anti-Jihad, who won't do.
Turkey, Rice and Kurds: sounds like a prison menu for Muslims.
From the reprehensible Brent Scowcroft to the tragicomic Condoleeza Rice. Such a long, sad journey we've taken these last two decades.
And what's with the pompous names?
MO HIJABS MO SAND CRABS MO TURKIC GUT FLAB PALESTINIAN METH LABS MO MO
Completely off-topic: Happy Mothers Day to all the women posters in here. Maybe poetess can do a paean to our better half.
Television, you're in rare form today. I always promised myself that I'd never type the acronym "LOL" but what the hell: LOL. Shalom from this chuckling hillbilly's hog farm.
Slightly off thread but still on the subject of Turkey. From the Sunday Times on the EU friendly alternative to honour killings in Turkey - forced suicide.
Where Beast meets West.
Turkey, Rice and Kurds: sounds like a prison menu for Muslims.
How true. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks with my stomach.
Like rice and turkey, kurds are edible, as Little Miss Muffet would agree.
Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet
Her clothes all tattered and torn
It wasn't the spider that crept beside her
But Little Boy Blue and his horn
His horn? Now doggone it Interested but that's just downright disturbing.
MO HARVARD YALE MO DUKE MO PUKE MO MIND CAVITY MORAL DEPRAVITY MO
Speaking of fairy tales, I re-read the Noble Koran yesterday. All 200 pages. I blew my mind out in a car.
No, Alarmed Pig Farmer, it is all perfectly innocent. For more on harmless horns, see here.
You Americans. What suspicious minds you have.
The Kurds are in the whey of the Turkish resurgence and Iraqi Arab oil domination of the region. So we need to keep this fly in everybody's ointment healthy and well-supplied. Build schools, donate Western books (from the pre-Socratics to Julian Jaynes, Democritus and Sappho to James Joyce and H.G. Wells, Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen to Loren Eiseley and Stephen Jay Gould), and send Peace Corps teams to spread the benefits of rational sanitation, medicine and education.
They'll get a country eventually, and let's hope it tends toward teaching their own pre-Islamic history in order to shape their national identity, and doesn't merely supply Imperial Islam with another base for their global, totalitarian aims.
Interested-
Sitting on my tuffet, thinking of the next stanza to your "fractured fairy tale". But I don't think the censors would allow it. (Was Miss Muffet from Nantucket, by any chance?)
Alarmed Pig Farmer, If I couldn't laugh sometimes at Islam, I'd have to cry or scream with rage.
If I could place the olympian council of Interested, Beard, and Television into a conference room, what a lot of money we'd make.
Happy Mother's Day, and may God bless your children if you're old enough to have them.
Television-
"There is nothing funny in Islam."
-Ayatollah Khomeini.
(Said before his body was dragged from its funeral procession coffin, un-shrouded, and manhandled for souvenirs by the frenzied faithful, his finally-silent mouth agape.)
Something else equally unfunny, as Barbara W. Tuchman put it (in "The March of Folly"):
"Having taken Constantinople in 1453 and advanced into the Balkans, the Turks were regarded much like the [Cold War Era]... Soviet Union as the overshadowing menace of Europe, but however fearful the alarms, the Christian nations were too immersed in conflict with one another to reunite in action against them."
Funny how Europeans, those paragons of the historical sense, worldy savoir-faire, and avante garde culture, have forgotten this little lesson entirely.
The fatal lacunae?
Btw, where the hell has JSLA been lately, anyway?
"Turkey, Rice and Kurds"
I will smile inwardly at that for many days to come.
But isn't that also the title of a Mongo Santamaria album?
TV
I'm late, but this one was priceless.
On the Russian pipeline story, why is Russia building a pipeline there? Why don't we buy all of Russia's oil, and build a pipeline from Siberia to Alaska. Not at ANWR, given all the Environmental Wacko opposition, but maybe some other place in Alaska, like Cape Nome. Build enough refineries there, and let the US buy up as much oil as it can from Russia. With US, Chinese and Indian demand, Russia should be guaranteed a steady cash flow. This should in turn be used to bring Russia around to the US position on Iran's nukes.
If Turkey needs energy, there are more than enough sources in dar ul Islam - Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran et al. Let them get their energy from there. Not one drop of dar-ul-Harb oil should flow to Istanbul - we need it in our cars.
In a sense it's a moot point. If, as Hugh is correct, Kurds deserve their state, or, as another poster opined, the Kurds have their own evil Jihadi tendancies, what does it matter now? Iraq is being pulled apart like a taffy apple. Two more Shia Mosques blew up today. They will lead to more reprisals of the increasingly Sunni-Shia divide. The pathetic 'central government' can't even come up with a sham cabinet. Real security is in the hands of the militias. In a very real sense, the only glue in place her is our boys. Of course, this two shall end. With the Sunni's and Shia's dividing and killing one another(witness the dissolution of mixed neighberhoods), obviously the Kurds will want their own state. Once they are satisfied the Sunni-Shia divide is worsening AND the US is leaving, what possible force on earth will keep them from declaring their own country. Will Turkey invade? Probably so, but they will face their own rebellion with the Kurds within their borders. So the Turks will move into the north and the Iranians will move into the South. The Jihadis from Saudi and Syria and everywhere else will move into the central region to reak havoc. I say, let's aid the Kurds with guns and ammo, putting pressure on the Turks to allow us to use their bases if we need to in the future. If not, aid will go up to the Kurds. Meanwhile break out the popcorn, for the coming internal middle east battle of the crazies.
Alarmed Pig Farmer, Interested, profitsbeard, hasan salami, Infidel Pride: thanks for laughing along with me. I'm in kind of a funk today: had an argument yesterday with my older sister. She, like myself, is American, born and raised here; she is intelligent, loves classical music (particularly Mozart), is an Anglophile, loves to read about Elizabethan England, loves English comedies, etc. She also loves Islam and has a knee-jerk spasm to defend Islam and Muslims every time I used to raise a criticism of Islam. I have long since learned to refrain from bringing the subject up, because I cannot bottle my infuriated impatience with her on this subject. Yesterday, I made the big mistake of broaching the subject. I won't go into great details; suffice it to say that she began with the "Islamic Spain Golden Age" spasm -- "Did you know that the Muslims brought plumbing to Spain?" Then when I brought up how the Da Vinci Code is anti-Catholic and a Catholic friend of mine was part of a group who wanted to have it banned, she bristled with righteousness about how it's bad to censor anything -- to which I brought up how over 20 people died over the Mohammed cartoon riots and nobody has died over the Da Vinci Code. She then responded by saying that Muslim countries are under attack, particularly by the "tyrant" Bush. I told her about how Muslims are beheading Christian girls in Indonesia; she responded by saying "I'm against violence in all forms, no matter where it is"...
By that time, my chest was throttled with rage, impatience, furious depression. I told her we had to stop talking about the subject at that instant. I had to tell her three times: I was adamant. I will never talk about this with her again. I may never talk to her again, period. I am incapable of the patience it takes to try to persuade someone of screamingly lucid, staggeringly obvious sanity, when it comes to the mountain of hideously ghoulish shit that emanates out of the stinking world of Islam, and an intelligent, otherwise decent person blithely insisting it smells like roses.
Hugh,
You have completely ignored the promises made during WWI to the Assyrian Christians and the soveriegn right of the Assyrian nation to self-determination. Today, most of the Assyrians who are now refugees in Syria will tell you that they fled the violence being used against them by the Kurds.
It is true that the Kurds deserve their own state but their historic homeland is in the territory of what was once the Mahabad Kurdish Republic, now considered Iranian Kordestan centered on Sanandaj.
The so-called Kurdistan that is now in Turkey and Iraq are actually part of the historic homeland of the Armenians and Assyrians. The Kurds only moved into these areas because, being Sunni Muslims, they were unhappy under the rule of the Shi'ite Qajar dynasty in Persia and the Ottomans invited them to move west to displace the Christian Armenians and Assyrians.
biorabbi, you are a wise man.
TV, I feel you pain. Your personal situation defines the tremendously dangerous situation all of us share. I've been there. I am there. And I hate it here. But as Fitzgergald wrote a month ago, this is no time for self-pity... although I'm tempted by that sentiment. Not to imply that you are, but you know what I'm saying. I hope.
It's like that old dude in Master and Commander had tatooed on his fingers: Hold Fast.
TV
It isn't just you and your sister. I avoid this topic with my wife. She isn't a Muslim, but she might well have been; on one occasion 2 years ago, when she was bashing India for supposedly discriminating against Muslims (using their current standards of living within India as evidence, and I didn't have with me the argument that Inshallah is the cause of that status), I pointed out that countries like Indonesia, supposedly peaceful, persecute their minorities, as opposed to merely discriminate, her response was classic. She said, "Well, Indonesia is officially a Muslim country, whereas India is a secular country".
In other words, if, instead of granting freedom of religion to all citizens, India had officially declared itself a Hindu state a la Nepal, it would have been okay? Except that she does not support Hindutva parties, so that avenue is closed. I was speechless, and that was the last time I raised that subject. She has said other outrageous things as well. During 2002, whern Israel was plagued by suicide bombings and we's sometimes watch the cleanup live on FoxNews, she'd express her disapproval, but then go on to state that Israel is not spotless either. How does one refute a vague statement like that, and does one have the time to comb through all of Jewish history? (Oh, on that topic, Jews would be biased when writing about their own history, so it's tough to take their rationalizations at face value.)
I avoid that topic, more because I fear I'd do something really violent that would earn me a criminal record for domestic violence. Not something I want to earn - besides, I do have a kid, and don't want to end up as yet another father with just visitation rights.
Easy fellas, no need to get all riled up with your relatives.
I think it's better just to tell them that where you are right now, they will be in a couple years, a couple of Madrids, a couple more Beslans, in a decade at the outside.
Just tell them that like Churchill, Eden and Duff Cooper in the thirties were ahead of the curve, that you too are ahead of the curve concerning islam. And that though they are taking longer to grasp the essentials of islam, that sooner or later, despite all of their best efforts to remain uninformed, the muslims will do all they can, which is considerable, to drive home the true nature of islam.
And copy out a few internet pieces, copy some magazine articles, and leave around the house some books like Andrew Bostom's new one: "The Legacy of Jihad."
Check out { http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/ }, it's a Catholic site, and publishes articles reflecting the positions of the Vatican. Well lately they've been publishing some bruising pieces on you guessed it, islam. They recently published a piece on the history of the muslim sacking of Rome.
But you don't want to lose your temper when your making points about islam. You really just want to exude the conviction that you know what you're talking about, because you've gone to the trouble of researching it.
Besides, this type of division amongst us is exactly what the jihadists want to see. Moreover, historically, the only inroads the muslims made against the Christian East and West were because of the lack of unity among the Christian powers.
A divided West is a sine qua non for muslim triumphs.
"You have completely ignored the promises made during WWI to the Assyrian Christians and the soveriegn right of the Assyrian nation to self-determination."
-- from a posting above
I was not writing here about all the things that should be extracted, as promises, from the Kurds. But I was getting to that in a future article. As you know, I think that Arabic-speaking Christians in Iraq have no future there, even though their presence in Iraq long predates the arrival of the Arabs and Islam. Some should be invited to settle in the West Bank, to take the place of Muslim Arabs who should, in turn, be happy to leave that resource-less area for other, resource-rich Arab countries, if not Iraq itself than other places.
But I also think that the Kurds, whom, you will notice, I never fail to mention when discussing the murder of Armenians in 1894-96 and in the larger massacres that began in 1915 (I never ascribe the massacres to "Turks" but to Muslim Turks, Kurds, and Arabs who picked off those straggling through the Syrian Desert until they could reach Christian communities in Haleb and Beirut).
In fact, I have in front of me an issue of "Ninevhen" (Vol 27, Nos. 3-4), the publication of the Assyrian Foundation of America, and I frequently read its touching stories about the plight of Assyrians (who were massacred, perhaps it should be recalled, in 1933 after the British left), and in particular, I was going to discuss, and will discuss here since yoy raise the matter (though I have mentioned it before) the need to extract, as part of the price of American diplomatic support and military supplies, a promise by the Kurds to help establish a "Chaldo-Assyrian Safe Haven in Nortghern Iraq." A map of such a regbion, from Rizgary in the north, Sumel, Telkaif, and Hamdaniya, which the Assyrians suggest could be a separate administrative region, protected by American interest, and by the Kurds, who are and will remain beholden to the Americans, and who, at least some, may to the extent that they nurture their own justified resentment against the Arabs, might be able to view Islam as a vehicle of Arab supremacy (which it is), and in so doing, any lessening of Islamic fervor will be better for the Assyrians, as for the Copts in Egypt and the Maronites in Lebanon. For more on all this, google "November 25 communique "Appeal for a ChaldoAssyrain Safe Haven in Iraq."
No, I was getting to that in a separate article, all about the potential value, to Infidels, of an independent Kurdistan. There was not a trace of sentimentality about the wonderfulness of all Kurds in the piece. I am perfectly aware of what the Assyrians have endured, and that the promises to them -- which did not rise to the same level as the Kurdish state, the Jewish state, the Armenian state, and the Arab state, that were supposed to have been established in the territories of the former Ottoman Empire. Notice, however, that I did regret the failure for the Great Powers and the League of Nations to promise and establish a mandate for a "Christian" state in the Middle East. Possibly at the time the French Mandate for Lebanon, when the Christians were still in the majority, was thought to fill that role, but the relentless assault of Muslims on the Christians, especially the Maronites, and the Arab countries' insistence on the Lebanese government declaring itself to be "Arab" at Taif, have had their effect and no one could now describe Lebanon as a refuge for Middle Eastern Christians.
Your charge is unwarranted. If anyone else here reads "Nineveh" with the same sympathetic attention, I will be surprised.
Hugh,
I look forward to reading that future article.
Also, perhaps I wasn't clear, but I support an independent Kurdistan but at the expense of Iran.
I don't want to take up anymore space on Hugh's thread for this Off Topic, but I appreciate the thoughts of Alarmed Pig Farmer, and I can't imagine what it would be like (as Infidel Pride related) to be married to someone who persisted in being myopic about Islam (I only see my sister about four times a year). As for Dan's comments, of course I agree with your sensible advice, but it's very difficult for me to remain calm and unemotional when this subject comes up, particularly among friends or relatives. And I don't think we're going to avoid a familial situation to some degree similar to what divided families during our great Civil War. I'm telling you, there are too many Westerners among us who could witness a mushroom cloud caused by Muslims and still hem, haw, quibble and pussyfoot around calling that spade a spade. And that -- not so much the vileness of Islam (about which I could otherwise remain relatively phlegmatic) -- is what aggravates my passions and gets me unhinged. No matter how much data I could marshal and time & trouble I could take to get "materials" together about the Koran, and the damned suras and Goddamned ayats, and frigging tafsirs and ahadith and Sira, not to mention that vast crawling jungle of Muslim history not even counting the hornet's nest of complexity around the "Palestine"/Israel situation -- no matter how much I prepared, this certain quantity of Western bozos (whether friends, family or strangers) would find ways to wiggle and squirm and equivocate.
Happy mothers day to all from El Cid and family.
Hello to all Interested, Alarmed Pig Farmer, Profitsbeard, Television and all my ant-jihad and anti-dihimmi compadres,
As always a great discussion.
I had a wonderful day with my six grandchildren all have been educated about the jihad, all proud carriers of the belief there culture is worth fighting for.
As to the Kurds, remember that Saladin the nemesis of the great crusaders was a kurd.
Is it Mother's Day in the US? Ours was weeks ago.
Mothering Sunday (which sometimes gets called Mother's Day) is the fourth Sunday in Lent. It was originally a day for domestic servants to have time away from the employers place to visit their own Mother church, and by extension their own mothers. I thin the US version is less tied to church tradition.
I had to look it up to explain why the Disney calendar appeared to be 6 weeks late. I was hoping for a double lot of chockies on the strength of it but sadly no...
Hello Granny, thanks for the info, I assumed that it was mothers day for you their too. Well anyway belated Mothers day wishes then. I have one small question and if you can explain what "double lot of chockies" mean?
Sofia LOL, I must read my Hadiths more carefully.
I have added to my knowledge of the Kurds, thanks to Hugh's and others interesting insite.
Again thanks and all the best.
Hello El Cid.
Chockies is an abbreviation for chocolates, which is one of the traditional Mothering Sunday gifts. Flowers is another but chocolate tastes nicer. Having received one gift of chocolates from my offspring on the 4th Sunday in Lent I was hoping that, prompted by the direction on the Disney calendar that Mothers day was 14 May, I would be given a second box. 2 mothers days, one British one American. But no.
Granny, thank you for the explanation, I hope you enjoy your Chockies. My dear wife, my companion for all these years, with wonderful Polish spirit loves Chockies.
Granny these are sad and dark times, it conforts me to know across the distance of the internet such brave folk as your self and the many other Jihadwatch family.
Other then bring out the truth about the dangers we face, this website is a great comfort to many, and feeling a brother (sister) at arms shoulder's side by side to yours in these times of growing darkness helps to build our courage.
I am convinced that this global solidarity, will help us defeat this enemy.
My words my not be as eloquent and erudite as many of the contributers to this site, but I offer an old man defiance to those that will cloud my grandchildren's future.