So they don't want an Islamic state. It would be more convincing if Kurdish persecution of their Christian and Yezidi neighbours were not such a well established fact.

Posted by: Paolo at August 7, 2005 4:07 PM

“We will not accept that Iraq’s identity is Islamic,” Barzani told an emergency session of the autonomous Kurdistan parliament in Arbil.

This is the best news I've heard out of Iraq in months! YAH!
:)

Posted by: Freedom1 at August 7, 2005 5:46 PM

Paolo is right- in Ottoman times the Kurds played the Cossaks to the Armenian Christian's Czarist Jews, so it's best not to over-sympathize with the former. Still, this is a welcome development, but one that this administration, which still has no clue as to the type of struggle we're in, is sure to misplay. Explain to me again exactly why we're keeping Iraq together instead of welcoming the rise of national consciousness among the converted (i.e. non-Arab) peoples of Islam? And if the Kurds express irredentist designs on pieces of Turkey, Syria, and Iran, is there no justice in their claims- or more importantly, is this not in our long-term interests, as this will surely halt the slide into Islamism and in fact may spark a Turkish nationalist reawakening? Take it away, Hugh.

Posted by: emperor_diocletian at August 7, 2005 8:26 PM

Yeah, one reason is Turkey. Another is Aztlan.

Posted by: Chris Fotos at August 7, 2005 8:39 PM

If the American government misses the opportunity to help in the establishment of a free Kurdistan, the mere existence of which would not only lead to the creation of a state that would weaken or threaten the stability or borders of Iran and Syria -- countries that have sizable Kurdish populations -- but also cause Turkey, which has no place to go but to the United States (for the Turks now now they will never be admitted to the E.U., and if the secularists in Turkey have their wits about them, they will be careful to blame not the West itself, for being "anti-Islam," but the horrific behavior of many, as they can plausibly if not entirely truthfully present it, non-Turksih Muslims, especially the despited Arabs and hated Persians. And that would be a good thing for secularism in Turkey, which is to say -- a good thing for Turkey.

As to Turkish worry about what will happen to the Kurds in Anatolia, the American government can make clear that the existence of a free and independent Kurdistan need not necessarily, in all cases, be a threat -- that in the case of Turkey (but only Turkey) the Americans will make sure that the Kurds do not attempt such an enlargement, that in any case Kurdish oil is likely to have to flow northwards in a pipeline through Turkey and will require continued Turkish goodwill, and that the moral case for the autonomy of Kurds in Antatolia becomes less compelling with the existence of a free Kurdistan, to which Kurds if they insist on living in a Kurdish state may move.

But all this is not realized in Washington, which is crazily convinced that a free Kurdistan is not a good idea, because there is such fear of redrawing borders, and fear of Turkish reaction. There need not be. It is the Turks, whose media have been intolerably anti-American, and for that matter intolerably anti-Infidel, that need to be read the riot act. Turkey has had a long run, during the Cold War, and it was the spoiled child of American foreign policy for a long time. When the American army was forced to take Iraq with three divisions rather than four (in a few weeks), it was because of the Turks. But Russia is no longe rour mortal enemy, though it remains the historic enemy of Turkey. Those bases, those listening posts in Turkey, now have a new use -- to proejct power against Islamic states. If Turkey doesn't like it, too bad. If Turkey does not like the idea of a free Kurdistan, too bad -- what else can they do, especially if the American troops leave Iraq, but in so doing, preposition equipment in Kurdistan, where as all American soldiers in Iraq know, they have the only Middle Easter allies outside of Israel.

A free Kurdistan will inspire other non-Muslim Arabs to bethink themselves. Berbers in North Africa, and of course the Iranians who, fed up with the Islamic Republic, need to be encouraged to see the Arabs in a new light, not merely as despised primitives, but as despised primitives who brought the poisoned chalice of Islam to Sassanian Persia, a primitive belief system which overwhelmed a more highly developed and sophisticated and far more interesting civlization. That, too, may be encouraged if Islam is identified, more and more, with the Arabs themselves, and all attempts to modify Islam's message, or to jettison it altogether, are identified with the non-Arab populations of North Africa and the Middle East.

All of these are developments that can be encouraged by the establishmenbt of a free Kurdistan. Anwar Shaikh and Ali Sina and Ibn Warraq and many others have noted that Islam is the Arab religion, the vehicle for forced arabization, cultural and linguistic, and that the Arabs have, through their use of Islam, have been the most successful imperialists in history.

Helping the first non-Arab Muslim population in what the Arabs call, quite inaccurately, the "Arab world," to throw off the Arab yoke, would make sense.

Perhaps someone in the Pentagon can take a second look, and not be so dismissive of the idea, which is hardly fantastic and from the Infidel point of view makes sense, to prevent another Arab attack to crush Kurdish aspirations. If guarantees for the Turcomans are necessary, the Americans can obtain them -- and deliver them to the Turks.

But of course, as long as the will-o'-the-wisp of "democracy in Iraq" is the official goal, and a strong viable nation-state (where none can possibly exist, not now, not in decades to come, and the American army does not have decades, does not have even one more year -- unless the Bush Administration wishes to ensure the election of those who do not even recognize a problem with Islam, and wish for appeasement, which is even worse than the naive current policy of establishing a "Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations" in Iraq.

Posted by: Hugh at August 7, 2005 10:25 PM

Hugh, as an American of mixed ethnicity, I'm a bit chary of ethnic nationalism, whether of the Kurdistan, Aztlan, Greater Germany, or other variety. Add to the problem the fact that the areas claimed by Kurdish nationalists contain sizeable minorities of Arabs, Persians, and Turks, and handfuls of Syriac and Armenian Christians, and it's easy to see how this rankled ethnicity could start doing unto others as others did unto it, and we'd have the makings of a whole new round of instability, mayhem, gudge-holding, and migration.

In federal systems, local bilingualism or preservation of important local cultures without violence to others is a possibility. Granted, such a thing will require time and important shifts in political culture of the Middle East, but it is probably a better way.

Posted by: Kepha at August 7, 2005 10:54 PM

Is this another war looming where the religion of peace will be involved

Posted by: shiva at August 8, 2005 3:55 AM

emperor_diocletian and Hugh, my reference to Kurds persecuting Christians and Yezidis is rather more recent than the admittedly loathsome part they played in the great Armenian massacres long ago. It goes back to no earlier than last January. Check reports on this site about the time of the election, see how Christian communities in Kurdish country were treated.

Posted by: Paolo at August 8, 2005 4:06 PM