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What
strikes me as the one of the more upsetting aspects
of the Iraq war and its aftermath is the
preoccupation with preserving Iraq’s territorial
integrity. Both the United States, which leads the
coalition of the willing that toppled the previous
Iraqi government and now occupies the country, and
the other leading powers in the international
community, have been very clear that there will be
no redrawing of Iraq’s borders as a result of this
conflict. Meant to appease the many Iraqi Arabs who
fear the growing autonomy of ethnic minorities as
well as Turkish leaders who oppose Kurdish
nationalism, this commitment to preserve territorial
integrity perpetuates more problems than it solves.
More importantly, it is wholly inconsistent with the
Bush administration’s vision of a new, democratic
Middle East.
Iraq, with a population of roughly 23 million, is
very ethnically diverse, though the majority of its
citizens are Muslim Arabs, who are divided by
religious differences into Sunni and Shiite
communities. The largest non-Arab minority is the
Kurds, who live mostly in the mountainous North.
Also living in the area are large numbers of
Assyrians and Turkomen. The Kurds, though, are
between 15 and 20 percent of Iraq’s population, and
they have been unofficially independent since the
end of the First Gulf War. This makes the Kurds a
major player in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.
After the First World War, the victorious powers
redrew the map of Europe according to the
distribution of different national groups. The
result was not perfect, but it was a step in the
right direction that greatly influenced the
political geography of today’s Europe. In the Middle
East, after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire,
more emphasis was placed on rewarding the Arab
leaders who had joined with British and French
forces during the war than on advancing the same
principle of self-determination that had been
applied in Europe. New states were created on
borders whose routes were mostly arbitrary and did
not represent strong ethnic divisions. Accordingly,
in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the British and
French divided Ottoman-occupied Kurdistan in to the
newly created states of Syria, Turkey, and Iraq.
About a third of Kurds have lived under Iranian
occupation since the 16th century as well. In an
earlier agreement, the 1921 Treaty of Sevres,
Kurdistan was to become independent, but Turkey
objected and at Lausanne this principle was
abandoned.
The Kurds speak several dialects of Kurdish, which
is an Indo-European language similar to Persian, and
the vast majority are Sunni Muslims, though some are
Christians or adherents to older indigenous
traditions. Like other peoples who have found
themselves dispossessed and without political
independence, the Kurds have a diaspora with
communities in Western Europe and the United States.
The Kurdish nationalist movement has been active for
over a century, first directed against the Ottoman
rulers in Istanbul and then against both the Turkish
government and Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
After the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. patrolled no-fly
zones in the north and south of Iraq; the northern
zone was established to help the Kurds in an
uprising against Hussein’s regime. As a result of
that rebellion, Ba athist forces massacred thousands
of Kurdish civilians in the now notorious Anfal
campaign, but the Kurds were able to establish de
facto autonomy over Iraqi Kurdistan.
President Bush has outlined a bold vision for
long-term change in the Middle East, but his
scorecard on advancing the plan is covered in zeros.
Both his second inaugural address and his most
recent State of the Union address called for an
American commitment to spreading liberty and human
freedom to every corner of the Earth, especially in
the Middle East where such freedom is scant. But his
administration’s efforts to spread democracy and
liberty seem limited to the military and the
rhetorical. It is time for the President and his
aides to lead a movement for self-determination in
that region through sound diplomacy and innovative
action.
A free and independent Kurdistan would be a great
tool with which to demonstrate the principles that
the United States government wishes to see adopted
by other states in the Middle East. Many Kurds
already have experience with popular government, and
a nation that struggles for so long for independence
against a tyranny (as was Iraq’s Ba athist regime)
is one that is more likely to embrace democracy and
individual freedoms. An additional benefit would be
the presence of a non-Arab free state in a region
dominated by regimes whose Arab leaders often
suppress non-Arab minority groups. A free Kurdistan
would be the first non-Arab indigenous state to
achieve self-determination in the Middle East since
the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948. Its
creation would boost the success of Bush’s vision by
leaps and bounds.
There are still many obstacles to helping the
Kurdish people win their freedom, such as objections
from Turkey and Iraqi Arabs and fears from other
world leaders that redrawing borders might lead to
destabilization in an already volatile region. But
if Bush truly desires to make bold strides toward
reshaping the Middle East in a positive direction,
establishing an independent Kurdistan would be a
step worth taking. Maybe then his lofty rhetoric
will begin to resonate with more force, and he may
be remembered as the President who dared to break
with tradition and start drawing new, better lines
in the sand.
http://maroon.uchicago.edu
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