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Kurdistan: Iraq's Success Story
25.10.2006
By Paul Strand |
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The Kurds throughout
history have been a rugged warrior race, but they
have no beef with democracy or America, and no U.S.
forces have been killed or kidnapped in Kurdish
areas of Iraq.
In fact, 90 percent of the Kurds have a favorable
impression of America - a real anomaly in the Arab
and Muslim world.
A major reason for that is because American forces
and their allies did so much to protect the Kurds
from the killing wrath of Saddam Hussein starting a
few months after the end of the first Gulf war.
The long-time dictator definitely had it in for the
Kurds, and if he's executed in the days ahead, one
of the major reasons will be for the war crimes he
committed against them in the 70s and 80s - gassing,
bombing and killing them by the hundreds of
thousands, chasing hundreds of thousands of others
of them out of their ancient territories.
Much of that was over oil, because Kurds occupy some
of Iraq's most oil-rich regions.
There are those who are helping the Kurds build a
new society. Among them is Heather Mercer, a U.S.
Aid worker, who spent several months in an Afghan
prison under the Taliban in 2001.
The same is true for Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran
- they're sitting on some of the most valuable oil
reserves in those three lands, which is why Iraq,
Turkey, Syria and Iran have all so fiercely opposed
the idea of a free Kurdistan, carved out of their
four nations.
It's one of the reasons Kurds have been among the
most enthusiastic of voters in post-Saddam Iraq.
They figure there's a real chance in a truly
democratic Iraq that they'll be able to wiggle their
way out of Baghdad's control, and continue to at
least maintain their status as a fairly autonomous
region.
Then maybe someday translate that into true freedom
as a prosperous, independent Kurdistan.
They'll likely have to do it all on their own,
though.
The same world that's so adamant in demanding 10
million Palestinians be given their own homeland,
never raises a similar cry for the 30 million Kurds
- by far, the world's largest ethnic minority
without a home to call its own.
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