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Who is Denise Natali?
17.4.2012
By Kani Xulam Washington - Rudaw |
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Kani Xulam, an ethnic Kurd living in America,
founder of the American Kurdish Information Network
(AKIN) Kani is a native of Kurdistan. He has studied
international relations at the University of Toronto
and holds a BA in history from the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
Read more by the Author
She is lending her pen
to the cause of tyranny deliberately and I suspect
proudly.
April 17, 2012
WASHINGTON, DC, — Who do you think would
be the first to voice a sentiment such as “Kurdish
nationalist interests” and “American national
interests” are not one and the same? The usual
suspects are our habitual critics and abusers, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, Nouri
Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, Bassar Assad,
the “still” president of Syria, and Ali Khamenei,
the supreme leader of Iran. But to this illustrious
list, we can now add another name, that of an
American,
Denise Natali.
If you are scratching your head and wondering why on
earth I would make such a claim, don’t. Just read
her recent piece, “Coddling Iraqi Kurds,” in Foreign
Policy. Though a bit convoluted, a careful reading
of the diatribe makes this professional researcher a
darling of the bigots in Ankara, Baghdad, Damascus,
and Teheran. She says in English what they have been
telling us in Turkish, Arabic and Persian ad
nauseam. Why Denise Natali has chosen to subscribe
to their verbal and physical despotism is beyond me.
Over the years, I have met my share of clueless
Americans who side with our foremost foes without
even knowing us. But not Denise Natali. She can tell
a Kurd from a mile, as it were. She is lending her
pen to the cause of tyranny deliberately and I
suspect proudly.
Of all peoples fighting tyrannies, we Kurds alone
hold a special place in the ranks of the freedom
fighters all over the world. To us belongs that
reputation of fighting four countries, three
peoples, and two religious denominations at the same
time. But God, apparently, thought we could handle
one more. We have to now deal with Denise Natali as
well. I, for one, welcome the challenge. Imagine
triumphing over the combined forces of intolerance
and darkness. Our poets will have a field day
singing our victories. Our painters will capture the
moments with their brushes. Where will Denise Natali
be on that most solemn day for the Kurds and
Kurdistan? I have a hunch she will drink a cup of
hemlock the day before. Kurdish liberation and
Denise Natali do not mix. When the first comes into
existence, the second has to exit.
But our battles are not going to be trouble free.
Let’s just look at Denise Natali and how she is
waging a total war on the Kurds and Kurdistan. It is
a performance full of lessons for the experienced as
well as the rookie. I urge my fellow Kurds to study
it carefully. Her initial arrows may be directed at
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), but all of us are
her fairest targets. To make inroads into what we
fondly call Kurdistan, she disguises her goals as
those of the United States. According to her, the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is helping the
Turkish state to “quell” the PKK and “manage”
cross-border Kurdish nationalisms. And in exchange,
the United States has allowed the Iraqi Kurds “to
become the biggest beneficiary of Post-Saddam Iraq.”
Now that she has proven to all “analysts” the
legendary Kurdish proclivity to kill its kind, she
tells us more — and it is so good that you wonder if
it is God that is talking through Denise Natali! Get
ready for a gem here and sit down if you are
standing: The KRG is too strong for its own good.
And not wanting her Middle Eastern despots to be in
harm’s way,www.ekurd.net
KRG’s power must be curbed, she declares!
“Principles” are at stake. U.S. has “commitments” to
the countries that control the fate of the Kurds.
Washington cannot and should not be led astray by
the likes of Mam Jalal or Kak Massoud for something
as dangerous as “Kurdish nationalist interests.” It
is an impressive logic. I think it should be called
“Advanced Politics,” just like Erdogan calls that
abomination in Turkey, “Advanced Democracy.” 1000
years from now, people will stop reading
Machiavelli, but not Denise Natali. We should all
consider ourselves lucky for living in her times, so
to speak.
Notwithstanding my involuntary praise of Denise
Natali, or the gaping holes in her argument, it
behooves us Kurds to reflect on her perceived
reality. Is KRG really helping the Turkish
government to “quell” the PKK? Is it really a
contractor of Denise Natali, oops my mistake, the
United States to “manage” cross-border Kurdish
nationalisms? Kurdistan Region President Massoud
Barzani, was in Washington, DC last week. When
confronted on the topic, he said the opposite: “When
Kurds suffer, I suffer; when they are happy, I am
happy.” If anything, there was a genuine
undercurrent of Kurdish nationalism to everything
that he said in the capital of Americans. If the
United States has hired him to “manage” Kurdish
nationalisms, the United States is failing miserably
to the shock of not just Denise Natali, but also
Messrs. Erdogan, Bassar, Maliki and Khamenei.
Denise Natali must know this. For she also says, the
KRG is hoodwinking the United States. So if she
cannot get the United States to rein in the KRG, she
has other options: the erstwhile oppressors of the
Kurds, which must be alerted to the rising power of
the Kurds in the heart of the Middle East, like the
rising power of the Nazis in the heart of Europe.
This fiscal year, Baghdad is going to give Erbil 11
billion dollars, she says. Not long ago, it also
gave International Oil Companies (IOCs) 560 million
dollars for their work in the Kurdistan region. And
what has President Barzani done in return? Nothing.
No one in Baghdad knows how much revenue is
generated from cross-border trade with Iran, Turkey
or Syria. It is high time Maliki did something about
this. Otherwise, says this self-appointed adviser of
our foes, with the KRG acting like a state, “Kurdish
communities in Turkey, Syria, and Iran will likely
increase their demands for similar rights, creating
new pressures for Kurdish autonomy across borders.”
If that happens, Denise Natali will simply lose her
brilliant mind. Instead of losing that extraordinary
intellect, we must sacrifice 40 million Kurds to
save her. As an American, she was born too late to
take part, for example, in Andrew Jackson’s war on
Native Americans to satiate her thirst for blood. If
she had been born a few decades earlier, she would
have joined the Klan to hunt down the “Negros.” To
our eternal misfortune, she was born in our times,
when America had, to a certain extent, outlawed the
domination of race over race, a calamitous event in
the life of Denise Natali, like the collapse of
Soviet Union is in the life of Vladimir Putin. A
votary of absolute power, she needed an outlet for
her own propensity to dominate not just individuals
but also peoples, be they from other lands. For
reasons that mystify me, she chose to come to
Kurdistan. Apparently, we didn’t know what to do
with her, but she surely seems to know what to do
with us. She wants us all to go on a one-way trip to
hell and leave Arabs all of our oil, which should
earn them at least 40 billion dollars per year for
the foreseeable future.
Her tenure in Kurdistan is worth noting. She spent
18 years in our midst. She learned our language. She
named her daughter after one of us. She worked her
way up and eventually became the Dean of Student
Affairs at the American University of Iraq --
Sulaimani (AUIS). Her colleague, John Dolan, has
written a parody of her time at AUIS. Denise Natali,
apparently, liked order (too much) and wanted to
discipline her students. Her students, free from the
clutches of Saddam Hussein, wanted to experiment
with its opposite, freedom. It was a clash of two
competing ideologies. One had to give in. The
students didn’t want to. Denise Natali began
expelling them one after the other from the so
called Harvard of Kurdistan. One of the students
took matters into his own hands and left a death
threat on her office door. The university entered a
crisis mode. No one snitched on the student.
Instead, a blast wall rose in front of Denise
Natali’s office.
As Kurds, we definitely owe Denise Natali an
apology. I offer mine belatedly. But I don’t think
the errant student’s behavior is the reason Denise
Natali is fighting us tooth and nail. What else
might have tipped the scales against us? Could it be
that she doesn’t like Kak Massoud Barzani or Mam
Jalal Talabani? They are not perfect, to be sure,
but are they as bad as Saddam Hussein? Denise Natali
doesn’t offer an answer, but order must come from
Baghdad, she insists. I doubt very much if Kurds
agree with her, and while that is clearly not her
concern, it is mine—and I suspect yours as well,
since you are a reader of these pages and of Rudaw.
I will end my rebuttal on a more sobering note. Two
prisoners of Saddam Hussein meet in Hawler after his
hanging. Both are Kurds. Both are torture survivors.
One has become an author; the other works as a
vendor. The writer asks the peddler what he thinks
of the KRG? He says, “At least this is a government
that doesn’t throw us in jail just because it can.
No more Anfal. No more chemical weapons. At least
now we don’t have to live in fear like we used to.”
This account of the exchange is in the pages of
Jalal Barzanji’s new book, “The Man in Blue
Pyjamas.” It offers depth and perspective. It is
what is missing in Denise Natali’s diatribe, which I
am sure she classifies as “analysis” and
“information”. We disregard it at our peril.
* Kani Xulam is a political activist based in
Washington D.C. He is the founder of the American
Kurdish Information Network (AKIN) www.kurdistan.org.
Kani is a native of Kurdistan. He has studied
international relations at the University of Toronto
and holds a BA in history from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He was recently awarded
an MA by the International Service Program at
American University. At the University of Toronto,
he represented Kurdistan at the Model United
Nations. In 1993, at the urging of Kurdish community
leaders in America, he left his family business in
California to establish the American Kurdish
Information Network in the nation’s capital. He is
the founder of the American Kurdish Information
Network (AKIN)
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