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Half-a-Century Kurdish Revolution in Vain
23.6.2012
By Rauf Naqishbendi —
Ekurd.net |
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June 23, 2012
Prudent leaders are those who serve their nation. As
promising occasions arise, they harvest the fruit of
those God-given opportunities. They are perseverant
and tenacious when challenged with difficult
choices, determined not to kneel to the burdensome
circumstances that compromise the interests of their
people. Prudent leaders also sacrifice their own
interests for the good of the commonwealth, not
otherwise. Leaders who have betrayed their people or
have taken advantage of whatever the circumstances
may be in order to serve their own personal gains
are ruinous to their nations, and their burials are
warranted.
Illustrating what has been said are the two Kurdish
leaders—Talabani and Barzani—who in the past
repeatedly have been agents of the Kurds’ enemies,
and at present are trading the just cause of their
people, independence, to advance their own personal
gains. For decades they have been merchants of death
as they made tens of thousands of young brave men
into sacrificial lambs, fueling the engine of their
power struggle.
At this time of national urgency, when the Kurds are
facing hardships in their security, these leaders
are ignoring that urgency in their lust for power
and the pursuit of objects of their greed.
Upon ousting Saddam’s regime, the Kurds were
rejuvenated, but the people’s exultations were
marked by the leaders’ utter complacency. They acted
as America’s puppets instead of being Kurds; they
downplayed the American government’s
half-a-century-long sin of supporting the Turkish
regime in their genocide against the Kurds, as well
as America’s foreign policies’ aloofness toward that
repressive regime.
After the Americans invaded Iraq, they exerted their
utmost force to bring peace amongst Arab rival
factions; they used the Kurds’ armed forces to
pacify Iraq, knowing that once the Arabs in Iraq
united, they would turn against the Kurds. In a
nutshell, Kurdish leaders did everything to maintain
Iraq’s map intact, realizing that Iraq, as a
country, is a notion bound in evil’s darkness
regarding the Kurds. They did everything to unite
Iraq but nothing to make the Kurdish dream for an
independent Kurdistan real. They cared more about
accumulating wealth, looting banks and government
institutions, and leaving the fate of hundreds of
thousands of dislocated people gathered around
Kirkuk and other annexed regions unanswered.
Since its inception in 1961, the Kurdish revolution
plagued Kurdistan with colossal tribulations,
destruction, and bloodshed. The unfortunate handicap
of this revolution has been its leaders; therefore,
one need not wonder why this revolution, one of the
most elongated revolutions in mankind’s history, has
not accomplished the agenda set out from its onset.
Looking back on the half-a-century struggle, the
Kurds still have not accomplished any meaningful
achievement. A vast part of Kurdistan is still
annexed; that is to say, Kurdistan at present is
smaller than when the revolution started in 1961.
The problem with this armed uprising, like others in
the past century, has been the reliance of the
Kurdish leaders on foreign powers—the Russians,
America, and particularly their neighboring
countries of Iran and Syria. These foreign powers
fueled the revolution to accomplish their own
strategic goals. While foreign assistance continued,
the revolution managed, and when assistance was
thwarted, the revolution was extinguished. The Kurds
should not blame their downfall on foreign powers
but rather on their own leaders’ delinquencies,
leaders who lacked self-reliance and entrusted their
local resources to others in order to manage their
revolution.
Since the American troop withdrawal from Iraq last
December, the Iraqi government has gathered a cloud
of strength and is in the process of fortifying its
military might and consolidating its political
power. Moreover,www.ekurd.net
the Maliki government is focusing on empowering
central government and limiting the authority of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Effectively,
Maliki’s government is trying to tighten its grip on
Iraq’s natural resources. Accordingly, he is
disputing and attempting to abrogate all oil
drilling contracts that the KRG has signed with
major oil companies during the American occupation.
With percolating discord between the Maliki
government and the KRG, rumor has it that Massoud
Barzani’s leadership is in solicitation for
protection from the Maliki government, and to this
end they have been in frequent flights between
Kurdistan and Istanbul. Here we go again, the tale
of the Kurdish leaders’ moronic and naive pleading
to the most atrocious Kurdish enemy for help. Again,
as has been customary with Talabani and Barzani,
they have never been creative enough to scheme their
way out of trouble when challenged. Talabani and
Barzani are living in an illusionary world and have
no touch with reality, for instance, their naivety
in believing in America to perpetuate its protection
of Kurds. The American government did good for their
own interest, using the Kurds to ease their
occupation of Iraq and to gracefully exit Iraq.
Now, in the absence of America’s protection, the
Kurds have to manage on their own. Sadly, with their
current leadership, the Kurds are unable to manage,
and the Iraqi government will take away, little by
little, every iota the Kurds have accomplished under
American occupation, and it is not “if” but rather
“when.” When this occurs the Kurds should not pass
the blame to anyone but their own leaders. These two
leaders wasted fifty years, time wise a life on its
own, and accomplished nothing for the well-being of
Kurds. Should they lead the Kurds another fifty
years, the future of the Kurds is not going to be
better than the past, because the corrupted bring
upon their people not liberty but repression, not
justice but inequity.
For the Kurds to succeed they will need to rely on
themselves through prudent and wise leaders, but
Barzani and Talabani are neither wise nor prudent.
Surely they have succeeded in attaining the wants of
their families and their cronies, but none for their
people. These two leaders and their cronies must be
brought to the court of justice. Time is not in
favor of Kurds; therefore, these leaders’ obituaries
must be immediate and without any delay.
Rauf Naqishbendi is a contributing columnist for
Kurdishaspect.com, American Chronicle,
Kurdishmedia.com and
Ekurd.net,
and has written Op/Ed pages for the Los Angeles
Times. His memoirs entitled "The Garden Of The
Poets", recently published. It reads as a novel
depicting his experience and the subsequent 1988
bombing of his hometown with chemical and biological
weapons by Saddam Hussein. It is the story of his
people´s suffering, and a sneak preview of their
culture and history. Rauf Naqishbendi is a software
engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
ISBN: 978-1-4626-0187-5 ( get The (Zoftcover)
($7.95)
Link:
http://www.publishamerica.net/product41368.html
Your comments welcome at
rxa12@yahoo.com
Copyright © 2012 ekurd.net
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