|
The United States should accept the inevitable, rising
Kurdistan |
|
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page |
|
The United States should accept the
inevitable, rising Kurdistan
4.12.2013
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |
|
|
|
|
December 4, 2013
An inevitable result of the tumult of the past
decade in the Middle East is that the Kurds,
previously a minority in several countries, are
moving steadily toward establishing their own
nation.
The Kurds are 30 million largely Sunni Muslims, with
their own language, living mostly in Iran, Iraq,
Syria and Turkey. The governments of these countries
have sometimes found them troublesome as a minority,
with irredentist tendencies and a persistent desire
for their own state.
They remained under control in these places until
the first and second American invasions of Iraq, in
1991 and 2003, when the United States took the Kurds
under its wing. For instance, the U.S. Air Force
maintained an expensive “no fly” zone over the
Kurds’ region after the first Gulf War.
The U.S. breakup of the Saddam Hussein government in
Baghdad, coupled with the Kurds’ speedy moves to
cooperate with the occupying Americans, quickly put
Iraq’s Kurdish northern region on the road to
autonomy.
In Syria, the substantial weakening of the Bashar
Assad government provided Kurds there with a fine
opportunity to establish increasing independence. A
desire by the Turkish government to soften its
sensitive relationship with the Kurds in Turkey,www.Ekurd.net
plus Turkey’s need for oil and gas, which Iraqi
Kurdistan is eager to export, have combined to
produce what is a potentially viable Kurdistan in
the Middle East.
The relatively peaceful, slow evolution of a
Kurdish national homeland is probably a natural
development in the Middle East which no one —
including America — should obstruct.
The United States is opposed to the creation of an
independent Kurdistan for varied reasons. The first
is paternalism toward the Kurds that comes from
having protected them for 22 years. The second is
that an independent Kurdistan would come at the
expense of Iraq and be an embarrassing result of the
eight-year U.S. occupation.
The third is that U.S. oil companies have
established a presence in Kurdistan, and it is
easier to watch over them as part of Iraq. The
fourth is that Kurdistan would be one more country
to play on the troubled field of the Middle East,
with its irredentism and tribal divisions.
The creation of a separate Kurdistan appears to be
inevitable, however, and the United States should
get used to it rather than maintain a policy of
opposition.
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency,
post-gazette.com
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page
|
|
|
