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| Why an independent Kurdistan scares Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. Armenian is happy for Iraqi Kurds. |
While the war for Mosul is still ongoing between the Iraqi Army and the last remaining ISIS terrorist fighters, Iraqi Kurdistan has finally gotten its wish and voted a resounding 93% for independence for the province. The Kurdish referendum has been perhaps one of the easiest and quickest referendum other than South Sudan's independence vote to get the approval of the Western countries without little criticism or debate. This might inspire Catalunya's stop and go push for its own independence vote that is currently set to take place this Sunday October 1st. This time it won't be a symbolic independence vote either. The Kurds are celebrating in Erbil and Sulmaniya still. The Turkish and Iraqi governments have already threaten to sanction Iraqi Kurdistan and indirectly invade the border if the Kurdish government goes through the process of acting as a defacto nation state such as officially trading with countries as the State of Kurdistan or continuing to control and operate the oil fields in Northern Iraq without any input from Baghdad. The Baghdad government sees the creation of Kurdish state as a second Israel that only benefits Western countries ie US, UK and the wider EU and Japan at the expense of the neighboring countries.
The Yes vote has terrified Turkey whose own Kurdish minority has long protested Turkish government's excessive use of force to put down protests, celebrations of Kurdish culture and language (outlawing the use of Kurdish for many decades), Turkishification in the name of uniting all of Turkey's multiple ethnic groups under a unifying Turkish nation that is secular, collectively punishing Turkish Kurds for attacks by the PKK (Kurdish Workers' Party), YPG in Syria and pro Kurdish supporters in Turkey and even in the Kurdish Diaspora. Turkey has been fighting an insurgency in Turkish Kurdistan in failing hopes of stopping a similar referendum from happening in Turkish Kurdistan. If Turkish Kurdistan were to join Iraqi Kurdistan or begin the process of voting on independence, Turkey would loose 20% of its territory. Not all Kurds want full on independence. The Turkish Kurds would prefer for now more autonomy and gradually move onto independence. The Iranian Kurds have also been celebrating the referendum in Mahabad and Sananjad happily.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians from Mosul's city proper have relocated and some cases pushed out to nearby IDP camps. Many Mosul residents are traumatized by the ongoing bombing campaign around the city. On the heels of Iraq's recycling fights with Al Qaeda and ISIS in Mosul and on the border with Syria, there is one Iraqi province that has been mostly stable and relatively peaceful. We're talking about Iraqi Kurdistan. The Project for a New American Century has long viewed the Middle East in terms of ethnic and religious states to be divided up into bantustans and unnecessary mini states as the only solution to solve the geopolitics of each country's respective socio-economic problems. Many woes have less to do with religion and more to do with marginalization, heavy handed corruption from the government, torture and violence from the mukhabarat and secretary intelligence police, lack of basic social services, etc. These were the same complaints the Kurds have brought forth to the Iraqi government both past and present.
The geopolitical chessboard of fracasos
The realpolitik US foreign policy legend and big wig Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined the breaking up of Middle East into mini states in his magnum opus The Grand Chessboard and his lesser work Strategic Vision. He further outlined the need to keep America's hegemonic, unipolar strangle hold on Eurasia as part of the US geostrategy abroad to remain a superpower. He is not the first to pivot toward Eurasia following Halford Mackinder's Heartland Theory nor the last. American self interests and concerns also extend to Africa and Latin America. He is most remembered by ordinary Americans for having supporting the Mujahideen Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in 1979. Brzezinski is both the former National Security Advisor to former President Jimmy Carter and an advisor to both Lyndon Johnson and JFK in the 1960s. Now a days, the 89 year old Brzezinski serves as a counsellor for the Centre for Strategic and International Services, lectures and occasionally interviews as a neoconservative pundit on American Foreign Policy. He has rarely changed his perspective on foreign policy. With the exception being the recent events in Middle East and U.S. cooperation with China. Like Henry Kissinger who is still living, is much respected by the neoconservative and liberal pundits when it comes to the history and future of U.S. Foreign Policy no matter how corrupt or disproportional. It's not coincidental that his daughter Mika Brzezinski is a political pundit on Morning Joe at MSNBC. Unlike her father, the younger Brzezinski is not heavily involved in politics of foreign policy. It is worth noting, Brzezinski has been observing Trump's foreign policy moves and doesn't know what to make of Trump as of yet.
Since 2003, US-UK invasion, occupation and dismantlement of pre war Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan has enjoyed and taken full advantage of its autonomy as a self governing de facto nation state. Kurdistan has been transformed over the years from the once bombarded and least developed province of Iraq into one of its most prosperous and peaceful. Iraqi Kurds not only have their independent government, control their own territories, airways and border checkpoints, Kurdish language, culture and people have thrived and been spared from the horrors of continual low intensity war elsewhere in Iraq. The Kurds are seen as the most pro-West (for lack of a better word), appreciative, understanding and flexible of all Iraqis. The love for Kurds in Western countries is in contrast to the mainstream media's anti-Arab and Islamic paranoia about ISIS taking over the world via mass migration and aslyum seekers. Now Kurdish leaders in Erbil are waving the success of independence in front of Baghdad's, Ankara, Damascus and Washington's face. The Kurdish Democratic Party or KDP have hinted that the Kurdish parliament is not necessary for a referendum vote. The independence vote is a surprise to no one. Many pundits, historians, geopolitical analysts have been warning for years if not decades that the Kurds want nothing short of self determination for their multiple country territory that straddles Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The Kurds have suffered bombings, identity, language and cultural repression under brutal dictatorships of Saddam Hussein, Turkish military dictatorships, Syrian father/son duo Hafiz and Bashar Assad and their grievances and needs were cast aside by Iran's Islamic revolutionary government for the most part.
Following World War I, the European colonial powers drew lines in the sand of Mesopotamia and Palestine (once known as Greater Syria) to create the modern day countries of Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. Still following divide and conquer tactics, British colonialists promised favoured ethnic groups ethnic states of their own for their cooperation and support of British troops against the then dying Ottoman Empire. The Kurds were promised a mountainous state in the center of the Middle East. This promise also coincide with the Armenian Genocide and the need for the Armenians to have a state of their own as a permanent refuge from genocide and a place of healing. Modern day Armenia came into existence in 1922 and was protected by the Soviet Union more or less for most of its existence. Now 90 years later, the Kurds are attempting to deliver on the long neglected promise of a homeland of their own. Even if it is not recognized yet.
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