Perhaps no other group of people in modern times has been as romanticized in the Western conscience as the Kurds. Consistently portrayed as “freedom fighters” who are eternally struggling for a land denied to them, the Kurds have been frequently utilized throughout history by other countries and empires as an arrow and have never themselves been the bow.
In today’s case, the Kurds are being used by NATO and Israel to fulfill the modern-day colonialist aim of breaking up large states like Iraq into statelets to ensure geopolitical goals. When nations are divided into smaller statelets, they are easier to conquer by foreign entities. This is a signature move that powerful imperialist nations use for the purpose of colonizing smaller and less influential nations. The Kurds have been utilized as pawns in this “divide and conquer” strategy throughout history and continue to allow themselves to be used by colonial powers.
In an article written in 2007, NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr stated that the Kurds of Iraq have a long history of being used as pawns in regional power struggles. Now, they are finding themselves in the middle of a contest between the United States and Iran for dominance in the Middle East.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had the CIA instigate a Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq against Saddam Hussein. The United States walked away from the rebellion when Saddam and the Shah of Iran settled their differences, leaving the Kurds to face their own fate.
Interestingly, the Kurds seem to have developed amnesia by once again choosing to cooperate with Washington, which has repeatedly used them solely for its own benefit.
In the Gulf War over the Iraqi seizure of Kuwait in 1990, President George H.W. Bush appealed to the Kurds, as well as the Shiites in the south, to rise up in rebellion against Saddam.
Victorious in that war, the American military permitted Saddam to retain his helicopter gunships, which he used to retaliate against the Kurds, along with Shiites, by the hundreds. American public opinion eventually forced the administration to establish northern and southern no-fly zones to protect the two populations.
Kurdish loyalty to America has cost them quite a bit, and so it is with a certain narcissism that the Bush administration presumed to tell the allegedly autonomous Kurds what kind of relations they could entertain with other countries in the region, including American rival Iran. But the Kurds appear to be finding themselves in a contest between the U.S. and Iran for dominance in the Middle East yet again.
Andrew Exum, a former top Pentagon Middle East policy official who served as an Army Ranger, stated ”… this decision — to arm a group closely associated with a foreign terrorist organization, and one that has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state — will likely reverberate through U.S. relations with Turkey for decades to come.” The Turkish government has long insisted that the Kurdish militia is closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a separatist group known as the PKK. That group is listed by Turkey, the United States and Europe as a terrorist organization.
A rough estimate found in the CIA Factbook sets the Kurdish population at 14.5 million in Turkey, 6 million in Iran, about 5 to 6 million in Iraq and less than 2 million in Syria, which adds up to close to 28 million Kurds in what they refer to as “Kurdistan” and adjacent regions.
However, other sources state that there are only about 1.2 million Kurds left in Syria due to the carefully calculated and planned imposed war by NATO and its Gulf Allies. Roughly the same number migrated to Germany during the past six years.
It’s important to differentiate between Kurdish people who have assimilated in the countries they now reside in and reject the idea of establishing an illegal Kurdistan and those who are power hungry and are allowing themselves to team up with the West and Israel to assist in the destabilization of the region. Some Kurdish people in Syria, especially those that reside in areas that are not controlled by the Kurds, such as Damascus, are loyal to the Syrian government and have stated that they voted for Assad in 2014.
This free and democratic election saw Assad win 88.7 percent of the popular vote over the other two nominees. In the beginning of the war in Syria, there were Kurds fighting in the Syrian Arab Army, who received arms and salaries just like their Syrian counterparts. There are a small number that are still in the Syrian Arab Army in the southern Syria.
But in northeastern Syria, many Kurds have defected to the U.S.-led SDF where arms, salaries, and training are provided by the U.S. Syrians consider the Kurds who have remained loyal to Syria as their fellow Syrian brothers and sisters and the descriptions of Kurdish treachery in this article do not apply to them.
Related Articles that I have written and recently posted on Steemit that I highly encourage you to read as well:
Amidst Universal Opposition to KRG Referendum, Israel Stands by Kurds
Kurdish Independence and Disunity
Kurds and Assyrians: A Tumultuous Past and Present
Modern Day Horrors: Kurds Disarm Assyrians and Yazidis, Abandoning them to Daesh Onslaught
Thank you for your support! I really appreciate it.
Wow, good analysis. Honestly it is difficult to tell who is good and bad in the Middle East, but I guess when we're desperate and the political climate frowns on sending our own forces in, you have to
Thank you! Glad you liked it. Look out for my other articles pertaining to this topic, there will be quite a few.
Always great information in your posts @sarahabed! The Kurds have enjoyed mostly positive coverage from western media for some time now, good to hear another perspective on this.
Thank you! I took someone's advice and decided to break down some of my more comprehensive analyses and make them into more manageable articles.
I can post more I just didn't want to overburden steemit with Kurdish articles but this topic is SO important and factual information is scarce that I almost feel obligated to keep posting more.
I am actually trying to figure out how I can dedicate an entire section of my website to Kurdish articles.
Thank you so much for your support! I really appreciate it.
Definitely worth an upvote and a resteem :)
Thank you! I appreciate it! I just put out another article pertaining to the Kurds. There is a ton of information on this subject, and I just want this "other side" of the story to get out there too. So that people can have information from all sides of the conflict.
You make some good points, but I think you're forgetting the most important fact. Much of the conflict in the Middle East is due to the country border lines that were designated indiscriminately after WW1 by western powers. Many of these countries should not exist in the same form as they do today, and almost no ethnicity was affected more perversely than the Kurds. When you take tribal territories that have been warring for a thousand years and try to place them in confined borders and establish a universal government, problems arise to say the least.
This is only one small part of a much bigger in-depth 3 part analysis that I did. Look for the other articles on my steemit that I am posting, they will fill in the missing parts. I was told that it would be easier for people to have smaller articles so I broke up the information into mulitple more specific articles.
Ahh, I see, I'm new around here, and yours was the first article I read. I'll make sure I give the others a read!
Welcome to Steemit! No worries, what I did to make things easier is I added the related articles to the bottom of each one so that they are easily accessible. I will still be adding a few more. It's a ton of information to be perfectly honestly and I am trying to make it manageable on my readers, and not overwhelm them. But you did bring up a good point and I will be addressing that in one of the posts.
It is the borders Rojava is trying to
End not the people of Syria or Turkey.
Upvoted. Keep it coming :)
Thank you!
You make a good analysis, but according to what I know the Kurds were actually screwed when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the French and British divided the region into countries disregarding ethnic backgrouns and the kurd population wasn't even considered in this dismemberment. This is from Wikipedia:
"The Kurds were basically sold out by the Sykes-Picot agreement between the UK and France".
gduran, you are exactly right, the Sykes-Picot agreement was the start of a long run of bad luck for the Kurds.
Same response as what I gave to @gduran after reading all of the shorter articles.. you can decide what makes the most sense to you. In short, they never had a nation of their own, and what they are trying to do now is both illegal, immoral and will create a much bigger dilemma for the Middle East. Just look at who is supporting their independence? Israel. There's your answer.
I have noted that, particularly demonstrated by some authors of fiction published on Steemit, articles can be linked, and even have a table of contents of linked articles. I am preparing to do this myself with a story I am writing, and would find it very useful for your articles on this topic, as well.
Followed, BTW =)
Thank you, that's a great suggestion. I will try to do that now, at least for the recent articles, which I am still allowed to edit. I will follow you too! Thanks again!
I will post an article that addresses this..keep an eye out for it. Most likely tomorrow since I posted quite a few today. Basically go through all of the Kurdish articles that I posted yesterday, today, and will post tomorrow and then if you still have questions I have more information. I am breaking down months of research into shorter articles that address one or two main points rather than a 15 page in-depth analysis for each article. I am finding that the information in my articles it simply too difficult for most people to digest if they are reading the entire article in one sitting. Trying to make things easier for everyone.
I very much appreciate your in depth look at the Kurds. It is perhaps the best understanding I know to have informed any article on them and the issues around them I have seen.
However, I cannot fault any people for wanting to be free from the tyranny of the states that exist in the middle east. If having a nation was a prerequisite for having a nation, there would be no nations. There has never been a Kurdistan, but I will not accede that means that Kurds must forever be minorities in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and to a lesser extent, Syria.
As a sizable, discrete population, the Kurds have been political footballs long before the national boundaries of the middle east were redrawn after WWI. Today the machinations of Israel and the USA have followed that tradition.
Amongst the most remarkable thing about the Kurds, to me, is that they continue to exist, given the oppressive regimes of the nations where their territory is, and the ways every imperial power has sought to use them for it's own purposes.
Recently an author by the name Ocalan published an article (less than 50 pages) outlining a vision of how people can be independent of state powers, and not themselves create such a power.
I believe such a Kurdistan is strongly to be desired, and might serve as a model whereby all peoples oppressed by the unholy alliance of banksters, corrupt media, and military force could draw inspiration for their own voluntarist evolution, creating a world moving at long last away from the cycle of empire and collapse into feudalism.
While there are certainly laws against it, that doesn't make it wrong. Most of the laws in this world are written by the invisible hand of oligarchs seeking to increase and extend their wealth and power, from the shadows, advocated for by venal propagandists, claimed to be authored by sycophantic shills, and enforced by sadistic thugs labeled as heroes while they shatter the hopes and dreams of ordinary people just trying to live free of oppression.
It is this system of oppression that is unlawful, and such oppression will always be unlawful, even if it is legal. I therefore hope the Kurds, and all peoples everywhere, become independent of the state structures currently mining the wealth of the world and concentrating it in the coffers of oligarchs, while billions of free, sovereign people suffer poverty of dehumanizing proportions.
Thanks for adding to my understanding of the history involving the Kurds with your excellent article, even if I am unable to support your conclusion that there should be no Kurdistan, or a free Kurdish people.
Thank you for your feedback! I have posted more related articles that you might find of interest, I added a link to them in the article above.
Very interesting viewpoint. Although I feel sympathic towards an independent Kurdistan, I also realize this is all part of the plan for further destabilization and Western control of the region. It's a big dilemma...
Thank you, that's exactly it. We need to look at the big picture and how it will effect the majority, not just what benefits the minority.
Want to know who is bad in the world ? Question to ask yourself 1. Who can't you criticise ?
There are not a exhaustive list but it may give Some persepectve of the good v bad narrative !
if you learned it from the media, it's propaganda. You folks don't get how far we've fallen.
Yes..and this is particularly relevant to the romanticization of the Kurds.
سارة الحلوة ♥
Thank you lol
upvote me sara
great source of knowledge
good to hear about the positive enjoyment coverage by the media for the kurds
nice work
:)
upvoted
Thank you! I appreciate it.
Every person in the Middle East is being used by the United States and it's allies NATO.
The United States has been supporting Isis. The United States only started supporting the Kurds after kobani
The United States was embarrassed
Into supporting the Kurds.
The Kurdish people are simply trying to survive. . Turkey was trying to commit genocide against the Kurdish people
Long before the pkk was created.
America and Isis have been trying to commit genocide against the Kurdish people as well as the Syrian people.
The Syrian people are not the villains and neither are the Kurds it is America and her allies that are the villains.
There is a lesser known and equally important side to this story, that hasn't made it's way into mainstream media yet. Look out for my next few posts.
I am taking my in-depth research and breaking it into smaller articles, making it easier to digest. You will learn about the not so glamorous side of the Kurds.
Once you have both sides of the story then you can make your mind up about whether or not you support their independence and if the cost is worth it.
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Wonderful, thank you.