Muslim on Muslim. Pass the beer and popcorn, please.
If there were only two of them left on the planet, and butt naked, they’d start throwing rocks or haymakers at each other.
Thanks for the inset map and the post
I read earlier where the rebels there were actually al-queida. So this perhaps is a good thing.
Kurds have always helped us and never caused any problems to our interests. I’d be in favor of helping Kurds take over MORE territory in the ME.
Screw the Turks, we should be using every under handed, dirty devious trick in the book to help establish a Kurdish autonomous region in Syria to be linked eventually with the one in Iraq and one someday to be established in Turkey.
The Kurds in Iraq have been good allies and have shown discipline, patience and perseverance in pursuit of a state, as well as moderation and respect for democratic norms in the area under their control, the Kurds have demonstrated they are capable and deserving of a state of their own, not unlike the Irish after The Troubles, taking the half loaf on offer and biding their time between the establishment of the Free State in 1922 and effective independence in 1936 or ‘38.
The Israelis followed a similar path, accepting the rump state offered by the UN at Partition in ‘47; sans Jersusalem, the Negev and the Huleh area in the north. It was only the unsuccessful Arab appeal to arms and Haganah competence and courage that gave Israel the ‘48 Armistice Line now known as the pre- ‘67 borders.
In all three cases the states aborning acted with reason and discipline.
IRA men that fought the new government and continued killing English or Irish police, soldiers and politicians went before Irish firing squads.
Similarly, Ben-Gurion’s government tried Menachem Begin’s associates for terror and running guns when they rejected peace.
The emergence of a US sponsored Kurdish state would go far too toward expunging the US record of using them as pawns and then betraying them what, at least twice since WWII, to the Shah and to Saddam.
It’s been almost 100 years since the politicians at Versailles rejected Kurdish appeals for a state because it conflicted with their own imperial ambitions.
A Kurdistan means dismembering three existing failed or failing states: Turkey with their Great Power/Great Game pretensions in Central Asia and steady slide towards Islamist tyranny; Iraq newly armed by us and falling into a wholly predictable chaos under an inept Shia government lacking the stabilizing effect of the troops Obongo elected not to station there and finally Syria, facing a continuing bloody Arab fascist or bloody Islamist ruled future.
The new state will need friends, Kurds aren’t Arabs, they’ve shown this by the competence with which they’ve managed their affairs.
The new Kurdistan will be natural allies of Israel and ourselves, in need of sponsors and on guard against the irredentist ambitions of their neighbors.
I can see a Kurdish/Alawite/Christian alliance dominating the area north of Israel and frustrating Persian plans.
The Kurds are different, and worthy of some respect. I say this because during the time of Saddam, the Kurds took to sending their best students to study overseas. And they did.
After Saddam, when these now *very* educated Kurds came home, the Kurdish people did something extraordinary. They put the learned Kurds *in charge*.
This first made a splash when “Kurdish spokesmen” appeared on international and US TV, and were very well spoken, logical and persuasive.
Then, with the fall of Saddam and the violent occupation in the South, the Kurdish territories in northern Iraq were for the most part very quiet, outside of the sounds of construction equipment and business. They developed their territory in record time, and soon were Turkey’s biggest trading partner after Europe.
Right now, with significant Kurdish communities in northern Syria, Turkey, and Iran, the Kurds have wisely taken to playing it cool. They have not talked of a “greater Kurdistan”, though lots of other people have; and they have gone out of their way to not make enemies.
However, “greater Kurdistan” is their dream.
Now, with northern Syria pretty much out of the fray, there is likely a *lot* of back and forth between them and northern Iraq. But all kept very discreet. They realize that what Turkey objects to is a “de jure” declaration of a unified Kurdistan.
If they instead have “de facto” (in fact) unity, that just does not appear on the maps, Turkey can probably live with it. Thus the northern Syrian Kurds will likely push for autonomy within Syria much like they have in Iraq.