Posted on 03/11/2015 12:54:50 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he supports creating a new nation for the Kurds in exchange for their help fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“I think they would fight like hell if we promised them a country,” Paul told Breitbart News during a stop in Naples, Fla.
Paul, a likely 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said the Kurds are “the best fighters” in the military campaign against ISIS and said he would support sending additional arms for the Peshmerga, the Kurds’ trained soldiers in Iraq and Syria.
“Part of the problem is the Kurds aren’t getting enough arms,” Paul said. “The arms are going through Baghdad to get to the Kurds, and they’re being siphoned off, and they’re not getting what they need. I think that any arms coming from us or coming from any European countries ought to go directly to the Kurds. They seem to be the most effective and determined fighters.” Kurdish Peshmerga forces successfully retook Kobani, Syria from ISIS in January. Paul said their efforts against the radical Islamist group deserved recognition from the U.S. and its allies.
“But I would go one step further: I would draw new lines for Kurdistan and I would promise them a country,” Rand said.
The Kurds are an ethnic group that has inhabited a region dubbed “Kurdistan” in the Middle East for centuries. It includes portions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.
Paul acknowledged difficulty of granting Kurdish sovereignty. Given the number of states impacted by creating them a state, he said creating Kurdistan involves complex diplomacy.
“It’s a little easier to say than it is to actually make it happen, because in order to actually draw a new country you’d have to have the complicity of Turkey and probably Iraq a little bit as well,”
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
The only opposed to the idea of a separate Kurdistan - are the nations from which the land would be taken.
Why on earth should they trust us?
In some ways Iraq should have been partitioned after we took it over in 2003.
A lot of the Borders in the middle east are not congruent to the groups of people living there, which is precisely WHY in a LOT of areas they NEED a STRONGMAN type hold some of those countries together.
While I agree that A Kurdish country is a good idea its not quite that simple. It would mean a whole new series of wars.
A good historic writer needs to write a book about the Battle of Kobani. I know some guys that were there and they say the heroic and selfless acts of the Kurds are some of the greatest feats ever seen on the battlefield. At times close quarters gun fights degrading into belly to belly knife fights.
Iraq and Syria have already lost control of the part of the land that would be incorporated into the prospective country of Kurdistan, and if Turkey had any sense about it, they would simply cede that portion in their country to the Kurds, who are a most troublesome minority.
For Iran, it might be OK to simply allow the Kurds to take that portion of Iran they already occupy away from the Islamic Republic, a bunch of revolutionaries that are as bad in their way as ISIS.
Then start an airlift of as many modern and medium to high tech military material to the Kurds as they can sensibly absorb, and set about upgrading the peshmerga into a truly disciplined and technically savvy fighting force.
Who are we to pass out “nation” status? They’ve got military control, a government, and borders... the northern region of the former Iraq is now Kurdistan. All they need now is diplomatic recognition from other nations.
Or us them, for that matter? We trusted the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, only to watch them become the core of the Taliban.
Well first you would have to get Turkey on board which they are currently not.
You beat me to the punch and correct me if I am wrong but wasn’t it the Sykes-Picot Agreement that led to that, again correct me if I am wrong, and I do agree that the Kurds should have been given their own nation buy using a piece of Iraq, although some nations would not like it, Bush could have use his influence to convince them maybe, one of the few groups in the ME I really care about to be honest.
“I think they would fight like hell if we promised them a country,” Paul told Breitbart News during a stop in Naples, Fla.
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Who is the ‘we’ Rand is speaking of.
This isn’t nation building in the sense the US has been doing. It would be recognition of the Kurds as an already-functioning nation who don’t get any help from Turkey or Iraq. They’re victims of borders which were drawn after WW2.
All the left-wingers want Palestinians to have their own homeland so why not the Kurds?
If they can beat ISIS, then they can beat the Iraqis and TAKE themselves a country.
Iraq is our (US/NATO) client state. They can only “beat” Iraq when and if the West tells Iraq to stand down. And the Kurds can’t really be a functioning natino if no other nation recognizes them as such. They would need Western recognitino.
It’s not for us to promise them a country.
He’s right, and we should recognize them.
Let's see, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. I say, go ahead and do it.
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