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Time for a Sovereign Kurdistan Has Come
by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700
Copyright
May 26, 2014
All Rights Reserved.
Shuttling to the Mideast at breakneck pace,
70-year-old Secretary of State John Kerry hopes to save a sinking Iraq, faced
with a growing Islamic insurgency threatening to topple the U.S.-backed Shiite
government of 64-year-old Nouri al-Maliki.
While al-Maliki rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic, the White
House must seek safer ground not in Baghdad but in the semiautonomous region
controlled by the Kurds. While
vilified for generations and denied a homeland by Turkey, Iraq and Iran and
others, the time has come for the U.S. to back a sovereign Kurdistan. Whatever happens in Baghdad, the
U.S. must place its bet with a more reliable U.S. ally in the Kurds. Unlike their Sunni and Shiite Iraqi
compatriots, the Kurds aren’t embroiled in a bitter sectarian war in Iraq. While Sunni-Islam-dominant, the
Kurds—like the U.S.—are more tolerant toward different groups and religions.
Las Vegas odds-makers aren’t putting their cash behind survival of
al-Maliki’s Shiite regime. Talk of security cooperation in Iran won’t save Iraq from the well-funded, well-organized
and well-developed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or Syria [ISIS] seeking
nothing short of toppling the U.S.-backed Baghdad government. Whether or not Baghdad falls, the
U.S. shouldn’t throw more cash down a rat-hole backing al-Maliki or any other
Sunni or Shiite extremist group.
When former President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq March 20, 2003, he
toppled Iraq strongman Saddam Hussein April 12, 2003, opening the floodgates of
Islamic extremism. Bush and his
Vice President Dick Cheney took six years and another three years with President
Barack Obama to democratize Iraq. Not only hasn’t it worked, it’s a complete failure with or without U.S. military
intervention.
Conservatives on Capitol Hill, led by ranking member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.}, believe Iraq is still
salvageable—but at what cost? With
over $1 trillion tax dollars spent and $4,800 U.S. lives lost, it doesn’t
dishonor the dead or current batch of U.S. soldiers to admit Iraq is a lost
cause. Putting U.S. resources into ridding ISIS of Kurdish territory in Mosul and backing an
independent Kurdistan would provide a lasting ally in the region more akin to
U.S. values of inclusiveness, racial and ethnic tolerance. “Iraq is breaking up before our eyes
and it would appear that the creation on an independent Kurdish state is a
forgone conclusion,” said right wing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Known for his hawkish stand on
Israeli security, Lieberman wouldn’t throw his weight behind the Kurds unless he
knew they’d bolster the region’s stability.
Hosting former Israeli Prime Minister and elder statesman 90-year-old
Shimon Peres at the White House, President Barack Obama listened carefully to
Peres’s support of a sovereign Kurdistan.
Giving perhaps the biggest green light to an independent Kurdistan June
18 was Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who agreed with Lieberman and
Peres that Iraq is disintegrating into Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions. When Obama, Kerry and his foreign
policy team get up to speed, they’ll realize that there’s no stomach in the U.S.
for re-starting the Iraq War.
Whatever happened in the past, it’s clear that the U.S.-backed government of
al-Maliki failed to bring all Iraqi’s under one tent. Peres told Obama point-blank that
Iraq couldn’t come back together without mass military intervention. Nine years of training and supplying
the Iraqi army hasn’t produced a coherent security service.
Backing an independent Kurdistan runs counter to Iraq’s sovereignty under
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. In
one of the most heinous chemical weapons attacks in world history, Saddam gassed
the Kurds with mustard, Sarin and VX nerve gas March 16, 1998 in Halabja,
killing an estimated 3,200 to 5,000 Kurds.
Saddam blamed the Kurds for coordinating attacks against Iraq during the
height of the Iran-Iraq War [1980-1988].
Some 30 million Kurds live in the semi-autonomous region outside the
borders of Iraq, Turkey and Iran.
After Halabja, the Kurds nationalistic Peshmerga fighters developed better
security for Kurds after Saddam’s gas attack.
“The Kurds have de facto, created their own state, which is democratic. One of the signs of democracy is
granting equality to women,” Peres told Obama, urging Obama to back an
independent Kurdish state in the wake of Iraq’s disintegration.
As ISIS gets closer to Baghdad, the White House has to make a strategic
decision about what to do as Iraq disintegrates.
With the Kurdish population on more solid ground, the tectonic plates
have quaked along Shiite and Sunni lines.
As security experts point out, reversing the trend toward sectarian war
would require a massive deployment of U.S. and NATO forces—something not backed
by the American public. If there’s
a role to play in Iraq, the U.S. military should immediately back operations to
evict ISIS from Mosul and establish an independent Kurdish state. With Erdogan no longer objecting to
a sovereign Kurdish state, the time is right for the White House to do the same. Backing the Kurds only strengthens
the U.S. position in the Mideast by supporting a state that backs racial, ethnic
and gender equality—something that comes naturally to the Kurds.
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