KNUCKLEHEADS IN KURDISTAN
By David Andelman

The Huffington Post
Kurdish Aspect, CO
Oct 29 2007

For the moment, Congress seems to have escaped making its most
colossal foreign policy boner since the Senate rejected the Treaty of
Versailles, keeping the United States out of the League of Nations
back in1919. It "postponed" consideration of a measure condemning
Turkey for the genocide of its Armenians 90 years ago and that would
have turned off the possibility of any ongoing dialogue on the latest
flashpoint in the Middle East.

Which doesn’t mean there aren’t knuckleheaded moves within the
grasp of the United States, or for that matter what exists of an
Iraqi government and an intransigent Turkish military and political
leadership over the volatile border region of Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran
and Turkey.

Listen to General Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey’s military leader, discussing
on Friday the attacks by PKK Kurdish guerrillas that have left 42
people including 30 Turkish soldiers dead in the past month:

"We are determined to make those who cause this sadness grieve with
an intensity that they cannot imagine."

The world has failed for generations to understand the myriad tribes,
religions and nationalities that have dotted the lands of Mesopotamia
and once governed more or less successfully, but rarely peacefully,
from the Ottoman Turkish capital of Constantinople. Certainly we
know the Shiites and the Sunnis well by now. It seems we are about to
become very familiar indeed with the third principal group in Iraq —
the Kurds.

But out our gaffes with respect to this benighted people go far back in
history. At the time Iraq was constituted as a nation by the western
powers gathered at the Paris Peace Talks of 1919, one member of the
American delegation advising President Woodrow Wilson on the Middle
East, Arthur I. Andrews, wrote:

"In some respects the Koords [sic] remind one of the North American
Indians. They have a tawny skin, high cheek bones, broad mouth and
black straight hair. Their mien too is rather quiet, morose, dull.

Their temper is passionate, resentful, revengeful, intriguing and
treacherous. They make good soldiers, but poor leaders. They are
avaricious, utterly selfish, shameless beggars, and have a great
propensity to steal. They are fond of the chase and of raising their
rivals, are adept in the exercise of frightfulness. Mentally they
are slow."

As I point out in my new book, A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919
and the Price We Pay Today, this was only one of a host of staggering
misconceptions, prejudices and gaffes that marked the efforts of the
United States, Britain, France and Italy as they went about creating
nations and drawing boundary lines that persist to this day.

It happens that in the ensuing nine decades, the Kurds and their region
of Kurdistan have turned out to be the lone promising island of peace
and prosperity in the nation of Iraq. Certainly the way the borders
were carved — leaving a large chunk of Kurds in the reconstituted
Turkey that was all the peacemakers left of the once vast Ottoman
Empire — was just one of a host of errors.

Nevertheless, the world may now be in a position today to reverse,
even rectify these errors. Peace and prosperity may be just two of a
host of consequences. Arriving at a solution to the tensions across
the Turkish-Kurdish frontier may also lead to an independent nation
of Kurdistan, a model for the rest of Iraq and a roadmap to eventual
American disengagement from the entire region.

But first we have to get there. And that’s where the problems arise.

There are, quite simply, a host of strong passions on all sides of
the frontier — and I say all sides because Iran, with its own small
Kurdish population, and a big stake in the future of the rest of Iraq,
also has a dog in this fight. Indeed only 20 percent of all Kurds are
in Kurdistan itself. Some 55 percent are actually in Turkey, another
20 percent are in Iran and smaller numbers are scattered across Asia
and the Caucasus including 200,000 in Afghanistan and even 100,000 in
Israel. None of this, however, should prevent an independent nation
of Kurdistan. Certainly there are far more Albanians in Albania than
in Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia.

Yet that doesn’t prevent Kosovo from aspiring to independence.

Indeed, an independent Kurdistan could play for the Kurds the same
role as a homeland that the Jews lusted after and, after centuries,
won for themselves.

Still, we have to take this one baby step at a time. First, we need
to encourage General Buyukanit and his military not to take steps
that would make Kurds grieve with an unimaginable intensity. We,
and by that I mean not only the United States but also the European
Union which can dangle a real carrot in the form of potential Turkish
membership in the EU, must persuade Turkey that a free and independent
Kurdistan on its border would be the best possible guarantee that
PKK guerrillas are tamed and held in check. It’s pretty clear that
a Congressional resolution bashing Turkey for its unquestionable
genocide of another resident minority, the Armenians, ninety years
ago, would remove much of our ability to talk calmly and rationally
with the current rulers of Turkey.

Fortunately, for the moment, most sides are still talking — though
possibly not the same language. Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan
flew to Teheran this past weekend to lobby for Iranian support,
while an Iraqi delegation flew back to Baghdad from Ankara on
Saturday without any breakthroughs. What the foreign minister wants
from his Iraqi counterparts, however, he’s not getting — "very,
very quick results." Instead, all he got was long-term proposals,
"far from being satisfactory."

Absent in all of this is one reality, though. The Kurds themselves.

Baghdad can scarcely be expected to speak with any authority for a
regional government that wants nothing but independence and, frankly,
has demonstrated it’s ready now to move in that direction. So those
who really need to be in the heart of the discussions aren’t even at
the table — the Kurds themselves. As I’ve suggested in my book and
innumerable speeches in recent weeks, the only real solution is an
independent Kurdistan that can stand on the international stage and
speak for itself.

Moreover, there’s not much time left. On November 5, Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with President Bush in
Washington. Can the president talk the Prime Minister off this
slippery ledge with a fiery pit on the other side? It may be the
world’s last hope. Said Prime Minister Erdogan on a Turkish reprisal:
"We can’t say when or how we will do it, we will just do it."

David A. Andelman, executive editor of Forbes.com, is the author
of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today,
(Wiley, 2007). He may be reached at david@ashatteredpeace.com.

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