Roadmap To Kurdistan: So...What's Your Plan B?

So...What's Your Plan B ?

by Gerald A. Honigman

As National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice spoke at the U.S. Institute of Peace on August 19, 2004. Some of what she said was morally indefensible…real politik at its worst.

While she was delivering what has increasingly come to be her favorite words of wisdom regarding the necessity of creating a 22nd state for Arabs (and second, not first, in the original borders of the Palestine Mandate as Britain received it on April 25, 1920...Jordan created out of the lion's share in 1922) at the Institute of Peace, she totally shot down questions relating to Kurdish anxieties and national aspirations in Iraq. Keep in mind that before the imperial Arab conquests in the 7th century C. E., the Kurds had lived in Mesopotamia for millennia. Here’s some of what Rice had to say, however, about her Arab buddies:

The President believes that the Palestinian people deserve not merely their own state, but a just and democratic state that serves their interests and fulfills their decent aspirations.

Regardless of the very likely murderous effects that this will have on the sole, miniscule state of the Jews, Condi--now true to State Department form--simply brushes aside the Jews' concerns as she does with the Kurds. Her latest "deal", for example, at the Gaza-Egyptian crossing, after Israel's unilateral withdrawal, typifies this. Her likely next squeeze will be to force the Jews to virtually cut their own microscopic state in half so that Arabs will have contiguity between Gaza terrorists and West Bank jihadists. What this will do to Israel's own contiguity is of no matter. Any Israeli leadership which permits this is a disgrace.

Take the cut off in American aid and support that will be threatened instead.

Better poor than dead.

And that cutoff will backfire tremendously on any American Administration that does this. The American people are fair and not stupid. While Dubya won't be running for office again, his pals will...including a brother with probable presidential aspirations of his own.

Back to Iraq and the Kurds...

Despite the non-stop bloodshed and turmoil in the Arab areas of Iraq (Arabs continue to blow each other apart by the hundreds); despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been killed, maimed, turned into refugees, and the like by Iraqi and Syrian Arabs over the decades; despite the fact that the Kurds have been marked as traitors because of their close ties to America; despite the fact that the most stable and democratic areas in Iraq are undoubtedly in the Kurdish areas…indeed, despite all of this and more, Dr. Rice simply brushed off a question regarding a Kurdish referendum on independence (which showed that at least 80% of the Kurds wanted this) with the following disdain:

…It’s the role of leadership to convince people that they really ought to stay in the same body.

A sickening disgrace.

Compare this hypocrisy to her Arab derriere kissing.

Did she tell Arabs that they already have the bulk of "Palestine" and that others besides themselves are also entitled to a reasonable share of justice in this multiethnic region? Did she tell them that more than mere lip service is required to obtain and maintain that justice?

Did she council a post-Tito Yugoslavia to remain as one? We led the pack in bringing about its dissolution, promoting a jihadist Dar ul-Islam agenda that had been knocking at the Balkans' gates for numerous centuries. The first Battle of Kosovo was fought to prevent this by the Serbs' Stephan Dusan in 1389. We aided the onslaught in the name of Kosova just a while back. That's the other side of the story most haven't heard...But it won us some points when we next bombed other Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq.

America can and should do better than this.

While it's true that the Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, is now the President Of Iraq, and that, since America's recent wars, the no fly zones (created as an afterthought in the wake of the massacre of thousands of Kurds who revolted at Bush the First's call, but were then left holding the bag by him) have permitted the blossoming of Kurdish democracy, autonomy, and such in the north, it's also true that this is all very iffy and tenuous.

Right now, the majority Shi'a need the Kurds to help offset determined Sunni opponents and suicide bombers.

Truth be told, the only source of stability America can count on over there comes from the Kurds...the very folks our State Department has full intentions to shaft yet again as it has disgracefully done too often before. Condi's words of advice at the Institute of Peace were nothing new.

So, here's my question, Dr. Rice...and from someone (me) whose work on this subject can be found on recommended reference lists of leading universities all around the world...including Paris' famed Institut d'Etudes Politiques, where you spoke on February 8, 2005:

With more and more pressure coming to bear for an American withdrawal from Iraq sooner rather than later, what will you, your fellow State Department Arabists, and Dubya himself demand as justice for some thirty million truly stateless Kurds? All of you have no qualms about forcing a rejectionist Arafatian/Hamas good cop/bad cop state down Israel's throat even though the alleged moderates have also openly proclaimed their intent to destroy Israel as a Jewish State and have called all dealings with the Jews merely a Trojan Horse. Again, Arabs already have some two dozen states on over six million square miles of territory--lands which they conquered and forcibly Arabized from scores of millions of non-Arabs in the region.

While I truly hope your plans for Iraq succeed and have supported the overthrow of Adolph--I mean Saddam--Hussein, the odds of you succeeding in forging an Iraqi nationalism triumphant over an Arab nationalism in Iraq are (I'll be generous) less than good. I'm sure you and your experts are familiar with the history of the previous attempts at doing this...so you know what your odds are--or at least should.

After America pulls out and the likely Shi'a Islamic Republic of Iraq is established, what then?

We all know where much of the Shi'a's support is coming from...the Ayatollah big brothers to the east.

Right now, like with the Kurds, the Shi'a also need us to help contain the Sunni Arabs who blow them up. After we help them further achieve their own goals, however, and we leave, the fun will really start. Shi'a Arabs have voiced the same disdain for the Kurds as Sunni Arabs have. They're just biding their time...

If America's ideal of a federalist State--which is a good one, but which Sunni Arabs mostly reject--collapses, what next for the Kurds? They have repeatedly been slaughtered over the decades in the wake of America's games in the region. Kurds have repeatedly been used and abused by the Foggy Folks, the CIA, and others as well.

As America now insists on the birth of Arab State #22, if Iraq goes sour, then--at long last--Kurdistan must be enter into the realm of nations as well.

Iraq was an artificial state to begin with...no more real than Yugoslavia. Its opposing ethnic groups were forced together for others' interests...especially the Arabs and the Brits' after World War I. British petroleum politics colluded with Arab nationalism to shaft the Kurds out of the one best chance they had at independence. Among other things, President Wilson's famed Fourteen Points had earlier addressed the self determination of these folks as well.

The fears of the Turks that Kurdish independence will spread to Turkish Kurdistan must be addressed...and can be.

The proportion of Kurds to Turks in Turkey is the same as Arabs to Jews in Israel proper...one fifth of the population. Turkey also dwarfs Israel geographically. Yet this doesn't stop the Foggy Folks from insisting that another, hostile, adjacent, independent Arab state emerge right on Israel's doorstep--in close contact with that potential Arab fifth column in Israel. State routinely uses this as a key argument, however, against the birth of a Kurdish state...along with angering its Arab buddies, of course. "Destabilizing" and so forth...

Regardless, those fears cannot condemn 30 million people to a perpetually stateless condition.

If there's a parallel to the plight of pre-1948 Jews, it is the Kurds...not "Palestinians," most of whom were new arrivals--Arab settlers--themselves into the land as the Records of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations and other solid documentation show.

Again, for all the attention Arabs get on this issue, they already have some two dozen states. They renamed themselves "Palestinians" instead of Arabs late in the game so they could argue the point better.

Zuheir Mohsein, official with the PLO's military wing and Executive Council, in his interview with the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, on 3/31/77, stated, "there are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, etc...It is only for political reasons that we now carefully underline Palestinian identity....this serves only a tactical purpose...a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel".

Using this Arab line of reasoning, then Kurds should rename themselves after geographical regions in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and so forth that they live in and demand multiple states--not just one--as well. And likewise for the Jews...Get the picture?

This won't happen, of course...for lots of reasons. But if justice demands yet another Arab state, America must also finally demand a share of it for its strangely loyal Kurdish friends.

No matter what we do, we're largely despised in that region.

And if you believe the Arabs' manure that it's all Israel's fault, you know nothing about their still pervading Dar ul-Islam versus Dar al-Harb worldview. Israel is just another manifestation of this...a painful one, admittedly. After all, how dare kilab yahud Jew dogs (half of whom in Israel were refugees from so-called "Arab" lands) ask, in one tiny state, for what Arabs demand for themselves in some two dozen of their own! There is no justice besides their own in Arab eyes. And so Kurdish children in Syria are forced to sing songs praising their Arab identity, Kurds in Iraq received similar treatment and worse, and so forth.

Unlike elsewhere, American bases will be welcome in Kurdistan. And, with its vast oil deposits, it will be an economically viable, democratic success story...unlike anything over two hundred million Arabs have created to date. In other words...something we can really be proud to be a part of. As we have built up despotic Arab regimes militarily, we must also do no less for Kurds who truly share more of our own values.

America's hope for a united Iraq is a noble one. But it will most likely be unattainable given the bloody realities at hand...realities that date back centuries and out of our control.

Again...think Yugoslavia...and the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Albanians, and so forth who were held together only by the likes of a Tito. How much longer will we be willing to expend American treasure and blood over such an unrealistic goal?

Arrangements can be made to share Kurdish oil wealth with Arabs, Turks, and others as well...as conditions permit. The Shi'a have their own oil wealth.

The fate of the Kurds, however, must not forcibly be tied--as Condi & Co. insisted back in 2004 and still do now--to Arabs of either stripe to the south. If a civil war breaks out among them, Kurds--who have supported America the most--ought not to suffer.

In other words, when America withdraws and all Hell breaks loose among the Arabs, America must then come up with a well thought out Plan B.

We must not leave the Kurds at others' mercy as we've done too often before.

The roadmap for Kurdistan is long overdue.

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