by Gerald A. Honigman
Kurdish Soldiers Qameshli, Syria. Photo by Yan Boechat/VOA – Voice of America, Public Domain, Wikipedia
Recently, President Trump sent out a mass mailing asking if fellow Americans supported his long delayed military actions in Iran.
On the same day that I received this email, breaking news reported that the CIA may be supporting Iraqi Kurds linking up with their Iranian cousins to help give the rest of the Iranian people the courage needed to also rise up in full revolt against their repressive, murderous Islamist tormentors.
Such a decision to indirectly support America’s best historical allies in that region besides Israel, 41 MILLION TRULY STATELESS Kurds, who were promised independence after WWI, but got shafted out of it by a collusion of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism, may be a step forward, but so far it’s actually very disturbing.
Why is the Kurdish cause only worthy of minimal support, while Arabism’s demand for a 22nd or 23rd state lionized? And that would be its second, not first, state in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine—Jordan having been created out of almost 80% of the total area in 1922.
After WWI, President Woodrow Wilson included them in his “14 Points,” and my own extensive doctoral work on this subject has been included on Paris’s acclaimed Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) reference list since 1982.
President Trump has evidently decided to allow the CIA to once again temporarily use and abuse courageous and very effective Kurdish forces to fight our own enemies in that region—this time the IRGC and Basij in Iran.
The problem is that when we did this several times before, when we no longer needed them, we simply abandoned them to their assorted Arab and Turkish genocidal enemies—and sometimes closely related Iranian foes as well…
When Iran and Arab Iraq fought a costly war in the 1980’s, the CIA and Secretary of State Kissinger encouraged the Kurds to revolt against Saddam Hussein.
When the Shah made his peace with Saddam, the CIA pulled the rug out from under their legs and ended support, abandoning them to their Arab executioners who possessed tanks, fighter aircraft, helicopter gunships, artillery, etc…far outgunning what the Kurds were given.
Legendary Pulitzer Prize winning NYTimes journalist, William Safire, wrote his “Sellout of the Kurds” series at this time, with Daniel Schorr’s Pike Papers exposes as well….“Kurds Often Used as Pawns in Power Struggles”…
https://share.google/SiJTaQcIwjLbeSi6c
Syrian Arabs and Turks have had a similar genocidal approach to these ancient, indigenous people, the descendants of Medes, Kassites, Hurrians, and Gutians (Guti-Gurti-Kurdi). They predate invading Arabs and Turks in their mountainous ancestral homeland by millennia.
Professor Ismet Cherif Vanly’s 1968 book, “The Syrian ‘Mein Kampf’ Against the Kurds,” detailed the same murderous, oppressive Arab actions which are being repeated as I write this current article, and being committed by Trump’s additional new Islamist buddy ruling Syria today, Ahmed al-Sharaa. Druze, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, and others are his victims as well.
At a time when the only democratic entity anywhere in the Middle East besides Israel is found in Syrian Kurdistan, with Iraqi Kurdistan also far ahead of any Arab nation regarding this as well, President Trump has unfortunately decided to bow to Turk and Arab Kurd-hating oil potentate and associated Big Oil (Arabian American Oil Company—ARAMCO, etc.) influence.
This is a stain on America’s reputation, especially since it’s an intentionally planned travesty which we repeated several times earlier.
Here’s General Petrous’s reaction to this betrayal…
The following provides a detailed summary of this overall disgraceful situation…
The Turkey of today has been turned into a
racist, autocratic, domineering, intolerant, Islamist nation which, for a long time, has suppressed and oppressed its own 23 million (of 41 million total) Kurds—outlawing their own language and culture, renaming them “Mountain Turks.” It’s previously committed atrocities against Armenians, Assyrians, Yazidis, and others as well…
It gets away with much of this because it shares a long border with Russia and sits on the strategically important Straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles—Russia’s outlets to the Mediterranean Sea from its Black Sea bases.
So, Turkey, regardless of its intolerant leadership, remains an important NATO ally—a moral mixed blessing, for sure. It has the second largest armed forces, besides America, as well.
Across the border in Syrian Kurdistan, Kurds have been fighting Turkish supported Islamist organizations, the same folks who’ve been blowing up American soldiers, over the years.
So, what sense does it make to withdraw American support for its loyal Syrian Kurdish allies—who, along with Iraqi Kurdistan, would welcome having American bases on their territory at a time when Erdogan’s Turkey has made the Incirlik Air Force base contingent on America’s acquiescing to Turkey’s ongoing oppression of its own and neighboring nations’s Kurdish populations…
As a final offering for now on this important and disturbing issue, President Trump would be wise to read his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s call for support for our loyal Kurdish friends and allies…
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