“We are carrying out the will of the people.”
Kosovo’s Prime Minister
By: Dr. Rashid Karadaghi
Feb 25, 20008
When Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci, declared Kosovo a free and
independent state last week, freedom-loving people all over the world rejoiced,
for they saw their own freedom in the newly-attained freedom of the Kosovars.
But, as expected, the forces of darkness in Serbia, Russia, and elsewhere ---
believers in the “live and let die” philosophy --- were angry and they denounced
the courageous move because independence meant that they would not have the
Kosovars to kick around anymore.
No nation that has experienced oppression and occupation could but applaud
Kosovo’s independence. We Kurds are especially joyous because this momentous
event proves, like so many others before it, that freedom from foreign
occupation and oppression is attainable even if the occupier hides behind all
the tanks and the bombers and other lethal weapons in the world, provided the
oppressed have the will to be free, for, in the words of Albert Camus, “Once the
slave says ‘NO!’ he is free.” History is full of examples of powerful armies
that have, in the end, crumbled in the face of people power. Our own Kurdish
history attests to this truth.
How we wish the same words that were spoken by Kosovo’s Prime Minister were
spoken by a Kurdish leader to make every Kurd’s dream of independence a reality!
Sadly, that wasn’t to be. Instead of “carrying out the will of the people,” the
Kurdish leadership buried the will of the people as expressed in the results of
the referendum conducted in Southern Kurdistan in 2005 in which over 98% of the
Kurdish people in Southern Kurdistan voted for independence.
Instead of carrying out “the will of the people,” which was expressed loudly and
clearly in the referendum, the Kurdish leadership made a historic mistake by
rushing to Baghdad immediately after Iraq’s liberation in 2003 and playing a
major role in reconstituting Iraq as a unified country and becoming a “bridge”
of reconciliation between the warring Arab Iraqi factions, instead of making
sure that Iraq would never again be reconstituted as a state because a so-called
“new” Iraq would not hesitate for a moment to do what the Iraq of Saddam and all
his predecessors did for eighty years to annihilate our people.
Now that Iraq is about to stand on its own feet again, those same warring
factions that the Kurds were trying so hard to reconcile are beginning, in a
very assertive and loud way, typical of wounded tyrants attempting to restore
their former “glory,” to pay the Kurds back for their good deeds! It is no
longer a cliché to say that history is repeating itself, for it is happening
right before our eyes! And this is only the beginning. Just wait for the snake
to fully come out of its hibernation! Resuscitating the Baghdad monster will, no
doubt, come back to haunt us and we will curse the day we breathed life into it
again, instead of letting it expire. No nation that has experienced the likes of
the Anfal and Halabja genocide would have acted the way we did, just as freedom
was within our grasp.
The Kosovars had not suffered one-hundredth of the atrocities at the hands of
the Serbs that the Kurdish people have suffered at the hands of Arab Iraq, yet
they refused to remain part of a country that oppressed them. By contrast, the
Kurdish leadership went against all the evidence of past and current history and
against all the wisdom of the ages and voluntarily led the Kurdish people back
into Arab Iraq’s cage!
To be fair to our own people, we must not forget that, unlike the Kurds, the
Kosovars have well-connected friends who have championed their cause and made it
much easier for them to get to where they are now. Their declaration of
independence was hailed by Western leaders as contributing to the stability of
the region, whereas the world considers even a federation for the Kurds within
Iraq a cause for alarm, claiming it would destabilize the Middle East!. Fascist
Turkey, which fights tooth and nail even the mention of the name “Kurdistan” and
says the only good Kurd is a dead Kurd, was the first country to recognize
Kosovo’s independence!
Regardless, we have to accept a truth that we have always known but pretended
otherwise, which is, that, unlike some other oppressed people, we have no real
friends who would stand with us when we need them. But this doesn’t mean that we
have to accept our unacceptable condition. What it means, though, is that we
have to rely on our own people, forty million strong, if we are to be free and
independent. Moreover, if we wait for the occupiers of our homeland and their
supporters to grant us our freedom out of the goodness of their heart, we will
have to wait till the end of time, for no oppressor has ever given his victims
their freedom voluntarily, which is why our forefathers have said, “Freedom is
taken, not given.” The day our people believe in the true meaning of this
ancient saying and act on it, we will follow the example of land-locked Kosovo,
among others, and be free.
