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America Betrays the Kurds--Again By: Sabah Salih 24 February 2008 Ever since the Bush administration surrendered its Iraq policy to the losers of the State Department and Gates and his crew took over the Pentagon, betrayal of the Kurds has been in the offing. In the past, the State had gone for the wholesale betrayal of the Kurds not once but twice. In each case, cold-blooded exploitation was followed by ruthless abandonment. This may not be a history that America wants to remember, but it is a chapter that the people of Kurdistan will never forget. Its repetition in some form has been in the making for some time. Fixing Iraq, Bush apparently has been advised, can be done in a very convenient way: shafting the Kurds. The Arabs, both the Sunnis and Shiites, have never really gotten around their chauvinism when it comes the Kurds; at heart, they are for giving it to the Kurds. An anti-Kurd policy is guaranteed to endear America not only to the Arabs of Iraq but also to the rulers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the rest. Even more so to the arch Kurd-hatters of Turkey, who are reminded every day that, despite their flag, their national anthem, their borders, their state still lacks moral and ethical legitimacy as long as Kurdistan, in the north and the south, continues breathing. By giving the Turkish regime just enough power to make itself feel that it has Kurdistan Regional Government at its mercy, that it can kick it and humiliate it and trample upon its dignity at will, the Bush administration has won Turks over at Kurdish expense. That there is great satisfaction with this anti-Kurd policy can be seen in the recent cacophony of Arab, Turk, and American voices accusing the Kurds of having too much and still wanting more. Using its Arab and Turkish surrogates to squeeze the Kurds seems to be the Bush administration’s new-found strategy for paving the way for the mother of all betrayals: Revamping the Iraqi constitution in ways that would make article 140 history; Kurd-haters couldn’t be pleased more to have Kirkuk wrenched away from Kurdistan for good. This also explains why the Bush administration is not embarrassed in the least by, on the one hand, talking to the Kurds, and, on the other, giving the Turks the green light to go and hammer at them whenever they feel like it. This is the administration’s way of reminding the Kurds that America owes them nothing, that in this conflict they are all alone, but that if they choose to be America’s unconditional puppet and keep a low profile and forget all about Kirkuk, then America and its so-called allies in the region can work with them. So far Turkish action, in the guise of fighting the PKK, has been a carefully worked out plan to undermine, psychologically and militarily and economically, the Kurdistan Regional Government. Each move is calculated to be an assault on Kurdish national dignity. This is an outcome both Baghdad and Washington fully support. The message to the people of Kurdistan is that you have no government to protect you, and that from now on the Turks, in collusion with Baghdad and Washington, are your masters. Encouraged by anti-Kurd sentiment in Baghdad and Washington, the Turks have been steadily expanding their aggression against Kurdistan, from targeting remote mountain hideouts to what has now become the start of a slow bleeding of a nation. You may say destroying four bridges is nothing, but in a place like Kurdistan that would be the equivalent of something like 10% of the region’s bridges. What’s more, if the Turks are allowed to get away with that this time, imagine what they will do next time. The moment has come for the Kurdish people to stop being nice to the Bush administration. More important, the Kurdish leadership should start immediately a serious debate at school, at work, at home, and in the media to translate national outrage into a suitable course of action against both the Turkish regime and the Bush administration. Dr. Sabah Salih is Professor of English at Bloomsburg University.
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