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KurdistanObserver.com
The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
Washington, DC
An
Open Letter to President George W. Bush
Mr. President,
We, the Kurdistan’s People
Independence Platform (KPIP), wish to voice our concern about your method of
spreading freedom and democracy to the Middle Eastern Regions. Your plans are
far from reaching their goals of freeing the nations in the region and your
policies do not reassure us that you have a basic understanding of the
historical, political and cultural background of this region. It is most
important that you understand that the Kurds are the largest nation in the area,
comprising 50 million people who are denied sovereignty by the occupying
countries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The Kurds have always striven for
their right to freedom, independence and self-determination, and through the
years have paid a high price for this aspiration.
Mr. President, you continue to remind the world of the rights of your country to
defend its homeland security and national interests. You maintain that by
spreading freedom and democracy you are protecting your own nation as well as
the citizens of the world. We ask how you can justify this while you deny the
rights and freedoms of fifty million Kurds? For the first time in recent
history, there exists a unique opportunity for Southern Kurdistan to realize its
own destiny. This right is being denied by the upcoming election, which will
once again result in political power being based in Baghdad.
Your fight on world terrorism has achieved limited success with the dismantling
of the Taliban regime and the deposing of Saddam Hussein. However, thousands of
innocent people have lost their lives in the process; the region is even more
unstable now than before the liberation and the situation continues to
deteriorate. Not only have you alienated world opinion, undermined the integrity
of the United Nations but also in effect fuelled the fires of fundamentalism.
At this point in time, we believe a serious
re-evaluation of your policies in the region is necessary. South Kurdistan has
proven its ability to govern its own people in the last twelve years. During the
liberation, we cooperated successfully with the allied forces, and have since
maintained stability and civil order. Surely, this should reassure you as to our
abilities to self-govern. The fact that you are still imposing a colonial based
ideology, centralizing government in Baghdad, will surely meet the same pitfalls
as the last 85 years of Iraqi occupation have done. Linking South Kurdistan to
Iraq in the 1920s was a huge mistake of historical proportions, and the
repetition of this mistake is a direct threat to all Kurdish people and their
right to a true democratic state.
With the dawning of the 21st Century, we implore you not to deny the
Southern Kurdish people of this real opportunity of determining our own destiny
by forcing us to partake in the upcoming Iraqi election. History can only repeat
itself with the forced inclusion of our people in a country that continues to
deny our rights to nationhood. The atrocities such as the chemical attack on
Halabja city, the genocide of more than 200,000 innocent Kurds, and the
destruction of thousands of towns and villages in Kurdistan must surely be
resigned to the garbage bin of History. Any opportunity for the rise of despots
such as Saddam Hussein must also be vehemently denied.
We canvas your support for the creation of a democratic and independent State of
Kurdistan, and trust you realize that the stability of our nation would only
strengthen our ability to cooperate and support the allied nations in the fight
against world terrorism. Surely, your support of a Kurdish nation conforms to
your belief in the right of freedom and democracy for the whole world.
Signed by the committee members of the
Kurdistan’s People Independence Platform (KPIP), an organization that works for
the creation of an independent state for all parts of Kurdistan.
Oslo, Norway, January 11, 2005
sekoikurdstan@walla.com
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