By: Rashid Karadaghi

Oct 7, 2002

Even though I know that what I am about to say, and have said before just like many other Kurdish patriots, will probably fall on deaf ears, I believe it is our obligation to express what we believe is right for our people in the hope that those who speak on our people’s behalf officially in national and international forums will some day hear our voice and that of millions of other Kurds and tell the whole world what the Kurdish people really want, instead of trying, wittingly or unwittingly, to abort the unique opportunity that our people have today to finally become free from occupation and establish their long overdue independent state. Only then, and only when the Kurdish leadership stops reciting the ridiculous and insulting mantra: " The Kurds do not want an independent Kurdish state. …We have never asked for separation from Iraq. … We are all Iraqis…. We are Iraqis first and Kurds second. … The Kurds will have no future without Iraq. ,etc." will they become the true leaders and representatives of the Kurdish people and their people will achieve their freedom.

When I heard in the news a few weeks ago that President Bush had welcomed the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington for meetings at his Texas ranch, an honor accorded only to heads of state and not to mere ambassadors, and when I saw the still photo of the meeting showing the ambassador in such a confident and relaxed manner with the President of the United States, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for our people and our leaders. Obviously, the Saudi ambassador was accorded this honor and this respect not because of his person but for being the representative of a "nation" whose voice carries a lot of weight not only with the United States but also with other decision-makers in the world.

By contrast, when our leaders, not ambassadors, come to Washington, they would be lucky to be received by a low-ranking Administration official and even then mostly as part of the "Iraqi Opposition," instead of representatives of the Kurdish nation. The disparity between how we, a nation of over thirty-five million, are perceived compared to other nations is enough to make anyone outraged.

We do not begrudge Saudi Arabia or any other nation their status on the world stag; we are merely saying that a nation of 35-40 million should not be reduced to what our people have been reduced to – stateless and status-less, persecuted beyond belief, and deprived of the most basic rights that other nations take for granted. But the question to ask here is: Are we ourselves as Kurds, leaders and followers alike, also contributing to deepening our own dilemma and our intolerable condition by our own attitude, or are we nothing more than helpless victims? Do we have any willpower or has the enemy taken away even that from us? No one doubts that our enemies – our oppressors and occupiers of our country – are among the most vicious and inhuman in history, for they have been holding our people captive and our country occupied against all laws of God, Nature, and Man and have no intention of relinquishing their occupation. But are our enemies and their supporters totally responsible for our people’s suffering or are we also compounding our problem by our inability to convey to the whole world openly and without fear what our people really want, and then fighting to achieve it?

The free and independent nations of the world did not attain their status by being timid, self-effacing, hesitant, minimalist, and lacking in self-confidence but by being bold, assertive, determined, and self-confident. They did not ask for their rights: they took them.

I believe that we are selling ourselves too short. No nation that has suffered and sacrificed as much as the Kurds in order to be free would ever have called for remaining part of the state that has caused all that suffering and all those sacrifices. I have yet to hear a single person from any oppressed nation accepting, let alone advocating, to remain part of the oppressor nation. Yet, those who speak on our behalf are doing precisely that, forgetting that they represent a people who have suffered too much and too long at the hands of their oppressors to ever trust them again or to want to have anything to do with them again. They forget that their people don’t want Big Brother to come back and be in charge of them and torture them again. They are bargaining away what their people have been dying for by the thousands for over a century. In the name of the people, they are disclaiming everything that their people have fought for and deserve to have. They are at pains every time they get a chance to renounce any and all Kurdish claim to freedom from oppression. Against all reason and logic, they continue to call for the unity and so-called "territorial integrity" of the very state that has done nothing for their people since its creation eighty years ago but, instead, has destroyed everything they had built, instilled fear and terror in their hearts, and repeatedly committed acts of genocide against them. Can anyone explain the wisdom of this course of action to those who are most affected by it, namely, the Kurdish people?

For the Kurds to accept, let alone call for, remaining part of the occupying state of Iraq, or any of the other states occupying Kurdistan, under any system or circumstances whatsoever, would be like Jews wanting to go back to being slaughtered by Nazi Germany. Can you imagine finding a single Jew who would entertain the idea? Yet, we see our representatives playing second fiddle to the so-called Iraqi Opposition and seeking that Opposition’s approval of the crumbs called "Federalism" --- and they are hardly getting even that! When you seek to be humiliated, you will be humiliated. A bold leadership does not seek anybody’s approval of its people’s legitimate rights, least of all a feeble "Opposition"; it declares them to the world and takes them because it has every right to do so. . When nations and individuals are contented with little, they end up getting even less. It does not take a genius to know this; all it takes is simple common sense. Begging for your God-given rights, or asking those who have usurped them to "grant" them back to you will get you nothing but their contempt.

The next few weeks and months may prove decisive for our people and our cause. How we act as a people will determine the outcome. We must never accept the proposition that it is up to our enemies to set our agenda and decide our future because we know only too well what kind of future they want for us. The Kurdish people must make their own history and set their own agenda for the future regardless of what their enemies and their supporters have designed for them. The Kurdish people have every right to expect of their leaders not to squander this historic opportunity but to take full advantage of it because sometimes there are no second chances. The people and their leaders must take the leap and take their future into their own hands, for if they don’t, the future will be as bleak as the past if not more so.

We will become a recognized "nation," like all the other nations of the world who have achieved that status, the day we see ourselves as one and give ourselves the right to be one. No one can, or will, "give" us that right but ourselves. We should not expect others, no matter how sympathetic to our cause, to bear our burden or to transform our thinking for us; it is our job to do so. We will become a "nation" only when we overhaul our mentality fully and completely. Once we do that, our perception of ourselves and others will change and, regardless of how many enemies we are surrounded by and regardless of how hard they try to annihilate us with their latest weapons of war, we will become a "nation" destined not to slavery but to freedom.
 
 
 
 

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