Now that Maliki is out of power the USA is helping the Kurds in Iraq and bombing the ISIS in what the Obama administration is calling a long term effort.
The Kurds have no home country and are rarely welcome anywhere they go. Sound familiar?
Why is the USA propping up the Kurds? What is the agenda?
Originally posted by KazetNagorra Kurds are fighting IS. The US is fighting IS. Now you put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Kurds are also a large component part of Iraq, but one that has a viable government system in place. It was the use of poison gas against the Kurds by Iraq that helped influence the US to intervene in the first place. So there is some consistency. What is harder for the US to accept is that the Kurds are doing better than the rest of Iraq and maybe no longer committed to remaining aboard that sinking ship. This is also hard for the US because it affects the aspirations of Kurds over the border in Turkey, a NATO ally. So a stronger Kurd army in [former?] Iraq will be a potential enemy to Turkey and hence to NATO and hence to the US. Oh life is tough but ISIS is also tough and today it is ISIS that is the problem.
Originally posted by finnegan Kurds are also a large component part of Iraq, but one that has a viable government system in place. It was the use of poison gas against the Kurds by Iraq that helped influence the US to intervene in the first place. So there is some consistency. What is harder for the US to accept is that the Kurds are doing better than the rest of Iraq and maybe no longe ...[text shortened]... ce to the US. Oh life is tough but ISIS is also tough and today it is ISIS that is the problem.
I read somewhere that relations between Turkey and Kurdistan have improved. Quick Googling finds this. Perhaps Turkey no longer has a problem with a strong Kurdistan.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—The Kurds of Iraq have the right to decide the future of their land, said Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Friday.
“The Kurds of Iraq can decide for themselves the name and type of the entity they are living in,” Celik told Rudaw in an interview to be published soon.
The AKP is the party of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan under whom Ankara and Erbil have built strong economic and diplomatic relations.
In case Iraq gets partitioned, said Celik, “the Kurds, like any other nation, will have the right to decide their fate.”
Celik believes that Iraq is already headed towards partition thanks to “Maliki’s sectarian policies.”
In the past several days fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have occupied most of Iraq’s Sunni areas in the center of the country.
They have declared war on Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite government whom they accuse of persecuting the Sunni population.
“Turkey has been supporting the Kurdistan Region till now and will continue this support,” said Celik.
Turkey and Kurdistan have signed a 50-year energy deal and Kurdish oil is exported via a pipeline that connects the autonomous region to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
Originally posted by Sleepyguy I read somewhere that relations between Turkey and Kurdistan have improved. Quick Googling finds this. Perhaps Turkey no longer has a problem with a strong Kurdistan.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—The Kurds of Iraq have the right to decide the future of their land, said Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on ...[text shortened]... to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/130620142
That sounds like good news. It is important to Turkey that they settle their differences with the Kurdish community. This offers also the prospect of the Kurdish region of Iraq becoming more closely associated with secular democracies in Europe.
"We have very brave peshmerga," said Masrour Barazani, chancellor of the Kurdish region security council. "But they were outgunned," he said of the clashes that led to them withdrawing from the minority areas that have now been overrun. "They had worn out light machine guns. We don't have any armaments to counter what Isis is carrying."
A flush of weapons delivered by the US on Monday has eased immediate fears of light arms shortages. But the new rifles and bullets are no match for the heavy weaponry carried by Isis, most of which was also supplied by the US – to the Iraqi military during the nine-year occupation.
Much of those heavy weapons, including tanks, humvees, troop carriers and artillery pieces were seized by Isis when the Iraqi Army abandoned all its bases in the Arab north of the country in mid-June.
The enormous arsenal has given Isis an added potency that continues to startle the Kurds and expose the limitations of their military and political power.
"I don't care if we get tanks from the devil," said Manzer Jalal, a volunteer Kurdish fighter and former peshmerga member on a frontline near Irbil this week. "We will fight them with whatever it takes, but I don't mind telling you how happy I am about the US jets."
Originally posted by KazetNagorra Kurds are fighting IS. The US is fighting IS. Now you put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Nobody likes the Kurds in that region. They are seen as a threat. Turkey bombs them and so do every other country that has them within their borders. Kurds are turds. Havn't you heard?
Why is the USA so interested in being their ally? What do they have to offer, a puppet government that serves the west well? What else?
GW Bush gave Al Maliki personal lessons on how to be a politician according to Frontline (PBS). Al Maliki was nothing. He was no politician. He was just a puppet that they were willing to bet on. That bet didn't pan out.
...study led by Indian and Estonian academics, including Dr Toomas Kivisild of Cambridge University, has confirmed their origins in the Indian sub-continent, and even identified the location and social background from which they emerged.
The findings have been welcomed by Britain's Gypsy Council, which said it would help to promote understanding of Roma people throughout Europe.
...The study, which was published this month [Dec 2012] in the journal Nature, examined Y chromosomes in DNA samples to compare the genetic signatures of European Roma men with those of thousands of Indians from throughout the sub-continent.
...When the researchers overlaid the closest matches onto a genetic map of India, the highest density was in areas dominated by India's "doma", "scheduled tribes and castes" – the low caste dalits or untouchables who suffer widespread and generational discrimination and usually do society's dirtiest jobs.
12 Aug '14 15:43
Rise of the Kurds
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