At present
only one military force is effectively combatting Islamic State (IS) on the
ground – the
Kurdish guerrilla fighting force known generically as the Peshmerga (“Those Who
Face Death”). For weeks, IS has been losing ground in northern Iraq to Iraqi Kurdish fighters; now they
are succumbing to Peshmerga troops in Syria. On
January 27 it
was announced that the Kurdish forces had “expelled all IS fighters
from Kobane and have full control of the town”. After more than four
months of intensive fighting, the Kurdish fighting force had chased IS out of
the strategically important town situated on the Syrian-Turkish border.
In fact
almost all of the recent victories over IS have been achieved by Kurdish
guerrillas, willing to fight where others have collapsed – like Iraq’s security
forces, with some million men under arms, which fled in the face of IS’s lightning
advance last summer. More to the point,
perhaps, the Peshmerga are the force with “boots on the ground”, unlike any of the
62-nation strong anti-IS coalition, established by President Obama. All of them promised, and many are providing,
financial, logistical, military and humanitarian assistance by the bucketful,
but not one fighting soldier on the ground, at least officially.
It is true that the Peshmerga’s
military successes might not have occurred so quickly, or so conclusively, without
the aid of substantial American support by way of air cover, training by US special
forces (and perhaps
something more than training, albeit unacknowledged) and the plentiful
provision of weapons. For example, prior
to the Kurds securing Kobane, US-led
coalition aircraft pounded IS positions 17 times in just 24 hours.
Nevertheless, the Kurdish guerrillas are the ones actually undertaking the
fighting, the victories are theirs to celebrate, and they deserve the
congratulations of all nations opposed to the brutal and inhumane IS
organization and its unacceptable ambitions for the future of the world.
How can the world repay these
doughty soldiers, fighting on humanity’s behalf?
The Kurds yearn for the restoration of what might
be called “Greater Kurdistan”. The Kurds
are an ethnic group some 30 million strong who inhabit a distinct
geographical area flanked by mountain ranges.
It was once referred to as Kurdistan. No such entity is depicted on current maps. What was once Kurdistan, together with all
its 30-plus million inhabitants, was carved up in the negotiations following
the First World War, which dismembered the old Ottoman empire. Following the treaty of Lausanne in 1923, the
territory that had been Kurdistan was divided up and allocated to the sovereign
states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Kurds currently form the largest minority in Syria, while within Iraq,
following the downfall of Sadam Hussein, they have developed a near-autonomous
state across the north of the country which has taken the name Kurdistan.
Most Kurds, however, live within Turkey’s borders. They
comprise about 20% of Turkey's 77 million population and have long
been a pressing political problem for Turkey. In the 1980s an armed insurgency challenged the Turkish state, which
responded with martial law. In
the subsequent, and on-going, conflict between Turkey and the Kurdish
independence movement, the PKK, more than 40,000 people have been killed. Which is the most obvious explanation for why
Turkey’s president, Rece Tayyip Erdogan, apparently preferred to see IS retain
control of Kobane rather than assist Kurdish fighters to recapture it, and sat
on his hands for months while the battle raged just over the Turkish border.
But the recapture of the town by the Kurds is precisely
what has happened, with the aid and support not only of the US, but of the 62
nations who oppose IS and are dedicated to its destruction. In short, Erdogan has been backing the wrong
horse – and not only Erdogan. World
opinion as a whole has not been noticeably supportive of the idea of Kurdish
independence in the past. Western policy
in Iraq has been to attempt to retain the disparate areas – Sunni, Shia and Kurd – in one unified state, rather than
permit the Kurds to transform their autonomous region into a sovereign entity.
One notable
exception has been Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In a
speech delivered on June 29, 2014 at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, he declared that
Israel supports the transformation of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan into an
independent Kurdish state. "We need to support the Kurdish aspiration for
independence,” he said. “They deserve it."
Following that lead, in August 2014 Senator
Conrad Burns urged the US government to support the Kurds in their
aspiration. “The people of Kurdistan
have been striving for independence and the right of self-government for
generations,” he wrote. “They have been close several times only to be struck
down by outside world powers. They have endured
atrocities and have paid the price for freedom. It is
therefore time that the United States took heed of these sacrifices and
fulfilled its moral obligation to support the people of Kurdistan and their
ambitions for freedom and national sovereignty.”
Britain’s traditional stance has been to back Kurdish
autonomy, but to oppose statehood. In
a recent editorial, the London Daily Telegraph asked whether that
would remain the UK’s position after IS was beaten. “Britain should be thinking not just about
how to defeat IS” it wrote, “but what might lie beyond.”
Meanwhile gallant Kurdish fighters are still putting
their lives on the line, combatting the dark forces that glory in violating accepted
standards of humane and decent behaviour in pursuit of their political and
religious aims. The Kurds deserve the grateful thanks of each one of the 62 nations that
have signed up to the anti-IS alliance. When
the final battle has been fought and won – or even in advance of that happy event – supporting the Kurds’ desire for an independent sovereign
state would be a suitable gesture of appreciation.
Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 2 February 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Experts/The-Kurds-standard-bearers-for-humanity-389751
Published in the Eurasia Review, 30 January 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/31012015-kurds-standard-bearers-humanity-oped/
Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 2 February 2015:
http://www.jpost.com/Experts/The-Kurds-standard-bearers-for-humanity-389751
Published in the Eurasia Review, 30 January 2015:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/31012015-kurds-standard-bearers-humanity-oped/