November 2017: History of Kurds Covering Recent Years

[Anthea]

Kurds' Desire for Independence Remains a Long-Cherished Goal
By Jeffrey T. Fowler, Ph.D.

The history of the Kurds, a minority ethnic group in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, dates back approximately 3,000 years to the ancient Persian kingdom of Medes and Persians. The Kurds claim they are descendants of the Medes and traditionally live in the mountainous regions of their homeland.

While the Kurdish faith originally was Zoroastrianism, most Kurds today are Sunni Muslims. There are also small communities of Kurds who are Jews, Christians and Bahais. Kurds are essentially not Arabs, who view their faith somewhat differently than their Sunni and Shia Arab neighbors. The breakdown of Kurds across the region today is essentially as follows: Turkey 13 million; Iran six million; Iraq four million; Syria (and Lebanon) one million.
Historical Difficulties in Establishing a Kurdish Nation-State

After the First World War, the Treaty of Sevres delineated how the old Ottoman Turkish Empire would be divided. The treaty was pro-Kurdish and allowed for a Kurdish referendum on a homeland in Turkey, but the newly minted Turkish Republic rejected the treaty and the planned referendum.

From 1918 to 1990, the Kurds waged insurgent campaigns to gain a homeland. All of those insurgencies were put down forcibly and with increasing repression of the Kurdish minority across the region.

In modern times, the Kurds have been oppressed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq as well as during the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The Hussein regime killed approximately 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds during the al-Anfal campaign in the 1980s, often with the use of poison gas. The Iranian Revolution allegedly executed 1,200 Kurdish political prisoners.

Due to the history of oppression and their unique cultural attributes, the Kurds have long dreamed of a separate Kurdistan.
Kurdish Nominal Autonomy and Political Progress

The U.S.-created “no-fly zone” after the First Gulf War (1990-1991) established nominal autonomy within the Kurdish-dominated portion of Iraq. In 1992, a coalition of Kurdish political interests created the Iraqi Kurdistan Front and subsequently the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

These actions led to the construction of a regional secular nation-state in league with other parts of Iraq. It had its own Kurdish parliament, military force (the Peshmerga), established borders and a Kurdish foreign policy.

One of the interesting facets about the Kurdish forces is their ready acceptance of women fighters, particularly in the People’s Protection Unit or (YPJ). Women have been very active in fighting ISIS in Syria. Another unique facet of the Kurdish people is their support for Israel, which is reciprocated in kind by the Jewish state.

The Kurds also support the Yazidi “Sun Brigade” in the fight against ISIS. The minority Yazid population was the victim of genocide under ISIS.

It is important to remember that the Kurds are loosely federated across the Middle East and that one party, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), fought a bloody internal conflict in Turkey from 1978 to 2013 before a ceasefire was declared. There are many factions within the loose Kurdish regional federation. As with many other countries, their politics can be truly byzantine, but the factions have one common goal – the creation of a Kurdish state.

Iraqi Kurdistan conducted a referendum on autonomy on September 25, 2017, and the results were overwhelmingly in favor of a Kurdish state. However, the Baghdad government is adamantly opposed to a Kurdish state in Iraq, in part because the oil-rich city of Kirkuk is in Kurdish hands.

The only state to support the Kurdish move for independence is Israel. A Kurdish state would give Israel a real and militarily strong ally in the region. The lengthy diaspora of the Kurds to establish a homeland of their own strikes a familiar chord with Jews around the world.

The Trump administration has not supported Kurdish independence, perhaps because the U.S. has backed both the Kurds and the Iraqi government in recent years. Some Middle East observers believe that U.S. decision was a mistake. The Kurds have been staunch allies and brave fighters willing to work with the United States for some years now.

Kurdish Support against ISIS

In 2014, the Iranian regime, perhaps proving the old adage that, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” began supporting the Kurds against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The religiously liberal Kurds and the hardline Muslim Iranians seem to be a strange pair.

However, the leadership in Tehran, ever pragmatic, may have concluded it is better to fight ISIS in Iraq or Syria than in its own country. Since then, the U.S. has provided support for the Kurds and views them as a major force in the fight against ISIS.

The YPJ has been instrumental in driving ISIS out of strongholds in northern Syria. The combination of U.S. airpower and the effective military operations of both the YPJ and the Syrian Democratic Front (SDF) operating in coordination resulted in reclaiming Raqqa, the ISIS “capital” in Syria.

Unfortunately, Turkey has used ISIS as an excuse for attacking Kurdish fighters in Syria. Turkey sees no difference between its internal enemies of many years, the PKK and the YPG.

In Iraq, Kurdish Peshmerga and associated forces have assisted the Iraqi army and U.S. forces to retake Mosul from ISIS. The temporary standoff between the Iraqi government and the Kurdish forces in Kirkuk was indicative of friction between them, but the situation was resolved peacefully by a Kurdish withdrawal. The issue of an independent or autonomous Kurdistan remains in play.

Uncertain Kurdish Future

The dream of a Kurdish state remains uncertain. The Kurds have benefited from significant upgrades in equipment from the United States, as well as from the experience of working with U.S. advisers.

The Kurds have also experienced the freedom of having an autonomous region for some time now. Considering the long history of the Kurds, my money is on these tough and resilient people to prevail eventually. As the Kurdish proverb says, “Not every cloud brings rain.”

https://inhomelandsecurity.com/kurds-de ... shed-goal/

Jeffrey T. Fowler, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Security and Global Studies at American Military University. He holds a B.A. in law enforcement from Marshall University, an M.A. in military history from Vermont College of Norwich University and a Ph.D. in business administration with a concentration in criminal justice from Northcentral University. Jeffrey is also a published author, a former New York deputy sheriff and a retired Army officer, having served over 20 years in the U.S. Army.

[Anthea]

Will the Kurds be this generation’s Montagnards?
By Hans Sinah Oxford Eagle Contributors

While Americans may disagree on the best policy and strategy to turn the Middle East into a region of peaceful, freedom-loving democracies dotted with McDonald’s, Ford dealerships and suburbia, if indeed that is our goal, few would agree that we are any closer to establishing peace in that region now than when we invaded Iraq in 2003. Our shifting policies and goals aside, a recent news item makes clear we may be on the brink of repeating one of our more egregious mistakes from the Vietnam war: Abandoning a people who fought courageously with American troops and against our common enemies.

Three weeks ago, the world was presented the ugly reality of Iraqi troops, along with Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary forces, using American M1A1 Abrams tanks, slaughtering Kurdish fighters. The Iraqi’s goal was to destroy the Kurdish people’s will for independence, the natural yearning of all peoples to, as the inscription on the Statue of Liberty reads, “breathe free.”

Seeing American weapons being used against the Kurdish fighters, and noting the deafening silence from Washington, the president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region — the only area in that warring region that has remained a beacon of stability, a bulwark against extremism in all its forms, and even a place of women’s equality, (as in Israel, Kurdish men and women fight together for their respective homelands), resigned and sadly noted that with allies like America, they may now turn towards Russia.

The Kurdish people have seen their homeland divided and dispersed throughout history, including by the powers-to-be after World War I. Despite promises by the victors of the war, the Kurds emerged from the Great War era dispersed among what is now the southern part of Turkey, the northern provinces of Iran, what at the time was a French-run sphere of Syria, and the British sphere of Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq. No one, as was normal in the heydays of post-colonialism, seemed to have asked the Kurds what they wanted. Had they been asked, the answer then, as now, would surely have been – a country.

Fast-forward to America’s entry into the region, and specifically the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We poured money, men and equipment into Iraq, sometimes in amounts and proportions that can only be viewed as staggering. In terms of monies, who can forget us sending plane-loads of cash — and I mean this literally, to Iraq: Between 2003 and 2004, during the existence of the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority, we delivered approximately (no one seems to know exactly how much) 12 to 14 billion (no, you did not read that wrong, that is billion with a “B”) of shrink-wrapped hundred dollar bills using C-130 cargo planes. The amount of cash was so great, that instead of counting it, we measured it by tonnage.

Luckily, we not only kept careful records of who we shoveled this cash upon, but we also made sure none fell into the hands of our enemies. Oh, if that had only been the case. In fact, not only was record-keeping practically non-existent, (after all, what’s a couple of billions of purported friends?), but we simply had no idea where all that money went. Some, certainly as was planned, ended up paying Iraqi civil servants to do whatever they were supposed to do, but much likely also ended up in the hands of our enemies. For one thing, eventually, $1.6 billion of that cash was found by a special inspector general in a bunker in rural Lebanon. We can only hope, but logic tells us differently, that none of that money ended up in the hands of terrorist or funded militias, arms and bombs used to kill American servicemen and women.

We do know, however — and this brings us back to our “allies,” the Iraqi army, fighting the Kurds, with American Abrams tanks, alongside their Iranian paramilitary friends —that American monies have also been sent directly to Iran. We all remember that after four Americans held hostage in Iran were released back in 2016, we co-incidentally the next week sent them a plane load, (apparently international cash transactions these days are routinely ferried around in cargo planes), of $400 million, quickly followed by another two planeloads of $1.3 billion in cash. It seems we have no problems funding the Iraqis and the Iranians, both of whom are equally intent on destroying the Kurds.

From the Kurds’ point of view, however, those cash payments to their enemies must have paled in comparison to seeing American tanks being used by Iraqi troops in that October attack. This was likely so because the Kurds have been the only reliable American ally in this never-ending war. As we fight the numerous permutations of evil – whether it be termed al-Qaeda, Isis or Daesh – the Kurds have been there for us. In fact, they were so much on our side, that as recently as last year, we embedded American Special Forces to fight alongside Kurdish fighters in Syria battling the various factions of the Islamic State. American Special Forces and Kurdish troops fighting together – there is a historical ring to this, which brings us to Vietnam.

On October 12, 1961, President Kennedy, a believer in non-conventional warfare, visited the Special Forces units at Ft. Bragg. In conjunction with his visit, and as per a directive issued at the behest of the President the month before, the Army’s special forces for the first time were officially permitted to wear distinctive green berets. Three years later, those Green Berets were fighting alongside the Montagnard people in the highlands of Vietnam. In fact, the first Medal of Honor of the Vietnam War was awarded to a Green Beret Captain for his bravery and command actions during a firefight in 1964 when a Viet Cong battalion launched a pre-dawn attack on Camp Nam Dong (about 25 miles south of Hue and 30 miles west of Da Nang.)

While it appears the Nungs, another indigenous tribe fought alongside the Green Berets at Nam Dong, in the 1968 movie version of this battle — The Green Berets – the Montagnards very much fought alongside John Wayne. Similarly, throughout the early sixties, the Montagnards consistently and bravely not only gave Green Berets their support but also their lives. An estimated 200,000 Montagnards were killed during the war, many of the survivors fleeing the Communist forces after the fall of Vietnam into Cambodia, where they met similar fates at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

The similarities here are striking. Like the Kurds, the Montagnards yearned for their own land. The French had promised them if not an autonomous land, then at least a protected area; the Northern Communists purportedly made similar promises of Highland autonomy, none coming to fruition. As the War escalated, the Montagnards threw their lot in with the American forces, and then specifically the Green Berets, only to be left behind as the war waned.

Similarly, the Kurds sought their own homeland, and when the current war started, consistently and with abandon, threw their lot with the Americans. While the special connection that developed between the Montagnards and the Green Berets in Vietnam has not arisen in the Middle East, Special Forces, as noted above, have been embedded with Kurdish fighters in Syria. And now, as in Vietnam, we are seemingly abandoning the Kurds, standing silently by as the Iraqi army, our purported allies, and the beneficiary of billions upon billions of dollars, not to mention the ultimate sacrifice of thousands of America’s best and brightest young men and women, turn their Abrams tanks inward.

In the international arena, American memory tends to run short-term. We do what is perceived to be either the best or most palpable option at the moment. Sometimes those decisions may be dictated by forces greater than we can control, sometimes they are guided by valid, well-conceived policies, and sometimes by short-term domestic political or personal desires. The world, however, tends to remember long-term. The world remembers us abandoning the Montagnards, and is taking notice to see whether we will do the same to the Kurds.

http://www.oxfordeagle.com/2017/11/30/w ... ntagnards/

Hans Sinha is a Clinical Professor of Law at Ole Miss and a former prosecutor and public defender in New Orleans.

[Anthea]

Syria’s Kurds Have Plenty of Territory — If They Can Keep It

In the war with Islamic State, Syria’s Kurdish forces successfully fought back and extended their territories, most notably by capturing the strategic city of Raqqa and large swathes of Deir ez-Zor province.

These territories, which encompass almost all of Syria’s oil reserves, provide the Kurds with valuable bargaining chips with the Syrian regime. Th Kurdish zone could potentially trade territory in return for recognition and preservation of the semi-autonomous region along the Syrian border with Turkey.

What remains unclear is if Syria’s Kurds can defend these territories if the regime tries to retake them by force.

There are political and territorial details that make this situation unique. The Syrian regime insists that Raqqa — despite the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces’ successful ouster of Islamic State from there in October 2017 — remains an occupied city until the Syrian army returns.

Similarly, the SDF’s rapid offensive against Islamic State in Deir ez-Zor province, and the seizure of its oil fields, is something Damascus would undoubtedly seek to reverse if given the opportunity. It may soon have that chance. The Islamic State is largely defeated following the Syrian army’s capture of Al-Bukamal on the border with Iraq in November 2017.

Unlike Iraqi Kurdistan next door, nobody recognizes the federal system the Syrian Kurds established in their territories last year. When the Iraqi military seized Kirkuk from the Kurdish Peshmerga in mid-October, those troops were reentering a disputed territory in force, not Iraqi Kurdistan proper.

This is because since 1992, with the creation of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraqi Kurdish autonomy in Erbil, Duhok, Halabja and Sulaimani provinces is universally recognized, while areas like Kirkuk have always been gray, to say the least, since their status was never resolved.

Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa in Syria, on the other hand, are not disputed territories in the same sense, nor is Syrian Kurdistan’s autonomy legally recognized in Syria … or anywhere else. Thus, any regime push in these areas could ultimately result in it outright dismantling de facto Kurdish autonomy. In Iraq, however, the Iraqi government only sent its forces up to the Green Line that separates Kurdistan from the rest of Iraq.

Nevertheless, Syria’s Kurdish militias have attempted to change the political structures of territories they have taken by force. In the Arab city of Manbij on the west bank of the Euphrates River, they have installed governing military councils, arguing that they are legitimate since local people support them.

The SDF has established a military council for Deir ez-Zor and a civilian council for Raqqa.

In Deir ez-Zor, the SDF’s military push against Islamic State coincided with a Russian-backed Syrian regime offensive in September. The SDF have territories in that province to the east bank of the Euphrates while the Syrian army is retaking territories to the west side.

The SDF insists that the river should serve as a natural demarcation line that the regime should not cross.

However, should Syrian Pres. Bashar Al Assad choose to force the SDF out of Deir ez-Zor, he certainly has the means to ferry his armor into position. The Syrian army possesses Russian-made mobile pontoon bridges suitable for the job. The SDF has barely a dozen tanks, but prior clashes with the Turkish army in northwest Syria indicate that the SDF possesses formidable anti-tank missiles.

None of this means conflict is inevitable. Rather, the contrary may well prove true.

The continued presence of American and Russian troops and warplanes in Syria could deter Damascus from launching a new military adventure against the Kurds. The Syrian government’s reliance on Russian diplomatic and military support could also act as a deterrent. The Kremlin has sought a speedy resolution to the conflict now that Assad’s forces are firmly entrenched and control most of the country once again.

Russia has also, so far, shown no desire to see the regime move into Syrian Kurdistan to destroy the SDF. Furthermore, without the support of Russian air power, Damascus may find it much harder to subdue the SDF’s battle-hardened fighters.

“Considering Russian efforts to minimize military confrontation between opposition groups and the regime it would be right to conclude that Russia wouldn’t favor armed confrontation between the SDF and Syrian army,” Timur Akhmetov, an analyst and researcher at the Russian International Affairs Council told War Is Boring.

“My understanding is that the U.S. and Russia have undisclosed agreements over the division of forces along the Euphrates.”

Akhmetov does not foresee a regime move into either Raqqa or the Deir ez-Zor oil fields.

“While Syrian officials will raise the Raqqa issue I doubt their words will be followed by actions,” he said. “Open confrontation over the unresolved question of the oil fields is also unlikely. Russia has invested much efforts to launch a political dialogue between the parties to the conflict and it will be interested in keeping a status quo in the Kurdish-held territories in middle-term perspective.”

“There are too many unknowns, like to what extent the U.S. is ready to commit to the Kurdish cause, and Russia seems to want to turn the process with the Kurds into a purely political tradeoff,” he concluded.

There are also mixed messages coming from Washington. The United States will soon cease arming Kurdish fighters in Syria, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, probably because the war with Islamic State is essentially over — for now.

At the same time, Washington is reportedly aiming to keep an open-ended military presence in Syria following Islamic State’s military defeat, which will likely include retaining a troop presence, an estimated 2,000-strong force supported by U.S.-built airfields built in their area of operations.

However, were the Syrian army to assault the SDF, it may stop short of attempting to subdue all of Rojava while U.S. forces remain present in these territories. Together, this indicates that Syrian Kurdish forces have substantial leverage to retain its territories short of direct conflict with Damascus.

https://warisboring.com/syrias-kurds-ha ... defend-it/

[Benny]

Lets sincerely hope that it doesn't end like with the Montagnards!

/B