Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Islamic State 'retreating' in key Syria town of Kobane [View all]shaayecanaan
(6,068 posts)The Kurds are hardly alone in their national aspirations, the Caucasus is veritable font of would-be states, and the Russians would waste no time in championing the emergence of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Karabakh or Transnistria should the US champion an independent Kurdistan (which they probably won't anyway, given that even this would serve Russian interests more than those of the US - the Russians are pretty matey with the Kurds).
As it is, the Americans have their hands full trying to preserve the Turkic states as they are currently - even gently trying to cajole the Armenians into giving up their claims on Karabakh. It would be deeply inconsistent with US foreign policy to suddenly support an independent Kurdistan - as it is, the US cannot even formally acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, which, although important, is of far less practical significance to the Turks than the Kurdish issue.
You did well to note the historical misdeeds of the pesh merga, although the Armenians weren't the only ones to get a taste. Around 300,000 Assyrian Christians were also done to death according to tender Kurdish mercies, compared to which the recent conquest of historical Assyria by ISIS seems positively benevolent. If anyone has a right to Mosul it is the Assyrians, it has been their effective homeland since the time of Sargon the Great, 1000 years before the God of the Bible ever existed. For a while, it seemed that the Americans favoured an autonomous Assyrian entity in Iraq, but decided against it, and for probably sound reasons. Now, they can only await their fate, and dream of the good old days under Saddam, who notwithstanding his cruelties, was the best protector of religious minorities that the region has ever seen.