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In reply to the discussion: Islamic State 'retreating' in key Syria town of Kobane [View all]The Magistrate
(95,247 posts)Last edited Thu Oct 16, 2014, 11:35 AM - Edit history (1)
The discussion is not one of any general principle of national aspiration, but of what might eventuate from a particular situation.
Personally, I neither oppose nor support the establishment of a Kurdish state. I simply observe that the thing is coming into being, and that, as I said in my first comment here, it could solve more problems than it creates. That the existence here of a people who do not have a state, and desire one, has been a long-running problem in the region, and a source of much instability and bother, cannot be seriously denied.
It is true that the massacres of Assyrian Christians in the Great War tend to be overlooked. They were on smaller scale in absolute terms than that inflicted on the Armenians, but certain of similarly devastating proportion to the communities affected. In the latter stages of it, a small detachment from the English NorPerForce ( an item which is quite a tale in itself ), gave assistance to a large body of Assyrian refugees in flight from attack. During England's occupation of Iraq, Assyrians provided the English with their most reliable native infantry in the region. That, shall we say, did not endear them to their neighbors, and at times all the way down to the present the community as a whole has been made to pay for it. Even in the Gulf War of the '90s, Hussein juggled force deployments somewhat to ensure Assyrian conscripts came under heavy bombing.
I repeat that Iraq is not a natural nation, not the expression of a people conceiving themselves as more one than not and desiring to rule themselves. It is an artificial creation of three elements, which are not only disparate from, but hostile to one another. Their continued rule under one central authority must always consist in a contest between them to be in the position of either doing down the other two, or joined in alliance with one to do down the singleton remaining. It was set up in a manner intended to assure that the Sunni Arab minority would be dominant over the other two, and throughout its history this condition was maintained by force applied from the capitol. This was most marked in the latter stages of the only period in which the place could be truly regarded as independent, namely the forty-odd years of Ba'athist rule, between the removal of the foreign Hashemite monarchy, and the U.S. invasion under the Bush regime. Probably the mistake of greatest scale made in the latter act was the failure to realize the actual dynamics of the place, and the natural consequences which would flow from disturbing them. We kicked the keystone out of an arch, an arch that bridged the Middle East as a whole, and somehow are still amazed to see rubble falling and ruination as the result of it. The keystone cannot be set back into place; the arch cannot be restored. The rubble may yet sort itself into natural piles, and that is about that best that cam be hoped for as an outcome.