Good Kurds, Bad Kurds ecoutez et repetez

Anyone who has seen Kevin McKiernan's Good Kurds, Bad Kurds will know that..



...by 2001 more than 37,000 lives had been lost in Southeastern Turkey, more than all the fatalities in the conflicts in North Ireland, the West Bank and Gaza.

Kurds inside Turkey were forbidden to wear their national costume, speak their language, perform their music or even bear Kurdish names. There had been 29 Kurdish rebellions inside Turkey since 1923. Kurds were not allowed to run their own schools or media. McKiernan filmed footage of a few of the 3,000 Kurdish villages which were systematically torched during the 15-year uprising led by Abdullah Ocalan. McKiernan had stumbled onto Turkey's ongoing repression of its own Kurdish minority, which makes up about 20 percent of the country's population of approximately 63 million. The Turkish military has evacuated and leveled hundreds of Kurdish villages, leaving 2 million people homeless. The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish army in the southeastern mountains, but even in cosmopolitan Istanbul at the opposite end of the country, Kurds and supporters of their cause live with the threat of censure, arrest, and death.

Kurds have risen against Persian, Turkish and Iraqi state domination over their lands throughout the past century. The British napalmed and gassed Kurds in the 1920s, to the recorded delight of Winston Churchill. The mercenary Kurds served as US State Department/CIA guinea pigs by attacking and weakening Iraq over the last forty years. Israel has been a partner throughout, the weakening of the Arabs being a primary ongoing objective of Israeli foreign policy. This ugly menage-a-trois has been a major factor in the massive destruction which has befallen Kurdistan. Instead of being a breadbasket for the region as it should be, Kurdistan has the remains of thousands of destroyed villages and towns and millions of displaced residents.

In 2007 (and after more 1m Iraqis have been salughtered) it has been reported that thousands of Turkish troops invaded northern Iraq, chasing Kurdish guerillas. Of Course Associated Press has said: "The PKK ... is seen as having provoked Turkey into planning an attack on Iraq."

So the Americans had/have two choices now that they are being invaded - sorry the new democracy in Iraq is under threat. Either they support Turkey or the Kurds. But not both.

Turkey was their choice since the very start of the Cold War perhaps due to the fact that it was an excellent southern flank near the Soviet Union. Not to mention the Dardanels straights, which blocked the Black Sea Soviet Navy.

So, for all they care about 'freedom and democracy', the Kurds are totally irrelevant to them: "kill as many as you can, we don't give a shit...". Sordid realpolitik that is.

As long as Turkey is important (a.k.a. a good strategic choice) to the Americans, the Kurds (a big national minority without a state) are lost.

Now the next logical step for the neoliberal oil grabbers is to use the "Kurd alibi" to weaken the regional 'axis of evil' i.e. Iran.