Another Fine Mess - Kurdistan

The reality of Kurdistan is a problem that's been on the boil since the end of WWI. It's a tale of betrayal by the West and brutal oppression by the East that has resulted in a people without a homeland.

Long under the thumbs of the Ottomans, the Kurds were to be given back their homeland by the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 between the WWI Allies and the Ottomans. That lasted three years in which the fierce Turkish nationalist, Ataturk came upon the scene which led to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and the carving up of the Kurdish homeland with Britain and France tucking the oil rich part into their new possession, Iraq.

The Kurds caught their first break after the first US/Iraq war when the American-led coalition imposed a "no fly" zone over Iraq's Kurdish north which allowed the evolution of an effective, autonomous Kurdish mini-state. That didn't mean Saddam was dormant during these years. To the contrary he continued his policy of Arabizing oil-rich centres such as Kirkuk by driving out Kurds and replacing them with Sunni newcomers. Turkey, beset by its homegrown Kurdish liberation movement, eyed developments in northern Iraq with genuine alarm.

Okay - boom - Saddam's gone. What to do, what to do? Well today we know all too well that the conquerors had no idea what to do and so they didn't. Among their list of overlooked "to dos" that weren't has been the Kurdish problem.

The Kurdish Autonomous Region has been preparing itself for several years for what is occuring on the ground today. It began with the introduction of the KAR's constitution, a document drafted with eventual independence in mind. The only reason the Kurds remain part of Iraq today is that the new Iraqi government yielded to their demands that the Iraq constitution acknowledge and embody the KAR constitution. In other words, the Kurdish leadership has a key to the door anytime they want to walk out.

While the Kurdish Autonomous Region has been easy duty for American troops in Iraq, violence has been mounting between Kurds and Arabs. This is yet another Iraqi civil war, one of several. The Kurds have forced a referendum to decide the future of oil-rich Kirkuk and have been maneuvering to ensure the outcome by ousting Saddam's Sunni plants and replacing them with displaced Kurds. Fair? Hard to say but certainly arguable.

Meanwhile the Turks are getting antsy at the prospect of a break away Iraqi Kurdistan - as the Turks were bound to get. This has led Turkey, our sole Islamic NATO ally, to send tank columns driving on to the Iraqi border. They're now talking quite openly about invading, not only to crush their own Kurdish separatists who have taken refuge there but even to topple Barzani.

So, what is the Grand Occupier doing about this? Very little. The time for sorting out this mess was four years ago, in the immediate wake of the conquest. It had to be dealt with before the KAR constitution became a fait accompli and before the fuse that is Kirkuk was allowed to be lit. The White House, however, arrogantly assumed that the Kurds were safely in their pocket and ignored their gambits while it turned its attention on the Sunni insurgency, the Shia militias and al-Qaeda terrorism. The Americans' unwillingness to recognize much less deal with the Kurdish issues wasn't lost on Ankara.

There are so many forces at play in that supposedly placid part of Iraq that there may be nothing to be done now except to let it all play itself out. This is certainly beyond the grasp and skills of the idiotic lame duck now quacking haplessly about the Oval Office.