Not what springs to mind when you think of Iraq, is it?
This week I explore the difficult
history and present of a country which doesn't exist. Kurdistan lives
in the hearts and dreams of 35 million people scattered across
Northern Iraq, Southern Turkey, and small sections of Iran and Syria.
It is the hope of a people who have fought for their existence for
generations, and struggled to maintain their heritage in the face of
cultural erasure in Turkey and systematic attempted genocide by
Saddam Hussein. Who are the Kurds? For a people separated by so many
borders this is a complicated question, but the easiest answer is any
native speaker of Kurdish. The book I read, Invisible Nation, focused on the
Kurdish population of Northern Iraq, a fiercely independent people
whose culture has been shaped by decades of fighting for survival.
While Kurds are primarily Muslim, they are far less conservative than
their regional neighbors. They drink, women go unveiled, and
sometimes even join men on the front lines. But perhaps most
surprising to me: they love former president George W Bush.
A map of 'Kurdistan', showing areas where Kurds live in four countries. Iraq is the only one where their dreams of autonomy have come close to being realized.
I am grateful to have found this book,
because while I have lived with the Iraq war for almost as long as I
can remember, my knowledge of this deeply complicated event is still
colored by my simple child's understanding. Going to anti-war
protests under my parents wing I learned the Iraq war was Bad, that
there should be No Blood for Oil, and that Bush and his cronies
invaded seeking only profit and nationalistic fervor. I I never
learned about the Kurds, never heard that there was a whole
population in Iraq who welcomed the American soldiers with songs and
flowers, and fought alongside them.
The now iconic image of Saddam's statue being pulled down. In the North, meanwhile, uncaptured by photographers, Kurds were gleefully pulling down their statues without the encouragement or assistance of the watching US soldiers shown here.
To understand why the Kurds would so
enthusiastic greet an invading force, we have to back up and examine
their history. Perennial victims of a map, they have been
consistently exploited for other's wars, strung along by their hope
of a homeland. During the last throes of the Ottoman empire they
were used by the Turks as executioners for over a Million Armenians,
only to be later despised, never 'Turkish enough'. Iraqi Kurds
joined forces with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, a disastrous alliance
which gave Saddam Hussein an excuse to finally try to solve 'The
Kurdish Problem'. In one of the world's most notorious use of
Chemical weapons, Hussein poisoned towns full of civilians, and
killed thousands in just days. During the first Bush presidency when
Bush I invaded to defend Kuwait from being annexed by Iraq, the Kurds
were heavily encouraged to rise up in order to create chaos, with
heavily implied American support for an independent Kurdistan dangled
as an incentive. When the brief war ended and to everyone's surprise,
Saddam Hussein was still alive and still ruler of Iraq, this promise
melted away. Retaliation, again, was harsh. The slaughter that
followed was so terrible that when at last the American grew a
conscience and attempted some humanitarian aid, mothers threw their
babies onto departing helicopters, rather than let them die together.
In the aftermath, the American military began to enforce a no fly
zone around Kurdish Iraq, in effect creating the infant nation of
Kurdistan.
This nation, having survived Hussein's
ravages twice, did remarkably well under the patrol of American jets.
While Iraq's currency spiraled into inflation, the Kurdish one stayed
stable. The Kurds elected their own government, started
reconstructing their bombed cities, and built universities. Things
were looking good. They might even achieved independence at last had
not political bickering divided the tiny country even further until
another Bush came along to unite them.
The capital city of Erbil
Having lived at the edge of security,
their existence barely tolerated by every nation surrounding them,
when Washington began to growl threats against Saddam Hussein, they
were among the old people in the world who cheered. They readily
offered assistance in information and manpower. When the invasion
finally came, Kurdish Pesh Murga fought alongside American soldiers,
and the two armies developed a strong mutual respect. The Kurdish
government, well practiced in running their section of Iraq, was
eager to offer their experience to rebuild the country. It seemed on
the edge of a happy ending for the Kurds, far from the horrific
bloodbath I imagined as a child. But it was not to be.
During the initial successful invasion,
Bush's envoys to Iraq were veterans of the area, people with strong
connections to Iraqis and a good grasp of the complicated politics on
the ground. Later though, Washington began to favor politics over
pragmatism, and sent people for their loyalty to the White House, not
their knowledge of the region. One particularly disastrous
ambassador, Bremer, spent most of his career in Europe and then was
given the unenviable task of running a country he knew nothing about.
He made this harder upon himself by refusing to respect local
customs, and horribly insulted every Iraqi politician (whose
cooperation he desperately needed) by continually putting his feet up
on his desk, soles pointed towards his supposed allies in one the
worst insult possible in the Middle East. With clueless bureaucrats
the helm, the power vacuum in Iraq quickly turned to a cyclone.
Internal politics soured even further, and violence erupted around
the country in opposition to the defunct occupation. While the Kurds
still maintain a seat in government as the (primarily symbolic)
President, they have mostly retreated back behind their invisible
border as Iraq disintegrates to less than it was under a
dictatorship. Kurdish independence remains at the forefront of
everyone's thoughts, but the issue has once again been set aside to
deal with yet another catastrophe: ISIS. America may find itself
begging their help once again, as the Kurds are one of our best hopes
against the rapid spread of ISIS, which they fight with
characteristic bravery. I find the Syrian war hopeless, a battle for the least awful outcome, with no hope for a good one. But after learning about the Kurdish people and their struggles and successes despite the odds I have one hope: that at last, somehow, from the rubble of the modern Middle East, Kurdistan will rise.
Kurdish pop star Helly Luv sings anti-ISIS tunes, just miles from ISIS occupied territory.
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