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POPSHistory Repeats ? How feasible is a divided Iraq ? Cut back to 1947. Ethnic riots had broken out across India, and its leaders decided the best course of action was to divide the country. Cyril Radcliffe drew a line across a map dividing communities that had lived together for hundreds of years. Result: a million deaths and 14-16 million people displaced. Neither was that the end of the story. India and Pakistan didn't stop fighting, Pakistan imploded violently into two nations, and the mayhem still goes on in Kashmir. It's only a unified, multicultural Iraq that can preserve some semblance of independence and decency.
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POPSKurdistan Intensifies Split from Iraq
<<<"This lays the foundation for a separate state — it is not a constitution for a region," said Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab member of the national Parliament. "It is a declaration of hostile intent and confrontation. Of course it will lead to escalation." Kurdish officials defended their efforts to adopt a new constitution that defines the Kurdistan region as comprising their three provinces and also tries to add all of hotly contested and oil-rich Kirkuk Province, as well as other disputed areas in Nineveh and Diyala Provinces. Iraq's federal Constitution allows the Kurds the right to their own constitution, referring any conflicts to Iraq's highest court. Susan Shihab, a member of Kurdistan's parliament, said she no longer had faith that the rights of Kurds under the federal constitution from 2005 would be respected. "What is missing the most in the new Iraq is confidence," she said. At the same time, though, some Kurds acknowledge that they have grown frustrated with
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POPSRemember: Saddam Was Our Man NY Times OpEd from March 14, 2003. The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad -- for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq. This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.
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POPSTurkey is Centre of the World Despite the fragile situation, if Turkey were to organise autonomy for Kurds in its own borders, northern Iraq, Syria and Iran it would be a heroic act of enormous historical import.
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POPSTurkey to invade Iraq
A couple of things come to mind: 1. Since we can't stop the war we might as well enjoy it's interesting twists and turns. 2. The USA politicians and TV Talking Heads act as if they are God and omnipotently declaring: 'Let's take out Iran." -- "Not an invasion but surgical strikes," etc. -- but there are other forces and factors involved 3. Much like Vietnam the war may finally end by the North Vietnamese army overrunning Saigon in 1975 and that was when finally the last USA troops were out. It seems when an enemy has invaded one of your outposts or cities it doesn't take as long to get out as current politicians suggest. So now we are bombarded with all the claims and complaints of Iran 'killing Americans,' (or having nuclear weapons)...soon we can have a Turkish invasion. The terrorist and anti-American forces in Saudia Arabia will keep pouring in funds...Israel can come in and blow something up. The fun has just begun. Meanwhile, the USA can control it's own borders
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POPSHalabjah: Dreadful Images These are upsetting images. A reminder or introduction: the reality of war, the ongoing suffering of the Kurds, Saddam's wardenship of the war against Iran, and so much more. This site is a good start to find out more.
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POPSIraq’s Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory A bloodthirsty sectarian war centuries in the making has only just begun. It's going to get much worse before it gets better. Caught in the middle of the civil war are the Americans. To Iraq’s factions, they are the weakest of all the armed groups in one crucial respect: their will is ebbing and their time here is limited. That leaves Iraqis more motivated than ever to cling to their weapons, preparing for what many see as an inevitable plunge into the abyss. “Everyone — the Sunni, the Shia — is playing the waiting game,” an Iraqi leader told me over dinner at his home in the Green Zone. “They’re waiting out the Americans. Everyone is using time against you.”
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POPSThe U.S. Applies Pressure on Iraq for its oil...or else! This excellent article from Walrus Magazine of Canada, makes very important reading for anyone truly interested in the U.S. arm twisting and manipulations of the Iraqi government to convince them to give up their sovereignty of its own natural resource so the U.S. interests can control it. This is really a MUST READ.
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POPS'Tragic protest' of Iraqi Kurdish women "When Saddam's regime was in power he did everything to subordinate women" "The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds was exactly like that. He actually killed all the men but let the women stay and live that sort of misery with their children. There was 30 years of that kind of rule. It will take a long, long time for that to change. It is a very slow and painful process." The human rights minister in the Kurdistan region admits that immolation is a problem that his government is struggling to deal with There have been attempts to improve education and women's shelters have been built, but it will take years to change long-held customs.
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POPSThe rudest travel book ever written A vintage version of the kind of person waxes so strongly about something he/she could not possibly have any insight on; in this case foreign lands by someone who's who's never stepped out of his/her immediate borders (city/country). This would be a 19th century masterpiece if ignorance were a collectible... Check out more splendid ignorance @ source. :p
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POPSTo be or not to be: Genocide & the Melancholy President Turkey is a lose lose situation for us. There's no way we'll pull them off of the Kurds through appeasement. Of all the times Bush stood strong, this is the time for a little bravado, where did it go? What kind of President caves in on issues like genocide? He just took away Pansy of the Week award from Gordon Brown!
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POPSStrip of Iraq 'on the Verge of Exploding' Cont.... The long-cherished dream of many of the world's 25 million ethnic Kurds is an independent state that encompasses parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. All but Iraq adamantly oppose Kurdish autonomy, much less a Kurdish state. Iraqi Kurds continue to insist they are not seeking independence, even as they unilaterally expand the territory they control in Iraq.
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POPSTurkey's Hatred of Free Speech Until recently, Turkey banned public usage (eduaction, broadcasting etc) of Kurdish language. Kurds make up a fifth of population. There is a strong strand of nationalism which seeks to reframe the Armenian holocaust as the fault of the Armenians. Turkey is seeking membership of the european union.
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POPSAmerica's Allies at War: Turkey and the Kurds Ut-oh. Turkey? As in our long-time Near-Eastern ally? Getting ready to invade Iraq? To attack the Kurds? As in the only people in Iraq currently not trying to kill us? I'm going to file this one under "Lose Lose Situation." To bad we don't have a leader with diplomatic skills who could be defusing this situation RIGHT NOW...
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POPSUS "dark night" Policy to Ensure Iraq Remains a Client State In beginning the history of the near future, it will be particularly importamnt to look at how this alleged new policy deals with the growing unrest between indigenous Iraqi factions, notably Shi;ite-Sunni, and Kurds-Baghdad government. A shortish and interesting article which offers a non-western analysis which may connect brain cells.
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POPS Tehran Calls Iranian Kurds "Terrorists" In an exclusive interview with Newsmax recently in Berlin, Ahmadi says that Iran was now working hand-in-glove with Turkey to get PJAK labeled as a terrorist organization. “Iran knows they can’t make trouble for us directly because they have such bad relations with Europe. That’s why they are going through Turkey.” The Iranian regime has been telling journalists and diplomats that PJAK and the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) are the same. “But we are an Iranian party, and have nothing to do with Turkey,” he says. PJAK has become a serious threat to the regime in Tehran because it is fighting to overthrow the clerical regime in favor of a secular republic and because it favors equality between men and women, Ahmadi asserts. The group has around 2,500 armed guerilla fighters, 40 percent of whom are women.
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POPSSaddam Trial 'Fundamentally Flawed' Say US Observers “Judging Dujail” reports previously undocumented and serious procedural flaws in the trial, including: regular failure to disclose key evidence, including exculpatory evidence, to the defense in advance; violations of the defendants’ basic fair trial right to confront witnesses against them; lapses of judicial demeanor that undermined the apparent impartiality of the presiding judge; and important gaps in evidence that undermine the persuasiveness of the prosecution case, and put in doubt whether all the elements of the crimes charged were established. At stake is not only justice for hundreds of thousands of victims but, as at Nuremberg, the historical record itself.... Executing while other trials are ongoing will also deprive many thousands of victims of their day in court.
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