Iraqi Kurdistan is a heartrending glimpse of what might have been

[hist2004]

Letter from Kurdistan

Holiday in Iraq

Over Christmas break, the author took his son to northern Iraq, which the U.S. had made a no-fly zone in 1991, ending Saddam's chemical genocide. Now reborn, Iraqi Kurdistan is a heartrending glimpse of what might have been.

by Christopher Hitchens April 2007

Last summer, you may have been among the astonished viewers of American television who were treated to a series of commercials from a group calling itself "Kurdistan—The Other Iraq." These rather touching and artless little spots (theotheriraq.com) urged you to consider investing in business, and even made you ponder taking your vacation, in the country's three northern provinces. Mr. Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show, could hardly believe his luck. To lampoon the ads, and to say, in effect, "Yeah, right—holiday in Iraq," was probably to summarize the reaction of much of the audience. Sure, baby, come to sunny Mesopotamia, and bring the family, and get your ass blown off while religious wack jobs ululate gleefully over your remains.

Well, as it happens, I decided to check this out, and did spend most of the Christmas holiday in Iraqi Kurdistan, bringing my son along with me, and had a perfectly swell time. We didn't make any investments, though I would say that the hotel and tourism and oil sectors are wide open for enterprise, but we did visit the ancient citadel in Erbil, where Alexander the Great defeated the Persians—my son is a Greek-speaking classicist—and we did sample the lovely mountains and lakes and rivers that used to make this region the resort area for all Iraqis. Air and road travel were easy (you can now fly direct from several airports in Europe to one of two efficient airports in Iraqi Kurdistan), and walking anywhere at night in any Kurdish town is safer than it is in many American cities. The police and soldiers are all friendly locals, there isn't a coalition soldier to be seen, and there hasn't been a suicide attack since May of 2005.

It wasn't my first trip. That took place in 1991, in the closing stages of the Gulf War. With a guerrilla escort, I crossed illegally into Iraq from Turkey and toured the shattered and burned and poisoned landscape on which Saddam Hussein had imprinted himself. In the town of Halabja, which has now earned its gruesome place in history, I met people whose hideous wounds from chemical bombardment were still suppurating. The city of Qala Diza had been thoroughly dynamited and bulldozed, and looked like an irretrievable wreck. Much of the area's lavish tree cover had been deforested: the bare plains were dotted with forbidding concrete barracks into which Kurds had been forcibly "relocated" or (a more accurate word) "concentrated." Nearly 200,000 people had been slaughtered, and millions more deported: huddling in ruins or packed into fetid camps on the Turkish and Iranian frontiers. To turn a spade was to risk uncovering a mass grave. All of Iraq suffered terribly during those years, but its Kurdish provinces were among the worst places in the entire world—a howling emptiness of misery where I could catch, for the first time in my life, the actual scent of evil as a real force on earth.

Thus, I confess to a slight lump in the throat at revisiting the area and seeing thriving, humming towns with multiplying construction sites, billboards for overseas companies, Internet cafés, and a choice of newspapers. It's even reassuring to see the knockoff "MaDonal," with pseudo–golden arches, in the eastern city of Sulaimaniya, soon to be the site of the American University of Iraq, which will be offering not only an M.B.A. course but also, in the words of Azzam Alwash, one of its directors, "the ideas of Locke, the ideas and writings of Paine and Madison." Everybody knows how to s****** when you mention Jeffersonian democracy and Iraq in the same breath; try s******ing when you meet someone who is trying to express these ideas in an atmosphere that only a few years ago was heavy with miasmic decay and the reek of poison gas.

While I am confessing, I may as well make a clean breast of it. Thanks to the reluctant decision of the first President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, those fresh princes of "realism," the United States and Britain placed an aerial umbrella over Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 and detached it from the death grip of Saddam Hussein. Under the protective canopy of the no-fly zone—actually it was also called the "you-fly-you-die zone"—an embryonic free Iraq had a chance to grow. I was among those who thought and believed and argued that this example could, and should, be extended to the rest of the country; the cause became a consuming thing in my life. To describe the resulting shambles as a disappointment or a failure or even a defeat would be the weakest statement I could possibly make: it feels more like a sick, choking nightmare of betrayal from which there can be no awakening. Yet Kurdistan continues to demonstrate how things could have been different, and it isn't a place from which the West can simply walk away.

In my hometown of Washington, D.C., it's too easy to hear some expert hold forth about the essential character of any stricken or strategic country. (Larry McMurtry, in his novel Cadillac Jack, has a lovely pastiche of Joseph Alsop doing this very act about Yemen.) I had lived here for years and suffered through many Georgetown post-dinner orations until someone supplied me with the unfailing antidote to such punditry. It comes from Stephen Potter, the author of Lifemanship, One-upmanship, and other classics. Wait until the old bore has finished his exposition, advised Potter, then pounce forward and say in a plonking register, "Yes, but not in the South?" You will seldom if ever be wrong, and you will make the expert perspire. Different as matters certainly are in the South of Iraq, the thing to stress is how different, how very different, they are in the North.

In Kurdistan, to take a few salient examples, there is a memorial of gratitude being built for fallen American soldiers. "We are planning," said the region's prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, in his smart new office in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, "to invite their relatives to the unveiling." Speaking of unveiling, you see women with headscarfs on the streets and in offices (and on the judicial bench and in Parliament, which reserves a quarter of the seats for women by law), but you never see a face or body enveloped in a burka. The majority of Kurds are Sunni, and the minority are Shiite, with large groups belonging to other sects and confessions, but there is no intercommunal mayhem. Liquor stores and bars are easy to find, sometimes operated by members of the large and unmolested Christian community. On the university campuses, you may easily meet Arab Iraqis who have gladly fled Baghdad and Basra for this safe haven. I know of more than one intrepid Western reporter who has done the same. The approaches from the south are patrolled by very effective and battle-hardened Kurdish militiamen, who still carry the proud title of their guerrilla days: the peshmerga, or, translated from the Kurdish language, "those who face death." These men have a very brusque way with al-Qaeda and its local supporters, and have not just kept them at a distance but subjected them to very hot pursuit. (It was Kurdish intelligence that first exposed the direct link between the psychopathic Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden.) Of the few divisions of the Iraqi Army that are considered even remotely reliable, the bulk are made up of tough Kurdish volunteers.

Pause over that latter point for a second. Within recent memory, the Kurdish population of Iraq was being subjected to genocidal cleansing. Given the chance to leave the failed state altogether, why would they not take it? Yet today, the president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd: a former guerrilla leader so genial and humane that he personally opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein. Of the very few successful or effective ministries in Baghdad, such as the Foreign Ministry, it is usually true that a Kurd, such as Hoshyar Zebari, is at the head of it. The much-respected deputy prime minister (and moving spirit of the American University in Sulaimaniya), Dr. Barham Salih, is a Kurd. He put it to me very movingly when I flew down to Baghdad to talk to him: "We are willing to fight and sacrifice for a democratic Iraq. And we were the ones to suffer the most from the opposite case. If Iraq fails, it will not be our fault."

President Talabani might only be the "president of the Green Zone," as his friends sometimes teasingly say, but he disdains to live in that notorious enclave. He is now 73 years of age and has a rather Falstaffian appearance—everyone refers to him as "Mam Jalal" or "Uncle Jalal"—but this is nonetheless quite a presidential look, and he has spent much of his life on the run, or in exile, or in the mountains, and survived more dangerous times than these. You may choose to call today's suicide murderers and video beheaders and power-drill torturers by the name "insurgents," but he has the greater claim to have led an actual armed Resistance that did not befoul itself by making war on civilians. In Baghdad, he invited me to an impressively heavy lunch in the house once occupied by Saddam Hussein's detested, late half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, where I shared the table with grizzled Kurdish tribal leaders, and as the car bombs thumped across the city I realized how he could afford to look so assured and confident, and to flourish a Churchill-size postprandial cigar. To be chosen by the Iraqi parliament as the country's first-ever elected president might be one thing, and perhaps a dubious blessing. But to be the first Kurd to be the head of an Arab state was quite another. When he was elected, spontaneous celebrations by Kurds in Iran and Syria broke out at once, and often had to be forcibly repressed by their respective dictators. To put it pungently, the Kurds have now stepped onto the stage of Middle Eastern history, and it will not be easy to push them off it again. You may easily murder a child, as the parties of god prove every single day, but you cannot make a living child grow smaller.

I got a whiff of this intoxicating "birth of a nation" emotion when I flew back with Talabani from Baghdad to his Kurdish home base of Sulaimaniya. Here, as in the other Kurdish center, in Erbil, the airport gives the impression of belonging to an independent state. There are protocol officers, official limousines, and all the appurtenances of autonomy. Iraq's constitution specifies that Kurdistan is entitled to its own regional administration, and the inhabitants never miss a chance to underline what they have achieved. (The Iraqi flag, for example, is not much flown in these latitudes. Instead, the golden Kurdish sunburst emblem sits at the center of a banner of red, white, and green.) Most inspiring of all, perhaps, is Kurdish Airlines, which can take a pilgrim to the hajj or fly home a returning refugee without landing at another Iraqi airport. Who would have believed, viewing the moonscape of Kurdistan in 1991, that these ground-down people would soon have their own airline?

The Kurds are the largest nationality in the world without a state of their own. The King of Bahrain has, in effect, his own seat at the United Nations, but the 25 million or so Kurds do not. This is partly because they are cursed by geography, with their ancestral lands located at the point where the frontiers of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria converge. It would be hard to imagine a less promising neighborhood for a political experiment. In Iraq, the more than four million Kurds make up just under a quarter of the population. The proportion in Turkey is more like 20 percent, in Iran 10 percent, and in Syria perhaps nine. For centuries, this people's existence was folkloric and marginal, and confined to what one anthropologist called "the Lands of Insolence": the inaccessible mountain ranges and high valleys that bred warriors and rebels. A fierce tribe named the Karduchoi makes an appearance in Xenophon's history of the events of 400 B.C. Then there is mainly silence until a brilliant Kurdish commander named Salah al-Din (Saladin to most) emerges in the 12th century to unite the Muslim world against the Crusaders. He was born in Tikrit, later the hometown of Saddam Hussein. This is apt, because Saddam actually was the real father of Kurdish nationhood. By subjecting the Kurds to genocide he gave them a solidarity they had not known before, and compelled them to create a fierce and stubborn Resistance, with its own discipline and army. By laying waste to their ancient villages and farms, furthermore, he forced them into urban slums and refugee centers where they became more integrated, close-knit, and socialized: historically always the most revolutionary point in the emergence of any nationalism.

"The state of Iraq is not sacred," remarked Dr. Mohammad Sadik as we drove through Erbil to his office at Salahaddin University, of which he is president. "It was not created by god. It was created by Winston Churchill." Cobbled together out of the post-1918 wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq as a state was always crippled by the fact that it contained a minority population that owed it little if any loyalty. And now this state has broken down, and is breaking up. The long but unstable and unjust post-Ottoman compromise has been irretrievably smashed by the American-led invasion. Of the three contending parties in Iraq, only the Kurds now have a serious Plan B. They had a head start, by escaping 12 years early from Saddam's festering prison state. They have done their utmost to be friendly brokers between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, but if the country implodes, they can withdraw to their oil-rich enclave and muster under their own flag. There is no need to romanticize the Kurds: they have their own history of clan violence and cruelty. But this flag at present represents the closest approximation to democracy and secularism that the neighborhood can boast.

Americans have more responsibility here than most of us are aware of. It was President Woodrow Wilson, after the First World War, who inscribed the idea of self-determination for the Kurds in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, a document that all Kurds can readily cite. Later machinations by Britain and France and Turkey, all of them greedy for the oil in the Kurdish provinces, cheated the Kurds of their birthright and shoehorned them into Iraq. More recently, the Ford-Kissinger administration encouraged the Kurds to rebel against Baghdad, offering blandishments of greater autonomy, and then cynically abandoned them in 1975, provoking yet another refugee crisis and a terrible campaign of reprisal by Saddam Hussein. In 1991, George Bush Sr. went to war partly in the name of Kurdish rights and then chose to forget his own high-toned rhetoric. This, too, is a story that every Kurd can tell you. However the fate of Iraq is to be decided, we cannot permit another chapter in this record of betrayal. Meanwhile, you should certainly go and see it for yourself, and also shed a tear for what might have been.

Source: (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/04/hitchens200704)

Hist2004

[KB]

Letter from Kurdistan

Holiday in Iraq

Over Christmas break, the author took his son to northern Iraq, which the U.S. had made a no-fly zone in 1991, ending Saddam's chemical genocide. Now reborn, Iraqi Kurdistan is a heartrending glimpse of what might have been.

by Christopher Hitchens April 2007

Last summer, you may have been among the astonished viewers of American television who were treated to a series of commercials from a group calling itself "Kurdistan—The Other Iraq." These rather touching and artless little spots (theotheriraq.com) urged you to consider investing in business, and even made you ponder taking your vacation, in the country's three northern provinces. Mr. Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show, could hardly believe his luck. To lampoon the ads, and to say, in effect, "Yeah, right—holiday in Iraq," was probably to summarize the reaction of much of the audience. Sure, baby, come to sunny Mesopotamia, and bring the family, and get your ass blown off while religious wack jobs ululate gleefully over your remains.

Well, as it happens, I decided to check this out, and did spend most of the Christmas holiday in Iraqi Kurdistan, bringing my son along with me, and had a perfectly swell time. We didn't make any investments, though I would say that the hotel and tourism and oil sectors are wide open for enterprise, but we did visit the ancient citadel in Erbil, where Alexander the Great defeated the Persians—my son is a Greek-speaking classicist—and we did sample the lovely mountains and lakes and rivers that used to make this region the resort area for all Iraqis. Air and road travel were easy (you can now fly direct from several airports in Europe to one of two efficient airports in Iraqi Kurdistan), and walking anywhere at night in any Kurdish town is safer than it is in many American cities. The police and soldiers are all friendly locals, there isn't a coalition soldier to be seen, and there hasn't been a suicide attack since May of 2005.

It wasn't my first trip. That took place in 1991, in the closing stages of the Gulf War. With a guerrilla escort, I crossed illegally into Iraq from Turkey and toured the shattered and burned and poisoned landscape on which Saddam Hussein had imprinted himself. In the town of Halabja, which has now earned its gruesome place in history, I met people whose hideous wounds from chemical bombardment were still suppurating. The city of Qala Diza had been thoroughly dynamited and bulldozed, and looked like an irretrievable wreck. Much of the area's lavish tree cover had been deforested: the bare plains were dotted with forbidding concrete barracks into which Kurds had been forcibly "relocated" or (a more accurate word) "concentrated." Nearly 200,000 people had been slaughtered, and millions more deported: huddling in ruins or packed into fetid camps on the Turkish and Iranian frontiers. To turn a spade was to risk uncovering a mass grave. All of Iraq suffered terribly during those years, but its Kurdish provinces were among the worst places in the entire world—a howling emptiness of misery where I could catch, for the first time in my life, the actual scent of evil as a real force on earth.

Thus, I confess to a slight lump in the throat at revisiting the area and seeing thriving, humming towns with multiplying construction sites, billboards for overseas companies, Internet cafés, and a choice of newspapers. It's even reassuring to see the knockoff "MaDonal," with pseudo–golden arches, in the eastern city of Sulaimaniya, soon to be the site of the American University of Iraq, which will be offering not only an M.B.A. course but also, in the words of Azzam Alwash, one of its directors, "the ideas of Locke, the ideas and writings of Paine and Madison." Everybody knows how to s****** when you mention Jeffersonian democracy and Iraq in the same breath; try s******ing when you meet someone who is trying to express these ideas in an atmosphere that only a few years ago was heavy with miasmic decay and the reek of poison gas.

While I am confessing, I may as well make a clean breast of it. Thanks to the reluctant decision of the first President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, those fresh princes of "realism," the United States and Britain placed an aerial umbrella over Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991 and detached it from the death grip of Saddam Hussein. Under the protective canopy of the no-fly zone—actually it was also called the "you-fly-you-die zone"—an embryonic free Iraq had a chance to grow. I was among those who thought and believed and argued that this example could, and should, be extended to the rest of the country; the cause became a consuming thing in my life. To describe the resulting shambles as a disappointment or a failure or even a defeat would be the weakest statement I could possibly make: it feels more like a sick, choking nightmare of betrayal from which there can be no awakening. Yet Kurdistan continues to demonstrate how things could have been different, and it isn't a place from which the West can simply walk away.

In my hometown of Washington, D.C., it's too easy to hear some expert hold forth about the essential character of any stricken or strategic country. (Larry McMurtry, in his novel Cadillac Jack, has a lovely pastiche of Joseph Alsop doing this very act about Yemen.) I had lived here for years and suffered through many Georgetown post-dinner orations until someone supplied me with the unfailing antidote to such punditry. It comes from Stephen Potter, the author of Lifemanship, One-upmanship, and other classics. Wait until the old bore has finished his exposition, advised Potter, then pounce forward and say in a plonking register, "Yes, but not in the South?" You will seldom if ever be wrong, and you will make the expert perspire. Different as matters certainly are in the South of Iraq, the thing to stress is how different, how very different, they are in the North.

In Kurdistan, to take a few salient examples, there is a memorial of gratitude being built for fallen American soldiers. "We are planning," said the region's prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, in his smart new office in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, "to invite their relatives to the unveiling." Speaking of unveiling, you see women with headscarfs on the streets and in offices (and on the judicial bench and in Parliament, which reserves a quarter of the seats for women by law), but you never see a face or body enveloped in a burka. The majority of Kurds are Sunni, and the minority are Shiite, with large groups belonging to other sects and confessions, but there is no intercommunal mayhem. Liquor stores and bars are easy to find, sometimes operated by members of the large and unmolested Christian community. On the university campuses, you may easily meet Arab Iraqis who have gladly fled Baghdad and Basra for this safe haven. I know of more than one intrepid Western reporter who has done the same. The approaches from the south are patrolled by very effective and battle-hardened Kurdish militiamen, who still carry the proud title of their guerrilla days: the peshmerga, or, translated from the Kurdish language, "those who face death." These men have a very brusque way with al-Qaeda and its local supporters, and have not just kept them at a distance but subjected them to very hot pursuit. (It was Kurdish intelligence that first exposed the direct link between the psychopathic Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden.) Of the few divisions of the Iraqi Army that are considered even remotely reliable, the bulk are made up of tough Kurdish volunteers.

Pause over that latter point for a second. Within recent memory, the Kurdish population of Iraq was being subjected to genocidal cleansing. Given the chance to leave the failed state altogether, why would they not take it? Yet today, the president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd: a former guerrilla leader so genial and humane that he personally opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein. Of the very few successful or effective ministries in Baghdad, such as the Foreign Ministry, it is usually true that a Kurd, such as Hoshyar Zebari, is at the head of it. The much-respected deputy prime minister (and moving spirit of the American University in Sulaimaniya), Dr. Barham Salih, is a Kurd. He put it to me very movingly when I flew down to Baghdad to talk to him: "We are willing to fight and sacrifice for a democratic Iraq. And we were the ones to suffer the most from the opposite case. If Iraq fails, it will not be our fault."

President Talabani might only be the "president of the Green Zone," as his friends sometimes teasingly say, but he disdains to live in that notorious enclave. He is now 73 years of age and has a rather Falstaffian appearance—everyone refers to him as "Mam Jalal" or "Uncle Jalal"—but this is nonetheless quite a presidential look, and he has spent much of his life on the run, or in exile, or in the mountains, and survived more dangerous times than these. You may choose to call today's suicide murderers and video beheaders and power-drill torturers by the name "insurgents," but he has the greater claim to have led an actual armed Resistance that did not befoul itself by making war on civilians. In Baghdad, he invited me to an impressively heavy lunch in the house once occupied by Saddam Hussein's detested, late half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti, where I shared the table with grizzled Kurdish tribal leaders, and as the car bombs thumped across the city I realized how he could afford to look so assured and confident, and to flourish a Churchill-size postprandial cigar. To be chosen by the Iraqi parliament as the country's first-ever elected president might be one thing, and perhaps a dubious blessing. But to be the first Kurd to be the head of an Arab state was quite another. When he was elected, spontaneous celebrations by Kurds in Iran and Syria broke out at once, and often had to be forcibly repressed by their respective dictators. To put it pungently, the Kurds have now stepped onto the stage of Middle Eastern history, and it will not be easy to push them off it again. You may easily murder a child, as the parties of god prove every single day, but you cannot make a living child grow smaller.

I got a whiff of this intoxicating "birth of a nation" emotion when I flew back with Talabani from Baghdad to his Kurdish home base of Sulaimaniya. Here, as in the other Kurdish center, in Erbil, the airport gives the impression of belonging to an independent state. There are protocol officers, official limousines, and all the appurtenances of autonomy. Iraq's constitution specifies that Kurdistan is entitled to its own regional administration, and the inhabitants never miss a chance to underline what they have achieved. (The Iraqi flag, for example, is not much flown in these latitudes. Instead, the golden Kurdish sunburst emblem sits at the center of a banner of red, white, and green.) Most inspiring of all, perhaps, is Kurdish Airlines, which can take a pilgrim to the hajj or fly home a returning refugee without landing at another Iraqi airport. Who would have believed, viewing the moonscape of Kurdistan in 1991, that these ground-down people would soon have their own airline?

The Kurds are the largest nationality in the world without a state of their own. The King of Bahrain has, in effect, his own seat at the United Nations, but the 25 million or so Kurds do not. This is partly because they are cursed by geography, with their ancestral lands located at the point where the frontiers of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria converge. It would be hard to imagine a less promising neighborhood for a political experiment. In Iraq, the more than four million Kurds make up just under a quarter of the population. The proportion in Turkey is more like 20 percent, in Iran 10 percent, and in Syria perhaps nine. For centuries, this people's existence was folkloric and marginal, and confined to what one anthropologist called "the Lands of Insolence": the inaccessible mountain ranges and high valleys that bred warriors and rebels. A fierce tribe named the Karduchoi makes an appearance in Xenophon's history of the events of 400 B.C. Then there is mainly silence until a brilliant Kurdish commander named Salah al-Din (Saladin to most) emerges in the 12th century to unite the Muslim world against the Crusaders. He was born in Tikrit, later the hometown of Saddam Hussein. This is apt, because Saddam actually was the real father of Kurdish nationhood. By subjecting the Kurds to genocide he gave them a solidarity they had not known before, and compelled them to create a fierce and stubborn Resistance, with its own discipline and army. By laying waste to their ancient villages and farms, furthermore, he forced them into urban slums and refugee centers where they became more integrated, close-knit, and socialized: historically always the most revolutionary point in the emergence of any nationalism.

"The state of Iraq is not sacred," remarked Dr. Mohammad Sadik as we drove through Erbil to his office at Salahaddin University, of which he is president. "It was not created by god. It was created by Winston Churchill." Cobbled together out of the post-1918 wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, Iraq as a state was always crippled by the fact that it contained a minority population that owed it little if any loyalty. And now this state has broken down, and is breaking up. The long but unstable and unjust post-Ottoman compromise has been irretrievably smashed by the American-led invasion. Of the three contending parties in Iraq, only the Kurds now have a serious Plan B. They had a head start, by escaping 12 years early from Saddam's festering prison state. They have done their utmost to be friendly brokers between the Sunni and Shiite Arabs, but if the country implodes, they can withdraw to their oil-rich enclave and muster under their own flag. There is no need to romanticize the Kurds: they have their own history of clan violence and cruelty. But this flag at present represents the closest approximation to democracy and secularism that the neighborhood can boast.

Americans have more responsibility here than most of us are aware of. It was President Woodrow Wilson, after the First World War, who inscribed the idea of self-determination for the Kurds in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, a document that all Kurds can readily cite. Later machinations by Britain and France and Turkey, all of them greedy for the oil in the Kurdish provinces, cheated the Kurds of their birthright and shoehorned them into Iraq. More recently, the Ford-Kissinger administration encouraged the Kurds to rebel against Baghdad, offering blandishments of greater autonomy, and then cynically abandoned them in 1975, provoking yet another refugee crisis and a terrible campaign of reprisal by Saddam Hussein. In 1991, George Bush Sr. went to war partly in the name of Kurdish rights and then chose to forget his own high-toned rhetoric. This, too, is a story that every Kurd can tell you. However the fate of Iraq is to be decided, we cannot permit another chapter in this record of betrayal. Meanwhile, you should certainly go and see it for yourself, and also shed a tear for what might have been.

Source: (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/04/hitchens200704)

Hist2004

Can't beat The Atlantic Monthly. Kudos to Hitchens for his reporting...don't always agree with him, but he never leaves much doubt on where he stands and why.

[Vorian]

Very nice article..

[Pandy]

Very good article. Very goOD.

[Argyll]

You realise the Turkish members will call Bullshyt on this article, some of them simply cannot see that the Region known as Kurdistan has indeed prospered.

[GazB]

You realise the Turkish members will call Bullshyt on this article, some of them simply cannot see that the Region known as Kurdistan has indeed prospered.

The region known as kurdistan has not prospered as half of it is in Turkey and Iran...

BTW most of the preIraq invasion al quada ties were with the Kurds, Saddam removed alquada from areas he could reach. Any AL quada ties with Iraq nowadays would be as a direct result of the US invasion, and nothing to do with any love between the groups.

[Canadian2urk]

You realise the Turkish members will call Bullshyt on this article, some of them simply cannot see that the Region known as Kurdistan has indeed prospered.

good for them if they prosper, I'm honestly happy for them.
but it seems you are missing the whole point though, AGAIN.... :roll:

that does not give them an excuse to sponsor Terrorists. if you want warm friendly relations with neighboring countries, you atleast recognize PKK as Terrorists an not say provocative bull**** like "i will not let any country attack the PKK". :cantbeli:

[Argyll]

and at the same time if you want good relations with countries, you need to recognise their existence...........I didn't miss the point, infact you made mine!!

GazB.......That Region in Iraq is known as Kurdistan ;)

[Desk Jockey]

You realise the Turkish members will call Bullshyt on this article, some of them simply cannot see that the Region known as Kurdistan has indeed prospered.

I was recently in Southern Turkey and had a chance to speak with both Kurds and non Kurds. I always find you get the best skinny from the truck drivers. By all accounts (especially after some Raki or Efes) 80% of the folks I spoke with echoed this sentiment. I think the other 20% agreed two but werew orried that I was MIT.

Good Article

Argyl, I know you have spent the last several years in Iraq doing contract work, have you had a chance to go up north, especially Erbil?

As always stay safe and watch your six.

Regards

[Desk Jockey]

good for them if they prosper, I'm honestly happy for them.
but it seems you are missing the whole point though, AGAIN.... :roll:

that does not give them an excuse to sponsor Terrorists. if you want warm friendly relations with neighboring countries, you atleast recognize PKK as Terrorists an not say provocative bull**** like "i will not let any country attack the PKK". :cantbeli:

Not all Kurds are PKK/Kadek, do they provide safe haven for Kadek, a percentage do, but let us not blanket the entire ethnic group. FYI. I have been in the vicinity of Kadek bombings, Taksim once, and Diyarbakir. I am the first one to point out that the PKK/kadek has to clean up their act.

However, sponsorship of the terrorist is not across the board.

Sag Ol,

DJ

[a_very_ex_STAB]

Can't beat The Atlantic Monthly. Kudos to Hitchens for his reporting...don't always agree with him, but he never leaves much doubt on where he stands and why.

This would be Hitchens the flip flopping former lefty - still grasping at straws to justify his conversion to the neocon camp.

He'll be telling us soon that creating an independent Kurdistan was the actual reason for the invasion of Iraq :roll:

[Argyll]

No mate, I haven't been up North since 2004, but other guys on my contract were there at xmas.......Yeah the Truck drivers are , when you understand them a hoot, we have a lot of Turkish drivers working for our client, people make comments that I must be brave or stupid doing what I do, well let me tell you, the Truck drivers are the brave ones, especially the Turkish one, these are the guys I respect .

Thanks for your goodwill?

[Ergnkon]

Oh..don't you worry. Turks are very well
aware of the things happening in N. Iraq..esp. when it's mostly "Turks" building the N. Iraqi instutitions. It's being shown on the Turkish TV channels almost on the daily bases (maybe hoping some of them in Turkey will leave)

Turks are aware of the things that goes on there both good and bad and often mention both sides of it...not only the good side by those turns a blind eye to on who's expenses kurds are allowed to develop their areas.

Militias on the Rise Across Iraq
Shiite and Kurdish Groups Seizing Control, Instilling Fear in North and South

By Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 21, 2005; Page A01

BASRA, Iraq -- Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/20/AR2005082001317.html

Finally, the U.N. report helpfully reviews the increasing violence in the contested city of Kirkuk, which indicates an unraveling there--Kurdish militants seeking to ethnically cleanse the city of Turkomen and Arabs in order to win a referendum on Kirkuk's future. Kirkuk accounts for a very high level of oil reserves. Shia militia as well as insurgents are fighting back. It is, as predicted, likely to be a very violent place in the coming months. Let's hope the Times and other news media see fit to pay attention.

http://www.johntirman.com/UN%20report,%20Jan%2007.html

Enabling Kurdish Illusions
Independence isn't in the cards.
by Michael Rubin
03/19/2007,

Iraqi Kurdish leaders continue to shelter the PKK. Whether their support is active or passive is irrelevant, for there are no acceptable levels of support for terror. Nor is it responsible to undercut the security of a long-term NATO ally like Turkey. Until Iraqi Kurdish leaders expel terrorists in their midst and renounce interests beyond Iraq's border, any congressional encouragement of ethnic federalism risks plunging the region into chaos.

Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, recently returned from both Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/397lgxzg.asp?pg=2


Talabani and Barzani have spent thousands of dollars getting former US ambassadors to say good things about them. I thought that since the Iraqi Kurds have not been able to learn what Washington really thinks about them, it would be a good idea to say it directly to their newspapers. Iraqi Kurds must understand that Washington will absolutely not forget about Ankara, and that for as long as the PKK exists in Northern Iraq, the region will be seen as a terror supporting one.

In the end, the Northern Iraq leadership is responsible for whatever happens in their region. And if the situation continues, Northern Iraq is not looking at a good future. Turkey has just as much a right as the US, Israel, and other countries to struggle against terror coming from across the border to it.

http://hurarsiv.hurriyet.com.tr/goster/haber.aspx?id=5440734

[Dakota435]

This would be Hitchens the flip flopping former lefty - still grasping at straws to justify his conversion to the neocon camp.

He'll be telling us soon that creating an independent Kurdistan was the actual reason for the invasion of Iraq :roll:

He is still very much a lefty, but is part of that tiny group of lefties that still believe in liberating people from oppression. The differences between those kinds of lefties and non-Buchannanite righties mostly revolves around how society should be ordered and the role of the state in a democracy, but there is broad agreement on fighting dictatorship.

The modern anti-war left has morphed into Fascism (which was itself a left wing political invention). This is clearly evidenced by the alliance with the modern left with Islamic Fascism (look at the signs in any anti-war demonstration).

These people aren't anti-war, they're just rooting for the opposite side.

[NewsMan]

Can't beat The Atlantic Monthly. Kudos to Hitchens for his reporting...don't always agree with him, but he never leaves much doubt on where he stands and why.

Seriously... do you have to quote the ENTIRE article? Beyond that... EXCELLENT article.

[NewsMan]

BTW most of the preIraq invasion al quada ties were with the Kurds, .

Maybe so... Ansar al Islam is a a very, very small group of Kurdish islamists. So let's get the context in order.

[NewsMan]

He is still very much a lefty, but is part of that tiny group of lefties that still believe in liberating people from oppression.


Saw someone that looks like that in the mirror today... hmmm.

[Desk Jockey]

Maybe so... Ansar al Islam is a a very, very small group of Kurdish islamists. So let's get the context in order.

What about the Peshmerga?

[a_very_ex_STAB]

He is still very much a lefty, but is part of that tiny group of lefties that still believe in liberating people from oppression. The differences between those kinds of lefties and non-Buchannanite righties mostly revolves around how society should be ordered and the role of the state in a democracy, but there is broad agreement on fighting dictatorship.

The modern anti-war left has morphed into Fascism (which was itself a left wing political invention). This is clearly evidenced by the alliance with the modern left with Islamic Fascism (look at the signs in any anti-war demonstration).

These people aren't anti-war, they're just rooting for the opposite side.

Ah that old simplistic falsehood. If you're not wearing a tight sweater and waving some pom poms you're against us. That's really old.

If you're so into fighting dictatorship there's loads of countries around the world some of them much more dangerous than Saddam's Iraq - but strangely the US and UK are not invading any of them :roll:

[IraGlacialis]

What about the Peshmerga?
From what I read, the Peshmerga seems to be pretty legitimate (at least compared to PKK). They are the guys who keep most of the security and work with the US. I think they have helped root out some PKK cells.

[NewsMan]

What about the Peshmerga?

What about peshmerga? Are you saying they're AQ facilitators?

[Desk Jockey]

From what I read, the Peshmerga seems to be pretty legitimate (at least compared to PKK). They are the guys who keep most of the security and work with the US. I think they have helped root out some PKK cells.

The pesh worked with the US, true. What about longterm?

What happens when the coalition leaves?

A standing army for the Kurds?

[Dakota435]

Ah that old simplistic falsehood. If you're not wearing a tight sweater and waving some pom poms you're against us. That's really old.

If you're so into fighting dictatorship there's loads of countries around the world some of them much more dangerous than Saddam's Iraq - but strangely the US and UK are not invading any of them :roll:

Bogus argument. So, if the cops in your neighborhood can't take out EVERY crook, they should leave them all alone? Not logical.

Low hanging fruit dude. Plus what were basically unfinished, unresolved hostilities from '91. Very different from any other situation.

The anti-war crowd doesn't have to agree, but AT LEAST they'd have the courtesy of not supporting terrorists by calling head chopper offers "freedom fighters" or just insurgents, two of whom set off a car bomb leaving two children in the back seat.

Are you denying that the anti-war rallies aren't full of supporters of the insurgents/terrorists? That's who I am referring to.

[Dakota435]

The pesh worked with the US, true. What about longterm?

What happens when the coalition leaves?

A standing army for the Kurds?

The Kurds will have to do something about the PKK sooner or later, since their goal is a functional society at peace with Turkey and the PKK are in the way of that.

[Desk Jockey]

What about peshmerga? Are you saying they're AQ facilitators?

No, but they are a US trained force that will one day be independent, to a greater extent then they are now. Not AQ, but a well trained force that could aid Kurdistan in independence.

Do you want a standing Kurdish army to work n conjuctions with potential terrorist enemies of the Turkish republic?

Do you support an autonomous Kurdish repubic?

DJ

[IraGlacialis]

The pesh worked with the US, true. What about longterm?

What happens when the coalition leaves?

A standing army for the Kurds?
My guess (or at least hope) is that when the US withdraws, there will be some remenent in the Kurdish area (especially if we withdraw with the rest of Iraq still unstable) to keep Turkey and Iran out. Have American bases there like in Germany or South Korea. Also, the US may assist in the rooting out of the PKK.
BTW, the US isn't the only ones training the Kurds; the Israelis are doing the same.

I'm on the fence with the idea of a Independent Kurdistan. It is already practically functional on its own.

[Desk Jockey]

My guess (or at least hope) is that when the US withdraws, there will be some remenent in the Kurdish area (especially if we withdraw with the rest of Iraq still unstable) to keep Turkey and Iran out. Have American bases there like in Germany or South Korea. Also, the US may assist in the rooting out of the PKK.
BTW, the US isn't the only ones training the Kurds; the Israelis are doing the same.

I'm on the fence with the idea of a Independent Kurdistan. It is already practically functional on its own.

True, but I have to disagree that there will be any long term US bases in Kurdistan. CAS OR QRFs units will be far away. Furthermore I think the US will court the Azeri ad Azeri turks before anatolia
Hope for the best.

[Argyll]

The US ain't gonna withdraw completely from Iraq.....

[IraGlacialis]

True, but I have to disagree that there will bw any long term US bases in Kurdistan. CAS OR QRFs units will befar away. Furthermore I think the US will court the Azeri ad Azeri turks before anaoilia
Hope frr thebost
Yet if there are still US and Israeli forces, there is a chance the Turks won't risk invading the area. Plus, a base in Kurdistan would ensure a really friendly area (as compared to some of the public reactions our bases get in some Arab countries) to springboard from in the ME.

The US ain't gonna withdraw completely from Iraq.....
If we withdraw when Iraq is falling into a complete crapheap, the only place I see us staying in is Kurdistan, possibly Southern Iraq (near the Kuwaiti border), and least likely, the Green Zone.

This is all just my opinion.

[Argyll]

There will be no Green Zone shortly anyway, all the Security companys have been told to look for other locations, it's going to be handed over to the Iraqi's in the very near future

[Argyll]

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/2064/Kurds_Near_Agreement_with_15_Oil_Companies

They just keep bringing home that bacon don't they?

[Desk Jockey]

There will be no Green Zone shortly anyway, all the Security companys have been told to look for other locations, it's going to be handed over to the Iraqi's in the very near future

Given the fact that anti Iraqi forces have penetrated the IP, Army, and so forth will we see a destabilized green zone. I think back to the rash of Kidnappings recently.

Is this a recipe for disaster?

[NewsMan]

No, but they are a US trained force that will one day be independent, to a greater extent then they are now. Not AQ, but a well trained force that could aid Kurdistan in independence.

Do you want a standing Kurdish army to work n conjuctions with potential terrorist enemies of the Turkish republic?

Do you support an autonomous Kurdish repubic?

DJ


I look at Peshmerga as a "National Guard" for the Kurdish region. They are the reason the violence hasn't spilled into the northern areas. I do not look at them like I do the Mahdi army and the others. Peshmerga have proved over and over that their mission is to keep their area secure and not ethnic cleansing. There are MANY examples of Iraqis of ALL creeds fleeing to the north so they can have security and stability provided by Peshmerga.

As for what I support: I would like to see a federated Iraq that works together in oil sharing. I support Iraqi Kurdistan's autonomy because it has worked to stop the slaughter of those people.

With that said, I also believe that this autonomy must come with assurances to Turkey that collusion will not be permitted. Most of the things I read suggest that Kurdish leadership in Iraq is trying to move in that direction. It is a slow a difficult process because of radicals in the PKK and the nationalistic "our way or no way" attitude of the Turks.

[annihilation]

There will be no Green Zone shortly anyway, all the Security companys have been told to look for other locations, it's going to be handed over to the Iraqi's in the very near future


Why would they do that and where would everyone move too?

[Argyll]

They'll do that because the land doesn't belong to them, and Security companys have been told to look for other places, a lot of the villas that were originally occupied by PSC's have been repossesed by their original owners

[GazB]

GazB.......That Region in Iraq is known as Kurdistan

Actually only known as kurdistan by the Kurds and kurdistan is not entirely within Iraq, it includes parts of Turkey and Iran, and I have heard Syria too.


Maybe so... Ansar al Islam is a a very, very small group of Kurdish islamists. So let's get the context in order.

Well if you want order to the context... pro invasion bush supporters jumped up and down with final evidence of links they said between Saddam and Al Quada. When examined however those links actually turned out to be links between Kurdish northern Iraq where Saddam had no control because of the northern no fly zone imposed by the west. Al quada likes lawless regions and by making all of Iraq one of those has actually improved al quadas training and operating areas rather than combated and reduced them.


Ah that old simplistic falsehood. If you're not wearing a tight sweater and waving some pom poms you're against us. That's really old.


Yeah. If you don't support the invasion of Iraq then you must support the Iraqi resistance and Saddam... the whole idea of imposing political systems on countries that don't ask for it was something Stalin would approve of... I guess if you support the invasion of Iraq you are a stalinist communist... so the choice is either dictator lover in bed with Saddam, or regime changer in bed with communism and Stalin... and you can't pick neither or sit on the fence... after all you are either with us or against us... :rolleyes:


Bogus argument. So, if the cops in your neighborhood can't take out EVERY crook, they should leave them all alone? Not logical.

First of all we are not talking about officially appointed cops. This is a lynch mob. And it only goes up against a very select few bad guys... in fact many of the worlds bad guys were their buddies not so long ago.


Are you denying that the anti-war rallies aren't full of supporters of the insurgents/terrorists? That's who I am referring to.

How many of those rallys actually involve explosive devices? Whether or not you agree or disagree with their choice of tactics or weapons (of course the Iraqis really don't have 13 nuclear carrier groups to pick from when deciding upon how to react to a US led invasion of their country) their situation is what it is because of the US.


The Kurds will have to do something about the PKK sooner or later, since their goal is a functional society at peace with Turkey and the PKK are in the way of that.

The way the albanians in kosovo turned the KLA into their army/police force is more likely what is to happen.

[intikam]

The Kurds will have to do something about the PKK sooner or later, since their goal is a functional society at peace with Turkey and the PKK are in the way of that.

Finally...thanks...Türkiye is only againist terorist actions..
just like USA UK or EU...
not kurds...it s very open...

[Mitanni]

Turkey's, or let me re-phrase it, Turkish regime's problem is not PKK nor Kerkuk it is the very existence of Kurdish nation. Turkish State has never hesitated to show her animosity towards any Kurdish democratic, social progress. Not only she virtually imprisons her 15-20 million Kurdish population within her artificial borders but also tries to undermine any Kurdish gain elsewhere in the world. This is pure racism and hatred towards Turkey's part.

[Canadian2urk]

artificial borders

artificial?? Your intentions are VERY obvious you terrorist piece of ****...
are these the actual borders then??? LMAOrofl
http://www.kncna.org/images/kurdistan-map-large.jpg

[IraGlacialis]

artificial?? Your intentions are VERY obvious you terrorist piece of ****...
Wow. Even if Mitanni may possibly be a bit unrealistic in his comments, that's a harsh accusation.

[BloodyTalon]

artificial?? Your intentions are VERY obvious you terrorist piece of ****...
Ladies and gentlemen: Godwin's Law.

[Mitanni]

Well,

What can I say? A typical Turk! Like in every forum and every website all they can do is curse and name calling. So I am not going to belittle myself by acting like a Turk.

[Argyll]

Then stop reacting to their posts......I missed this one, but he's recieved a time out......with a warning NOT to whine about it.

[eugenlitwin]

What about the Peshmerga?
here we go
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshmerga
Peshmerga forces fought side by side with American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States) troops in the 2003 Iraq War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Iraq_War) in Iraqi Kurdistan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan). Since that time the Peshmerga have assumed full responsibility for the security of the Kurdish areas of Northern Iraq.
In early 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005) it was speculated by Newsweek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek) magazine that Peshmerga forces could be trained by the US to take on Sunni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni) rebels in Iraq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq).
In late 2004, when Arab Iraqi Police and ING (Iraqi National Guard) units in the city of Mosul collapsed in the face of an insurgent uprising, Kurdish Peshmerga battalions, who had recently been converted into ING forces, led the counter-attack alongside US military units. To this day, there are a number of Kurdish battalions of former Peshmerga in the Iraqi Army serving in Northern Iraq.
It is estimated that as of January, 2005 there were 80,000 Peshmerga fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan. A February 2005 The New York Times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times) article mentioned that Massoud Barzani (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massoud_Barzani) wants to retain the Peshmerga forces. The article estimates their number to be 100,000. A recent CBS News (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_News) reports places their number at 175,000.
The peshmergas are an active partner in the American-led coalition in Iraq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq). Many peshmerga are fluent in Arabic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic), in contrast to foreign coalition troops, and they therefore play an important role in the Sunni triangle of Central Iraq (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq). On the strategic level the peshmergas are ready to fight a guerrilla war in case of a Turkish or an Iranian invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan).

[afreu]

Bogus argument. So, if the cops in your neighborhood can't take out EVERY crook, they should leave them all alone? Not logical.

Low hanging fruit dude. Plus what were basically unfinished, unresolved hostilities from '91. Very different from any other situation.

The anti-war crowd doesn't have to agree, but AT LEAST they'd have the courtesy of not supporting terrorists by calling head chopper offers "freedom fighters" or just insurgents, two of whom set off a car bomb leaving two children in the back seat.

Are you denying that the anti-war rallies aren't full of supporters of the insurgents/terrorists? That's who I am referring to.

I doubt everbody opposing the iraq war automatically supports the insurgency. Or would you accuse the governments who didn't join the alliance for supporting terrorists?

/edit - only read first 2 pages, well said GazB

[Mahir]

same old stories, dreams

[tengiz]

To people who find turks not negotiatable:You talk about others' lifes as talking about plants.You can easly comment about artifical borders(!) but this places are where we live.Do you dare to talk about your own country's borders so easly?

Another reply to people who gives hopes to kurds.I find it crazy to think a free kurdistan is functional.Please first look at the map before talking.How can a kurdistan will live without exit to seas?It is just making things worse on this geography.

And living inside a high kurdish population in my city i can only say they are just poor people but will never rebel to Turkey in any condition.

[syncmaster001]

and at the same time if you want good relations with countries, you need to recognise their existence...........I didn't miss the point, infact you made mine!!

GazB.......That Region in Iraq is known as Kurdistan ;)

They are exist. But not in kurdistan, They are in iraq. They can't divide iraq. and nothing gives them a right to support terrorism. :)

[THE.WHITE.RIDER]

The region known as kurdistan has not prospered as half of it is in Turkey and Iran...

BTW most of the preIraq invasion al quada ties were with the Kurds, Saddam removed alquada from areas he could reach. Any AL quada ties with Iraq nowadays would be as a direct result of the US invasion, and nothing to do with any love between the groups.

You don't think Saddam was a terrorist? You don't think he gave thousands of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers?

Wow. You are telling me that the Kurds were the ones dealing with Al-Qaeda. I don't mean to be rude, but that is BS. The Kurds have some of the finest anti-terrorism strategies in the world. They have experience for the past 16 years ion the KRG. They constantly are infilitrating cells. They recently stopped a plot in Kirkuk. The Kurds didn't support Al-Qaeda. This makes me laugh. The Kurds are the ones who are cooperating with the US, unlike Sunni Arabs who were the ones who welcomed Al-Qaeda and are begining to see the folly of it. You think Kurdistan cooperates with Ansar Il Islam? This is pure fiction!

[THE.WHITE.RIDER]

To people who find turks not negotiatable:You talk about others' lifes as talking about plants.You can easly comment about artifical borders(!) but this places are where we live.Do you dare to talk about your own country's borders so easly?

Another reply to people who gives hopes to kurds.I find it crazy to think a free kurdistan is functional.Please first look at the map before talking.How can a kurdistan will live without exit to seas?It is just making things worse on this geography.

And living inside a high kurdish population in my city i can only say they are just poor people but will never rebel to Turkey in any condition.

You think there are no other landlocked countries on the planet?

[THE.WHITE.RIDER]

you're a jewish kemalist.

[THE.WHITE.RIDER]

good for them if they prosper, I'm honestly happy for them.
but it seems you are missing the whole point though, AGAIN.... :roll:

that does not give them an excuse to sponsor Terrorists. if you want warm friendly relations with neighboring countries, you atleast recognize PKK as Terrorists an not say provocative bull**** like "i will not let any country attack the PKK". :cantbeli:

you're a jewish kemalist agent operating in canada.

[DeltaWhisky58]

you're a jewish kemalist agent operating in canada.

For goodness sake, grow up and get over yourself little boy, no-one is listening to you!

[eugenlitwin]

Iraqi Kurdistan is on the right road, neighbors do´t like it but this is just a fact

Baghdad Christians Find New Life in Kurdish North
6-28-2007

KARA-ULA, Iraq -- The 70 houses of this tiny village spring from the treeless, arid plain here in the northern tip of Iraq with the uniformity of an army camp.

Built over the past four years of war, they house Christian refugees from some of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods: Dora, New Baghdad and Mashtel.

There the residents did not know one another, busy with their city lives. Now a barber, a bank manager, a news anchor and an electrician are comrades in the misery of flight. "We saw everything a human can see," said Majida Hamo, a mother of four who came from Mashtel recently. "It was a kind of genocide killing."

"We were saying to Jesus, 'See us and save us.' "

The Iraqi exodus is one of the largest displacements in the Middle East since the creation of Israel in 1948. Many have fled to Jordan and Syria, countries where Arabic is spoken. Others have stayed within Iraq's borders, moving into the largely peaceful Kurdish north, which is more foreign to them than neighboring countries because the main language is Kurdish, not their native Arabic.

The choice of this small patch of land along the Turkish border was not arbitrary. On a gray day in 1975, the refugees' parents were driven from their farms here, caught in one of Saddam Hussein's cruel sectarian relocation plans, residents said. They were given a few hours to gather their possessions and get into army trucks. They ended up in Baghdad. In the capital, the families -- farmers and shepherds -- became city dwellers, taking jobs as taxi drivers, maids and barbers. Samir Bibadro was born the year his parents arrived. They settled in Dora, a bustling lower-middle-class area with a large Christian population.

For most of his adult life Mr. Bibadro worked as a barber, giving trims and close shaves in his southern Baghdad neighborhood. After the American invasion, Sunni militants moved in to control it and began killing barbers, because the Prophet Muhammad wore a beard. Mr. Bibadro did not have the money to move to America, as some in the Christian community had, and settled for the village of his father, a place he had never been. Plans to move became urgent after the killing of his cousin and his brother-in-law. Sitting on a couch in his one-story concrete house far from the violence, Mr. Bibadro patted his chest with thick fingers and described his feelings with a smile and one word: comfortable.

Upper-middle-class refugees have a different view.

For Suhail Nissan, a former bank manager, living in Kara-Ula feels like running out of air. She and her four children fled a year ago, after an anonymous caller threatened to kill her if she did not give up her house. She left without taking her furniture.

Now, she is spending her meager savings busing her children to an Arabic school. The teaching is far short of the standards in the schools for the gifted that her children attended in Baghdad, where they learned French and English, and she worries that their future is dimmer.

Her savings will last just a few months more, she said. "I am thinking, in two months what will I do?" she said, standing outside the new village church, clenching her hands nervously. She has even tried getting her old job back, as a manager at the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad, but it refused.

The only instruction in the village for teenagers is a religious lesson taught by a former news anchor, Salam Toma, in a white room, empty except for rows of plastic chairs. Another problem is health care. As bad as the hospitals have become in Baghdad, care, at least for those with money, is still better than it would be here. Ms. Nissan's husband went to Syria for care when he fell ill recently. Behjat Tahkia, 43, an electrician, said his brother had wanted to move to the village with the rest of the family but had to stay in Baghdad because of a heart ailment. Still, people here are glad to be alive, and grateful to the local Kurdish government, which has allotted small monthly stipends and the land for their houses, residents said. Hermes Toma Musa was 32 when Mr. Hussein's soldiers forced him to leave his patches of eggplant and watermelon, his goats and sheep. For him, the return in 2004 was a homecoming. The concrete house is much better than the hut he lived in 40 years before. He has planted rows of apricot trees. The only building left from the past is an old police station, which is now a school.

"Even if Baghdad were not on fire, we would still come here," he said, standing in the sun on his roof. "It is like being in heaven while I'm still alive."

By Sabrina Tavernise
New York Times

[IraGlacialis]

^^^^^
That's real nice of them.

[TRofNC]

a Kurdistan is only one dream, without the agreement of Turkey.

The Kurds do not want only in Irag a Kurdistan, want also from Turkey a part to have. That is unacceptable for Turkey and the Turks sees to each kind of the support for the Kurdistan as hostile action. Turkish security forceses found, US weapons with the pkk and it more frequent times determined that US contacts to pkk store. The Turks ask themselves naturally, what has to mean everything. Those do not want to believe in the fact that NATO allied supportet the terror organization.

(Apology for my write errors. I do not know English. I translated this Text in Internet)

[eugenlitwin]

a Kurdistan is only one dream, without the agreement of Turkey.

The Kurds do not want only in Irag a Kurdistan, want also from Turkey a part to have. That is unacceptable for Turkey and the Turks sees to each kind of the support for the Kurdistan as hostile action. Turkish security forceses found, US weapons with the pkk and it more frequent times determined that US contacts to pkk store. The Turks ask themselves naturally, what has to mean everything. Those do not want to believe in the fact that NATO allied supportet the terror organization.

(Apology for my write errors. I do not know English. I translated this Text in Internet)

it´s ok,p-)
i´m almost agreed with you "Kurdistan is only one dream, without the agreement of Turkey." just change word Kurdistan to "Kurdish question"

[Violet Fashion by Mindy]

One of the big problems the coalition/NATO/Russia face over questions like Kosovo, Kurdistan, Chechnya is "Where do we draw the line?"

As seen in the Balkans and some former Soviet Republics. You grant one group independence then another group wants the same and so and so on.

Would Germany agree for independence of Bavaria or would England give independence to Wales?

Would China give independence to Tibet or Italy give independence to Milan and Venice?

There is the potential for huge problems with ethnic/cultural/political/historical groups who have lost independence and in quite a few cases this loss they had nothing to do with but who's city ended up being on the wrong side of a line on the map.

[eugenlitwin]

One of the big problems the coalition/NATO/Russia face over questions like Kosovo, Kurdistan, Chechnya is "Where do we draw the line?"

As seen in the Balkans and some former Soviet Republics. You grant one group independence then another group wants the same and so and so on.

Would Germany agree for independence of Bavaria or would England give independence to Wales?

Would China give independence to Tibet or Italy give independence to Milan and Venice?

There is the potential for huge problems with ethnic/cultural/political/historical groups who have lost independence and in quite a few cases this loss they had nothing to do with but who's city ended up being on the wrong side of a line on the map.

agreed, but south Kurdistan is already independent, what should we do with them?

[TRofNC]

agreed, but south Kurdistan is already independent, what should we do with them?

there are no south Kurdistan. There are north Iraq and in north Iraq lives also 4-5 million Turkmenen. Do you have also idea for this part of the people?

[Vorian]

It is called Kurdistan and they are practically independent, wether you like it or not.

The Iraqi Turkmens (also spelled Turkomen, Turcoman, and Turkman) are a distinct Turkic ethnic group living in Iraq, notably in the cities of Arbil, Tal Afar, Kirkuk, and Mosul. Like the Assyrians, they claim to be the third largest ethnic group in the country (following the Arabs and the Kurds). However, estimates of their numbers vary dramatically, from 222,000[1] to 2,500,000.[2]

I would support the protection of Turkmen by their Turkish cousins if it wasn't a hypocritical attempt to sabotage the creation of a independent Kurdistan.

[TRofNC]

" creation of a independent Kurdistan"
oooh! these words is beautiful. But we try ourselves something, we change the word "kurdistan" with "north Cyprus".

Feeling you still well?"

Sir !
Which you say are more war. Ah it is naturally no problem if you, your family and relationship does not live in Iraq. Why does democracy and freedom only for Kurds and not for completely Iraq?

That is true democracy and improves away. Whether you like it or not

[eugenlitwin]

there are no south Kurdistan. There are north Iraq and in north Iraq lives also 4-5 million Turkmenen. Do you have also idea for this part of the people?

only 4-5 millions? last time when i checked one nice Turkish e-net site it was 75-145 millionsrofl

PS "I would support the protection of Turkmen by their Turkish cousins if it wasn't a hypocritical attempt to sabotage the creation of a independent Kurdistan."

me too

[TRofNC]

Why does democracy and freedom only for Kurds and not for completely Iraq?

That is true democracy and improves away. Whether you like it or not

[Vorian]

oooh! these words is beautiful. But we try ourselves something, we change the word "kurdistan" with "north Cyprus".


The difference being that Kurdistan has many million Kurds wanting independence while on "Northen Cyprus" is just a territory of RoC occupied by Turkey, cleansed by Greek Cypriots and full of settlers from Anatolia to boost population. Something like what Turkey accuses the Kurds of doing in Kirkuk.

[TRofNC]

Thpical argumentation OF Greece. The world has enough from this misunderstanding.
We talk openly, it are normally that those Greece wish, what the Turks do not want.

[Vorian]

Thpical argumentation OF Greece. The world has enough from this misunderstanding.
We talk openly, it are normally that those Greece wish, what the Turks do not want.

Ok, ok let's stop here, since we are completely off topic.

[TRofNC]

I agree. We can talk about it later

[eugenlitwin]

Why does democracy and freedom only for Kurds and not for completely Iraq?

That is true democracy and improves away. Whether you like it or not

who said so? there is just one tiny difference between those 3 groups: kurds are ready and want democracy, shiia/sunni arabs are not

[TRofNC]

who said so? there is just one tiny difference between those 3 groups: kurds are ready and want democracy, shiia/sunni arabs are not

From where do you know that?
And do not forget the Turkomans.
No, no... Only because US and Israel wants A puppete state?
REJECTET !!!
Democracy for Kurds? I bet Barzani and Talabani remains as leaders to her dying

[eugenlitwin]

From where do you know that?
And do not forget the Turkomans.
No, no... Only because US and Israel wants A puppete state?
REJECTET !!!
Democracy for Kurds? I bet Barzani and Talabani remains as leaders to her dying

no i don´t read my privios posts
or you talking about independent iraqi turkomanistan? check this map first in this case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Iraq_demography.jpg

[TRofNC]

If you want, I can draw another map for you... I talk about independent Iraq.

[JJC]

Kurds are a people who deserve the right to claim their historic homeland and have been waiting for far too long. After WW1 they were promissed that just like the Jews they will receive their independence in Kurdistan their home. In terms of international laws and customs, Kurds are more deserving to a state than Palestinians for some reasons that have been mentione here, but politics will alway dictate how things turn out.

Speaking of Turkomens, aren't they related to the same Turkmens of Turkmenistan, which is a country for those who never heard of it?..

[TRofNC]

Kurds are a people who deserve the right to claim their historic homeland and have been waiting for far too long. After WW1 they were promissed that just like the Jews they will receive their independence in Kurdistan their home. In terms of international laws and customs, Kurds are more deserving to a state than Palestinians for some reasons that have been mentione here, but politics will alway dictate how things turn out.

Speaking of Turkomens, aren't they related to the same Turkmens of Turkmenistan, which is a country for those who never heard of it?..

And who are the Americans? From where came? And where are the Indians?
The world does not develop with slogans of 70`s.

If we speak here about rights, it must apply to all, not only to certain people.

[eugenlitwin]

If you want, I can draw another map for you... I talk about independent Iraq.

yes, you can for sure but what it would change?.

[TRofNC]

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6802/harita6oa5.jpg

Here, that is my map. You can select to which you believe. Light blue marked area is where the Turkomans by the majority live.

[ce267]

And who are the Americans? From where came? And where are the Indians?
The world does not develop with slogans of 70`s.

If we speak here about rights, it must apply to all, not only to certain people.




very true bro....Kurds must respect for every ethnics...Northern iraq is homeland of Turkmans Arabs etc beside Kurds....but kurds are very greedy for fundemental humanrights for peoples of northern iraq...They claim Northern İraq belongs to only Kurds...also kurds have no majority in any city...so they forced to immigrate non kudrish people...but they couldnt achieve yet...

[eugenlitwin]

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6802/harita6oa5.jpg

Here, that is my map. You can select to which you believe. Light blue marked area is where the Turkomans by the majority live.

can you tell me where did you find this unique map?

[ce267]

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/6802/harita6oa5.jpg

Here, that is my map. You can select to which you believe. Light blue marked area is where the Turkomans by the majority live.


l have ever seen most realistic map...but Diala region Arap populations has equality Turkmen population...

[TRofNC]

can you tell me where did you find this unique map?

http://www.iraqiturkman.org.tr/turkmen1.htm

and

http://www.kerkuk.net/default.aspx?dil=2057

You can find here English info over Turkmen`s .

You can find here English info over Turkmen`s .

I must say to you, you can`t find often such maps, because Turkmens are for united Irag. That is to show only population.

[Argyll]

Diyala Region is predominant Turkmen?......totally crap mate, if anything they are a minority.

[Vorian]

http://www.iraqiturkman.org.tr/turkmen1.htm

and

http://www.kerkuk.net/default.aspx?dil=2057

Both completely unbiased sites. It's like wanting to learn about the Holocaust and visiting ilovehitler.com :D:D:D rofl

[ce267]

Diyala Region is predominant Turkmen?......totally crap mate, if anything they are a minority.

no..Sunni Arabs are dominant DİALA region...But Turkmen population should be second ...especially Tuzhurmatu city Turkmen people is quite domınant...

[Argyll]

Yeah, I was in Tuz not so long ago....which is closer to the Iranian border than the Turkish border.

[NewsMan]

The Kurds are "greedy" for this as a homland in the same sense Israel did what it did. It's about centuries of persecution and the desire to protect their population. It's about self defense. Kurds will not get protection from Turkey, nor Iran, nor Syria. The logical thing to do is take in on themselves. It's aboutthe old addage that says if you want something done right, do it yourself.

[TRofNC]

With support of the pkk terrorist and suppression of the Turkmen s and Arab can the nothing reach.
Turkey has too many Kurds from Iraq accepted and protected as Saddam it to poison wanted. But the little are strong already, catch them to Turkey threaten.

The Kurds forget too fast and the World also.

[eugenlitwin]

http://www.iraqiturkman.org.tr/turkmen1.htm

and

http://www.kerkuk.net/default.aspx?dil=2057

You can find here English info over Turkmen`s .

You can find here English info over Turkmen`s .

I must say to you, you can`t find often such maps, because Turkmens are for united Irag. That is to show only population.

don´t you see that those sites made by Turkomans and about Turkomans?

guestion: haw 4 miljons kursds took over 4 milons Turkomans? or kurds are belong to "ruler nation" in the same moment Turkomans...?


It's like wanting to learn about the Holocaust and visiting ilovehitler.com LOL,)

[TRofNC]

Who is to tell you over the situation of Turkomans? Chinese?
If situation of the Turkomans interests you, you must listen these People
which those to tell.
Your remark "made by Turkomans for Turkomans" shows, it is worthless for you, which the People own tell there. You have prejudices and you dont want these to change.
That is my last Word to the topic.
I would like progressing, not turn around the circle.

[eugenlitwin]

Who is to tell you over the situation of Turkomans? Chinese?
If situation of the Turkomans interests you, you must listen these People
which those to tell.
Your remark "made by Turkomans for Turkomans" shows, it is worthless for you, which the People own tell there. You have prejudices and you dont want these to change.
That is my last Word to the topic.
I would like progressing, not turn around the circle.

have your heard term "independent sources" before?

[8mm]

hmm Leyla Zana says it is time to divide Turkey..hey guys Turks are different people they always wait last moment they dont do anything now and everybody challange them as Turkey seem very passive now but i belive like in 1900s they are patient but when they lost temper hmm will be bad for terrorist who want to divide Turks country

[TRofNC]

have your heard term "independent sources" before?

Their kind does not please me.
You must learn to understand which you read. I said;" They must also listen the Turkomans ". You can get information from other sources. But these people must you also listen, which those think.

[eugenlitwin]

hmm Leyla Zana says it is time to divide Turkey..hey guys Turks are different people they always wait last moment they dont do anything now and everybody challange them as Turkey seem very passive now but i belive like in 1900s they are patient but when they lost temper hmm will be bad for terrorist who want to divide Turks country

when did she say so? maybe her Biography "explain" way she said it.

She was born in May 1961 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961), in Silvan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvan%2C_Turkey) near Diyarbakır (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diyarbak%C4%B1r), in the southeast of Turkey. When she was 14 years old, she was married to Mehdi Zana (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehdi_Zana) who was the mayor of Diyarbakır until the military coup d'état and a political prisoner after it. Zana was elected to Parliament of Turkey in 1991 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991). When taking her parliamentary oath, she spoke Kurdish and wore a headband with the colours of the Kurdish flag (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_flag), which were banned activities prior to 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002), and inflamed antipathy toward her. At her inauguration as a MP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_Parliament), she reportedly identified herself as a Kurd. Amnesty International (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_International) reported "She took the oath of loyalty in Turkish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_language), as required by law, then added in Kurdish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_language), 'I shall struggle so that the Kurdish and Turkish peoples may live together in a democratic framework.' Parliament erupted with shouts of 'Separatist', 'Terrorist', and 'Arrest her'"[1] (http://www.amnestyusa.org/action/special/zana.html),[2] (http://www.pen.org/freedom/lzana.html).
Although her parliamentary immunity protected her, after she joined the Democracy Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Democracy_Party&action=edit), that party was banned and her immunity was stripped. In December 1994 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994), along with four other Democracy Party MPs (Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan), she was arrested and charged with treason and membership in the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers_Party) (PKK). The treason charges were not put before the court, and Zana denied PKK affiliation; but with the prosecution relying on witness statements allegedly obtained under torture [3] (http://www.amnestyusa.org/amnestynow/leyla.html), Zana and the others were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
She was recognized as a "Prisoner of Conscience" by Amnesty International (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_International). In 1994 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994) she was awarded the Rafto Prize (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafto_Prize), and in 1995 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995), she won the Bruno Kreisky Award (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Kreisky_Award). In 1998 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998) her sentence was extended because of a letter she had written that was published in a Kurdish newspaper, which allegedly expressed banned pro-separatist views. While in prison she published a book titled Writings from Prison.
With Turkey applying to become a member of the European Union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union), the EU repeatedly called for her release on human rights grounds, making its position clear by awarding Zana with the Sakharov Prize (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakharov_Prize) in 1995.
In 2001 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001) the European Court of Human Rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights) ruled against Turkey after a review of her trial; although Turkey did not recognize the result, in 2003 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003) a new harmonization law permitted retrials based on ECHR decisions. In 2002, a film named The Back of the World examined her case. In April 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004), in a trial which the defendants frequently boycotted, their convictions and sentences were reaffirmed. In June 2004 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004), after a prosecutor requested quashing the prior verdict on a technicality, the Turkish Supreme Court of Appeals ordered Zana and the others released.
In January 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005), the European Court of Human Rights awarded Zana and each of the other defendants € (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro)9,000 from the Turkish government, ruling Turkey had violated her rights of free expression. Zana and others announced the new political formation Democratic Society Movement (DTH). On August 17 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_17), 2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005), Democratic Society Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Society_Party) (DTP) was founded as the merger of Democratic People's Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_People%27s_Party_%28Turkey%29) (DEHAP) and DTH

[eugenlitwin]

Their kind does not please me.
You must learn to understand which you read. I said;" They must also listen the Turkomans ". You can get information from other sources. But these people must you also listen, which those think.

yes, and you mast go to school ones again or http://www.english-at-home.com/, this time i just can´t get your point

[TRofNC]

when did she say so? maybe her Biography "explain" way she said it.

Zana was elected to Parliament of Turkey in 1991 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991). When taking her parliamentary oath, she spoke Kurdish


Zana belongs again in the prison.
Was German parliament or US Parliament to permit into another language to speak?
Who Turkey to divide wants must with heavy follows to count.

[Vorian]

Zana belongs again in the prison.
Was German parliament or US Parliament to permit into another language to speak?
Who Turkey to divide wants must with heavy follows to count.

Actually nobody would arrest a Congressman for speaking Spanish in US.

[TRofNC]

Actually nobody would arrest a Congressman for speaking Spanish in US.


Not for speaking, I talk about "swearing in Parliament" in Spanish or other language

[TRofNC]

yes, and you mast go to school ones again or http://www.english-at-home.com/, this time i just can´t get your point

I learned none word Englischs in the school. I can speak German and Turkish language.
for AntiTurks into different Forums(those are mostly Armenians, Greeks or Kurds with English pseudonyms) I don`t need English to learn.
The translators in the InterNet sufficient for it.

[Vorian]

Not for speaking, I talk about "swearing in Parliament" in Spanish or other language

It would be inapropriate and maybe they would get reprimanded or something but they wouldn't be jailed for it.

[TRofNC]

it is wrong to judgements, without to know the details and which happened exactly. Each country has laws, and to it one must hold oneself.

[eugenlitwin]

I learned none word Englischs in the school. I can speak German and Turkish language.
for AntiTurks into different Forums(those are mostly Armenians, Greeks or Kurds with English pseudonyms) I don`t need English to learn.
The translators in the InterNet sufficient for it.

i guess i fall under category "or Kurds with English pseudonyms"
LOL you make my day,)

[TRofNC]

That is not a surprise for me Mr.eugenlitvin(!).

Their identification with this name and picture is a very good strategy.

But, I would like to say to you, with foot licking, they cannot be always successful. At least not virtue-fully...

==Please dont take personally. I do not want to attack your personality. That is only a friendly advice.==

[eugenlitwin]

That is not a surprise for me Mr.eugenlitvin(!).

Their identification with this name and picture is a very good strategy.

But, I would like to say to you, with foot licking, they cannot be always successful. At least not virtue-fully...

==Please dont take personally. I do not want to attack your personality. That is only a friendly advice.==

you know what surprised me? that i have an english name:lol: i leave part "with foot licking" to history jugement.

[Argyll]

I suggest you stop using an Online transaltion mate.

[helomech]

I just breezed through this thread and it went from a general observation of Northern Iraq and the Kurds,to pissed off Turks who aren't willing to accept the fact that the Kurds' have got their sh1t together and are making things work;I know guys and gals that have done time up in northern Iraq and they've said that whole region of the country is completely opposite when compared to the rest of the country;

As far as pulling back from known safe areas like the Green Zone,it would make sense to do so,you can't watch every part of the country forever;when British Forces leave the Basrah AO,the Iranians could just move in unopposed..that is if the Iraqi police and security sit by and do nothing-purely speculation on my part..

Not to sound like an insensitive prick,but whenever there's a thread that MAY have something with the Kurd-Turk situation,it goes to sh1t real fast and the original thread is lost..you guys blow everything out of proportion need to sit back and think like big boys and girls before popping off...

[Desk Jockey]

I suggest you stop using an Online transaltion mate.

Please I will translate for you with Argyll and or another mods permission, you are setting forth babble.

Northern Cypriot is tough, but I willl try.

Argyll, off topic mate, I lurk at SOCNET and get together with Doc Moran (1989 91 Whiskey - Just Cause) he lives 10 minutes from me. Anyway, are they gonna let Frenchy deploy to Iraq?

After the whole Silver Bullet fiasco.

Take it to PM if necessary mate, just curious, Match may chime in. What a goat ****.

[Argyll]

Deck Jockey.......thanks, a lot of what TRofNC says gets lost in translation

Frenchie was sacked mate.

[ApuLunas]

Kurds are new toys of american imperialism. thats why the so called "independent sources" burnishes their polish, and thats why nobody in middle east respects them. like it or not, but i dont buy 9/11 ****.

[helomech]

Kurds are new toys of american imperialism. thats why the so called "independent sources" burnishes their polish, and thats why nobody in middle east respects them. like it or not, but i dont buy 9/11 ****.

........?!:roll:

[TriggerHappy]

Kurds are new toys of american imperialism. thats why the so called "independent sources" burnishes their polish, and thats why nobody in middle east respects them. like it or not, but i dont buy 9/11 ****.

The reasons they dont like kurds:

They are not Arab first of all.
They want to snatch arab land as iraqis claim.
They want to snatch persian land as iranians claim.
Then there is the turkish-Kurd love affair going on.

[IraGlacialis]

Kurds are new toys of american imperialism. thats why the so called "independent sources" burnishes their polish, and thats why nobody in middle east respects them. like it or not, but i dont buy 9/11 ****.
http://pictures.deadlycomputer.com/d/16690-2/tinfoil.jpg
Pic the one that best goes along with your fashion sense.

[helomech]

http://pictures.deadlycomputer.com/d/16690-2/tinfoil.jpg
Pic the one that best goes along with your fashion sense.

Hehehehehe.........nice

[ApuLunas]

The reasons they dont like kurds:

They are not Arab first of all.
They want to snatch arab land as iraqis claim.
They want to snatch persian land as iranians claim.
Then there is the turkish-Kurd love affair going on.

-who said we are so lovely with arabs?
-where USA already invaded with false reasons?
-where USA already wants to invade?
-the love affair of USA-Kurds?

well double standart is a well-known western tradition.:backhand:

[IraGlacialis]

^^^^^
So I guess you like the fez then. Good choice.
Aluminum or tin?

[ApuLunas]

^^^^^
So I guess you like the fez then. Good choice.
Aluminum or tin?

oooooooow, funny boy strikes again with his irresistible jokes.

[annihilation]

Kurds are new toys of american imperialism. thats why the so called "independent sources" burnishes their polish, and thats why nobody in middle east respects them. like it or not, but i dont buy 9/11 ****.

Is middle east respect something worth gaining? I doubt very much their respect holds much weight in this world. Also I wish this was all part of imperialism, at least then it be a worthy cause to gain some more territory.

[ApuLunas]

Is middle east respect something worth gaining? I doubt very much their respect holds much weight in this world. Also I wish this was all part of imperialism, at least then it be a worthy cause to gain some more territory.

ehm, you forgot the oil...

[IraGlacialis]

oooooooow, funny boy strikes again with his irresistible jokes.
Me funny? I am in no way funny compared to you. You are a master of hilarity.

[ApuLunas]

Me funny? I am in no way funny compared to you. You are a master of hilarity.

oh boy, you underestimate yourself.

[Argyll]

If your English is not good enough to post here without having to use an online translator, then please do not comment, because a lot of what people are posting are not making sense.

Once again the schools must be on Holiday, the silly season of My **** is bigger than yours is here, where schoolkids think above their experience grade!!
Apulunas........5 posts and you've already shown your colours, and you will be monitored closely, you have not began your membership well.

Remember people, you are guests in this house, and I suggest the new members refresh themselves with the rules!!