- Kurds are the latest victim of typical US abandonment
AT PENPOINT
The humanitarian tragedy of what amounts to the Turkish invasion of Syria may be more prominent, but the way the USA has thrown to the wolves the Kurds who helped it in its fight against ISIS has an echo of a previous betrayal of the Kurdish people nearly a century ago.
The circumstances have changed greatly, but the underlying reality is the same: the Kurds do not have a state. Turkey has said, and is acting to do so, that it wishes to establish a ‘safe zone’ on Syrian territory abutting it, where it will send the Syrian refugees it is hosting, while it will clear its own southern territory of ‘terrorists’. The area involved is where Kurds mostly reside, on either side of the Turco-Syrian border.
The Kurds have a long existence, being the descendants of the Medes, who had an empire covering Persia, the Caucasus and the Anatolian Peninsula back in the 9th to 7th centuries BC. They converted when the area was conquered by the Turks, and they came back into prominence through one man, Salahuddin Ayyubi. Salahuddin was second-generation, and his father and uncle had first won a place for themselves, coming down from the hills, and winning renown as soldiers. The Attubis ruled in Syria and Egypt for two centuries after, but by the time the Ottomans began to rule in the Empire, the Kurds sank back into obscurity.
Though old Ottoman provinces became states, like Syria and Iraq, a Kurdish state was not contemplated. Indeed, the British, who had the mandate for Iraq, did not support Kurdish nationalist movements arising in Turkey, presumably to avoid instability in their own mandate.
They came to prominence again when the Ottoman Empire was broken up after its defeat in World War I. There was some US sympathy for Kurdish aspirations, but the Ottoman Empire’s Kurds were split three ways, in Turkey, in Syria and in Iraq. There is a fourth section, in Persia, but though there are unification aspirations, it does not seem there is much happening over there.
The Kurds in Iraq have got a region of their own around Mosul. The area has developed many of the characteristics of a separate state. However, that did not stop the Kurds from looking to the USA to help them in Syria. The price they paid was to act as the ‘boots on the ground’ in the fight against ISIS. That has got the Turks upset. It is worse for the Kurds that the Kurds are in the opposition, for they have a party of their own, the HDPP.
Turkey has not got over the long civil war it had with the Kurds over its territory, which it insists on calling mountain Turks, and whose language is still officially banned in schools. Faced with a Kurdish quasi-state in Iraq, it did not like the prospect of Kurds in Syria to whom the Americans would be grateful.
The USA has let down the Kurds before. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire was broken up into a number of states, Turkey itself and the majority of the current Arab states. These states did not become independent at once, but became League of Nations mandates first. Of course, the mandates were in accordance with the infamous wartime Sykes-Picot agreement. Though old Ottoman provinces became states, like Syria and Iraq, a Kurdish state was not contemplated. Indeed, the British, who had the mandate for Iraq, did not support Kurdish nationalist movements arising in Turkey, presumably to avoid instability in their own mandate.
There was some thought of the USA getting the mandate for Turkey, and while it was being contemplated, the USA showed some support for Kurd national aspiration. The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, the peace treaty of the allies with Turkey, designated a large area where a plebiscite was to have been held, and which was to have been a Kurd homeland. This provision was removed in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, which replaced the Treaty of Sèvres.
The Kurds are not the only people the USA seems to have it in for. Between the two betrayals of the Kurds, came the abandonment of the Montagnards, the tribes that lived in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. While they had always been members of the armed forces of South Vietnam, they proved to be doughty warriors under US command during the Vietnamese War. When the USA withdrew from that country in 1975, it left the Montagnards behind. They were brutally and comprehensively persecuted by the victorious North Vietnamese, and some were extracted by their US colleagues, and resettled in North Carolina.
Are the Kurds to be fobbed off with the prospect of US residence? There is already a significant Kurd presence in Germany, where Kurds have gone as Turkish gastarbeiter (guest workers). The desire for a homeland had driven Turkish Kurds towards the USSR, and even now, the PKK (Kurdish Communist Party) is still the main political vehicle for Kurdish nationalism. It is because of the PKK that Turkey is able to claim that it is actually fighting terrorism.
Apart from the Kurds and the Montagnards, the USA has involved itself in the affairs of another people which has dwells among mountains: the Afghans. One of the issues likely to arise in the future in Afghanistan is what will happen to the Afghans who took the side of the USA. It should be remembered that the USA has not just needed fighters, but also translators and arrangers of food supply. One advantage is that the Afghans already have their nation-state; it should not be forgotten that the Montagnards were held out of the prospect of a separate state back in the 1960s.
The USA might be concerned for the fate of its allies, but the allies need to be more worried. Not just entire peoples and nations, but organisations, groups and even individuals. The Kurds illustrate best the inevitable difference in perception. For the Kurds, it is a matter of national recognition, no less, but for the USA, it is just one piece (though an important one) in the mosaic that is the Middle East. And no one should forget, least of all any hopeful Kurdish nationalists, that there are other things happening in the Middle East, not least the evolving Iranian situation, to attract US attention.
