Like the Arabs of what used to be called Palestine, the Kurds are a long-suffering Middle Eastern people who have never had a country, would very much like one, and can’t figure out the geopolitics of achieving that. Also like the Palestinians, the Kurds endured centuries of oppressive rule by the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
But Israel- considered by some the principal obstacle to Palestinian statehood, though opinions differ, and long-suffering in its own right -is a downright benign neighbor compared to the murderous crowd surrounding the Kurds- Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey.
The starting point for the bloody cauldron of turmoil we call the "Modern Middle East" is 1918 when along with the Russian, German, and Austrian Empires the Ottoman Empire was smashed to smithereens in the cataclysm of World War I. Into the resultant power vacuum stepped Britain and France, sensing an opportunity to write yet another chapter in their long running Colonial rivalry.
Not everyone thought this was a good idea. In 1920 Winston Churchill- then Britain's Colonial Secretary- prophetically observed " future generations will pay a terrible price for the blunders we are making today".
The Treaties that settled World War I created wholly new countries in the Middle East, which correlated very poorly to the ethnic, religious, linguistic, and historical characteristics of the "liberated" peoples of the region. In this great post- war "carve-up" the Kurds were promised but then denied independence and condemned to a rootless existence in a very dangerous neighborhood.
Those who naively ask, "Aren't they all Muslims?" betray a gross ignorance of the complex varieties of religious matters in the Middle East. The dominant Muslim sects- Sunni, and Shia- have little liking for the Kurds who are a different ethnic and religious entity altogether.
The most basic problem for the Kurds is that they are surrounded by four authoritarian regimes that all have substantial Kurdish minorities who the ruling powers view as disloyal and potential threats to their territorial integrity.
The traumas of World War II and its immediate aftermath essentially eliminated Britain and France as players in the Middle East to be replaced by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. For the Kurds the rest of the Twentieth Century was a tale of sorrow and slaughter- an oppressed minority in Turkey, Syria, and Iran, and victims of a horrific genocide in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Kurds found a new champion when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 in search of those "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (WMD) alleged to have been very recently used to decimate the Kurdish population of that country.
The Americans failed to find WMDs but they did overthrow Saddam and in doing so helped establish a "de facto" Kurdish State in Northern Iraq.
The Kurds proved to be a brave and resourceful ally for the U.S. in the savage and ultimately successful battles against the ISIS "Caliphate". The bloody conflict however proved a catalyst for a devastating Civil War in Syria, which threatened to topple the tyrannical regime of Bashar Al Assad.
The years long strife with hundreds of thousands of deaths and similar numbers of refugees flooding into neighboring countries and Europe occurred amidst a confusing welter of warring sects, changing alliances, and also foreign interventions by Russia, and Iran on the side of Assad and the United States on behalf of rebels among whom were Syrian and Turkish Kurds who established control of territory along the Southeastern border of Turkey.
Turkey has for decades been in conflict with the 20% of their population who are Kurdish. Thus the establishment on their Southern border of territory controlled by Turkish Kurds is viewed by Turkey as an irredentist threat led by a radical Kurdish political party -The PKK- broadly viewed as a terrorist organization.
As a result of the recent cross-border assault by the Turkish military the Kurdish forces in Syria will have ultimately to seek "safe haven" in Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq since the recent "cease fire" really means permanent Turkish occupation of the disputed territories.
The murky realities underlying these centuries old internecine struggles have long baffled U.S. officials. Since the Bush Administration militarily embroiled the U.S. both subsequent Administrations have sought to escape this quagmire, but both feared the inevitable political backlash and instead resorted to the age-old tactic of "kicking the can down the road".
Tragically for the Kurds there is no permanent solution--and for the United States no obvious exit strategy.
Bill Moloney covers national and international politics for the America blog. His columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, and Denver Post.
