By Morgan Miles —
There are 30M Kurds on the planet, but they were not given a nation at the dividing up of lands after WW2.
Instead, they have been oppressed, decimated, discriminated against in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, where their peoples have lived for centuries.
The Kurds have fought with U.S. troops against repressive dictators — against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, against ISIS in Iraq. They formed a terror group to fight for land in Turkey. The Iranian morality killed a Kurdish girl just because she wasn’t wearing her hijab correctly. Lots of Kurdish women left Iran to join the Kurdish insurgency in Iraq.
But no matter how much they serve the United States, no matter how much they do the U.S.’s bidding at bringing down bad guys, the U.S. always turns its back on them and doesn’t give them their rights to a homeland and self-governance.
In Syria, the new government under al-Sharaa coalition forces have attacked and intimidated the Kurds, wanting their oil in the North. Turkey, fighting against Kurdish terrorists, made incursions into Syria during the civil war. The Kurds get battered on all sides, and the U.S. is pressuring them to integrated into Syrian society (give up their guns).
In Iraq, Kurds have fought to establish a semi-autonomous region in the North. After leaning heavily on the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the U.S. backed away from their bid for independence, allowing the Iraqi military to come in and crush them in 2017. Still, they function semi-autonomously.
Separatism is not so strong in Iran, where the Iranians supported the Kurdish girl who was killed with massive protests.
In the war on Iran, the Kurds have been proposed to be the ground forces Trump will not send in Americans for. But the proposal is fraught with thorns: Which Kurds — Iranian or Iraqi? Will they demand independence? Will they be promised independence?
The most perplexing question is: If the Kurds are 30M, why do the Palestinians (half the size in population) get all the attention of the supposed lovers of justice around the world? Why do they never mention the Kurds — worse repressed, with no land?
