1/23/2004
True frIEnds of Kurdistan.......
With the rise of the anti-Kurdish sentiment under the name of "unity of Iraq" or "threatening Iraqi neighbours", the Kurdish nation has still some true freinds... Not all our freinds are the moutains ..
BBC's courtesy
Ralph Peters, one of the long-time American Kurdish freinds has written in the NY Post :
Denied recognition as a sovereign state, Iraqi Kurdistan is, in fact, the most progressive political entity in the Muslim Middle East. We should be doing all we can to amplify its success. Instead, worried pols in the Bush administration seem all too willing to sell out the Kurds to achieve a house-of-cards "success" in Baghdad before November.
and
The Kurds must be guaranteed the freedoms they already enjoy - in a loosely federated Iraq. And the historically Kurdish, oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which suffered so gravely from Saddam's ethnic cleansing and his programs to Arabize minority homelands, must be included within the borders of Iraq's Kurdish territories.
Thanks Ralph...You are a true freind ..
Meanwhile Alastair Leithead BBC correspondent to Kurdistan has written in his Day 4 Diaries
If anyone has earned the right to make their voices heard on the future of Kurdistan it is the people of Halabja.
and in his report the people of Halabja say :
"Yes, I want us to be independent," he told me as we stood at the peace monument, another symbol of remembrance on the hill overlooking Halabja. when Alastair asked a victim of Saddam's WMD on whether Kurds want independence or not.
"We cannot trust anyone in Baghdad whoever they are. We are Kurdish, this is Kurdistan and it has been for centuries. We must remain separate."
BBC coutesy...A picture which shows the graves of the 5000 Kurdish victims of WMD
In his conclusions, Alastair says :
If there is one thing to say from this all too brief journey around northern Iraq it is that people up here are very different in culture, language, thinking and in a landscape at odds with the rest of the country.
The Kurdish question is a big question for the coalition's diplomats and the embryonic new Iraqi authority to grapple with.
Thanks Alastair. Great comments and a very good job done by you.
(You can see Alastair Leithead's report on his journey through Kurdistan on BBC4 and BBC World at 2000 GMT on Friday)
