Let Kurds have Kurdistan

Kurdistan is a country of about 25 million people living under occupied control of five different states. While the Kurdish autonomous government in Northern Iraq exercises considerably more domestic authority over their part of Kurdistan, Kurdish peoples under the control of Turkey and Iran suffer from discrimination and violence at the hand of these states. Fair minded nations and states must organize an international conference to establish a new treaty recognizing Kurdistan as an independent nation under a security regime guaranteed by China, United States of America, Russia, France, England, and the remaining ten members of the United Nations Security Council and Fourth World nations in the region. Failure to take this important initiative will give rise to greater instability and regional war that engulfs all of the Middle East. Far more of a flash point than virtually any other place in the Middle East, Kurdistan stability and independence is a logical initiative and the main factor that will reduce tensions in the region.

The Iranian government’s Revolutionary Guard, according to Guardian Unlimited correspondent Michael Howard in Irbil, is undertaking a military offensive against Kurdish villages resulting in military and civilian deaths. This report describes a new front the Kurds must now defend. The Turkish government threatens from the west, Iraqi Arabs threaten from the south and the Iranians are attacking now from the east. The largest Fourth World nation in southwest Asia is again being attacked by authoritarian and unstable governments even as the Kurds have in the last several years established an island of relative stability and prosperity–precisely the conditions necessary in this part of the world

Kurdistan. That country in southwest Asia on top of which five states were partly established since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 has been occupied by the Kurdish people for more than 2000 years. With a combined population of about 25 million the Kurds have lived under external occupation for more than 700 years. Turkish peoples extended their influence and control over Kurdish territories beginning in the 13th century. After the collapse of the Ottoman empire following World War I, the newly established states of Syria (1916, 1961), Iraq (1922, 1932), Turkey (1923), Iran (1925) and later Armenia (1918, 1991) divided Kurdistan placing her people under five different state authorities.

There is no more urgent need for international leadership than the systematic recognition of Kurdistan with agreements to provide security for this country. Such a move will prevent Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq from becoming the major actors in a new holocaust that threatens the Kurdish peoples and undermines the prospect for peace in the Middle East. Diplomatic action must be taken by or before the Spring of 2008. It is in the world’s interest that the UN Security Council act now and host an International conference of states and Fourth World nations on the political future of Kurdistan. Only agreement between these parties, supervised by the United Nations, can establish the necessary political solution to violence and offensive threats against the Kurds in this volatile region.

(c)2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies