14. What's Wrong with a Kurdistan Anyway?

While everyone back home in America is fussin' and fightin' about who is the biggest liar in the presidential race, I'm over here trying to wrap my arms around the issues involving our new neighbor Syria. Oh. My. I'll just give you my white girl opinion up front: Let the Kurds band together like they want to, give them their land to become Kurdistan, and everyone go home and spend some quality time loving your families. What the hell.

Of course, it's nearly impossible for me to understand this without doing some heavy-duty reading. And I won't bore you with all that I'm finding out (unless you privately ask me). But in my preliminary investigations, I did find this tidbit interesting: The states in the Middle East have very artificial borders. Borders created for the most part at the end of World War I, and carved out largely by the British and French. In almost no cases do they conform to natural borders such as mountains, rivers, and valleys the way nations have usually been formed throughout history. Some say the only two natural countries in the Middle East are Iran and Egypt. (One might add Turkey, though it is not wholly Middle Eastern.)

Instead, borders in the Middle East were often formed by deliberately cobbling together separate groups that--in the case of Britain--allowed it to rule over these countries in the full knowledge that there was no one dominant group that would be able to drive them out. Iraq is thus made up of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, who more often than not place their sectarian identity above a national identity. Oof, no wonder there's always trouble!

Syrian Kurds have already gained a measure of autonomy in their territories because the government has relinquished Kurdish communities to local control. Kurds now have a head start on self-rule; Kurdish flags fly over former government buildings in those areas, and schools have opened that teach in the Kurdish language (something the current Syrian government had prohibited).

Kurdish folk dancers.

The thing that makes me personally nervous (and is apparently making the average peace-loving Kurdish groups suspicious, too) about this Syrian Kurd movement is that they have close ties to Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Europe and the U.S. and is fairly relentless in its guerrilla attacks here in Turkey.

Rest assured, Syria is not merely an internal affair--but something likely to undermine the entire state system of the Middle East. And it's an unfortunate reality that the powers who could rein in the violence will not likely sit down together anytime soon: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, and Egypt. (Ha, and we think we have issues with Democrats and Republicans.)

From what I've read, I don't think any solutions will occur with Bashar al-Assad remaining as Syria's president. And once he is ousted from power, the Kurds are likely going to take up arms in the vacuum that follows. The Iraqis are already training them. They've been oppressed for decades by Arabs, denied rights by one post-Ottoman Turkish leader after another, and betrayed after World War I by Allied powers who had once promised Kurdish independence. Now it seems the Kurds are feeling pretty determined. And I think the hubster and I have a front row seat. Zoinks! xx