The Dawn of an Independent Kurdistan

By Dr Jan Best de Vries:

Hawler (Erbil) is the international capital of Bashur, public life is well organized, both streets and offices of American and many other foreign oil companies are well protected by the police, and, notwithstanding the permanent threat of IS at the borders of this part of Kurdistan, the atmosphere is relaxed. Of course, this is only possible as long as the good relationship of the KRG with both Turkey and Iran is maintained, but the KRG’s independence from Iraq should become more acceptable for these countries than for Western ones, because in a future, democratic Iran, the political ambitions of Kurds, Azeri, Arabs, Persians and Baluchi will automatically lead to a confederalist state. As for Turkey, its Kurdish, Armenian, Assyrian and other minorities will justly strive after a form of regional autonomy. So much for Iraq, but in North Syria Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians and Chaldaeans have chosen for self-rule in their three predominantly Kurdish cantons of Rojava, because they feel not connected with Alawite and Sunnite Arabs in the south. In both Bashur (“the East” in Kurdish) and Rojava (“the West” in Kurdish) the dawn of an independent Kurdistan has begun.

The real problem for an independent Kurdistan lies with the Western countries because these don’t want to admit that their colonial constructions of Iraq and Syria in 1919 were a big mistake: the presence of oil in a land is no criterion for constructing two mega-states, each covering all present oil fields, one as the mandate of Britain (Iraq) and the other as the mandate of France (Syria). If IS wanted to demonstrate with its caliphate that there are no borders between the desert in Syria and Iraq, it has made its point…. Should then Iraq and Syria together best be subdivided under different names into a Kurdish northern, secular part, an Arab central, Sunnite part and an Arab southern, Shiite part, each with an outlet into the Mediterranean? Any other construction of Iraq and Syria is better than the present one in which the indigenous peoples never have had their own say!

Dr. Jan Best de Vries is an archaeologist and historian, decipherer of the so-called Byblos Script from Aleppo and Alalakh (‘How to Decipher the Byblos Script’, Aspekt Publishers 2014, ISBN978-946-153-420-0) 

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