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By Rauf Naqishbendi:
The never-ending saga in the Middle East has a new frontier. Basher Al Assad’s regime has opened itself for a United States missile strike. Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons against his own people. President Obama is adamant to punish Assad’s regime through striking selective Syrian military targets, unless Assad turns over his stockpile of chemical weapons to the United Nations. Whether the U.S. strikes Syria or not, the perilous situation in Syria will become precarious should the Syrian chaos spill over beyond its own border farther than it has been. A wise call for America is that of silence because, for a long time, American policy in the Middle East has been an utter failure, doing more harm than good. If the U.S. wants to make a difference, the Kurds are on a march in Syria and the U.S. should help them pursue their desired statehood.
President Obama’s decision against the Syrian regime is well justified in the light of humanity and human rights. But the use of chemical and biological weapons against civilian populations has been used before. Saddam Hussein used it in his genocide attempt against Kurds, devastating my hometown, Halabja, in 1988. Who delivered the building blocks for Saddam’s weapon of mass destruction? It was Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, Special Envoy to the Middle East under President Ronald Reagan, who made available to Saddam all the instruments he needed to complete his chemical and biological enterprise.
The question one needs to ask is why Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons was endorsed by the U.S. while the same use by Assad’s regime is disdained? The answer is that Saddam used it on the Kurds, and the U.S., throughout its history as a superpower, has trivialized Kurdish human rights and their quest for statehood. The obvious reason is that the U.S. has been a staunch ally of the most barbaric regimes in the region including Saddam, the Shah of Iran, and Turkish authorities who have violated Kurdish human rights with direct U.S. support and latitude.
Awarding Saddam with more weapons, low interest loans, and helping him to build his chemical and biological weapon was all glory to the U.S. Saddam was America’s friend at the time, and being America’s friend one can do every wrong under the sky with impunity. Conversely, Assad has been on the American hit list for state-sponsored terrorism; therefore, his actions were under surveillance, and detection of any faults will invite our heavy missiles to rain on his country. Ironically, with the same action by two leaders, one leader is awarded or exonerated but the other to be castigated. This has been the inconsistency in America’s policy in the Middle East; consequently, the U.S. has not been looked upon favorably in the region.
Al Qaeda was on the U.S.’s dirty list even before the tragic event of 9-11, and they have been a ferocious opposition force against Assad sponsored by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni majority states. They have been cleansing Syrian Christians and other minorities, including the Kurds, having declared Jihad against the Kurds. In response, the Syrian Kurds, under the leadership of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD, in affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)) fought them heroically.
What has been said regarding Syria is conspicuously indicative of the U.S.’s lack of coherent policy, which might be deliberate, causing the U.S. to imply different standards for the same phenomena. At the same time, the contradiction, as cited above in Al-Qaeda’s case, is the U.S. fighting them on one hand and on the other hand helping them through its allies, Turkey and other rich petroleum producing countries. This constitutes inconsistent and contradictory policy which taints American creditability in the region.
When comes to human rights, the U.S. has consistently and persistently declined to recognize Kurdish human rights to please authoritarian regimes in the region, mainly Turkey and the Saudis. Notwithstanding, for decades the Islamic regime and radical Moslem organizations have been in a process of liquidation of Christians minorities, yet the U.S. has not been on the side of the oppressed, and the White House has never made a strong condemnation about it. In a nutshell, the U.S. policy for human rights of oppressed minorities in the Middle East has been dismal; hence, every American call for human rights is taken as a mockery and pretentious.
Given the U.S.’s catalog of frequently failing policy in the Middle East, the U.S.’s mission to subdue Syria is just another failure to be recorded in our chronicle. Syrian chaos has already spilled over to Iraq and Lebanon. Should the U.S. strike against Syria, the ominous situation will be aggravated to flame in the whole region. Should the U.S. want to make difference, it should put pressure on Turkey and its Arab allies to thwart their support for Al-Qaeda and to help the Kurds.
In the final analysis, the U.S.’s policy in the Middle East has been a failure for a long time because the U.S. has been on the wrong side. The Syrian regime will eventually fall. The U.S. will reap no benefit from it, except that an independent Kurdistan of Syria would be an American legacy. This would be in the interest of the U.S. and the region, in compliance with sanity, should America decide to halt its longstanding hostile denial of Kurdish national recognition. After all, the Kurds at last deserve a sane judgment from the U.S.
Rauf Naqishbendi is a contributing columnist for the Kurdistan Tribune, Kurdishaspect.com, American Chronicle, Kurdishmedia.com(2003 – 2011), www.ikjnews.com, ekurd.net, and has written Op/Ed pages for the Los Angeles Times. His memoirs entitled “The Garden Of The Poets”, recently published. It reads as a novel depicting his experience and the subsequent 1988 bombing of his hometown with chemical and biological weapons by Saddam Hussein. It is the story of his people’s suffering, and a sneak preview of their culture and history. Rauf Naqishbendi is a software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
God Bless Kurds, from USA!