PERFIDIOUS KURDS

"Perfidy: 1. Deliberate breach of faith; calculated violation of trust; treachery: 'the fink, whose perfidy was equaled only by his gall' (Gilbert Millstein, New York Times Review of Books November 15, 1981). 2. The act or an instance of treachery."
~ American Heritage Dictionary.

Those damned Kurds! What next?

Many foreign governments have meddled in Iraq’s internal affairs over the years, as the US and Iran are doing today by supporting the Kurds. No government, however, has ever had success in playing the Kurdish card. So says KGB officer Pavel Sudaplatov in his autobiography, Special Tasks. Sudaplatov, for twenty years, was the KGB’s Director of Special Operations Forces and one who also played the Kurdish card, without success.

The Kurds are unworthy partners because they trust no one; they will never compromise on the core issue of an independent Kurdistan; they are willing to destroy several Middle Eastern states on the way to that goal; and, finally, they are ready to sacrifice, without hesitation, the interests of any foreign partner who blocks the way to an independent Kurdistan.

In other words, while President Bush rests easy at night in the belief that the US has earned at least one reliable ally in the Iraqi mess, i.e., the Kurds, he could not be more mistaken.

These pessimistic thoughts on Kurdish perfidy come to mind as Iraq drafts a national petroleum law (see the excellent assessment by Steven Mufson, “Iraq Struggles to Finish Oil Law”, WP). Iraqi adoption of a National Petroleum Law would be a giant Iraqi step away from civil war. President Bush’s faith in a new democratic Iraq would be vindicated. This should be a no-brainer, correct?

Read the rest at The Conservative Voice.

Why should anyone, especially Kurds, be loyal to a country that has consistently and repeatedly betrayed them in the past with devastating effect and massive loss of life each time? Secondly, if anyone ever wanted a prime example of what psychologists refer to as "projection," they need look no farther than this line: "[T]hey are ready to sacrifice, without hesitation, the interests of any foreign partner . . ." Is this not the very thing that the US has done to Kurds? Thirdly, the right-wing ultra-fascist who wrote this screed is really only concerned with the goal of US control of Kurdistan's (and Iraq's) energy resources. See Thursday's post for more on that.

In my book, if the Başûrî leadership is being perfidious . . . BIJÎ!

If, as the title states, the US does attack South Kurdistan for the sake of it's own interests in controlling Middle Eastern oil, well, then the US will finally learn the real meaning of the word "quagmire."

What else are these perfidious Kurds up to? How about providing sanctuary for everyone fleeing the violence in America's Arab Iraq . . . even Christians. Oh, the horror! From Reuters earlier in the week:

Tens of thousands of people have fled Baghdad, the epicentre of violence in Iraq. The United Nations, launching an appeal for aid for Iraqis who have fled their homes or left the country, said this month about one in eight Iraqis is now displaced.

It said the exodus is the largest long-term movement of people in the Middle East since the creation of Israel in 1948.

Many, including non-Kurds, have taken refuge in Kurdistan -- a largely autonomous region in the northern mountains that has been a haven from attacks plaguing other areas since the U.S. invasion of 2003.

But as refugee numbers grow, authorities in Arbil [Hewlêr], the Kurdish capital with a population of about a million, are beginning to feel the strain.

"Over the last two weeks, more than 9,000 people came to Arbil [Hewlêr] escaping from Baghdad as refugees, and they are mainly Sunnis and Christians," Imad Marouf, head of the disaster relief program in Arbil [Hewlêr], part of the Iraqi Red Crescent, told Reuters.

[ . . . ]

In a human rights report on Jan. 16, the United Nations said that of the 1.5 million Assyrian Christians living in Iraq before 2003, half had fled the country and many of the rest were moving to "safe areas" in the north of Iraq.

The main Chaldean Christian college and seminary in Baghdad--closed for months due to threats and violence--relocated to Arbil [Hewlêr] this month, according to Bishop Rabban al-Qas of Arbil [Hewlêr]. Both Christians and Muslims were targets of violence.

"The continuous deterioration of security in Baghdad and the kidnapping of six priests by gunmen forced us to move the these Christian institutes to Arbil [Hewlêr]," he told Reuters.

"The students ... could not attend classes because of the lack of security which made us move to Arbil [Hewlêr]," he said.

Marouf said his office had registered more than 5,000 families -- or around 30,000 people -- who fled to Arbil [Hewlêr] over the last two years.

Let's remember that last year, briefly, everyone was flabbergasted at the fact that the treacherous Kurds were setting an example of religious tolerance in the region, with Neçirvan Barzanî going so far as to say, "I'd rather see a Muslim become Christian than to see him become a radical Muslim."

Actually, I'd rather see them become agnostics or atheists before adopting yet another absurd ideology that has never done any good whatsoever for mankind, but the fact remains that the disobedient, disloyal, evil, majority Muslim Kurds are the only ones in the Middle East to engage in tolerance when the shit is in the process of flying off the fan.

By contrast, IWPR has a recent report on the situation in Mûsil, which is a prime example of how screwed everything becomes when religious people are in charge.

I spoke with some of the parishoners of the main church in Ainkawa two years ago when some of the first Christian refugee families had arrived and were settling in. The parishoners informed me that the Chaldeans of Ainkawa were supporting the Christian refugees themselves, with subsidies from the KRG. At the time, the strain was on, especially given the cost of housing in Ainkawa and Hewlêr, and since the economic situation has deteriorated, the strain must be very great on both the Chaldeans of Ainkawa and the KRG.

This fact begs the question: What are Christians in the West prepared to do for their brothers and sisters who have found refuge in South Kurdistan?

Let me remind everyone, in case you're not aware, but out of the ultra-right wing fascist Western blogosphere, there emanates a daily stream of smug self-righteousness and superiority by Christians and Jews from every blogger at Pajamas Media, Infidel Bloggers' Alliance, Jihad/Dhimmi Watch, and others. Notice too, that these same fascists constantly lend support to their long-time, good NATO ally, Turkey, going so far as to parrot the claim that Turkey is the region's great "Model of Democracy," even while genociding Northern Kurds--something which these fascists also support. Notice, too, that Iraqi Christians and others choose to flee to South Kurdistan rather than to America's "Model of Democracy" in Turkey. . . but that may be because Turkish democrats have developed a habit for whacking Christians in a serious way.

Given these facts, I want to know what the fatmouths on the extreme right are prepared to do for the Christians who have taken refuge in South Kurdistan. In the meantime, I won't hold my breath for an answer because I don't think I look good in purple. Besides, the bloggers mentioned previously are not interested in what becomes of their Christian brothers and sisters anywhere in the world. They're only concerned with propagandizing their phony War on Terror, Inc.

The same goes for the braindead talking heads on fascist TV or radio, who push the propaganda more widely than their counterparts in the blogosphere. If you're in the States, you're familiar with FOX News and Bill O'Reilly. Here's that little monkey, flinging some poo:

Discussing Iraq during the January 24 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly claimed that "the Sunni and Shia want to kill each other. ... They have fun. This is -- they like this. This is what Allah tells them to do, and that's what they do." O'Reilly then asserted that the "essential mistake of the war" was failing to anticipate that "these people would act like savages, and they are." Later, O'Reilly said that he had not predicted that the Iraqis "were going to act like savages in the aftermath of Saddam [Hussein]," and added: "[N]ow, Iran, we know they're savages." As Media Matters for America has documented [ . . . ], O'Reilly has repeatedly stated his indifference to the deaths of Iraqis and the fate of their country. Recently, O'Reilly claimed that Iraq is not in "civil war," but rather that Muslims are just "doing what they do. They're killing each other. And they're killing Americans"

Ask yourself why O'Reilly did not predict "that the Iraqis 'were going to act like savages in the aftermath of Saddam.'" The answer is because O'Reilly is an idiot. Even Dick Cheney knew the answer to that, two years ago this month:

No, if I were to think back on things that turned out differently than I would have expected, when you talk about Iraq, one of the things I’m still struck by is the devastation, the lasting consequences, if you will, of what happened in ‘91 with respect to the Iraqi population that we found once we toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime and got into Iraq.

The brutality that he used in 1991 to put down the revolt at the time I think just had devastating consequences in terms of the ability of the Iraqi people to recover from his rule. It’s taken a very long time for them to come back, to take control of their own affairs.

I think the hundreds of thousands of people, literally, that were slaughtered during that period of time, including anybody who had the gumption to stand up and challenge him, made the situation tougher than I would have thought.

I would chalk that up as a miscalculation, where I thought things would have recovered more quickly.

And that, boys and girls, is what is known as a Eureka moment, but there has not been, and will not be, any public discussion on this reality because it is irrelevant to the self-righteous. Nor will monkey-man at FOX publicize the situation of Christians and others in South Kurdistan, much less will they act to help because to do so would bolster the Kurdish argument for a democratic and independent Kurdistan. The problem with that, as these people--especially Dick Cheney--well know, is that you cannot control democracy. People may vote the "wrong" way, therefore democracy must be avoided at all costs.

Right now the only thing that matters is to get control on the ground by any means possible in order to get the oil flowing "into the preferred hands," as Noam Chomsky puts it.