WEEKLY WARNING WORDS

October 15, 2003 - WEEK 4 – Kurdistan

BY DR BRUNO J. KEITH

 

          Which outsiders are capable of building a nation in Iraq?  When we are smart enough to get out of that 3-nation state, we may jokingly suggest that those addicted to Shia dogmas should work it out with Sunni doctrinarians.  If their triangle builds an autonomous state, it might agree to a confederation with an autonomous Shia “square” deal with double its population.  Baghdad would be the confederated capital.  All on one important condition if the U.N. so wills:  They must admit “their” Kurdistan as an autonomous nation-state with the right to also include eventually the Iranian Kurdistan and, hopefully soon enough, also Turkish Kurdistan if we can bribe Turkey to submit to a Kurdish Thanksgiving.

          True, there hasn’t been a noble Kurd since Saladin of our crusades.  But why keep persecuting them and force them to become robbers and terrorists if those sheepherders and goatherd people of despair can be left alone (Perhaps with the oil wells of Mosul).  As a tolerated mountain state, it would keep those 3 unfriendly neighbors apart and at peace.  They could then help each other economically, debate their different ways of life and death in their universities and even form economic alliances; with some population exchanges in border-line cases, they could create a modus vivendi. 

          As a U.N. mandate for a dozen years, such Kurdistan could bring about some love marriages across rugged and savage boundaries.  Turkey, Iran and Iraq can never exist without violence unless they let their Kurd people go.  If this miracle can be worked, there will be only 2 kinds of dangerous public enemies:  Local feudal warlords and cleverly manipulating, pious religious leaders who prefer sending others to Paradise (their Heaven) instead of going there first themselves without lots of preaching, inciting to riots and scandalizing their parishioners, so they find no time or opportunities to earn their livelihood.  Only declare for the entire world to hear: Iraqians, you may choose to join humanity for ever improving peaceful co-existence or opt for bombs from at least one representative of modern civilization.

Next Wednesday - "Weapons of Mass Destruction?"