Why Kurdistan Will Benefit Iraq and the Middle East
Before welcoming the emerging state of Kurdistan in northern Iraq, I confess to having opposed its independence in the past.
In 1991, after the Kuwait War had ended and as Saddam Hussein attacked Iraq’s 6 million Kurds, I made three arguments against American intervention on their behalf, arguments still commonly heard today: First, Kurdish independence would spell the end of Iraq as a state; second, it would embolden Kurdish agitation for independence in Syria, Turkey and Iran, leading to destabilization and border conflicts; and three, it would invite the persecution of non-Kurds, causing “large and bloody exchanges of population.”
All three expectations proved flat-out wrong. Given Iraq’s wretched domestic and foreign track record, the end of a unified Iraq promises relief, as do Kurdish stirrings in the neighboring countries. Syria has been fracturing into its three ethnic and sectarian components — Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — which promises benefits in the long term. Kurds departing Turkey usefully impede the reckless ambitions of now-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Similarly, Kurds decamping Iran helpfully diminishes that arch-aggressive mini-empire. Far from non-Kurds fleeing Iraqi Kurdistan, as I feared, the opposite has occurred: hundreds of thousands of refugees are pouring in from the rest of Iraq to benefit from Kurdistan’s security, tolerance and opportunities.
I can account for these errors: In 1991, no one knew that autonomous Kurdish rule in Iraq would flourish as it has. The Kurdistan Regional Government, which came into existence the following year, can be called (with only some exaggeration) the Switzerland of the Muslim Middle East. Its armed, commercially minded mountain people seek to be left alone to prosper.
One could also not have known in 1991 that the Kurdish army, the peshmerga, would establish itself as a competent and disciplined force; that the Kurdistan Regional Government would reject the terrorist methods then notoriously in use by Kurds in Turkey; that the economy would boom; that the Kurds’ two leading political families, the Talabanis and Barzanis, would learn to coexist; that the Kurdistan Regional Government would engage in responsible diplomacy; that its leadership would sign international trade accords; that 10 institutions of higher learning would come into existence; and that Kurdish culture would blossom.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/09/11/why-kurdistan-will-benefit-iraq-and-the-middle-east/