An Open Letter on The Plight of Kurdish Disunity And Iraq as a Sovereign State – A response to Omar Sindi

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

A response to Mr Omar Sindi

In my view, in making such a ‘retort’ Mr Sindi is entirely missing the POINT of my article. Instead of rewriting all the known flaws – and worse – of the Ba’ath regime that has been aired a million times and more – people need to ask themselves and expose how ANY RULER trying to keep Iraq together as a country could, or can do so. The leader of Iraq in the period before the invasion was faced with constant threats, attacks and sedition by pro-Iran Shi’a groups, ongoing armed struggle and attacks by dissident tribal Kurds following mainly the KDP and PUK; Kuwait, pursuing slant drilling; Iran encroaching ideologically and through its proxies; Turkey staging cross border attacks without cease year upon year on the PKK pretext; Syrian Ba’athists pursuing their own rivalries; Al-Qaeda and the Wahhabists deepening infiltration; Russia and the Communist Party seeking to install a Communist government and the oil greedy West doing what it always does and is doing now. To hold back these enemies of the state, tough measures are required.

The incumbents have miserably failed – the Kurdish leadership left the Yazidis to their terrible fate while doing deals in secret with ISIS.

It is not about Saddam Hussein being a SAINT. Heaven forbid anyone could call Barzani and Talabani saints either, murdering and silencing their foes not even able to elect a president between them.

Iraq was better off with a leader like Saddam and he had mellowed well before the invasion of Iraq – the worst period was put forward in the opposition media and for ulterior motives. I also regret that Mr Sindi had to personalise his so-called RETORT repeating the same old refrains. I had hoped readers would be able to look at things from the viewpoint of IRAQ for a change.

When I was first in Baghdad and Kurdistan – from 1989 onwards – law and order may have been akin to a police state but it was clean, orderly, prosperous, aware of culture, heritage and holding back religious rule and as in my article. I also cited the former British Ambassador, who said if you kept your head down you could have a decent life. The post- Ba’ath usurpers have plundered the country for their own benefit and that their own families; they have destroyed yet built nothing but mosques and overblown crass universities that are not even accredited although using the name ‘American’.

The crumbling governments of Baghdad and Erbil are a sham and millions do not want to live in such a country. I wish instead that Mr Sindi’s response had been one in relation to the key point made which is to highlight the dismal failure of the US, UK and Iranian allies that were handed power almost twenty years ago and how much worse off Iraq is now. They have no problem strutting like kings in the country Saddam Hussein built. Instead he went for the bait.

For Kurds to ever have sought to gain independence it should not have been while taking a pop gun to a missile but as Kurdish political prisoner, Huseyin Baybasin, is doing from prison – seeking to register the United States of Kurdistan at the UN on the grounds of the Kurdish people’s right to statehood. Alas, as there is no UNITY for the UNITED, with the KDP in league with Turkey, the PUK with Iran, and all despising one another just as ever they did since they were just Aghas on every hilltop, even were the USK to be registered as a nation, the very reasons that have so far prevented it from becoming a nation for the good of the people in the first place are still there. These same reasons are shattering both Iraq and the Kurdish region.

In 1994 in an interview with Abdullah Ocalan, he replied to one of my questions, “If we had had unity we would have had a country by now.”

Interviewing Jalal Talabani at the very same time, he said ‘The PKK is the biggest Kurdish political party and they have achieved many things. But the PKK is not a party in south Kurdistan. I do not think it has the right to be the third partner here…. In Iran, there is nothing. Some people escaped from Iranian Kurdistan and came to Iraqi Kurdistan…they must respect out laws…Iranian Kurdistan is quiet. For that it must wait until the Kurdish problem in Turkey or Iraq is solved…

“The KDP’s policy is not a patriotic policy. It is a policy of supporting each government if they pay them. They have relations with Saddam Hussein now; with Turkey; with Iran. They want to have relations with Syria. Everywhere they want to be paid money, ammunition and arms and they are ready to side with those governments against those parts of Kurdistan…The policy of the KDP is the policy of national treachery.

“Once the KDP did have the support of 95% of the population; they were the kings of all Kurdistan. Now Iranian Kurdistan hates them. Turkish Kurdistan hates them., and the majority of Kurds in Syria and Iraq are against them. They are in decline…

“Each part of Kurdistan should look to its own affairs. I am not dreaming that one day America will send troops and arms to liberate Kurdistan. That is foolish thinking…”

Ocalan (with whose vacillating approach I do not sympathise either) also said, “Even if we were angels, the Europeans would not like us! Europeans are intelligent; if something doesn’t coincide with their interests they’ll have no difficulty finding fault with whatever causes them an inconvenience.” That is also true.

(Citations from Kurdistan Report magazine, January 1996, Edition no. 23, March-May 1996-pp. 45-47 (Ocalan) and pp. 49-51 (Talabani) – this publication was not digitised and only printed copies remain.

Now, I listen with interest and even some surprise when ordinary people in Baghdad casually say with real feeling, “I don’t like Kurds! They are corrupt, greedy and self-interested and do nothing for Iraq. We were better off under Saddam Hussein.”

There are plenty of Kurds who say the same thing. The answer to why that is should be plain for all to see.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

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