As Turkish forces embark upon a massive offensive into Kurdish-controlled Northeast Syria, memories of my 2011 trip to Iraqi Kurdistan are in the front of my mind.
> Part I: A Day Trip To Iraq
> Part II: Exploring Erbil, The Capital Of Iraqi Kurdistan
> Part III: Heartfelt Conversations With Iraqi Kurds
While I was checking out the ancient Citadel which sits atop the city of Erbil, two men approached me.
Oh boy, I thought. Here come the touts.
But it turned out to be two students who were a bit surprised to see what appeared to be an American tourist.
We had an extended chat about life In Iraqi Kurdistan, the Iraq War, travel, and life in general.
It was illuminating and fascinating, in that I was showered with gratitude, simply for being American. These two men, who had vivid recollections of Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror, stood next to me and invited me to look out at the city below.
This is our city. This is our country. And we will die for it.
As I walked down the hill and into the city, I came across a group of men sitting around and talking.
Seeing me, one man started chanting:
Thank You Mr. Bush!
The men around him erupted in applause.
What do you say to that? I just nodded and kept walking.
For dinner, I found a little shawarma restaurant in the heart of the city.
All eyes were on me as I sat down to eat my chicken sandwich. But the awkward silence was soon broken by one of the workers.
He welcomed me to Erbil and asked me what I was doing there.
Tourism.
How Long?
One day.
You should have seen the look on his face…
The food, by the way, was tremendous and the sandwich plus a freshly-made smoothie only set me back a couple dollars.
Once again, I was thanked for “your” (as if I represented the United States) sacrifice for “my” people.
The Uncertain Future
This trip report is so prescient now because U.S. foreign policy has dramatically changed over the last week.
Departing from decades of U.S. policy supporting the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, the Trump Administration has given Turkey the green-light to invade Syria. As noted even by the National Review, generally a stalwart supporter of the President:
Turkey now has an American permission slip to conduct an invasion into Kurdish territory, kill American allies, and carve out a zone of dominance that will further inflame and complicate one of the world’s most dangerous regions.
The target is not simply ISIS rebels, which the Kurds bravely fought to eliminate, but the Kurds themselves. Turkey brands the YPG as Kurdish terrorists, fearing an alliance with the PKK separatist movement within Turkey that seeks to created an independent Kurdistan spanning Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.
Such fear is not totally unfounded. The issue is not as simple as Turks bad, Kurds good. This analysis by Melik Kaylan in Forbes nicely explains the complexity of the situation.
And this isn’t the Armenian genocide. There is not Kurdish blood washing down the street…at least not yet.
But when American just blindsides one of its most loyal allies…all I can do is shake my head. Not even the courtesy of a discussion or even a heads up…
CONCLUSION
I was in Istanbul last week. While drinking coffee, I started chatting with a Turkish Kurd. He was shocked to learn I had visited Erbil and his eyes lit up when I showed him my pictures. He too patted me on my shoulder and thanked me for America’s support of the Kurds.
I doubt he would be so friendly today.
My time in Iraqi Kurdistan reminded me of the Afghanistan dilemma I pondered after my trip to Kabul. What should we do? What can we do? And what must we do?
There is no easy answer.
> Read More: The Afghanistan Dilemma
My heart breaks for these wonderful people who have risked their lives for America. What began happening in this region since Sunday night is shocking, and sickening. The damage and deaths resulting from this action cannot be overestimated. In my travels in Turkey I met the most wonderful, sweetest men and women, many were Kurds.
Americans have a very convenient headfake. Just because some dudes in DC decide to kill people they themselves don’t have blood on their hands. Yeah. No one buys that. If you are a representative democracy you collectively are responsible for the half a million Iraqi deaths and now the b Kurdish deaths.
Just because a bunch of men called the NSC decide to do things it isn’t much different than a bunch of men in the Libyan government deciding to do things. Both are terrorism. And in this case there was no valid reason for this new war. Everything was quiet. Trump did it for personal monetary gains. Lindsey Graham and Moscow mitch and all the other Republicans by enabling trump did it too and have blood on their hands. They can’t conveniently say it wasn’t them. They are bloody terrorists.
Thank you for the story, this is good to hear.
However, I take issue with part of your conclusion. that the man wouldn’t be so friendly now.
I have been many places where Americans (self-centeredly) expect not to be well-received, yet I find the vast majority of people have a more mature, learned mindset.
A tour guide in Tokyo summed it up nicely: you are not your ancestors, and I am not mine; let us be friends and hope that spills over to all. I find the same attitude across Japan, Vietnam, Korea, much of the Middle East and amongst Native Americans, all people who could hold a grudge.
Sure, some do hold grudges and demand reparations, but the vast majority let bygones be bygones and appreciate the here and now. More of this, please.
As with many disputes in the Middle East, things are rarely black or white. Turkey also is a formal ally of ours, with great strategic importance. Is it really in our national self-interest to completely alienate Turkey to assist an ally of convenience? Are the Syrian Kurds worse off than if we had never intervened in Syria? We helped them defeat ISIS, which presumably benefited them (who live there) even more than us. We also provided them with materiel, training, and undoubtedly plenty of $$. Surely, they can’t begrudge us departing the area when our stated goal for remaining there has been achieved. It’s time to take the training wheels off.
I’m not sure if we can link to other articles, but there’s an interesting one penned by Scott Ritter that’s worth a read.
I can’t help notice how the pictures of you posing next to the two young men show a relaxed and content demeanor. Hospitality nurtures understanding. Thanks for sharing a deeply personal story to help connect with their culture.
I’m a bit surprised at the reaction that you got. I spent a weekend in Erbil the year before you were there and to my surprise at the time, I got pretty much no reaction from anyone there. Nobody approached me on the street the whole time I was there. At the restaurants and in the market they were happy to serve me, but there wasn’t any fuss made over me at all. Even on the street, I didn’t catch anyone staring at me or looking at me like I was out of the ordinary at all.
Also, I’m not quite sure it’s fair to say that this is a departure “from decades of US policy supporting the Kurds”. Basically since WWII, the US policy on the Kurds has been to use them as a pawn in our fights against other regional powers and then betray them as soon as that relationship becomes the least bit inconvenient for us. At this point, I would be surprised if the Kurds expected anything better from us.
Initially I agreed with what you were saying. I encourage you to read Andrew McCarthy’s dissent in the NR, though, as it changed my mind. As Billiken alludes to, this is a complicated fustercluck. One, yes, the Syrian Kurds (YPG) helped defeat ISIS, but they are hardly an ally; in fact, they are a Marxist separatist group. You can argue that the US never should have been using the YPG as an “ally” in this fight to begin with. Two, it’s not like Turkey is some rogue actor. They are a long-time NATO ally; does the US not owe them some duty of protection against a separatist group designated by us as a terrorist organization? This is a lose-lose situation of either throwing a group that helped defeat ISIS under the bus, or abandoning an important regional ally.
Also, I think it’s important to remember that Iraqi Kurds are NOT the same as Syrian or Turkish Kurds. I don’t know that the US ditching the Syrian Kurds would really change the opinions of their Iraqi counterparts.
Kurds are one nation and their land is one land torn by great powers to four parts for the sake of Turks,Arabs and Iranians ,they have the same feeling and the same culture with slight different dialect and accents because of the impact of language s of their oppressors .
If you aske a child in any of these parts what do you dream of ,he would reply i want my country I want Kurdistan .
It’s now one hundred years for our struggle to be independent and this would move from generation to generation and we would never give up our land ..
Our faults are we are pro western and peaceful People,trust others easily and cooperate with them when they need us. While other nations in the area targeting westreners and Americans and blowing them up we respect them and not one of them injured their fingers by our people.
Most of your armies were not able to fight and defeat the biggest enemy of humanity Which was ISIS and we did it with sacrifices of morthan eleven thousand of young men and women to make your streets safer ,to enjoy your life’s better …
Erdoghan who created ISIS and supported it by opening Turkey’s boarders and airports and welcomed them form all over the world and then help them to cross the borders.
And that why Erdoghan for over last 6 years demanding to exterminate Kurds because the Kurds were the only power to defeat them
Now with starting invasion of Turks to our lands ISIS jailed fighters celebrating and their slppenig cells started attacking us .
We should learn our lessons and should never ever trust others and never ever cooperate with them in future …. once bitten twice shy
I’m from the United states and I’m coming to Kurdistan to visit for a few days…I hope you dont think I support what the person they call a president is doing right now
Most people do not realize that the political cluster$$$ that is the Middle East today is largely the fault of 3 countries: France, UK and USA. After WWI they divided the ME in to French and British Mandates, forcibly established Israel (and do not get me wrong, I totally think the Jews have a right to their own homeland, but the method wasn’t right) strong-arming the League of Nations and later the UN after WWII, and then subdivided the mandates without any regard for tribes, allegiances, religious boundaries (throwing Sunni, Shiites, Hashemites and Christians in one bubbling cauldron), etc.
Then after WWII USA strongly pushed for the split in Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state, to sidestep the sensitive (and arguably Anti-semite) situation that their Immigration Quota’s had kept European Jews from leaving Europe (and the Nazi’s) as far back as the 1920 and all the way in to WWII (remember: Israel wasn’t established yet before WWII, so they literally had nowhere to go to!)
And during this they three of them reneged on virtually all treaties and promises to the Arabs in the region time and again!
Western arrogance is what bred a lot of the tensions (and anti-western sentiment) we’re seeing there!
Who is surprised? The United States abandoned the South Vietnamese and, before that, we abandoned the Cambodians to the Khmer Rouge.
We never should have been in Viet Nam in the first place. Over 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed and over 150,000 wounded. How much longer should we have stayed there?
While the Kurds are our only friends in the area, they are not an NATO “ally” like Turkey. Are you ready for more dead and wounded Americans to help the Kurds in their border dispute with Turkey that’s been running hundreds of years? Sounds like a new quagmire to me. The purpose of our Syrian incursion was to grind down Issis who has directly harmed and threatened us, which was largely accomplished. While Endrogen is an evil creep we should have nothing to do with, we shouldn’t put our troops in harm’s way anymore to be Middle Eastern Police. It’s always sadly boiled down to oil and now that we have our own (thanks to fracking), let’s get the hell out and stay out unless we’re directly threatened again. Endogenous has promised limits to his incursion and if he violates those, Trump has promised to wreck the Lira which won’t be hard. Btw, do you know how many US troops are actually being pulled out? It’s less than a squad. To hear the media you’d think it was a division.
Thank you for this but I have to say we Kurds should learn lessons and not rely on Americans . So this is not the first time America and the west abondening us infact they sold us for acouple of dollars to the most brutal dictator in the history of humanity (I know exactly what I mean by saying this) after we made your streets safer, after giving the life of more than eleven thousand of our youths for the sake of your nations and now we got our rewards from your leaders.
We are the largest ethnic group in the world and yet we have no entity ,no land ,no even names we are banned to speak our beloved language and mention our beloved country and if we do so wewould face torture,Jail and humiliation by the hands of the racist, fascist and ignorant Turkish police and genderma.
This is a proof that America has no principles ,no humanity and I wonder how they proof the opposite to the world after giving the green light to the second largest army in NATO equipped with the latest destruction weapons to slaughter a nation armed with light guns..
According to the BBC Kurds aren’t even the largest ethnic group in the Mid-East.
“Between 25 and 35 million Kurds inhabit a mountainous region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. They make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have never obtained a permanent nation state.”
Should say @Rash Kurdos
Another betrayal. “ They didn’t help us in Normandy”….the guy’s a complete effing nutter.