Iraq's Bizarre Composition

Back in around 1922 Lester B. Pearson and Winston Churchill were two notable names on the team of men who hacked out a definition of Iraq including Sunni/Shiite/Persians and Kurds all lumped into a fractured definition of what was once the biblical Mesopotamia. 

Kurdish Hopes

Several times in history, Kurdistan has come close to achieving its statehood. The League of Nations destroyed that dream in the 1920s.  Now the time has come. The Middle East needs to be repackaged to isolate and protect non-warring factions and the failed attempts by the "League of Nations"  to which Lester B. Pearson and Winston Churchill were once bureaucrats, must be repaired.

America's Disastrous Foreign Policy in Iraq 

After twenty years of the American led interference in the Middle East, the pot has been stirred to a boil and t

There needs to be some good result from what is about to happen. There will now be copious quantities of blood shed in the Levant. 

Kurdistan

Some 30 million or more 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.

In recent decades, Kurds have increasingly influenced regional developments, fighting for autonomy in Turkey and playing prominent roles in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria, where they have resisted the advance of the jihadist group, Islamic State.

The Kurdish people once led nomadic lives revolving around sheep and goat herding throughout the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands in what are now south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, northern Iraq, north-western Iran and south-western Armenia.

The Atrocities of ISIL & Turkey against the Kurds

Of late, what has happened to the extraordinary Yazidi women in Northern Iraq and Syria takes the top off the bottle of retaliation owed to the oppressors of Kurdistan. 

Maybe you would need to have my years of experience studying and writing about this region to totally understand. Maybe not. Maybe your intuition is with you or maybe you are from the region. In any case, open your mind for what will come next. It will be bloody and this mess is on the entire League of Nations / United Nations for having failed in its governance and support of a region so steeped in extremist religious beliefs it is nearly ungovernable by self.

What I saw recently of the Turkish government-led conduct against the Yazidi makes me want to vomit because my country, Canada, is allied with these treacherous, corrupt and bigoted Turkish government sociopaths in the NATO Alliance. NATO's tolerance of Turkey's weak, token Mid-East state membership must end. So too must Canada's tolerance of the atrocities Turkey has committed these past 20 years. Disgusting. Why do we put up with it.

Iraq's Time is Over -- An Experiment that Failed

Iraq as a nation state no longer makes much sense. A ruthless dictator like Saddam Hussein was able to herd the four incongruous elements of Iraq using brutality but those days are over. There is no glue to hold the Persians, Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds together in one place. Iraq needs to end. The Persians can join Iran, the Sunni/Shiite Muslims can join Syria and the rest becomes Kurdistan.

Kurdistan -- That's what an impartial judge would order. 

Probably the people of those regions, if self determination was allowed to them would do pretty much the same thing. But then there's oil and greed, the things that drive the Americans and the West in every element of foreign policy. 

As a military and foreign affairs correspondent for Maclean Hunter I was intently focused on the Iraqi Kurds during the first Gulf War. They are an amazing, peaceful, industrious, and Earth-loving people who once were despised and even gassed by Saddam Hussein, killing or injuring more than ten thousand in the initial attack and many more later. 

I have met Kurds of different religions under the common umbrella of Kurdish culture with very strong work ethic and good moral compass. It's not about religion, it's about reversing some of history's injustices. 

Turkey, the most unlikely member of NATO has also been at war with the Kurds who number around 15 million in that country and whose ethnic region occupies the southeast portion of the country.

The recognized statehood of Kurdistan must rise from the ashes of the bloodshed and destruction that has only just begun.