Published May 1st, 2007 by Future Atlas
Iraqi Kurdistan seeks safety
Last week the Washington Post detailed the efforts of Iraq’s Kurds to build links to the US, separate from the American relationship to Iraq.
Kurdistan’s representative in Washington is quoted as saying that the Kurds are seeking the same kind of “’strategic and institutional relationship’ that Israel and Taiwan have with the United States. ‘We are seeking the same protection.’”
The Kurdish efforts have several potential future impacts:
- “Some senior U.S. officials contend that yielding to Kurdish demands for increased autonomy could break up Iraq and destabilize Turkey, a NATO ally that is fighting a guerrilla war with Kurdish separatists.”
- The Kurds have brought in Israelis and members of the Israeli lobby to work on their behalf in Washington. This suggests a potential Israeli-Kurdish alliance that could flank the core of the Arab world but could also serve as another long-term irritant in Arab-Israeli relations.
- The pro-war organization Move America Forward and parents of American soldiers who have died in Iraq have called for ‘developing and maintaining a major U.S. military presence in Iraqi Kurdistan’ after being brought into the cause by Evangelical Christians. This tilt toward the Kurds would deeply undercut the American mission in Iraq and make it more likely that an actively hostile government or governments would emerge there — particularly ironic given that, according to a consultant involved with these efforts, the parents see Kurdistan as “a validation that their child didn’t die in vain.”