An Unholy Alliance Against Self-Determination?

What have the US State Department, Boris Johnson and Iran’s backward and brutal ayatollahs got in common?

An obdurate hostility towards self-determination.

=

=

 Sure, we don’t expect any better from Tehran’s benighted regime…

]]]]]

——-

….but wasn’t it Boris who set himself up as champion of British self-determination last year in the Brexit campaign?

And has not one American Secretary of State after another made incessant noises about every people having the right to choose its own government – except Tibet, of course.

=

=

So what nation’s aspiration has brought these powerful forces together in hostility to freedom, a hostility shared, it might be added, by Turkey’s Erdolf.

====

Answer?

—–

The Kurds!

000000000000000000p

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert -“We support a unified, stable and a federal Iraq.” For the Americans, the referendum, “would distract from urgent priorities and that be the defeat of ISIS.” 

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson remarked, “. Unilateral moves towards independence would not be in the interests of the people of Kurdistan Region, Iraq or of wider regional stability. 

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commented, “Iran opposes holding talks of a referendum to partition Iraq and considers those who fuel the idea as opponents of Iraq’s independence.”

But just look at that map, above.

The territory inhabited by Kurds is larger than Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Syria, and at least as large as Iraq.

Their conduct in the war against ISIS has been exemplary.

Kobane – How Come No Huge Demos Like We Saw About Gaza? 

Kasihan Kobane! Erdogan…Echoes of Warsaw 1944? …

They are not infected with the jihadist virus.

..

Erdogan, No Enemy of Evil, No Friend to the Brave! 

======

The Kurdish women above, like all Kurd patriots, are, moreover, sworn enemies of our enemies, the sectarian dictators in Iran and Islamist Erdolf, whose view on the Kurds’ referendum was as follows –

“A step toward the independence of northern Iraq is a threat to the territorial integrity of Iraq, and it is wrong.”

This from the autocrat who, not that long ago, was openly eyeing a carve-up of Northern Iraq to expand his own borders?

[[[[[[[[[

Our Enemy, Erdogan, Claims Mosul – What Next – Vienna?

=============

Why should we not applaud their freedom fight?

Apart from the issue of principle, if all the Kurds came together in one Kurdistan…

====

.

============

…it would upset the apple-carts of more than one insalubrious regime!

The quotes come from a Kurdish news site, which also offers opinions, some of which make sense.

…as the Kurds eye independence, they will slowly grasp that the international community will never settle on a propitious moment to secede from Iraq.

Logically, therefore, there should be no hesitation in going ahead with the referendum in the Kurdish area within Iraq’s present frontiers.

But the commentator, Barak Barli, then goes on to draw precisely the opposite conclusion…

The key to success may lie in delaying the vote in exchange for ironclad guarantees that independence will be negotiated in the coming year.  

http://www.rudaw.net/english/opinion/31082017

But what value is there in such guarantees, ironclad or otherwise? Ankara and Tehran will under no circumstance approve independence.

And even if London and Washington were to shift their position and show sympathy – unlikely – there’s NO way they’d be prepared to back up any guarantee with force of arms, given all they have gone through in the Middle East in recent decades.

Go for it, Kurds!