Kurdistan: It's Time for an Independent Kurdistan - by Stanley Weiss

The dispossessed have become dangerously destabilizing. The overlooked can no longer be overlooked. And what was once a Middle Eastern flashpoint may yet become a safety valve for spiking regional tensions.

It will not be easy, but the uncertainty and plasticity in the region today offers an opportunity to secure a Kurdish homeland and remedy the capricious map-making of the early 20th century. Iraq is threatening to split into the pre-Iraq Sunni, Shia and Kurdish divisions of the Ottoman Empire, with the Kurds semi-independent and the Iran-allied Shiites ruling the Sunnis. Iran’s economy is in free-fall. Syria will soon have no central control and no choice. And while no country is eager to surrender a fifth of its population, Turkey would do well to get ahead of this issue — ending the vicious, ongoing war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), saving countless lives and positioning themselves to reap the benefits of a long-term strategic alliance to counterbalance Iranian influence. Not to mention, membership in the European Union will forever be out of reach for a Turkey at war with itself.

For proof of what’s possible, look no further than Iraqi Kurdistan, a pro-American, pro-Israel and semi-autonomous parliamentary democracy most Americans have never heard of. Nurtured by an American no-fly zone in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) was established under the Iraqi Constitution in 2005, a stunning testament to the success of Muslim representative government. Of more than 4,800 American soldiers killed in the brutal battles for Iraq, not a single one has lost their life — and no foreigner has been kidnapped — within the borders of Iraqi Kurdistan. Boasting two international airports, a booming oil industry and a dawning respect for the rights of women, this 15,000 square-mile territory of nearly four million Kurds is the one part of President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” that was actually accomplished.

Building on this unanticipated success, the U.S. should rethink its previous opposition to an independent greater Kurdistan and recognize that the advantages of a friendly, democratic and strategically-positioned ally far outweigh the outdated assumption that the Kurds’ national liberation would result in regional conflagration. At this point, inaction is far more likely to provoke continued regional conflict. Whether that means calling for U.S.-brokered talks with Turkey or a temporary UN peacekeeping force, sanctions or scaled up foreign investment, the U.S. should make every effort to incentivize the consolidation and emergence of a single, stable, secure Kurdish homeland.

After a thousand years of turning a thousand blind eyes, the world can’t keep kicking the Kurdish can down the road. Somewhere along that bloodstained road to Damascus, the region needs to experience this epiphany — and soon. The first major protests in Syria began outside the Ummayad Mosque, Islam’s fourth-holiest site and the location of Saladin’s tomb. Saladin’s descendants, it seems, are on the march once more. These Kurds want to be heard. Will the U.S. - - and the world — listen?

No EU-Digest: Creating an independent Kurdistan, which stretches from the Mediterranean  to Iraq, along the borders of Syria, Turkey, Iran is the only solution to guarantee a lasting peace for countries who presently are opposing the creation of an independent Republic of Kurdistan. These include, Iran, Iraq , Syria and Turkey, which all have large local Kurdish populations.. 

Once there is an independent Kurdistan, which has the global recognition and legitimacy of an independent state, it will be far easier for specially Turkey to deal with the PKK and other Kurdish factions at home,  by offering local Kurds to either stay or migrate to this new Republic of Kurdistan. A far better proposition than fighting these factions endlessly, which so far have had no results at all.

The EU could in this case become a key player and broker in this process, together with the Russians and Americans in making this happen. So far, unfortunately, they have not had the vision and willpower to do so.

Read more: It's Time for an Independent Kurdistan | HuffPost

USA: One year anniversary of Trump Presidency - a disaster for the US and the world

The US is "celebrating" Trump's one year in office today, as the President of the US, with a shutdown of the Government and demonstrations going on Nation-Wide

Trump's popularity at home and abroad are the lowest of any US President. In addition official records also show he did not tell the truth during interviews and speeches 2015 times during the first year of his presidency.

On the international scene the results are just as grim. The US relationship with Mexico and many other :Latin and Caribbean states are on a downward slope. His vulgar off the cuff  statements about Haiti and African states made him and the US enemies in both areas.

The Iran Nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement are now both on shaky grounds,

Turkey's President Erdogan, whose nation is a member of the NATO, recently said he does not believe previous statements about keeping the Kurds at bay, made byTrump to him anymore, and today attacked the US Kurdish allies in Syria,

As Mr trump starts his second year in office, hopefully there still is a silver lining of hope above the dark clouds which seem to have covered the US. A nation which always was the shining light of democracy around the world.

EU-Digest

Saudi Arabia: Trump's plan to create an Arab NATO with a collection of dictators, tyrants and thugs is bound to fail - by Robert Fisk

"The Savior ? "

Counter Punch reports that Donald Trump set off on Friday to create the fantasy of an Arab Nato. There will be dictators aplenty to greet him in Riyadh, corrupt autocrats and thugs and torturers and head choppers. There will be at least one zombie president – the comatose, undead Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria who neither speaks nor, apparently, hears any more – and, of course, one totally insane president, Donald Trump. The aim, however, is simple: to prepare the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East for war against the Shia Muslims. With help from Israel, of course.

The incubator of terrorism

Even for those used to the insanity of Arab leadership – not to mention those Westerners who have still to grasp that the US President is himself completely off his rocker – the Arab-Muslim (Sunni) summit in Saudi Arabia is almost beyond comprehension. From Pakistan and Jordan and Turkey and Egypt and Morocco and 42 other minareted capitals, they are to come so that the effete and ambitious Saudis can lead their Islamic crusade against “terrorism” and Shiism. The fact that most of the Middle East’s “terrorism” – Isis and al-Qaeda, aka the Nusrah Front – have their fountainhead in the very nation to which Trump is traveling, must and will be ignored. Never before in Middle Eastern history has such a “kumidia alakhta” – quite literally “comedy of errors” in Arabic – been staged.

On top of all this, they have to listen to Trump’s ravings on peace and Islamic “extremism”, surely the most preposterous speech to be uttered by a US president since he is going to have to pretend that Iran is extremist – when it is Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Isis clones who are destroying Islam’s reputation throughout the world. All this while he is fostering war.

For Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (henceforth MbS) wants to lead his Sunni tribes – plus Iraq if possible, which is why Shia Prime Minister Abadi has been invited from Baghdad – against the serpent of “terrorist” Shia Iran, the dark (Shia) “terrorist” Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad, the “terrorist” Shia Lebanese Hezbollah and the aggressive “terrorist” Shia Houthis of Yemen. As for the Gulf states’ own Shia minorities and other recalcitrants, well, off with their heads.

Much has been made (rightly) of MbS’s threat to ensure that the battle is “in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia”. But, typically, few bothered to listen to Iran’s ferocious reply to the Saudi threat. It came promptly from the Iranian defence minister, Hossein Dehghan. “We warn them [the Saudis] against doing anything ignorant,” he said, “but if they do something ignorant, we will leave nowhere untouched apart from Mecca and Medina.” In other words, it’s time to start building air raid shelters in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dhahran, Aramco headquarters and all those other locations dear to American hearts.

 Indeed, it’s difficult not to recall an almost identical Sunni hubris – almost four decades ago – to that of MbS today. The latter boasts of his country’s wealth and his intention to diversify, enrich and broaden its economic base. In 1980, Saddam was determined to do the same. He used Iraq’s oil wealth to cover the country in super-highways, modern technology, state-of-the-art healthcare and hospitals and modern communications. Then he kicked off his “lightning war” with Iran.

It impoverished his oil-rich nation, humiliated him in the eyes of his fellow Arabs – who had to cough up the cash for his disastrous eight-year adventure – led to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, sanctions and the ultimate Anglo-US invasion of 2003 and, for Saddam, the hangman’s noose.

Yet this leaves out the Syrian dimension. Sharmine Narwani, a former senior associate of St Antony’s College – and an antidote for all those sickened by the mountebank think-tank “experts” of Washington – pointed out this week that US support for Kurdish forces fighting under the dishonest label of “Syrian Democratic Forces” are, by advancing on Raqqa, helping to cut Syria off from Iraq. And that Kurdish forces are now reported as “retaking” Christian or Muslim Arab towns in the Nineveh province of Iraq, which were never Kurdish in the first place.

Kurds now regard Qamishleh, and Hassakeh province in Syria as part of “Kurdistan”, although they represent a minority in many of these areas. Thus US support for these Kurdish groups – to the fury of Sultan Erdogan and the few Turkish generals still loyal to him – is helping to both divide Syria and divide Iraq.

This cannot and will not last. Not just because the Kurds are born to be betrayed – and will be betrayed by the Americans even if the present maniac-in-charge is impeached, just as they were betrayed to Saddam in the days of Kissinger – but because Turkey’s importance (with or without its own demented leader) will always outweigh Kurdish claims to statehood. Both are Sunnis, and therefore “safe” allies until one of them – inevitably the Kurds – must be abandoned.

Meanwhile, you can forget justice, civil rights, sickness and death. Cholera has quite a grip on Yemen now, courtesy of the criminal bombing attacks of the Saudis – ably assisted by their American allies long before Trump took over – and scarcely any of the Muslim leaders whom Trump meets in Riyadh do not have torturers at work back home to ensure that some of their citizens wish they had never been born. It will be a relief for the fruitcake president to leave Israel for the Vatican, albeit given only a brief visitation to – and short shrift by what the Catholics believe – is a real peacemaker.

That only leaves one nation out of the loop of this glorious charivari: Russia. But be sure Vladimir Putin comprehends all too well what is going on in Riyadh. He will watch the Arab Nato fall apart. His foreign minister Lavrov understands Syria and Iran better than the feckless Tillerson. And his security officers are deep inside Syria. Besides, if he needs any more intelligence information, he has only to ask Trump.

The BBC reports that In stark contrast to the upbeat statements of Saudi officials concerning US President Donald Trump's visit to the kingdom on 20 May, many Arab Twitter users have taken a more sceptical view of the trip.

At one point on Saturday, though, the term "Trump's daughter" in Arabic was the top-trending topic worldwide on Twitter.

Many have taken to satire, posting images referencing negative comments by Mr Trump about Islam and Muslims. Their reaction comes ahead of his much-anticipated speech at the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh on Sunday.

EU-Digest

USA-Turkey relations: Why Trump will likely leave Erdogan empty-handed - by Nil Köksal

The conversations so far have been cordial, diplomatic. There's so much on the line.

But just days before U.S. President Donald Trump was set to meet Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House, Washington delivered a welcome basket loaded with a land mine.

Actual weapons and who gets them are the issue. Knowing that one of Turkey's biggest demands of the U.S. is not to arm certain Kurdish fighters in Syria, the White House announced last week it would be doing just that.

• U.S. to arm Kurdish fighters in Syria
• Rex Tillerson, Turkish leaders struggle to resolve Kurdish dispute

The decision dropped just as a high-level delegation, including the head of Turkey's Armed Forces, the intelligence service and Erdogan's chief adviser, was in Washington for meetings ahead of the main event Tuesday.

"It will be a tough meeting," said Prof. Huseyin Bagci of Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

Read more: Why Trump will likely leave Erdogan empty-handed - World - CBC News

Turkish Referendum: Turkish citizens living abroad have started voting at their Embassies and Consulates - by RM

Voting referendum has started

Large numbers of Turks all over the world have started going to the polls since March 27 to vote yes or no on a new Turkish Constitution,

The referendum which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is currently putting to vote around the world and in Turkey on April 16 will bring about a complete overhaul in the Turkish system of governance.

The change will abolish the office of the prime minister and concentrate dictatorial power in the president’s hands.

If the referendum is successful, Erdoğan could stay on as president not only for two terms, until 2029, but also uncontested.

Unfortunately, all opposition is just about wiped out, due to the systematic crackdown against any dissent in Turkey by President Erdogan.

Turks in Turkey today seem reluctant to protest this anti-democratic (Referendum) move.

In Turkey itself the Pew Research Center finds that on a number of issues, Turks are almost evenly split between those who are happy with Erdogan’s leadership and the state of the nation, and those who believe the former Istanbul mayor is leading the country down the wrong path. Overall, 44% are satisfied with the country’s direction, while 51% are dissatisfied. Half say the economy is doing well, while 46% think it is in bad shape. Forty-eight percent say Erdogan is having a good influence on the country, while  the same percentage believes he is having a negative impact.

Young and old taking voting rights very serious

There are some 7 million Turks living outside Turkey, of which close to 5 million live in Europe, approximately half a million in the US, and about 44.000 in Canada. The rest are scattered  around the world

Given early exit polls, verified by EU-Digest, the yes vote in Europe is ahead by about 2 % , while in the US and Canada, which both have a larger number of higher educated and economically more prosperous Turks than in Europe, the no vote is ahead by close to 35 %

With Democracy seemingly  on the way out in Turkey it is remarkable, that when U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Turkey last week he failed to raise concerns that the country may be sliding toward a dictatorship and made no mention at all of mass arrests of protesters and the purge of opponents that followed last year’s failed coup attempt, or the crackdown on the news media.  Turkey now has more than half of the world’s journalists in jail.

Turkey is also  internally at war with the Kurds, which make up close to a quarter of its population,

As of today the Erdogan Government has dismissed over 130,000 people from their jobs and filled the prisons with them. Also some 6,300 academics were fired from their jobs, while fifteen universities were  closed.

Bottom-line, a win for NO in the referendum is probably the last chance for Turkey to reestablish a more positive image of the country abroad and the fact that Democracy there is not totally dead.  

EU-Digest

Syria: There is no method to this tragic madness as the global political establishment "implodes"- by RM

Aleppo, Syria

On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 470,000 that had died in the war.  

These cold numbers are the first thing that hit you about Syria. Figures telling of a human catastrophe on a scale hard to compute. Suffering on a level to which any rational response seems inadequate – 470,000 people killed, according to the latest estimates; 11.5 percent of the population injured; 45 percent of a country of 22 million made homeless; 4 million refugees and 6.36 million internally displaced persons. Life expectancy is down from 70.5 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.4 years in 2015. Welcome to the Syrian civil war. 

The Syrian conflict has become worse than a nightmare, because after a nightmare you usually wake-up to some kind of normality, instead this is an ongoing nightmare, from which you never wake up.

In the meantime, the global political establishment, our political leaders, representing different so-called "power blocks", blame everything and everyone, except themselves, as they fuel this war with weapons from their weapons industry and that from around the world. 

Worse still, is that these weapons purchases are financed with money from mostly ignorant and misinformed taxpayers. 

Taxpayers usually are more interested in using an App on their smartphone, or in finding out on social media, like Facebook,what a friend is doing, or even why his or her dog prefers a certain type of dog food above another. Being concerned about whatever does not directly affect him or her is the last thing on the agenda. 

In Europe the war in Syria hardly ever is looked at as a human tragedy, or has anyone ask who the real culprits are of this tragedy, but sadly equated to what kind of impact the large number of refugees will have on European living standards.

Former US President Dwight Eisenhouwer once said about the weapons industry: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron ".   

Yes indeed, arms dealers and their government cabinet-level cronies always profit from a war.

On top of that there is now also a perverse logic that pervades restrictions. Military aid and arms sales by the US, but certainly not restricted to them alone, are now approved to formerly off-limits regimes.

Of the 67 countries which have received or are set to receive U.S. military aid, 32 were  previously identified by the State Department as having "poor" or worse human rights records.

Obviously, the central question is: does this make the world a safer place for anyone but arms manufacturers and the politicians who love and have them funded ?

Every academic in the world will tell you, Syria today is the most awful humanitarian catastrophic drama to hit the Levant since World War II. Do politicians realize that and make an effort to remedy it? No, not at all.

Whole families with small children ‒ some people terribly wounded by the bombings ‒ living in  olive groves under the elements, with neither shelter nor provisions.

And the drama continues. Russia used its Security Council veto at the UN to prevent any concerted action against the regime. Moscow also keeps the weapons and bombs coming.

Turkey, a NATO member, whose leader has his own aspirations for the area, supports whoever can help him diminish the Kurdish influence in the area, even ISIS. 

The Iranians use their expertise in crowd control to help Assad control the demonstrations against his regime, and the Americans are funding and supplying a Kurdish proxy army and different rebel groups to fight Assad forces, in addition to also bombing so-called "enemy targets".

Our global political establishment has had chance after chance to remedy the situation, but greed and hypocricy within a defunct political world order has made that impossible.

Syria and the surrounding region is now the epicenter of what is still to come - it is the beginning of cataclysmic developments around the world that will clarify to the world at large, "who was", "who is", and "who will come".

© this report can be copied only if its source is mentioned

EU-Digest 

Posted by EU-Digest at 11:50 PM