Kurdistan: The Military History of a Stateless Nation

it is a land stretching along the Taurus Mountains in the south of turkey and down the zagras mountains in the West of Iran and nestling into the foothills of Syria and Iraq from which the Tigris and Euphrates rivers draw their water it comprises some half million square kilometers and some 50 to 60 million people it is a nation by any common definition a vast body of people unified by Common culture and territory this is Kurdistan and for all the things Kurdistan undeniably is it's not a country despite a population in the tens of millions a shared ethnicity a language and an undeniable cultural history the Kurdish people do not occupy a recognized state of their own in fact we'd be willing to bet that some of our viewers around the world react harshly to this description of Kurdistan perhaps even in the comments below this video in recent decades Kurdistan and its people have been characterized by War on multiple fronts in this examination of past and present warographics is going to explore Kurdistan through the lens of that vile and and examine how the people of this stateless nation have kept their dream alive [Music] today's ethnic to send from many generations of primary subsistence farmers and herders based in the same mountainous regions that could rise the Kurdish Homeland in the modern era with their status as a nomadic Society accustomed to traveling through the Middle East and Highlands the predominantly Sunny Islamic Kurds of the early 20th century received a major disruption to their culture and traditions after the close of the first world war after centuries of mostly uninterrupted Passage through the mountains following their herds of sheep and goats Kurds were forced to settle when the League of Nations approved a British and French carve-up of the Middle East with the Border passage now enforced many Kurdish nomadic parties congregated in villages and established a long-term presence in the same lands that they had called home for Millennia for on the perspective of many Kurds themselves Kurdistan is occupied split into the four regions of a compass rose not by choice but by force the north is governed by turkey the east by Iran the South by Iraq and the west by Syria now as we're going to explain at length of those four countries shares a complex nuanced and difficult history with its Kurdish inhabitants but they all share one unifying through line Kurdish claims to their territory are not more important than maintaining claim to that territory themselves the reasoning behind each nation's opposition has morphed with time as did the reasoning of French British and ottoman rulers in Prior Generations however the end result has been the same since they began to maintain permanent settlements in the 1910s the Kurds have never had a nation-state of their own now we're not going to belabor a full ethnographic description of Kurdish peoples and customs in this video although if that's something you'd like to see in one of my more fitting channels well do let me know in the comments below but it's important to highlight a few areas of cultural difference that distinguish the Kurds from their neighbors and inform many kurds's desire for independent statehood not only is the Kurdish language its own distinct entity far closer to Persian than Arabic but it's commonly spoken across the Kurdistan territory and forms the basis for a fusion of Arabic Turkish and Iranian ideas and media one that integrates all three into a distinctly Kurdish hybridization unlike many nations in the region Kurdistan permits the sale of alcohol it promotes Democratic systems of governance and encourages women to participate in active visible and largely non-restrictive roles within Society its laws and social norms are starkly distinct from those of the surrounding governments so the hope of a modern Kurdistan came into being after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One Western rhetoric of the day advocated that non-turkish ottoman nationalities should finally have their chance to develop on their own and the Treaty of servers signed in 1920 proposed the recognition of a Kurdish State however turkey's military Resurgence immediately afterward would stop their treaty from being signed and the replacement the Treaty of Ankara signed in 1926 neglected to mention Kurdistan even once this agreement divide Kurdish territory among the four nations that still hold it today without Turkish consent acknowledgment of the prior false promises or an understanding of the treaty's implications on the people that it applied to the first Kurdish attempts to break out into sovereignty came a full two decades after the Treaty of Ankara in the wake of the second world war the Soviet Union had occupied Northern Iran during the war where their encounters with Kurdish tribes led the Soviets to view the Kurds as potential allies despite the Soviet occupation Kurdish nationalist sentiment grew progressively stronger until a Clear Vision emerged among tribal leaders and their Soviet allies an autonomous self-governing Kurdistan located within territories that officially belonged to Iran the mostly Kurdish town of mahabad was chosen as the seat of power for this new Independence Movement which would administer its own territory for years before officially declaring independence in January 1946. the new Republic of mahabad was in effect a puppet state of the Soviet Union but its Manifesto emphasized points that were genuinely beneficial to the Kurds autonomous self-rule the institution of free Kurdish language education within the Republic a common law system that applied to all people and the appointment of officials within the the Republic who were from the Republic it's fairly reasonable stuff mahabad ties to Moscow were certainly no secret something that the Republic's leader quasi Muhammad openly admitted but Muhammad and his government also continually emphasized their ideological distance from communism in fact the Soviets opposed the formation of an independent Kurdish State instead favoring a union with nearby Azerbaijan but they sent no troops in to enforce their will and no Diplomat in to convince the Republic's leaders to follow the Soviets example in the end the roholic wouldn't last a year this was before the days of the Cold War and eventually the Soviet Union did have to pull out of Iran in response Iran tapped down a similar Revolt among it as a population and with the Republic isolated the Kurdish tribes abandoned the idea in favor of protecting their crops and livestock unable to resist Iran without support mahabad fell by December and Iran responded viciously the Kurdish language was banned Kurdish books were burned and qazi oh on charges of treason 1946 did see one bright spot for the Kurds though even amidst the Republic's failure General Mustafa barzania occurred exiled from Iraq had attempted to support quasi in Iran and during that time he established what would become the Kurdistan Democratic party in the coming decades in a half barzani's party grew its influence in Kurdistan while barzani himself sustained a political career that would see him earn his historic mantle of the father of Turkish nationalism over the next 15 years bazani would try and fail to secure a legitimate promise of autonomy from Iraq even through two successive Iraqi governments in 1958 the national rights of Kurds were officially recognized in the Iraqi Constitution but within three years the relationship was going to sour in 1961 the Kurdish Democratic party was dissolved and the first Iraqi Kurdish War began this conflict would see the emerge of kurdistan's native biting Force the peshmerga which I would grow over the successive decades into a fully fledged military with an operational doctrine that highly prioritizes guerrilla warfare the peshmerga adopted the same methods of warfare that Kurds had practiced for centuries striking outward from the highlands and retreating into territory the Kurds understand better than anyone it was Mustafa bazani who had first founded the peshmerga in 1943 and he now mobilized them for their first large-scale Revolt with an initial force of 5000. before long that Army had more than tripled in size filled with Kurdish defectors from the Iraqi military and well with them came knowledge expertise and Small Arms the Kurdish during this time had a hard time finding an international backhoe with both the United States and the Soviet Union disinterested in sending military aid as such the peshmerga chose specific attack vectors against iraqi-held Targets in Kurdish regions sniper attacks roadblocks hit and run tactics sabotage and attacks on the Iraqi militaries supply lines the peshmaga were well aware that they were more mobile than the Iraqis with a better understanding of the land and a greater ability to endure prolonged Mountain Warfare and by fighting smart they were able to take significant territory in the mountains Iraq responded with overwhelming Force sending almost three quarters of the army along with air support in in addition to their attacks on villagers and civilian targets the Iraqis leveraged the knowledge of Kurdish militias who chose to oppose barzani for tribal or financial reasons the conflict reached a stalemate in 1963 with Iraq able to hold cities and lowland towns but effectively helpless once they tried to enter the mountains frustrated Iraq and its Syrian allies launched continued bombing attacks and pursued a policy of forced migration in which Kurds were forced out of their home region but if anything this Consolidated Turkish support of the peshmerga and over the next seven years the peshmerga were able to rub off the Iraqi military again and again granted the peshmerga had no ability to meet the Iraqis head on but they didn't have to in order to keep most of their territory and all sides understood that once Iraqi soldiers left the kurd cities those cities were going to fall back under Kurdish control by 1970 both sides trusted that the other understood that continued fighting would lead to a continued stalemate the eventual peace deal granted The kurd's Limited autonomy and amnesty for their Fighters as well as Kurdish language Services Kurdish administration of their local areas and a Kurdish vice president within the Iraqi government not only that but Iraq compromised with allowances for peshmerga fighters to maintain a frontier militia rather than forcing them to disband so what went wrong then well despite this laundry list of concessions the Kurds were underwhelmed by Iraq's parent inability to keep its promises in the following years kurdistan's attempts to keep an open border with Iranian Kurdish regions similarly frustrated Iraq and with Rising tensions again between both sides a 1972 assassination attempt on barzani set off tensions again on a small scale Iraq and the Kurds entered a cold war each massing power for a huge conflict this time Kurdistan got it into National backers the Shah of Iran the CIA and Israel all of whom sent heavy weapons and training support bazani's Army swelled to nearly a hundred thousand and when nervous Iraqi soldiers became belligerent while trying to control Kurdish territory this just made matters worse Iraq was aware of the coming storm and sought to pacify the Kurds with a much more favorable promise of autonomy but this Overture fell on deaf ears after all Iraq's last promises and the ones before that had been empty and their increased sincerity was now born of fear year of the peshmerga's increased capability not some respect for the kurd's claim to self-governance bazani rejected the offer and he made Ready for War this time the peshmerga planned on waging a conventional war and taking the fight to Iraq directly after all they now had sufficient weapons and numbers to do just that and Iran and the United States had provided all of the Tactical and strategic guidance that they needed but this turned out to be a grave Mistake by The peshmerga Who Would badly underestimated the casualties Iraq could inflict on a conventional military enemy Iraq's planes and tanks proved to be too much for the peshmerga's heavy Weaponry which would have been much more useful in the guerrilla-style attacks that they had historically favored this time Iraq was able to take far more territory within Kurdistan and hold it after crashing through ill-prepared Kurdish lines from the mountains the peshmerga gave ungodly amounts of resistance claiming some 20 or more Iraqi lives for every single Kurdish one that was lost and Iran attempted to help by committing its own Kurdish and regular forces but the peshmerga had done themselves in by attempting conventional Warfare and all their efforts to turn the tide simply Drew out the conflict eventually Iranian forces were withdrawn after an agreement with Iraq one that did not solicit Kurdish import within a day of their withdrawal Iraq crushed the already battered peshmerga force with the survivors forced underground or over the Border this defeat drove bazani out of the Kurdish leadership and left civilians defenseless against Iraqi reprisals hundreds of villagers were destroyed hundreds of thousands of Kurds were displaced and Kurdish regions were intentionally resettled by Arab residents despite its best efforts Kurdistan had been crushed in its attempt to meet Iraq Head to Head thank you the next major development for Kurdistan came not in Iraq but in Turkey when the young intellectual Abdullah akalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party later known as the pkk this Independence Movement was a Marxist one focused on establishing a free Kurdistan in the mountains of Southeast turkey By 1979 asalan and his small group of core Associates fled to Syria in the face of mounting Turkish unrest and in the following years they would train a Cadre of Kurdish gorillas this faction learned from the failure of berzani's pershmurgers in Iraq as had another leftist group the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan between a coup in Turkey the Islamic revolution in Iran and continued discontent in Iraq both the pkk and the PUK had ample opportunities to assert themselves unfortunately for the Kurds opposition to the Islamic revolution ended extremely poorly with a brief resistance that was overrun and punished by systematic arrests and political repression in iranian-held Kurdistan but in Turkish regions ossalan and the pkk used time-tested Guerrilla tactics to cause years of violent unrest with attacks against Turkish officials and government property accused Kurdish collaborators with turkey and Turkish International diplomatic missions throughout the 1980s and 1990s arsalan and his pkk waged a continual low-scale war with tactics that were often condemned as terrorism the pkk also facilitated greater interconnection between the Kurdish regions of each of the area's countries and helped to form networks between Iraqi and Turkish Kurds so that insurgents within one country could Retreat to the other in a crisis this ended up being particularly helpful due to the iran-iraq war where each country armed the others Kurdish population to try and ferment revolts at home this ended up being disastrous for the Kurds in both countries who were labeled collaborators With the Enemy driven from their homes and often executed this in turn inflamed tensions between each country's Kurdish populations furious with each other for the situation during this chaos the pkk continued to attack Turkish targets attempting to establish Kurdish autonomy VAR brutal and often discriminant attack the situation in the region continued to devolve for years but nothing the Kurds had experienced until that point could come anywhere close to what happened to the Kurdish Iraqis in 1988. this was the anfal campaign the Kurdish genocide carried out on the orders of Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi government the genocide came at the close of the iran-iraq war when a peace favoring Iraq gave the military the opportunity to carry out retribution against the Kurdish population for Iraq this was the end game after a generation of violent repression and a convenient opportunity to end talk of Kurdistan once and for all the architect of the genocide was Ali Hassan al-majjid Secretary General of the northern Bureau of the bahath Arab Socialist Party and cousin of Saddam Hussein himself granted near totalitarian powers in Northern Iraq al-majid oversaw an unimaginably cruel campaign against the Kurds one that would earn him among other nicknames the title of chemical Army over a period of several years armaged and the Iraqi military orchestrated the mass executions and disappearances of tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians including many women and children and wiping entire Villages off the map almajid leveraged chemical weapons including mustard gas and sarin to gas thousands of people and destroyed and looted Kurdish infrastructure social and cultural centers schools mosques power plants homes thousands more were starved in makeshift concentration camps or forcibly displaced into regions far from their homes the Iraqi regime made no attempts to hide their actions or their motives armaged directly ordered that any first-degree relatives of Kurdish Fighters should be executed as should wounded civilians if they were determined to be hostile to the Iraqi State he banned human existence in kurdish-held areas and explicitly detailed the tactics by which Kurdish civilians should be interrogated and slaughtered on mass armadrid earned Iraq the dubious distinction of being the first nation to ever attack its own citizens with chemical weapons and many survivors were abducted from their hospital beds while still blinded and burned never to be seen Again by the time the genocide finished Iraqi Kurdistan had been all but leveled to the ground with many of its Horrors rebranded and announced openly by Iraqi propagandists after the anfell campaign there was very little left for Kurdish survivors who are sent to camps and made to live under military rule through 1991. the survivors were only able to return to their land and the burned out Rubble of their homes during the U.S led operations in Iraq in 1991 where Kurds were given humanitarian Aid and protected with a no-fly zone under the cover of Coalition air power Iraqi Kurdistan was able to elect a regional government and gain a modicum of self-rule as they began to rebuild [Music] but even Iraqi Kurds returned to their homes didn't spell the end of their troubles we mentioned two political factions within kurdistar before the Kurdistan Democratic party or KDP now led by the son of Mustafa bazani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan or PUK led by Jalal talabani who had founded the party in 1975. Kurdistan at this time was very clearly a two-party state with the KDP and the PUK splitting the Parliament and the state's mechanisms of power fairly equally in the 1992 elections however cultures with recent histories of many decades of war and Guerrilla resistance often have a difficult time forming transitional governments and Kurdistan was no different Kurdish leaders were far more accustomed to wartime leadership by now than civilian governance and trust between the two parties quickly deteriorated in the words of Jalal talibani himself we came from the mountains we were trained as Fighters and now we had to run cities the parties initially decided to pursue a 50-50 leadership strategy dividing up major posts and ensuring that any Minister from one party had Deputy ministers supplied by the other but rather than lead to political consensus this Arrangement forced a constant cycle of stonewalling and bickering as the government atrophied within just two years the KDP and the PUK or at each other's throats a violent confrontation over a minor land dispute in May 1994 provided enough of a spark for each side to justify violence towards the other with each side falling back to Regions within Kurdistan that they controlled almost immediately France the United States and the United Kingdom attempted to mediate the situation all of them having a vested interest in a United Kurdistan in order to check the power of Saddam Hussein but fearing the implications of Kurdish quasi-nationhood turkey deliberately obstructed the ability of Kurdish representatives to travel to the negotiation the fighting would continue for some six months and after a brief month-long piece violence broke out again this time small skirmishers gave way to full-on battles with thousands of Fighters and civilians killed both sides and their respective Burger forces engaged in their standard Guerrilla methods of fighting in the highlands with the PUK also earning Iran's support in the conflict in an odd side note that probably deserves more attention than we can give it here the PUK was also solicited allegedly by the American Central Intelligence Agency to help with an Iraqi General's assassination of Saddam Hussein and the PUK was able to take out three entire divisions of the Iraqi army during the fighting but during and after their side quest the PUK and the KDP continued to battle with intermittent ceasefires until 1996 but the KDP was aware that the PUK had made an enemy of Baghdad and used that fact to their advantage in August of 1996 the KDP allied with 30 000 Iraqi troops to capture the city of herbal once the KDP was installed they engaged in Mass executions of PUK Fighters and Iraq signaled long-term support for the KDP by lifting sanctions on Kurdish territory and yet Iraq too had miscalculated apparently not recognizing that their intervention would remind the world of the genocide they'd only just perpetrated a U.S intervention punished Iraq in response in Operation Desert strike a bombing of Iraqi targets and an expansion of their no-fly zone Iraqi troops left herbal as the KDP continued hostilities requiring many PUK fighters to be evacuated by the United States after they were pushed back to the Iranian border the violence in the highlands only got worse in 1997 with the addition of the major faction within Turkish Kurdistan the pkk and look in order to not get completely lost in K's and P's here we'll suffice to say that this also brought turkey into the conflicts on the opposite side turkey picked up support of the iraqi-backed KDP where their Arc left off and the fighting continued through the end of 1997. this phase of the Civil War didn't change the territorial balance between the two sides but it did lead to the deaths of more thousands of Kurds before the KDP declared a unilateral ceasefire this time thankfully the Armistice held and the United States was able to help broker a peace deal in which barzani of the KDP and talibani of the PUK are able to lead their sides to begin to reconcile the United States maintained a heavy involvement in the peace process well aware that Iraq Iran and Turkey were all content to use the Kurdish infighting as a stage for proxy conflict but although the two sides would be unable to fully reunify for several years both benefited from a new sense of regional stability and ties with the United States that would persevere in the difficult times ahead [Music] now we would Hazard to Guess that many of our viewers today who are familiar with the Kurdish people got their introduction via the war on terror then the Valiant Kurdish defense against the Islamic State there were a few reasons the Kurds were so instrumental in that conflict not least because it directly threatened Kurdish people and their Homeland but their Newfound connections with the United States also played a large role as well in the Years immediately after their Civil War the KDP and the PUK made heavy use of Western Aid to rebuild a system that allowed for a quick recovery while building meaningful diplomatic relationships the turn of the Millennium saw some conflicts with the ansar al-islam terrorist group as well as the arrest of Abdullah rosalan by Turkish authorities after he attempted to flee to Nairobi the Kurdistan would remain mostly peaceful for the next few years slowly repairing its starkly factionalist system while still recovering from genocide in 2003 the U.S invasion of Iraq provided an opportunity for the Kurds to both Shore up their International connections and push for recognition within their Government after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime Kurds were particularly successful in the elections of 2005 and were able to establish constitutional autonomy in the new constitution Kurdish Representatives made their presence known in the Iraqi Parliament and Kurdistan convened its own governing body in the city of herbal during these same years turkey expanded the rights of Kurds in the country as part of a broader initiative to gain European union membership and Syrian Kurds engaged in significant protests in Damascus and Aleppo in all these years of heightened Western engagement in the Middle East led to a greater willingness from Regional governments to recognize Kurdish desires for autonomy or at the very least Kurdish personhood and as the 2000s graduated into the 2010s many Kurds were granted citizenship in Syria and turkey's president erdogan made visits and trade deals with Iraqi Kurdistan while resuming peace talks with his own Turkish pkk faction by this time the low-grade hostilities between turkey and the pkk are estimated to have killed some 40 000 people so any movement on the peace process was hugely consequential the early 2010s saw a broader upheaval within the Middle East as the Arab Spring took hold across much of the region weakening Central governments in Iraq and Syria provided an opportunity to assert greater autonomy over Kurdish regions but it was the years of Fallout and instability that followed the Arab Spring more so than the spring itself that would raise both kurdistan's International profile and place it into a state of War once again in the year 2013 a now Infamous jihadist group known as the Islamic State attempted to establish an islamist caliphate in Iraq and Syria using an ideological perversion of the Quran to justify their homes their targets included mosul the second largest city in Iraq as well as large amounts of Kurdish territory in the early days of the Islamic States offensive their Fighters swept through Kurdistan just like early other areas of Iraq and Syria that they attacked with peshmerga forces ill-prepared to stand up to them on such short notice in line with the group's hateful ideology the Islamic State made clear their intentions to annihilate Kurdish culture an autonomy with grand designs that made the iraq-led Kurdish genocide look somehow merciful in comparison however the initial shocking or strategy of the Islamic State could only be sustained for so long and once the conflict morphed into a longer-term engagement it carried as many immediate opportunities as it did immediate threats on the one hand the Kurdish peshmerga could not surrender to an enemy bent on their destruction and any territory they lost would likely be looted and burned but at the same time the Islamic State attack had driven the Iraqi Army from the area leaving the peshmerga as its sole Defender this allowed the peshmerga to have a shot at highly contested areas like the city of kirkuk which the peshmerga took without a fight in 2014. the city came under a strong offensive from the Islamic State and both sides waged war in the suburbs and outskirts but the Kurds were able to repel multiple attacks and hold kirkuk with authority the zidio would be contested again in January 2015 and the Islamic State was repelled again in the major cities of the area and on the outskirts the tactics of this war favored the peshmerga forces not only oh are they more experienced and talented Guerrilla Fighters than many of the Islamic States forces but they were defending the same Highland areas that they'd kept safe countless times before furthermore the Islamic State's operational Doctrine was all about Blitzkrieg style attacks with a relatively small forces expecting that the Iraqi Army would route or Retreat to safer grounds but unlike the Iraqis the Kurds were backed up against a wall defending a Homeland from which retreat was impossible the Islamic State was responsible for the deaths of some 1200 peshmerga by the end of 2015 and many villagers were destroyed in the fighting but both in Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan the peshmerga are more than able to hold their ground now the Islamic State was also considered a global threat at this time and unlike Iraqi or Syrian forces the Kurds had the international connections not to mention the ability to pull their own weight that made them ideal allies for the U.S France the UK and Germany Kurdistan also received well over a million Syrian Iraqi refugees during this time necessitating a high degree of involvement from foreign aid workers the situation placed significant strain on the Kurdish economy and its civilian population but brought the plight of the Kurds into a higher place of geopolitical importance than they had ever experienced finally the conflict was a much needed opportunity for various Kurdish factions to put aside their differences both across ideological lines and National borders that's not to say that the divisions are within the Kurdish population are healed outright far from it but such a dangerous common enemy has forced Kurdistan to tend toward Unity instead of internal conflict along with their civil leaders the peshmerga were reinvigorated quickly transforming from a relatively disorganized and untrained Force into a modern military that could keep up with the demands of a global Coalition the war against the Islamic State saw momentous Kurdish victories in the struggle over the kabani or the Euphrates region of Syria a grueling months-long campaign of small unit tactics and Village to Village fighting Kurds or also were instrumental in the evacuation of Mount sinjar where some 50 000 members of kurdistan's yasiri minority were besieged by Islamic State Fighters without food or water as the Islamic State advance blunted and then turned into a retreat peshmaga forces were vital in expelling the group from the mountains and maintained a safe haven for the millions of refugees displaced by the war during this time the world became acquainted with the Kurdish defense of their Homeland with the crucial role of women in the Kurdish military receiving particular Praise of course it's also critical to note that Kurdish forces were not Beyond reproach in this time with the Kurdistan workers party's use of child soldiers well documented by Human Rights Watch but even understanding those heinous acts it's impossible to separate the world's defeat of the Islamic State from the instrumental role of Kurdish fighters on the front lines [Music] now we really wish we could tell you today that the Kurdish victory over the Islamic state was the end of the trouble that their International recognition and Battlefield victories led to a sea change in the Middle East we'd love to tell you that Kurdistan is a Sovereign Nation unfortunately we can't do that and the remaining barriers were in place even before the war with the Islamic State Ended as you may have noticed our discussion of the Kurdish populations of Iran and turkey has been far more limited than in Syria and Iraq in the case of Iran Kurds have been Limited in their ability to express discontent for decades as Iran continues to suppress Kurdish National as protests and use Kurdish militias as Pawns in their geopolitical games the Iranian regime's intermittent crackdowns tend to result in small-scale violence including in the ongoing unrest following the death of Martha armini at the hands of the regime this simmering tension as held mostly steady in recent years and it doesn't seem particularly likely to change while the Islamic Republic of Iran are attained hour in Turkey the situation is far more nuanced and at times far more violent the Kurdish pkk in Turkey the Party founded by Abdullah akalan has led a low-grade Insurgency within turkey for many years this has included numerous bombings and attacks committed by the pkk including against civilian targets as well as brutal counter-insurgency action by the Turkish military although the early years of the Arab Spring saw a legitimate attempt at establishing a long-term peace the Kurdish fight against the Islamic State inflamed tensions in Turkish Kurdistan where citizens accused turkey of barring their attempts to send money while facilitating Islamic State activity the situation spiraled out of control with Turkish forces attacking the pkk on Iraqi territory and intervening in the northern part of Syria partially to prevent Syrian Kurds from forming deep links with Turkish Kurdistan in the late 2010s support from the United States and the overwhelmingly pro-independence results of a Kurdish referendum in Iraq both contributed toward the establishment of abroad Kurdistan so did the continued efforts of the peshmerga in beating back Islamic State forces however the rise of Kurdish nationalism in the region LED Not Just Turkey but Iran and Iraq to isolate kurdishold areas and avoid any initiatives that might end in recognition of a sovereign state meanwhile turkey exploited the conflict in Syria to capture turkish-held cities and drive back Kurdish militias even oh and those militias weren't made up of Turkish Kurds by 2019 Syrian Kurdish forces declared victory over the Islamic State after clearing out the town of backholes this final accomplishment led the United States and the broader Western coalition to pull large amounts of forces from the war zone trusting the Kurdish militias to Stamp Out Islamic State holdouts wherever they made themselves known but almost as soon as Western forces left the Kurdish counter-insurgent movement was interrupted when Turkish forces moved into the area this Invasion displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians many of whom had only just returned to their homes and forced Kurdish militias to seek support from the Syrian military as serious Assad regime had a vested interest in maintaining its own sovereignty they gladly agreed and over let into areas of Syria that had been held by Kurdish forces for multiple years turkey with substantial support from Russia was able to force a settlement in which Kurdish militias could not hold border territory adjoining turkey in 2020 hostilities intensified yet again with turkey using alleged pkk attacks on its military bases and the assassination of a Turkish Diplomat as pretext to start a land and air campaign against pkk positions in Iraq discerned the r of both the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurdish political groups which had previously kept a more favorable relationship with Ankara making matters worse the UN released a report alleging that a turkey-backed Syrian militia had perpetrated war crimes including murder and torture against the Kurdish population while also accusing Kurds of unlawful detention and recruitment of children in 2022 Iran also launched an attack into Kurdish territory in Iraq killing civilian women and children as well as refugees and toward the end of the year turkey began a new offensive against Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria announcing that they would no longer discriminate between pkk targets and other Kurdish ones in this most recent turn of events it's impossible to ignore the role of Western democracies first relying on Kurdish militia's expertise and bravery to spearhead the war against the Islamic State and then stepping aside to allow turkey and Iraq to have their way with Kurdistan frankly this cold shoulder marks only the latest and a long line of betrayals as this happened several times before in the history we've described the kurd's willingness to fight for their homes and autonomy has been taken advantage of when it was convenient to serve the goals of a larger power but as this happened several times before the Kurdish desire to form a free and Sovereign Kurdistan has not been deemed important enough for ostensibly allied powers to support every square foot the Kurds were able to secure as Kurdish during the war with the Islamic state has now been lost and much much of their long-held territory still gone with it the Nations around Kurdistan are just as insistent on keeping it as they've ever been but over 30 million Kurdish civilians and Fighters still live in the territories they claim as Kurdistan and more so than ever before Kurdish Society is acutely aware of its place as the world's largest stateless nation Unity for the people of Kurdistan has always been hard to come by and recognition let alone sovereignty has been even less common the kurdistan's path toward Independence had to start somewhere and compared to where it began it is far more developed far better armed and equipped and has a far greater place in global awareness than ever what the future holds we certainly can't say but with ongoing hostility from every nation that surrounds it we cannot expect the kurdistan's coming years will be easy we can only hope that the violence and the pain to come like that which came before will be pain that the Kurdish nation and its people will survive

Channel: Warographics

Views: 393,410

Keywords: stateless nations, kurdistan middle east, kurdish separatism, iraqi kurdistan city, kurdish people, kurdish independence, kurdistan, iraqi kurdistan, what is kurdistan, capital of kurdistan, nation, kurdish, iraq travel, kurds, turkey, who are the kurds, iran, middle east, iraq, iraqi

Id: jWYslKbs01A

Length: 34min 52sec (2092 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 11 2023