Found this amusing description by one of the main Kurdish politicians in the WSJ,
The Kurdish experience, says Mr. Barham, "shows that Iraq need not be ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship." He adds that "if we can do it, then the rest of Iraq can do it." He notes that the Kurds have done it despite their "tough neighborhood." He suggests comparing the Kurdish success with "the corruption and the tyranny of Arafat" over the Palestinians. It's an intriguing comparison. The Kurds have long had their own frustrated aspirations of statehood. When the British drew the map outlining today's Iraq, they carved up the Kurdish population among four neighboring countries. Today, there are some 12 million Kurds in Turkey, six million in Iran, one million in Syria and another million living overseas, as well as the four million in Iraq.
For the Kurds, unlike the Palestinians, no one is promising statehood. Turkey, especially, fiercely opposes any move that direction, afraid that an independent Kurdish state would link up with Turkey's own Kurdish separatists. And unlike the Palestinians, who face the relative restraint of democratic Israel, the Iraqi Kurds face Saddam, who offers no mercy. An American scholar of the region, Michael Rubin, wrote an article last December for the Jerusalem Report in which he quoted a Kurdish professor in northern Iraq, who commented on Palestinian support for Saddam: "If the Palestinians love Saddam so much, why don't they try living under him; we'd be glad to move to Israel."
opinionjournal.com
The Israelis would approve that swap in a cold minute, LOL! |
