Despite heroically spearheading the ground war against ISIS, the Kurds are
unlikely to emerge from the conflict with their own independent homeland,
writes Patrick Cockburn.
The neighbouring regional powers, especially Turkey, with their own sizeable
and restive Kurdish populations, won't permit it. Moreover, the landlocked
Kurdish territories are dependent on them for gas and oil exports and for
imports.
"We don’t want to be used as cannon fodder to take Raqqa,’ a Syrian Kurdish
leader in Rojava told Cockburn. "Once Mosul is liberated and IS defeated, the
Kurds won’t have the same value internationally", a left-wing Iraqi peshmerga
commander added ruefully.
They were doubtlessly referring to their military value to the US in the war
against ISIS. Whether the Kurds' isolation in the region and the US interest in
maintaining a foothold in the Middle East other than Israel continues to draw
the two sides closer together remains to be seen.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n05/patrick-cockburn/end-times-for-the-caliphate
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