The Triangle

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: MCT Campus

This week appears to be the week of separatist movements. In the Balkans last week, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia, much to the chagrin of Serbia, Russia, China and others. In Iraq, Turkish military forces crossed the northern Iraqi border into the autonomous Kurdish region in order to fight with the Kurdish militant separatist movement, the PKK, annoying the United States and the Iraqi government.

Serbia wants Kosovar separatists to give up, and Turkey wants Kurdish separatists to roll over and die. Neither separatist group appears willing to do anything of the sort.

The real question is: what makes these two movements different. Why has one, Kosovo, achieved its goal while the other, the PKK and, to a lesser extent, Kurds in general, is still cut up among a number of states. Why did the United States protect the militant arm of Kosovar separatism in 1999, and why isn't protecting the militant arm of Kurdish separatism now? What other interests are at play here?

Both Kurds and the ethnic Albanian Kosovars are Muslims, both are trying to get a homeland in a very unstable region of the world, and both separatist movements were - and in the case of the PKK, still are - particularly violent. Both groups have been trying to get a state to themselves for a very, very long time.

Both peoples were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks, and others, consistently, over the past century. Both ethnic groups have been pestered, poked, and prodded by Western governments, diplomats and cartographers for years.

Both groups have been on the receiving and delivering end of brutal violent activity for years. The Kosovars get a state, and the Kurds don't. Why?

Kosovar Albanians and Serbs have been shooting, prodding, and ethnic-cleansing at each other for the past century. When Slobodan Milosevic took power over Serbia (then Yugoslavia) during the crumbling decay of the Soviet Union, he engaged in a wide-spread ethnic cleansing of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo. Kosovar Albanians resisted violently, and in 1999, the U.S. and NATO intervened to stop the fighting. Milosevic was succinctly deposed, and Kosovo fell under the control of a NATO-established provisional government, autonomous within Serbia, until the fate of Kosovo could be satisfactorily determined.

The Kurds have a very similar story for recent history - in Iraq, Saddam Hussein engaged in various forms of genocidal activity against Kurds in Northern Iraq. Kurds resisted and attempted to separate themselves numerous times. The U.S. invaded Iraq - not specifically to help or protect the Kurds, however. In the new Iraq, the Kurds in the north were given autonomy. Unlike the Kosovars, this autonomy was supposed to be a permanent condition, rather than just a tentative position until the issue could be decided. Now, Turkey has invaded the autonomous Kurdish area to deal with the continuously violent PKK, and the U.S. is only voicing mild annoyance at this Turkish incursion.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools