ISIS Thread
- Thread starter The Flash
- Start date
I'm guilty of the same impulsive reaction in this case, so I apologise.
Now, I will write a post detailing my opinion here. It will take a while, just as a heads up. I will try to keep it short, but I also want to address all points under discussion here. It will be separate from this one, so as not to interfere with any discussion that might happen in the meantime.
Now, I will write a post detailing my opinion here. It will take a while, just as a heads up. I will try to keep it short, but I also want to address all points under discussion here. It will be separate from this one, so as not to interfere with any discussion that might happen in the meantime.
IS is a major threat to the world. It has executed people at will, conducted massacres and genocides, imposed a radical ideology on people that deprives them of their freedom, their dignity and often enough, of their right to live. It continues to do so as we speak, it attacks innocent people all the time and it keeps launching attacks on foreign cities, driven by an everlasting thirst to expand. This alone already constitutes a call for action. Every day the are left doing what they do, more people people fall victim to them. So why, then, am I against quick action?
A call for quick action is understandable. It speaks for our empathy and our humanitarian sense. We hate to see people being slaughtered, raped and expelled. This must be stopped from happening and whatever will happen, it can't be worse than it is now! Right?
Wrong.
I'm going to make a number of suggestions now, none of which I consider indisputable, but which I think are correct from my observations.
Suggestion 1: The chance to prevent all this from happening has already passed.
What caused IS are three things. Colonial meddling in the Middle East, Coalition invasion in Iraq and the collapse of Syria. All three are intertwined. To break this down:
We want IS to stop doing what it does now. If we sent in aeroplanes and bombed day and night, we might succeed. But that is not going to help in the long run.
NATO forces in Afghanistan and Coalition forces in Iraq were and are considered foreign occupation by the locals. Why? Because they are. They are American, British, Polish, Dutch, German, Canadian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish etc, etc. They are from countries on other continents, the people have different faiths and speak different languages. The Taleban are Afghans. IS are mostly Arabic, and if they are not, they still possess features indigenous for the territory they occupy: They speak Arabic, and they are Muslim. And they are Muslim even if their interpretation of Islam differs from those of locals. It's still closer than whatever comes from America or Britain. Hence, even those opposed to them locally will consider them as part of their social and cultural background. And therefore, even to some people who resist against IS or want them gone, it may not sit well if it's French or American bombs that do so. If it's Jordanians, Egyptians or other Arabs doing it, much of the barrier between liberators and liberated is gone.
Suggestion 4: There are good, ordinary people who like IS.
Abdul bin Abd-al-Rahim and his wife Fawzia may be completely normal people from Lower Bumblefuck, Syria. They may be pious Muslims but by no means radical. He may be a kebab guy and she's taking care of their children at home. They would never kill a person and have no urge to press their belief on others. They may have been fine in Syria under Assad. Then the civil war came, and everything was torn to shreds. Abdul had to take two other jobs to feed his children because nobody was buying kebabs anymore, and in the end, he was out of work because everything got destroyed. Then IS came and restored a certain normality in his town. They also imposed strict religious laws, but those didn't really change much for Abdul and Fawzia, because they were already living a modest, pious life. So they see IS as a good thing, because Abdul can go about his business again and he is even offered government services like health insurance and free schooling for his children. He may hear about some cruel executions, but none of the IS people he knows were ever involved. How do you tell these people they should stop supporting IS? How do you convince them that a return to war and chaos would ultimately be better for him and his town?
Suggestion 5: Not all victims of IS are pure and innocent.
By this I don't mean to say that any victim of IS deserves what IS does to them. I just mean to say that we should be careful with the "my enemy's enemy" attitude. And this is particularly true for the Kurds. Please hear me out. When it became known that IS is committing genocide against the Kurds, it was of course a natural and understandable reaction to say we need to help them, we need to give them weapons, etc. The problem is, who are 'they'? There is no such thing as unity among the Kurds. There never has been. The calls for arming the Kurds went by the unspoken assumption that there would be something such as unity or at least Burgfrieden (truce) among Kurdish groups, and among Kurds, Iraqis and Turks. The problem is, such a truce was never negotiated. There was never any sort of decision or statement made about it. It was simply assumed that it would exist, because everybody is fighting a common enemy.
Unfortunately, things are not that simple. The Kurds in northern Iraq have no trust in the Iraqi government, and they are perfectly fine in fighting for themselves. What's more, they also know how to exploit the situation for their own benefit. Why? Because the Kurds are not happy with what they have. They have a small autonomous territory in northern Iraq which is stable and peaceful, but not particularly viable. One thing they want is to add the city of Kirkuk and its territory to their state, and they claim that Kirkuk is a Kurdish city. However, this was not true; it was populated in roughly equal numbers by Kurds, Arabs, Turcomans, and then some Assyrians. So what happened? The Kurdish government encouraged its people to move to Kirkuk so the city would get a majority Kurdish population to back their claims.
The war with IS is helping the Kurds here. Kirkuk and other territories were occupied by the Kurdish government in 2014, under the pretext of defence against IS and Iraqi insurgency. I'm not even touching on internal Kurdish matters here, such as the Barzani-Talabani hostilities (two clans fighting for who gets to run Kurdistan) or the hatred between Muslim and Yazidi Kurds - but they exist, and you would be naive to think that there wasn't some suppressed, quiet satisfaction with seeing IS trying to eliminate the Yazidis. Why? Because it's been tried by Muslim Kurds as well. Bedir Xan Beg, a Kurdish national hero, is celebrated for some things we would find appalling.
It would be understandable if, after IS is defeated, the Kurds would claim national independence, and do so on grounds of the territories they occupy once it is happening. But one should always keep in mind how they gained control over these territories and what situations they used for their advantage.
Suggestion 6: The fact that IS are bad people doesn't mean it's wrong to study them.
Do we know all we need to know about IS? After all, they murder people, and that tells us all about them. They are bad people who need to be stopped. But this touches on the question "quick vs permanently". We don't want them or anything like them or worse than them to return.
A tumour is a terrible thing. It's a bad thing. It kills people. So it would be understandable for an emphatic person to stand by a patient and shake the doctor and scream at him, "stop studying! Just get rid of the damn thing! Don't you see it keeps spreading as we stand here?" He demands of the doctor something he shouldn't do: just cut up the patient and rip the tumour out. Even if it doesn't kill the patient, it won't solve the problem, because cancer cells will remain, and they will continue to spread. Since the tumour is gone, our empath thinks the problem is solved, but he doesn't realise that the cancer cells are still spreading to a point where it is impossible to save the patient and he dies. The doctor should have taken more care and studied the patient closely to see how far the cancer has spread to know where and how to fight it, even if it means the cancer is still spreading. The empath is devastated, because he meant so well, and he empathised so much with the patient. Empathy is a good thing. It sparks good things. Our empath brought the patient to the doctor. But that's where it should stop. It is should be the incentive to act, not the guiding principle.
Final suggestion: IS should be given the time to fail
In the case of IS, empathy should be our primary reason to act. But again, from there on, it should be rational, not emotional. Precisely because IS should be stopped and nothing like it should return, things need to be done right the first time. Things need to be done that, at first seem to be counter-productive. For example, it may work better to let IS develop a bit, to let it consolidate its governmental structures. Why? What the hell? Here's why: The state is run by people who have no clue about politics or economy. They think every answer is in the Qur'an or the Hadiths somewhere. If they run into problems that can't be solved with fatwas and exegesis, this will run it into an existential problem. People will lose faith in it. This is a permanent situation, because Islam alone will have proven to be an insufficient foundation for a state. Perhaps IS will then disintegrate, whether swiftly or slowly, but it will prove to have failed. And this experience will be the strongest of arguments against anybody else who would try to install a caliphate or a theocracy again. If IS is ousted, the mythos of a caliphate will remain, because nobody ever saw it fail - only saw it being destroyed by infidel outsiders. The lesson people will learn from it is that next time, they'll do more to protect it. If it fails in itself, people will have seen the idea of a caliphate fail. That is much, much more powerful.
I don't mean that we should allow IS to just continue the way it does. Of course people need to be saved from it. But those fighting against it should remain in the defence. Give up on the territory it controls for now. Let IS bleed dry while fighting small-scale battles. There will be a point when it can no longer sustain its fight, and all its religious fervour won't make it succeed. That's where it fails.
A call for quick action is understandable. It speaks for our empathy and our humanitarian sense. We hate to see people being slaughtered, raped and expelled. This must be stopped from happening and whatever will happen, it can't be worse than it is now! Right?
Wrong.
I'm going to make a number of suggestions now, none of which I consider indisputable, but which I think are correct from my observations.
Suggestion 1: The chance to prevent all this from happening has already passed.
What caused IS are three things. Colonial meddling in the Middle East, Coalition invasion in Iraq and the collapse of Syria. All three are intertwined. To break this down:
- IS is, among other things, a reaction to the unnatural division of the Middle East. It took place after WWI and the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire. I won't go into details here. Ask Wikipedia about the keywords: Sykes-Picot agreement, Treaty of Sèvres. The countries we have in this territory (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan) are artificial creations from European colonial lords. They have no historical basis. They were and are run by elites put into power by colonial overlords. IS reflects a desire of many people to change this, to create an organic state united by Islamic religion and Arab culture.
- The invasion of Iraq in itself was already a case of "it can't get worse no matter what we do". Remember, Saddam was gassing Kurdish children, suppressing Shi'ites and detaining political opposition. Something had to be done, quickly. The Coalition went in and thought they would be greeted by an exhilarated crowd cheering for their liberation. Instead, the country fell apart and normal life was impossible for fear of highwaymen and suicide bombers. And there was more: radical Islamist elements started forming because they saw Coalition invasion and post-invasion policies as a continuation of western colonialism. One of these was ISIL, now IS. So you see, IS was a result of "we have to act quick, whatever happens, it can't be worse."
- The collapse of Syria is an example of why we shouldn't just blindly support anybody fighting against a dictator. It's true, most rebels were people inspired by the Arab Spring and the desire to turn Syria into a liberal, democratic state. And it was the Syrian government that started shooting first. From that point on, it became the idea that everybody fighting Assad was our friend. If this conflict had been monitored closely from the beginning, it may have been possible to contain harmful elements such as then-ISIL.
We want IS to stop doing what it does now. If we sent in aeroplanes and bombed day and night, we might succeed. But that is not going to help in the long run.
- Getting rid of IS quickly would mean a swift and thus necessarily inaccurate military action. Say, two weeks of air raids and then an invasion. A country like France or Italy could do it by itself without many problems - they'd get rid of IS militia. However, this would mean either two things: Killing every single IS fighter, man woman or child, or killing parts, capturing others and seeing others flee. If you killed and captured them all, they would become martyrs and inspire others to continue the fight. Perhaps not in the territory we are talking about right now, but elsewhere. If fighters got away, then they'll pop up elsewhere and continue the fight. If you don't believe me, look at the Taleban. They were ousted within a few months when Operation Enduring Freedom began in Afghanistan. Yet, they still exist. Some hid in the Afghan mountains. Others went to Pakistan, where they destabilised the country, possibly permanently. Others stayed were they were and continued the fight from within the Afghan population. Incidentally, the Taleban were another case of "whatever we do, it can't get worse if we act quickly".
- Getting rid of IS permanently would mean that what they are doing at this very moment is something we cannot prevent, but we can stop it for good in the long run. This would mean cutting the flow of jihadists to IS territory, to remove their means of funding, and to be prepared, when it comes to an armed struggle, for what they are going to launch at us. It would also mean reaching out to the population under their control in a way they understand that they are supporting the wrong people. This cannot be done in a condescending manner by going in and saying "you're liberated now, enjoy your democracy", but by saying "we understand what you like about IS, but...". Preferably, this should not be done by foreigners, but by people from other Arab countries. Which brings me to my next suggestion.
NATO forces in Afghanistan and Coalition forces in Iraq were and are considered foreign occupation by the locals. Why? Because they are. They are American, British, Polish, Dutch, German, Canadian, Turkish, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish etc, etc. They are from countries on other continents, the people have different faiths and speak different languages. The Taleban are Afghans. IS are mostly Arabic, and if they are not, they still possess features indigenous for the territory they occupy: They speak Arabic, and they are Muslim. And they are Muslim even if their interpretation of Islam differs from those of locals. It's still closer than whatever comes from America or Britain. Hence, even those opposed to them locally will consider them as part of their social and cultural background. And therefore, even to some people who resist against IS or want them gone, it may not sit well if it's French or American bombs that do so. If it's Jordanians, Egyptians or other Arabs doing it, much of the barrier between liberators and liberated is gone.
Suggestion 4: There are good, ordinary people who like IS.
Abdul bin Abd-al-Rahim and his wife Fawzia may be completely normal people from Lower Bumblefuck, Syria. They may be pious Muslims but by no means radical. He may be a kebab guy and she's taking care of their children at home. They would never kill a person and have no urge to press their belief on others. They may have been fine in Syria under Assad. Then the civil war came, and everything was torn to shreds. Abdul had to take two other jobs to feed his children because nobody was buying kebabs anymore, and in the end, he was out of work because everything got destroyed. Then IS came and restored a certain normality in his town. They also imposed strict religious laws, but those didn't really change much for Abdul and Fawzia, because they were already living a modest, pious life. So they see IS as a good thing, because Abdul can go about his business again and he is even offered government services like health insurance and free schooling for his children. He may hear about some cruel executions, but none of the IS people he knows were ever involved. How do you tell these people they should stop supporting IS? How do you convince them that a return to war and chaos would ultimately be better for him and his town?
Suggestion 5: Not all victims of IS are pure and innocent.
By this I don't mean to say that any victim of IS deserves what IS does to them. I just mean to say that we should be careful with the "my enemy's enemy" attitude. And this is particularly true for the Kurds. Please hear me out. When it became known that IS is committing genocide against the Kurds, it was of course a natural and understandable reaction to say we need to help them, we need to give them weapons, etc. The problem is, who are 'they'? There is no such thing as unity among the Kurds. There never has been. The calls for arming the Kurds went by the unspoken assumption that there would be something such as unity or at least Burgfrieden (truce) among Kurdish groups, and among Kurds, Iraqis and Turks. The problem is, such a truce was never negotiated. There was never any sort of decision or statement made about it. It was simply assumed that it would exist, because everybody is fighting a common enemy.
Unfortunately, things are not that simple. The Kurds in northern Iraq have no trust in the Iraqi government, and they are perfectly fine in fighting for themselves. What's more, they also know how to exploit the situation for their own benefit. Why? Because the Kurds are not happy with what they have. They have a small autonomous territory in northern Iraq which is stable and peaceful, but not particularly viable. One thing they want is to add the city of Kirkuk and its territory to their state, and they claim that Kirkuk is a Kurdish city. However, this was not true; it was populated in roughly equal numbers by Kurds, Arabs, Turcomans, and then some Assyrians. So what happened? The Kurdish government encouraged its people to move to Kirkuk so the city would get a majority Kurdish population to back their claims.
The war with IS is helping the Kurds here. Kirkuk and other territories were occupied by the Kurdish government in 2014, under the pretext of defence against IS and Iraqi insurgency. I'm not even touching on internal Kurdish matters here, such as the Barzani-Talabani hostilities (two clans fighting for who gets to run Kurdistan) or the hatred between Muslim and Yazidi Kurds - but they exist, and you would be naive to think that there wasn't some suppressed, quiet satisfaction with seeing IS trying to eliminate the Yazidis. Why? Because it's been tried by Muslim Kurds as well. Bedir Xan Beg, a Kurdish national hero, is celebrated for some things we would find appalling.
It would be understandable if, after IS is defeated, the Kurds would claim national independence, and do so on grounds of the territories they occupy once it is happening. But one should always keep in mind how they gained control over these territories and what situations they used for their advantage.
Suggestion 6: The fact that IS are bad people doesn't mean it's wrong to study them.
Do we know all we need to know about IS? After all, they murder people, and that tells us all about them. They are bad people who need to be stopped. But this touches on the question "quick vs permanently". We don't want them or anything like them or worse than them to return.
A tumour is a terrible thing. It's a bad thing. It kills people. So it would be understandable for an emphatic person to stand by a patient and shake the doctor and scream at him, "stop studying! Just get rid of the damn thing! Don't you see it keeps spreading as we stand here?" He demands of the doctor something he shouldn't do: just cut up the patient and rip the tumour out. Even if it doesn't kill the patient, it won't solve the problem, because cancer cells will remain, and they will continue to spread. Since the tumour is gone, our empath thinks the problem is solved, but he doesn't realise that the cancer cells are still spreading to a point where it is impossible to save the patient and he dies. The doctor should have taken more care and studied the patient closely to see how far the cancer has spread to know where and how to fight it, even if it means the cancer is still spreading. The empath is devastated, because he meant so well, and he empathised so much with the patient. Empathy is a good thing. It sparks good things. Our empath brought the patient to the doctor. But that's where it should stop. It is should be the incentive to act, not the guiding principle.
Final suggestion: IS should be given the time to fail
In the case of IS, empathy should be our primary reason to act. But again, from there on, it should be rational, not emotional. Precisely because IS should be stopped and nothing like it should return, things need to be done right the first time. Things need to be done that, at first seem to be counter-productive. For example, it may work better to let IS develop a bit, to let it consolidate its governmental structures. Why? What the hell? Here's why: The state is run by people who have no clue about politics or economy. They think every answer is in the Qur'an or the Hadiths somewhere. If they run into problems that can't be solved with fatwas and exegesis, this will run it into an existential problem. People will lose faith in it. This is a permanent situation, because Islam alone will have proven to be an insufficient foundation for a state. Perhaps IS will then disintegrate, whether swiftly or slowly, but it will prove to have failed. And this experience will be the strongest of arguments against anybody else who would try to install a caliphate or a theocracy again. If IS is ousted, the mythos of a caliphate will remain, because nobody ever saw it fail - only saw it being destroyed by infidel outsiders. The lesson people will learn from it is that next time, they'll do more to protect it. If it fails in itself, people will have seen the idea of a caliphate fail. That is much, much more powerful.
I don't mean that we should allow IS to just continue the way it does. Of course people need to be saved from it. But those fighting against it should remain in the defence. Give up on the territory it controls for now. Let IS bleed dry while fighting small-scale battles. There will be a point when it can no longer sustain its fight, and all its religious fervour won't make it succeed. That's where it fails.
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Dr. Eddies Wingman
Brighter than thousand_suns
After reading it, let me say that it is one of the more insightful reflections I've read on the situation in the Middle East. I think pt. 3 in particular is underestimated by many. An example:
Yes, the rebels in Libya welcomed French (and later NATO) bombs, but that was because these bombs helped them win. An opportunistic appreciation, without any idea that they had anything in common with the European countries who participated - except a desire to give Gaddafi a hard time.
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
Perun, you've written this piece with much effort, and you explained your views very well. First I planned to zoom in at every aspect, but now I doubt if that's the best thing to do. At the moment, I have a few issues that I'd like to speak about. I hope that this small number is no offense towards the effort you've written. Also, I can not guarantee in advance that I have understood all your points. So bear with me.
If the people in power, who live there, will let that happen, IS can spread and their attacks will be more and more violent. There is already breeding ground in Africa to join IS. Connections will be made with extreme groups that are already active. The slaughtering of villages and towns will intensify. IS could get a stronger foothold.
Who's paying? The innocent.
Heading back to the north east, there are many innocent Kurds (also as ordinary as the people from suggestion 4). You mentioned that Kurds are trying to benefit from the situation (exploiting it). Is that so bad? It's not as if these people may not have a better life some day.
Maybe this deserves an entirely separate discussion, but I guess it depends on the question: do the Kurds deserve their own state or not (including Kirkuk or not)? What are the consequenses if the answer is yes? What are the consequenses if the answer is no?
Where on the map should the defence be put? In other words, what are the boundaries in which the world gives IS the time to fail? You say "Give up on the territory it controls for now" but isn't their territory (or at least impact) expanding rapidly? I hope we do not underestimate this aspect. If the West keeps a truce, then IS will head direction to Africa.
If the people in power, who live there, will let that happen, IS can spread and their attacks will be more and more violent. There is already breeding ground in Africa to join IS. Connections will be made with extreme groups that are already active. The slaughtering of villages and towns will intensify. IS could get a stronger foothold.
Who's paying? The innocent.
Heading back to the north east, there are many innocent Kurds (also as ordinary as the people from suggestion 4). You mentioned that Kurds are trying to benefit from the situation (exploiting it). Is that so bad? It's not as if these people may not have a better life some day.
"To keep in mind", Would you make that more concrete. What should exactly be done with that information?
Maybe this deserves an entirely separate discussion, but I guess it depends on the question: do the Kurds deserve their own state or not (including Kirkuk or not)? What are the consequenses if the answer is yes? What are the consequenses if the answer is no?
Forostar
Ancient Mariner
That's true. At the same time I wonder what will be the trigger when "we" want it as well. How long can the world stay calm enough.
Yes against ISIS. How, that's something I have doubts about. Bbasically I fear for the lives of innocent people, the possibility of IS slipping away, explanding beyond control.
This we know: there is already a war going on (from the sky).
IS - this being the contiguous entity of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - hasn't had any significant expansions to their territory since June. The battle of Kobanê is still going on, the Peshmerga are still fighting them at their borders, it's been a stalemate for months now.
Immediately, I'm asking you to be careful whom you cheer for. The Kurds, in shape of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq and its militia, the Peshmerga, have conquered and annexed territory outside of their assigned borders. This is illegal. Whether you think it's morally justified is a different story, but it is a clear breach of international law.
One of the problems is that if a Kurdish state was to become independent, it would not be an ethnically homogeneous Kurdish state. There would be Arabs living there as well; and there would also be Turcomans and Assyrians living there, both of which don't have a homeland of their own. Don't they deserve their own state too? If no, why not? If yes, is it responsible to disintegrate northern Iraq in favour of a number of tiny states that are not economically viable and would have countless border disputes?
Another problem is, if the Kurds in Iraq have their own state, then this will send a message out to the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran. Fine, you say, they deserve it too, right? Only that the same problems I just described applies to their territories too. If you are consequential in your demands, you would ask for the political disintegration of a large part of the Middle East into countries which cannot survive on their own and will go to war with each other pretty soon, because their territories overlap. There are areas shared by several ethnicities. Who decides which state gets what?
If you say, however, that you only want the Kurds to have their own country, you had better come up with a damn good reason why the Assyrians, Chaldaeans, Turcomans, Azeris, Loris, Bakhtiyaris, Mandaeans, Goranis, Zazakis, Aramaeans, Circassians and Armenians are not entitled to this, to name just those who live in the same territory as the Kurds or immediately adjacent to it.
The Flash
Dennis Wilcock did 9/11
This mindset is what caused my argument with you on the matter to get on my nerves. Kurds in Iraq laying the foundation of a Kurdish state almost 100 percent causes a civil war in Turkey and throws even more wood into the fire in Syria. It likely causes a massive amount of immigration, millions of people losing their homes, because as Perun pointed out, the land is far from being homogeneous. If that's what you want to happen, go ahead.
I understand your concerns regarding the protection of innocent people, but your method (immediate action) would put a much higher number of innocent people's lives in danger. The place is a mess, everything has harsh consequences.
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Forostar
Ancient Mariner
They popped up in Libya. That's perhaps not enlargement of territory but it has impact on the region.
Israel has also breached such international laws. So has Russia. It's good that we also discuss moral aspects. And there's also International human rights law.
I don't know how comparable these folks are with the Kurds. Do they all live across several nations, just as the Kurds? A map would help.
And how much have they been oppressed by these nations / other folk?
Europe is also not ethnically homogeneous. Borders have changed. Yugoslavia broke up. Kosovo appeared. Not sure how that will work in the long run, but for now, some of these countries benefit from the EU. Yes, this is probably not a good comparison, but my point is that borders can be changed if it removes breeding ground for violence, and if it gives more prospect of a better life.
What are the consequenses if the answer is no: the Kurds will not have their own state. The countries they live in could really work on suggestion 6. Study the Kurds, study their own society, study how the government and laws treat and respects these people. Study how to make the Kurds see they do not need an own state. Give them reason to not long for it anymore.
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The Flash
Dennis Wilcock did 9/11
I don't know how comparable these folks are with the Kurds. Do they all live across several nations, just as the Kurds? A map would help.
And how much have they been oppressed by these nations / other folk?
I'd actually say that Kurds have been the loudest ones of the bunch, the ones that fought with the oppression the most. Assyrians, Circassians, Turkmens, Yazidis etc. are all in horrible conditions. They're all lesser in population compared to Kurds, but live in the same areas as them. They're a direct target for ISIS and and some of them are oppressed by Kurds themselves very frequently.
Don't know if you avoided my post or not, but "border change" is not going to remove breeding ground for violence, it might even create more of it.
Now that's a different conversation. That I completely agree with. I can only speak from the Turkey side of things, I fully support the Kurdish citizenship rights, their right to education in their own language, reinstating the old Kurdish city names instead of replacing them with Turkish ones, letting them live their own culture freely and stopping the assimilation towards them. That's where I felt offended by your statements that had the impression that I didn't care about Kurdish people's lives. That goes against everything I stand for. I'm a keen anti-nationalist and a keen defender of the Kurds.
It's also a lengthy process, though. Current Turkish government tries to make peace with Kurds through dealing with PKK. The ones that are on the table should be Kurds, a terrorist organization cannot be seen as people to deal with peacefully. The current strategy is never going to work, because it doesn't bode well with Turkish people's feelings. Making amends and concessions with an organization that killed thousands of Turkish citizens isn't the way to go. I'm also afraid if the Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian side of things don't go that well, the strides Turkey makes (if they do) might not matter.
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bearfan
Ancient Mariner
There is a fair point to not wanting to stand by as people are threatened with massacre and seeing antiquities/libraries destroyed, and condemning a generation of women to not going to schools and being treated incredibly poorly.
There are certainly no easy solutions there. @Perun makes some good points and in a perfect world, it is worth following. But the world (especially that part of it) is far from perfect.
There are certainly no easy solutions there. @Perun makes some good points and in a perfect world, it is worth following. But the world (especially that part of it) is far from perfect.