By: GZ on Giovedì 06 Marzo 2003 12:30
Ieri c'era un bel pezzo di Ettore Mo dall'afganistan sul corriere (ettore mo da 20 anni va da quelle parti, era amico di Mansur il capo dell'alleanza del nord ucciso da al qaeda e ha scritto un libro sul paese) che come tanti altri pezzi che si leggono sulla stampa mondiale
raccontava come la vita sia tornata a kabul, la gente impari la musica (prima ti costava delle frustate), le donne lavorino alla radio o tv, ci siano gli esami all'università incluse anche le donne, aprano i negozi e le botteghe
e non ci siano attentati da mesi, dopo 20 anni di russi e poi di islamici fondamentalisti che hanno sventrato il paese.
E anche oggi su NY Times c'è un pezzo che racconta come i Kurdi da quando sono protetti dagli orribili marines abbiano già piano piano costruito una mezza democrazia nelle zone del nord dell'Iraq strappate a Saddam Hussein.
Ma lo hanno potuto fare grazie "all'Uso Della Forza" (americana e inglese).
Così come i bosniaci e poi i kosovari sotto milosevic debbono ringraziare la "forza" della nato.
Quel poco di indipendenza e libertà di cui i kurdi ora godono non lo devono alle mozioni Onu o alle delibere della CEE o al "sedersi intorno a un tavolo" con Saddam o ai digiuni, alle manifestazioni per la pace, alle bandiere ai balconi con l'arcobaleno, ai blocchi dei treni o agli "scudi umani" pacifisti.
Anche perchè per loro, come per
- gli afgani sotto i talebani o
- gli iraniani sotto i khomeinisti o
- gli sciiti sotto Saddam o
-i cristiani del libano sotto il dominio della Siria o
-i ceceni sotto la Russia
e tanti altri disgraziati invisibili ai media occidentali
Non Ce Ne Sono State
------------------NY TIMES-----------------------------------
Forget Hussein. Iraq's Kurds Are Free Already.
By STEPHEN KINZER
Kurds everywhere will celebrate Newroz, a traditional spring holiday that brings people together to share songs, folk dances and special cakes. In the Kurdish enclave of northern Iraq, the only place in the world where Kurds govern themselves, thousands of men will make the traditional leap over a blazing fire as their friends wave Kurdish flags.
Across the border in Turkey, the celebration will be different. Newspapers are required to call the holiday Nevruz, because that is the Turkish rather than Kurdish spelling. It cannot be officially described as a Kurdish holiday, only as a national day for all Turks. And under a government directive issued last week, no Kurdish flags may be displayed, only the flag of Turkey.
While Kurds in Turkey still live under a web of restrictions, those in northern Iraq govern themselves and have almost unlimited freedom to embrace their communal identity. So it is no surprise that Iraqi Kurds have erupted in protest at the news that thousands of Turkish soldiers would enter their enclave if the planned American invasion of Iraq takes place. Some have burned Turkish flags. Others have declared themselves ready to fight if Turkish troops move more than 12 miles inside their territory, a limit the Turks have tentatively accepted.
The Kurds, a non-Arab ethnic group, most of whom are Muslims, number about 30 million. But they have never had a state of their own and live in a half-dozen countries in the Middle East and southern Caucasus. Now, of all the dramas that could be played out after an American invasion of Iraq, the one in that country's Kurdish provinces might turn out to be the wildest.
"It's very, very easy for this to blow up," said Henri J. Barkey, who has written about the Kurds and is a former member of the State Department's policy planning staff.
In the 11 years since the end of the gulf war, Kurds in northern Iraq have built their enclave into a surprisingly prosperous democracy. If Saddam Hussein is overthrown, they will insist on holding onto their autonomy rather than submitting to rule from Baghdad. That prospect deeply troubles some of their neighbors, especially Turkey, which fears that a thriving Kurdistan on its border would be seductive to its own large Kurdish population.
"Turkey wants to be sure that the Kurds in northern Iraq don't get autonomy or a federal state within the new Iraq," said Siamend Hajo, a Kurdish researcher based in Berlin. "The Kurds will insist on getting exactly that, and they have 100,000 highly motivated fighters."
In the fourth century B.C., the Greek commander Xenophon encountered tribesmen who were probably ancestors of today's Kurds, and wrote that they "were very warlike and did not obey the king." For centuries, most Kurds saw themselves more as members of a particular clan or tribe than as a part of a Kurdish nation. That made it easy for others to divide and suppress them. In the last few decades, however, many Kurds have developed a keen sense of Kurdishness, and yearn to redeem their people from what they see as bondage at the hands of hostile powers.
Most countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, are creations of European statesmen, who drew their borders without concern for ethnic or regional identities. Arabs embraced nationalism early in the 20th century. Jewish nationalism later led to the creation of Israel. Now the Kurds believe it is their turn.
In seeking wide-ranging autonomy within a new Iraq, the Kurds can argue that they have built the only democracy that has ever existed on Iraqi soil, one that could be a model for the rest of the country.
Leaders of Middle Eastern countries, however, worry that regional autonomy is too dangerous an idea to introduce in the Middle East. They point to Yugoslavia and Lebanon as examples of what autonomy can produce, and fear that Kurdish nationalism in Iraq will encourage a resurgence of separatism among their own Kurdish populations.
There are 12 million Kurds in Turkey and millions more in Iran and Syria. If a Kurdish enclave is allowed to thrive in northern Iraq, might these Kurds give it their loyalty and abandon their ties to the countries in which they live? Might they even ask to join it? These questions terrify the leaders of Turkey, Iran and Syria.
By a quirk of history, American preparations for an invasion of Iraq began just as a new government took power in Turkey that seemed ready to embrace Kurdish aspirations. Last year the Turkish Parliament eased restrictions on Kurdish education and broadcasting. Now, with Turkey`s fears of nationalism again aroused, that policy is suspended.
"The Turkish state was finally on a track toward reconciling itself with Kurds and their identity," said Kemal Kirisci, a political scientist at Bosphorus University in Istanbul. "That's all in jeopardy now."
Under other circumstances, Kurds might be a stabilizing factor in the Middle East. Allowing them to develop a regional center in northern Iraq would give leaders there an ability to influence Kurds elsewhere. They demonstrated that several years ago by helping to persuade Kurds in Iran to live at peace with the Iranian government. But with various Kurdish leaders vying for power in northern Iraq and emotions running high, the idea of allowing Kurds to become regional power brokers terrifies every regime in the neighborhood.
Arabs have not forgotten that Turks ruled them for centuries when what is now Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire. The specter of Turks again using military power to try to influence events in an Arab country touches many delicate nerves.
"This situation," said John E. Woods, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, "is looking more Ottoman all the time."
Modificato da - gz on 3/6/2003 11:40:17