It’s easy to say everything this US administration has undertaken so far has been inept, but the open sanction of Turkish advancement in Syrian Kurdistan will likely result in the worst atrocities of the next decade. Whether you’re a patriot, a sceptic or an agnostic in regards to US foreign policy, all evidence points towards genocide against a people that have been longstanding allies.
I don’t need to talk about Kurdistan’s loyalty and shared values with the West through multiple conflicts in the Middle East. I don’t have to talk about their continual persecution within Turkish borders or the horrors they have experienced from a multitude of sources across their ethnic homelands for decades – it is already written.
What I would like to explain is that what happened in Rwanda – the quickest, most efficient killing of humans in the shortest time span in human history – will likely be rapidly duplicated in Kurdistan.
I feel impotent – I don’t have a military background or expertise. I don’t know what someone like me can tangibly do to save even a couple of lives that will undoubtedly be lost in this conflict. All I know is that if we all do nothing that humanity loses. And if democracy and the values that so many of us hold dear still mean something, they won’t after this.
As an American living abroad, certainly I do not take responsibility for these heinous actions and I have not contributed to them. I often avoid discussing American issues in my personal and professional life, they simply interest me less than the rest of the world and continuing crises such as this don’t help the matter. But, being a member of a nation that can allow something like this to happen, in the face of every blown foreign policy debacle I’ve witnessed in my 32 years as a citizen, is evermore disheartening. Let’s call it what it is – it’s despicable!
Many countries – many ‘Western’ countries – would have fallen into a coup over a betrayal of a key and loyal ally such as this. I don’t pretend to know what it is like to have been in the US military serving in Kurdistan, but I can imagine that the effort and sacrifices made on behalf of the region, indeed the bonds that would have been forged with the Kurdish people, can’t make this bureacratic decision easy to stomach.
It’s increasingly easy to feel disenfranchised as a US citizen everyday – many of us feel this way. But, in the case of Kurdistan, imagine you’re already under the threat of annihilation from most of your neighbours and a highly capable army is headed towards you and yours, and the support you’ve relied upon for two decades simply doesn’t exist any more.
This is what is happening and, if it can be allowed to happen in this capacity in Kurdistan, who’s to say it couldn’t happen in much more familiar places in the future?
So, what do we do?
I don’t have the answer, but I hope the answer isn’t nothing…
Learn more about Kurdistan through Anthony Bourdain’s visit in 2011