Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteWhat force could withstand the pressure? Affluence and empowerment on one side, accountable government on the other--it must be horrible.
;-)
Youthful and old idealists and intellectuals have a grievance, possibly, in the search for meaningful and reasonably funded life roles offering the possibility of greatness. Whatever the substance of its expression, that's part of both the generational and revolutionary zeitgeist.
We want to make our marks.
Where the separatist rebels gathered in Iraqi Kurdistan once found themselves before the heel of Saddam Hussein and frightfully unwelcomed by other hosts, they may now entertain prospects more difficult than gunships, bombs, and bullets: there's much accommodation, peace, trade, and prosperity whizzing through the air.
Could things get better? Yes, much.
Will getting there continue to lend itself to, one may say, encouragement through violence?
Daren Butler in his article for Reuters [1] this morning notes the risks to interests that Turkish Kurds may encounter in an open hot conflict. I'll get fancy here and mix, match, and add a few of my own:
- General misery of impersonal bloodletting that accompanies wars of all kinds but in the Islamic Small Wars bears down with special ferocity on unaligned noncombatants--i.e., people who would have rather just minded their businesses and their families (and screw politics);
- Reduced agricultural industry, reduced levels of interested or volunteered professional services (a. who in the countryside can work in a war zone? b. who in professional life would want to put together a practice in a war zone?);
- Loss of over-the-border trade and employment for Turkish Kurds participating in the regionalized and captial infused economy.
Personally, quite naively, perhaps, I wonder if systems of dual citizenship should not be created for people whose loyalties to kin, kind, and land span international boundaries.
Why not?
The states have interest, of course, in populations and resources within their purview, but there's much to be said to for coherent cultures and unimpeded transit between relatives.
One may caution about Kurdish expansion into the host countries, but as ties between people evolve through business and commerce, liberal educations, and open international communications, virtually everyone participating (one may read "allowed to participate") also transforms.
Whatever the PKK's immediate political wants, the agenda would seem a hard sell where so many Kurds in the border area have benefited from "The Liberation" and have been able to live with peace, close-by prosperity, and an overall improvement in government concern and capability on both sides of the border with Turkey.
1. Butler, Daren. "Turkey's Kurds fear incursion to fuel conflict." Reuters, October 17, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
Comments