People discussing war with Iran –or war with Iraq for that matter– ignore a few little things.
One: Shiites have been hated by Sunnis since Ali was killed.
Two: Kurds are Sunnis but persecuted by Arab Sunnis under Saddam.
Three: Turkey hates Kurds. If Kurdistan declares independence, the Turks, who have been fighting some very nasty Kurdish “insurgents” for years, will invade Iraqi Kurdistan.
Four: Kurds essentially have been governing themselves because Clinton protected them against Saddam
FIVE: The Saudis threaten to fund the Sunni insurgents killing Americans and innocent Shiites in Iraq. This is bull, since many “suicide bombers” and a lot of the funding of the insurgents are via Saudi charities. However, now that the Shiite militias are busy slaughtering Sunni men in revenge for bombs that kill Shiite men, women and children in markets, the Saudis are worried. It is only the US who is stopping massive slaughter of Sunnis, so that may be why Bush is increasing troopsLINK2
Six: Saudis have been spreading militant Islam through their funding and mosques throughout the world. A Saudi charity here in the Philippines just had their money frozen because they were helping the A.J. in Mindanao
Seven: If Iran gets the bomb, the Saudis will arrange to get one too LINK
Eight: Israel will bomb anyone harming them. But Israel is so small, bombing Israel risks killing a lot of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.
Nine: Iran’s big stick is not oil, but the Straits of Hormuz. If they block it with landmines or by sinking a ship, they essentially will block everyone else from sending out oil tankers. The winner will be Russia. Maybe that is why the Navy is sending another aircraft carrier to the Gulf.
Ten Iran has few oil refineries. They are vulnerable to economic sanctions. Unluckily the Russians are offering to build them a refinery.
Eleven: The Iranians have been promoting family planning for a generation…check this low birth rate:Population growth rate: 1.1% (2006 est.) . That’s lower than many European countries.
Spengler points out that the baby dearth may result in negative consequences by 2020… There are a lot of non Farsis living in Iran.LINK2
This means only 51% of Iranians are Persian. There have been some protests by these groups, but it is unclear to me what this means,
Twelve: A lot of workers in the oil fields are foreigners. In Saudi, alone the population is 24 million, and there are 900 000 Filipinos, and a lot more Indonesians and Indians. or Egyptians or Pakistanis…..
One study estimates that One third of the population of Saudi Arabia are these foreigners, and they do a lot of the everyday work. When Lebanon exploded, both India and the Philippines arranged their people to come home. Only about 20 000 out of 60 thousand pinoys came home, but you see my point. A lot of those who left are maids or drivers, not skilled mechanics or carpenters, but you get my point. If all the foreigners leave, will the “high unemployment” rate go down? If a Saudi Iranian war broke out, would the foreigners leave?
Or would they be allowed to leave? In Lebanon, several Pinay maids died jumping from windows because their employers locked them in the house….
Thirteen: Remember the Persians and Assyrians and Babylonians have fought over the area in the past.
Fourteen: If the price of oil goes up, they will restart pumping in Texas and Oklahoma, open the Pennsylvania coal mines, drill offshore and in Alaska, and import a lot more oil from Alberta Canada.
Fifteen: The NEWYORKER has an article about the inability of the US getting their point of view into the Middle East. Yup. Unlike the governments in the middle East or most of the world, the US has a lousy “information” system. You should try to get news as a Yank. We get our news from CNN, where the newsreaders smirk at Bush and where you can tell they gloat when they report the “car bomb of the day” without context, of course. International in the Philippines. When CNNI and BBC are anti Bush, just think of what those who only get AlJezerah and the anti American government run TV channels…
Sixteen: Outsourcing of information is one reason that Alqaeda can get their propaganda out. And of course the blogosphere is busy both supporting the war in Iraq and opposing TCS Daily points out that just like Alqaeda is funded by governments and also by private charities, so too could private organizations fight war (Robert Heinlein has wars by corporation in some of his scifi novels)… Indeed, a lot of the support services for American troops in Iraq are hired by private companies. So why not hire Haliburton to get Ben Laden?
Seventeen: Where is the discussion of all these overseas people? From Halliburton hiring police as private security guards to US army hiring Filippine drivers to the huge overseas foreign worker population in the oil fields, these people are indeed the “invisible men” of the region.
So there are a lot of facts floating out there, yet I hear little discusison of any of these on CNN.
What does all this mean?
Don’t ask me. I’m just a doctor. My area of expertise is medicine.
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the Philippines with her husband, six dogs, three cats, and a large extended family. A shorter version of this was posted to TownHallBlogs.
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3 users commented in " Putting the Middle East into context "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThe writer suggests that Turkey has a problem with some ‘nasty Kurdish insurgents’. It has been some time since I heard something as offensive and wide of the mark. I suggest the writer visits Kurdistan of Turkey to get an idea of what is going on there. She can observe the fact that scores of Kurdish mayors await trials for having offended the integrity of Turkey for writing a letter to the Danish PM in support of a Kurdish satellite channel that Turkey wants shut down, she can note the fact that few people have Kurdish names (as the Kurdish language was banned in Turkey until the lates 1980s), that many Kurds don’t sepak their own language as a result, that people get imprisoned for wearing green, red or yellow (as these are the national colours of Kurdistan and therefore must be ‘terrorist’), that 2 school children were excluded from school this week for drawing a rainbow with these 3 said colours, that many of the ‘nasty insurgents’ are teenager women/girls who joined the resistance after seeing their family members being killed by the military/deep state of Turkey, they can view the ‘mighty’ Turkish army lording ot over simple village people and killing with impunity (when does a Turkish soldier ever get sentenced for killing a Kurd?), and hundreds of other uncomfortable truths. You ignornant moron, think a little and do your research before spouting misinformed and insulting rubbish. I write this in defence of those thousands of Kurds killed by the Turkish state and whose deaths go unreported and without consequence.
I think the writer needs to research kurdish history of the region and why there was a
formation of a freedom fighting group commonly known as the PKK. They are not
“insurgents” they are freedom fighters, fighting for an independent kurdistan that we fully deserve.
Turkey will do more harm than good in invading iraqi kurdistan. they will damage their
already weak economy and create tension in the region that will not help the integerity of
iraq and obviously iran will get involved then so will israel and so on. The only people
victorious here will be the kurds and israel. Free kurdistan and israel.
Freedom fighters?
Apart from the fact that they control the vast majority of Europe’s heroin trade to fund their activities, we are talking about a group of people whose main victims are overwhelmingly Kurdish, a group that thinks nothing of targetting tourists just to hurt the trade and a group that is known to line teachers up and gun them down because they work for the state.
There has been a great deal of political oppression against Kurdish culture to try and stem the separatism - however Kurds have always been over-represented in Turkish politics and have always held positions in cabinet including Presidents and Prime Ministers. This has remained true throughout the 22 years that the PKK has been active. The PKK does not represent Turkish Kurds; the majority of Turkish Kurds do not vote for PKK affiliated political parties, which are allowed to be involved in Turkish politics.
There is also a ridiculous trend of calling this oppression a ‘genocide’. In a bloody guerrilla war which has spanned over 2 decades, some 37,000 people are estimated to have died - once you remove from this figure the victims of the PKK including Turkish, Kurdish and foreign civilians and the thousands of Turkish troops, you are left with a figure of a few thousands who were either PKK militants themselves or Kurdish civilians (impossible to distinguish accurately due to the non-uniformed nature of the group - but it would be fair to say that not everyone killed was a militant, nor that no militants at all have been killed). Given the timespan, this figure is remarkably low - and given the region, it is a figure I had trouble believing without conducting my own research. It is true, however, that many Kurds have been displaced by the fighting. Compensation for this is being negotiated.
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