The New Map of the Middle East

[velvetfog]

The January/February 2008 cover of The Atlantic magazine.

Read the article here: The New Map of the Middle East

The British-French Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire after WWI is now breaking down.
This is as it should be.
The artificial lines they drew on the map back then did not succeed in creating functional, successful states.

An obvious result of the changes now taking place is the dismemberment of Iraq and the recreation of Kurdistan.
The Kurds, 50 million strong, have for generations been the largest nation in the world without its own state.
Back in 1916, the British and the French carved it into pieces that were incorporated into modern day Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.





The old legends says that King Solomon sent emissaries to Europe to bring back 500 beautiful European women.
When they arrived, king Solomon had died, but the women were all married to prominent Jews, and their children (who were not true Jews, since Jewish orthodoxy requires that a Jew must be born from a Jewish mother) formed the basis for the tribes that today are known as Kurds.
Modern science backs up the legends, in that DNA testing has confirmed that the Kurds most likely originate from millennium old European and Jewish stock.
They are not Arabs.
The Israelis have been supporting the Kurds in their struggle for independence for more than 50 years.
This has included translating modern schoolbooks for all grades into Kurdish, and supplying them to the Kurds.
It also includes military training for the Kurds by elite Israeli paratroopers.
The Israelis have also trained and supplied Kurdish units with firearms, anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft artillery.
There is very strong support for the Kurds in Israel.
The greater Jerusalem metropolitan area is home to more than 100,000 Kurdish Jews.

Iraq: Kurdish president proposes independence referendum

The fighting in the middle East will go on for many more generations.
But in the end, the national borders will in all likelihood coalesce around the ethnic and religious groups that are fighting each other.
This would be similar in principle to what happened back in the 1990s with the territories within the former Yugoslavia.
The middle East will then probably end up looking like this:

(This post was last modified: 07-03-2014, 06:24 PM by velvetfog.)

[velvetfog]

The Iraqi government, led by al-Maliki, has now pushed the Kurds a step closer to independent statehood.
Al-Maliki yesterday accused the Kurds of sheltering ISIL fighters.
The result of this has been that the Kurdish ministers and officials of the Iraqi state have declared al-Maliki to be hysterical, and have withdrawn their services.
The Kurds have also found out that the Iraqi government had given their Shiite Arab oilfield workers orders to sabotage and destroy oilfield facilities if they were forced to withdraw as a result of ISIL attacks.
Concern over this has resulted in Kurdistan's army, the Peshmerga, to occupy and take control of the Kirkut and Bai Hassan oilfield production facilities yesterday.
This adds 400,000 barrels per day to Kurdistan's oil production capacity, enough to finance a viable state.
The Kurds are now planning to hold two referendums.
The first one will be held in the city of Kirkut, to decide if the city wants to become part of Kurdistan.
The second referendum, to be held later, is the independence referendum for all of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iraqi Kurds Warn Baghdad While Moving Toward Independence Vote

Iraqi Kurdistan's Barzani presses for independence at parliament

Why Israel is backing Kurdish independence

It’s the oil, stupid! #IraqatWar

Who won Iraq? #IraqatWar

g]

(This post was last modified: 07-11-2014, 05:26 PM by velvetfog.)