The Bloody Betrayal of the Kurds by Trump and the United States is Nothing New

By: Sammi Ibrahem,Sr

Background to the Kurdish Struggle and the American Betrayal in 1963

The betrayal of the Kurds of Syria by Donald Trump and the United States is only the latest such betrayal. After having provided the foot soldiers in the fight against ISIS, losing 11,000 fighters in the process, Donald Trump has unceremoniously betrayed them to the Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan, whose forces have been fighting an undeclared war in Turkish Kurdistan since the breakdown of a ceasefire in July 2015. In essence there have been a continuing series of wars against the Kurds of Turkey since 1978


The destruction of Cizre in Turkish Kurdistan is similar to Israel’s destruction in Gaza

Turkish armed forces, which we should not forget are an integral part of NATO, have laid waste to substantial parts of the main Kurdish cities of Diyarbakır, Şırnak, Mardin, Cizre, Nusaybin, and Yüksekova. See Blood on Erdoğan’s hands and Palestinian solidarity cannot ignore the oppression of the Kurds in Turkey

In 1975 the Algiers Agreement between the Shah of Iran and the Iraqi Baathists was the latest betrayal when the Iranian state, at the behest of the United States agreed to withdraw support for the Kurdish fight against the Iraqi state.

During the Iran-Iraq war a genocidal war was waged by Saddam Hussein against Iraqi Kurdistan. Hundreds of villages were destroyed in Operation Al-Anfil. The most infamous attack was that on Halabja when some 5,000 Kurds were murdered with mustard gas and nerve agents after the town fell to the Iranian army


Kurdish women in the Peoples Fighting Units are unique in the Middle East

At the time the West poured scorn on the suggestion that the massacre had taken place because the West supported Iraq against Iran. Indeed the West had supplied these chemical weapons, which were the later pretext for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to the Batthist regime.

It would appear that the PYD and SDF have reached an agreement with Syria’s Assad regime which will allow Syrian troops enter Kurdistan in order to prevent the Turkish invasion. It is a bitter pill to swallow. The Kurds go from the frying pan into the fire given the bloody record of Assad.

Below is an article by Jabra Nicol in Matzpen, the magazine of the Socialist Organisation in Israel on the background to the fighting with the Iraqi army commanded by the Baathists.

Why the Kurds Should Be Supported ‒ by A. Sa’id (Jabra Nicola)

October 10, 1963[This is a translation of an article that was published in Hebrew in Matzpen no. 11, October 1963]The bloodshed in Iraqi Kurdistan is still ongoing; the bloody and terrorist regime of the Ba’ath party has mobilised two-thirds of the Iraqi army – three out of five divisions – with half of its armoured force, along with heavy artillery and jet aircraft, in its dirty war against the Kurdish people fighting for its freedom


Turkey’s Destruction in Cizre matches Israel’s in Gaza

This dirty war began back at the time of Qassem’s rule in 1961.

The Kurdish people is one of the most ancient peoples in western Asia. For more than 5,000 years, it has inhabited a territory known as Kurdistan, at present divided between Turkey, Persia, Iraq, Soviet Armenia and Syria. As early as 1639, Kurdistan was partitioned between the Ottoman Empire and Persia; and after World War I, it was re-partitioned by the imperialists. At present there are two million Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, two million in Iran, another two million in Turkey, more than half a million in Syria and close to 15,000 in the Soviet Union.

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