By Ejder Memis, a plucky Kurd.
The Spectator article, "the myth of the plucky Kurdish warrior" is fine, I suppose, for a hatchet job. It requires a rejoinder, and I might muster the pluck to take on the task.
For Kurds, Newroz signifies the birth of the nation. It has a mythology distinct to that of Persians. In Kurdish Newroz, the ironsmith Kawa defeats the tyrant Dehaq and saves children who become the ancestors of the Kurds. It is ignorant and preposterous to Kurds to suggest that we celebrate 'Persian New Year.' This is elementary and it ought to be well-known to the author Paul Wood.
It is true that the Peshmerga forces stationed in Shengal fled before the Yazidi civilians, but it is also true that the YPG forces from Syria were the first to engage ISIS and open a corridor to the Sinjar mountain without any military assistance. The difference between the Peshmerga and the YPG was that the former had not been as battle-hardened as the latter.
Since Shengal, the YPG and the Peshmerga have been the only serious ground force to consistently roll back ISIS gains while the Syrian and Iraqi regime forces continued to lose ground in Palmyra and Ramadi. Neither the YPG nor the Peshmerga enjoyed the vast arsenal the US had bestowed on Iraq.
Still, the suggestion that Erbil, a city of 1 million, was nearly evacuated before several dozen ISIS 'technicals' is far-fetched and fanciful. The most ISIS achieved was to threaten Erbil airport with a few long range artillery pieces they had captured from the Iraqi army. Destroying those from the air hardly amounts to saving the city from falling. It was Kobani in Syria that was saved by the US intervention where the plucky Kurdish warriors' resistance reached mythical proportions.
The division among the Kurds and their loyalty to the political parties over and above loyalty to the nation is real and was aptly described as "neo-tribalism" by David McDowell who authored "A Modern History of the Kurds". This is an ongoing blight on our reputation. Our national epic, Mem and Zin by Ahmede Xhani, is a metaphor to the endless divisions besetting the Kurds either by circumstance or by the actions of our nefarious neighbours.
It is also hard to re-reconcile Wood's statement, "The truth is that both Iraq and Syria long ago ceased to exist as nation" with his earlier, somewhat uncritical, re-statement of the West's insistence to preserve Iraq's and Syria's territorial integrity. It was not Kurds who ended Iraq and Syria; it was the sectarian Sunni, Shia and Alewite Arabs and their masters in Ankara, Riyadh and Tehran who did that.
The Kurds in Iraq missed a historic opportunity to unify separate KDP and PUK civil administrations and security structures. The early departure of US forces from Iraq and Kurds' unanswered pleas for the US to set up a permanent base in Kurdistan are among the causes for the growing divisions and corruption in KRG. The US enjoys unparalleled influence on KRG leadership as well as the populace. It was the Washington agreement in 1998 that ended the Kurdish civil war stoked by Saddam. With a permanent US airbase in Kurdistan, the US could have continued to be a force for peace.
Nevertheless there is much to be proud of for Kurds, who are the only genuine pro-Western nation in the region, besides Israel, regardless of what the detractors say. Kurds' fondness and hopes for western style liberal secular democracy is a ground up affair. In human rights stakes Arabs do/did so much better under Kurdish rule than Kurds ever did under Arabs. There was for example no pay-back for Halabja or for the genocide inflicted during the Anfal campaign.
Unlike Kawa and Dehaq, the plucky Kurdish warrior is no myth; they may have lousy arms and training but pound for pound the Kurdish fighters' courage will more than match what our enemies throw their way. The Peshmerga and the YPG will continue to be a nightmare for the barbarian 7th century reinactors in ISIS and the multiple theocratic fascist cults turning the Middle East into a humanitarian disaster. Only a Kurdish re-birth, a fresh Newroz, can eliminate that threat to region and to the world. The Kurdish men and women fighting the islamists in Iraq and Syria have more mettle than weapons, and they deserve our gratitude.
