MESOP : PRO-KURDISH CIA – Former CIA chief says Kurdish autonomy could help establish a new political framework / AMERICAN ENTERPRISE PRO INDEPENDENCE

WASHINGTON,— 26 March 2016 – shafaq.news – An autonomous Kurdish region could help establish a new political framework within the Middle East, former Central Intelligence Director (CIA) Gen. Michael Hayden said.“This is all about a new structure in the Middle East. I think a pretty useful building block would be the Kurds,” Hayden said at the American Enterprise Institute discussion on Friday.

Earlier this week, Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government leader Massoud Barzani announced his government would hold a popular independence referendum by year’s end. Syria’s Kurds on March 17, 2016 declared a federal region in Syrian Kurdistan in the country’s Kurdish north, though the Syrian government claimed the declaration had no legal power. “I would not constrain myself to old lines,” Hayden argued, stating that the previous 20th century Middle East political architecture had collapsed. “If the old is gone and the new is yet to be created, I think a good conversation to have is — what is the future of the Kurdish people and a Kurdish autonomous region.” Kurds are a Middle Eastern ethnic group with the population of some 35-40 million living in greater Kurdistan, the mainly Kurdish regions in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, which covers an area as big as France.

Hayden said in July 2015, that he believes that Iraq no longer exists nor Syria or Lebanon which is an almost a failed state and is likely to be Libya and thus also the Sykes-Picot agreements that these countries put on the map, at the initiative of the European powers in 1916 had never reflect the realities on the ground.He says, “Now these facts confirm our memories in extremely violent manner. The region will remain unstable in the next twenty or thirty years, I do not know where we are going, but I think that politics aimed to revive these countries would be useless.”

He says, “This is the official policy of this administration and this impact on decisions about giving weapons to the Kurds, for example, the Kurds are our favorites allies in the region and no matter what will happen, they will remain so because their interest direct is compatible with the alliance with the West, but if we were deprived from choices because We believe that we can revive Iraq and Syria, we will increase the situation worse. Did you see the Iraqi army in the process of regaining control of Anbar province? I didn’t.

“Did you see Iraqi army able to regain control of Mosul? This will not happen, the army which took over Tikrit is supported by the Iranian Shi’ite militia officers. As for Syria, what is the imaginable future? Perhaps there will be a Syrian or Iraqi seat in the United Nations Organization But the two countries have disappeared. ”

He added in his speech quoted from US reports, “American support, a lot. I understand opposition to the blast, but if we go back to history, we witness that Iraq was divided into three states in the Ottoman Empire: Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite: the Federated States of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. What we call Iraq was not existed. This secular realities are important. Again, I do not think that Iraq and Syria will appear again. You must look for other alternative things. That is why I call for arming the Kurds directly. ”

About ISIS, he says, “We have to beat it and weaken it because we have the right to defend ourselves. You must use air force and hit the logistics and general headquarters and commanders. Secondly, we have to contain its expansion because of the Islamic state progress towards Sinai is more disturbing than its control on Reqqa. We have to protect our allies, the Egyptians, the Saudis, Turks, the UAE and others. And thirdly, we help Muslims who can fight on the religious level, because in fact the battle is based on Islam. ”

What is happening in Islam conflict similar to the conflict experienced by Christianity in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years’ War, as historians re-European modernism to the Treaty of Westphalia, the moment of separation between church and state appearance. Islam has not done this settlement that has never been witnessed. We do not know. But we get it wrong when say that this fight has nothing to do with Islam. Let’s be clear: the battle os completely linked with Islam even if they do not fully belong to Islam or Muslims with their families. We must help the moderates. www.mesop.de