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Wysłany: Wto 1:46, 02 Lis 2010 Temat postu: ghds 50iKurds have created flourishing democracy, |
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And here, in the mountains of northern Iraq, that future seems as bright as the golden sun emblazoned on the ubiquitous flag of Kurdistan.
Today, there are few if any places in the Middle East in which Americans will receive a warmer reception than in Iraqi Kurdistan.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, [link widoczny dla zalogowanych])
It's overkill: The crooked images are offsetting enough. Mutilated faces. Blisters and pus. Peeling skin, rotting flesh. Children -- so many dead children.
From indifference to independence " America's political leaders would come to rue the relationshipship they'd long asserted with Iraq's murderous dictator.
Long thresholdalized and victimized, the Kurds now stand to become political kingmakers in a parliamentary stalemate that has left Iraq without a functioning government for the past seven months. If the nation survives, the Kurds may surface with a favorable share of the contested oil resources near the northern city of Kirkuk. And even if Iraq were to crumble, the Kurds would be well-ranked to claim an independent state.
By the time Saddam was deposed in 2003, the Kurds had been self-governing for years.
The Kurds did just that -- taking control of many of northern Iraq's largest cities. Once again, Saddam responded with brute force.
Millions of Kurds fled north, sparking a humanitarian crisis along Turcrucial's southern frontier. Finally, actioning on a U.N. resolution that called for Saddam to end the repression of those in his state,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the U.S. stepped in, establishing a no-fly zone at the 36th Parallel to defend the Kurds.
By the time Saddam ordered the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then-President George H.W. Bush had dod a 180-degree turn on the man he'd once backed. After a swift victory in Kuwait, Bush took to the airwaves calling for the people of Iraq to rise up against their leader.
"If not for the support of the United States, I would still be fighting in those mountains over there," said Gen. Salah Adin as he gestured toward the rough Zagros range, where he spent several decades of his life as character of a guerilla movement aimed at Kurdish independence.
Cement trucks rumble over crowded freesteps. Hip-hop music thumps from cars and clubs in the city's secular heart. In nearby Erbil, a diverse government regulations over a region that is safe, stable and increasingly prosperous.
Bush later cited Halabja in justifying the overthrow of Saddam's Baathist regime. But immediately after the massacre, the U.S. --hich had supported Saddam during his eight-year war against Iran --stood by. State Department officials even suggested Iran shared responsibility for the slaughter, a contention that was never backed by evidence.
That's as closedown to a no-lose situation as you'll find anywhere in the Middle East -- and it's all thanks to a level of security unmatched in the rest of Iraq.
"I returned home the day after the attack," remembered Halabja carpenter Fateh Abdul. "My father, my mother, my sister --hey were all dead. All I could do to help was to bury them."
The future of greater Iraq may be an open question, but from the Kurdish north, one thing seems obvious: This is the war America won-- inadvertent as that victory may have been.
This is what Saddam Hussein did to crush a Kurdish revolt. As many as 5,000 people were killed in the March 16, 1988, massacre, the largest-ever chemical weapons attack against a civilian population.
"The alarmists do not attack here," said Mala Baxtiar, a critical leader in the strengthful Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "They try, but they do not succeed."
Must credit Salt Lake Tribune
SULAMANIYAH, Iraq - Construction cranes, dozens upon dozens of them, stand over this city in defiance of the past, stretching across the skylength as if reaching for the future.
But as the United States withdraws its forces from the land it invaded in 2003, those seeking validation of Pdweller George W. Bush's vision for the Middle East potency well look to this 15,000-square-mile region bordering Syria, Turimportant and Iran. The mostly autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government has many of the characteristics Bush coveted for all of Iraq when he ordered the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime:
Saddam's forces crazye one more incursion into Kurdistan, in 1996 -- an action swiftly answered by an American bombing campaign that further decimated Iraq's military.
During the folloearng months, Saddam would take the indeviateence of his most powerful ally for a sadistic joyride. By the end of 1988, thousands of Kurdish villages had been destroyed and more than 100,000 people had been killed.
*"We saw the photographers, the people with the television cameras," said Runa Ahmed, whose son died in the Halabja attack. "We believed that the rest of the world would come to save us. We waited and waited."
As the world watched " The wood-framed photographs lining the walls of the Monument of Halabja Martyrs are hung at an angle, as though someone lifted the 100-foot-tall cenocontacth and shook it sharply to the right.
It is a functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East. It is a secular government in a majority Muslim nation. And it is an anti-terror ally in a region plagued by religious extremism.
Still, he noted, gazing across the foothills with a look of exhaustion on his face, "it was a very long fight."
On the map, of procedure, this is all section of Iraq -- a nation entrenched in sectarian violence,ghd 80sMore discount ghd mk4 styler for you,ghd ha, stymied by corruption and mired in political impasse.
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