Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly on U.S. Kurdish Policy
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed examining United States policies aimed at the Kurdish community in the four Middle East countries the Kurds inhabit.
Aftandilian’s Op-Ed, entitled “U.S. Kurdish Policy Based on Country-Specific Calculations,” was published in The Arab Weekly on December 3, 2017.
From the text of the article:
Despite the general sympathy many US officials have for the Kurdish people, Washington is pursuing unique policies towards each Kurdish community in the four Middle East countries the Kurds inhabit.
In the late 1940s, when US policymakers were deciding whether to support Kurdish autonomy in north-western Iran, Washington sided with the Iranian government, which ended the Kurds’ autonomous republic by military means. Cold War calculations trumped whatever sympathies US officials felt towards the Kurds. Iran’s territorial integrity was deemed more important than Kurdish nationalist aims.
Although the United States is opposed to the Iranian government, there is no evidence that Washington has been inciting Iran’s Kurds against Tehran, even though most Kurds are Sunni Muslims. Washington does not want another ethnic/sectarian headache, given the myriad of existing troubles in the region.
In Iraq, the United States has supported Kurdish autonomy since the early 1990s. After Saddam Hussein sent his forces into the north against the Kurds who had risen — with US encouragement — against his rule after the 1991 Gulf War and caused a major humanitarian crisis, Washington helped the Kurds return to their homes and establish an autonomous zone protected by US air power. This was the beginning of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which has been a US ally ever since.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).