Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 31- A lesson on recent Kurdish History

Episode Date: December 24, 2018

Joe is joined by Travis Haycraft again to talk about the countless misconceptions people have about Kurdish history, the Peshmerga, the SDF, and we talk about the hilarious story where a group of religious conservatives accidentally joined a communist militia to fight ISIS. Follow the show @lions_by follow Travis @haycraft_travis donate to the show and get bonus content! http://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, it's Joe, host of Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. Joining me today will be Travis Haycraft again. He was here before in the Iran-Iraq series, and he is the closest thing of a subject matter expert our podcast has on the Middle East and Kurds in general, because he lives and works in Iraqi Kurdistan. But this podcast was originally recorded as a bonus episode about Kurdish history and something of a debunking of what is the mythos that surrounds the PKK, the Peshmerga, and the YPG, YPJ that has been permeating Western media since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War and the ISIS invasion of Iraq. What it won't be talking about is the U.S. patrol from Syria and the resignation of Secretary of Defense Mattis because we recorded it before all this happened.

So we might talk about that at a later time. But we record this as a bonus episode and we decided to release it as a regular episode so maybe we can help alleviate some of the misinformation and outright historical revisionism going on right now in the conflicts in the region and I hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to another episode of Lines Led by Donkeys podcast, a bonus, so thanks for giving me money and getting access to the show. Today with me again is Travis Haycraft coming live from Kurdistan. Hopefully this time we don't lose power. How are you doing over there? Well, I'm doing pretty well. It's finally starting to get cold again.

Well, I guess again. I don't really know if that's the right wording, but it's cold now, which is really a blessing because the summers here are brutal. I can imagine. pretty busy lately but um i've got a weekend off so here i am gonna talk about kurdistan kurds um communism the opposite of communism i guess that's fascism yeah and idiots uh which i think is a good combination of topics yeah it was really interesting i think it was like what two or three days ago you sent me a you slid into my dms and and just went off about how dumb everybody was about kurdish issues and i i'm a little guilty of that uh myself um even though i try to follow the syrian civil war and isis and iraq as much as i can and you know i just looked into kurds for iran iraq series um you know there's it's. There's so many different moving parts

that it's almost like paying attention to a significantly more confusing Game of Thrones episode. And it's made even more complicated by all the different groups that the Western world likes to latch onto from various points in history for whatever reasons normally bad. You know, it reminds me of this thing that happened probably two or three years ago now. You probably remember it since you're there.

But the guy named Abu Israel. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The, the, the fear of ISIS that everybody was talking about, uh, and was like Fox news had a piece on him and he was all over Facebook, but like he was killing American soldiers like six years before. Yeah. Uh, I mean,

we have a very short memory, I think for a lot of things. It gets shorter. Uh, the American historical memory gets significantly shorter the darker your skin gets i've noticed it's like i mean i think what we talked about in the episode i did about the iran-iraq war when in 1988 the u.s was supplying saddam hussein with like all kinds of financial aid military aid and so on and then

like two years later we're bombing the shit out of everything that we bought for him right so yeah and it was only then when we admitted to Iran like okay maybe Iraq was the aggressor in that war and that was like the most we were willing to to them. Yeah, I mean, and even then, we still kind of continue to blame them for all the things that Iraq actually did. Yeah, yeah. But no, I mean, I think, I guess the reason for my frustration is,

well, I mean, the inciting factor was just a couple of days ago, like, you know, every once in a while, while going through. Well, I got one of the staples of life in the Kurdistan region, and I expect Iraq as a whole, is checkpoints. Understandably, and obviously the security situation here is pretty bad. And I'll probably talk about that a little bit more later on. situation here is uh it's pretty bad and i'll probably talk about that a little bit more later on but and so the you know the way to solve this or potentially the way to solve this as a lot of people think is to set up checkpoints all over the place with uh military um or police or whoever

and in kurdistan the uh or the kurdistan region of iraq the military is the peshmerga which is a kind of semi-official militia force. And so they've got these checkpoints all over the place. And most of the time, they just kind of wave you through. But every once in a while, they'll ask for your papers. And maybe they'll take you out and patch you down and stuff like that. Most of the time, it's fine. But every once in a while, they can be a little bit mean.

And so that ended up happening to me. And so I got home later that day and was like, oh, my God, if I see another freaking article from some idiot at the National Review talking about how the Kurds are our saving grace in the Middle East, I'm going to flip my shit and I'm going to send a very angry email to the editor. Or instead, I could DM Joe on Twitter and be like, let's do a bonus episode where I say politically dangerous things. Yeah, that's a pretty good point.

From our standpoint, you hear a lot about how the Kurdistan region is the saving grace of Iraq. And I heard it as far back as 2005 for the first time when I was a kid. And when I first enlisted, it was like, Iraq's a shithole. Excuse my language. Iraq isn't a shithole. They've been through some stuff. But Kurdistan's great.

It's like a little America. They love us. They love democracy. They have the best military in the region. All these things. I admit that I believed it for a really long time. Why would anybody lie, there's, we can't explain all of it in an hour long episode. And I'm definitely gonna make a couple of sweeping generalizations that some people might get mad about. And for that, you know, I apologize. But I guess I'll try and give a little bit of an overview of, of kind of what the reality of the situation is here, as best I can. reality of the situation is here as best I can. And I guess in order to do that, I kind of got to go a little bit into the history. And I don't want to do too much repetitive. So most people who are listening to this have probably heard the series on the Iran-Iraq war. So they'll probably understand that, you know, the Kurds, they're an ethnic minority. They occupy in Iraq, northern

Iraq, like the northern quarter or so of the country. Right now, I believe there's, I'm going to make up a number. I think it's like five or six million in Iraq, but that could be totally wrong. It's like 15 or 20 percent of the total population. But also there's a Kurdish minority in Iran, in Turkey and in Syria. And depending on who you ask, the combined total of all Kurds is probably between 15 and 40 million. Obviously, there's no good. Sorry, they're the largest diaspora

without their own nation, correct? Yeah, that's kind of a phrase you'll hear a lot, like the largest ethnic group without a nation. I'm not 100 true sure if it's true but i have no idea if it's not true they're definitely like top you know number one number two um because i know like the amazigh peoples in northern africa who are also called uh berber which is a derogatory term by the way like the berbers of northern africa um are also like a large stateless nation.

But the Kurds are definitely number one or number two. But yeah, they're oppressed in pretty much all of the countries that they occupy. Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq. All of those governments have spent a lot of the last 50 to 60 years repressing their Kurdish minorities in often very brutal ways. I mean, obviously, in Iraq, there's the Al-Anfal campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, you know, the Halabja chemical weapons attack in March of 1988, and a series of other just really, really awful things that happened to the Kurds of Iraq. And I absolutely, for some of the things that I might be saying about the Kurdistan regional government and the Peshmerga, I absolutely do not want to like dismiss or

denigrate the really awful history of Kurds, particularly in Iraq. And I also don't want to denigrate like or dismiss the sacrifices of like Kurdish freedom fighters who fought against Saddam Hussein. Oh, not at all. And that's like,, or we're not going to be shit-talking the PKK or the YPG for fighting ISIS and Assad. Those are all things we can generally agree are good. Yeah, yeah. But they've definitely engendered something considered a pretty thick mythos around them. Oh, 100%.

So yeah, I mean, there's the Iranan-iraq war there's the alan fell genocide campaign and then there's the first persian gulf war in which after which um the uh i believe it was the president of france uh i don't remember his name i think it was at the time or is that is that too late i think shirk was i honestly i don't know i don't know very much about french or France. I should. I'm a European history major, but here I am dropping the ball.

I was Middle Eastern studies, so I can't really do much about Europe. This is squarely on my shoulders. I am a hack and a fraud. I know. Well, it doesn't really matter. He was some French guy. His name was probably Baguette or something like that.

For sure. But he, in the UN, he negotiated a no-fly zone over northern Iraq in like 1992 or 93, something like that. And this meant that Saddam's military could no longer go in and do genocide stuff. A lot of aid was delivered to the kurdistan region and it received essentially de facto autonomy at this point there's then a civil war between the major factions in the kurdistan region and here's where we're going to get to something that's going to be kind of prevalent throughout the episode and that's going to be three letter acronyms oh yeah so just get ready for it because the history the political history of kurds is like a history of three letter acronyms so just to cover our ass the president of france in 1993 was francois mitterrand for all of our uh the people who gave a shit out there

go on six of them on. The angry guys in berets and striped shirts being like, how dare they? Yeah. So the two major factions in the Kurdistan Civil War were the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or

KDP, led by the Barzani family. And the other faction was the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, led by the Talabani family. And I say the Barzani family and the Talabani family, and I mean that literally. These are both less political parties and more familial parties. Not like every member is a part of the family but like they're led by families the leadership of the party is passed down so it's like dynastic

yeah yeah um and ostensibly like the two parties have separate political ideas like the puk is much more of um like a supposedly socialist or leftist um uh political party while the the kdp is more of a kind of traditional nationalist conservative um party but really there there's not a whole lot of difference between the two uh they're both, you know, highly nepotistic. And the power structure is based on how close you are to the family man at the top versus really merit or ideological fervor or anything like that. At least they have that in common with the rest of Iraq. Yeah, I guess you could say that. But yeah, so they fought the civil war basically amongst themselves. There are a couple other factions like there was an Islamist faction and some others, but basically it's the KDP versus the PUK. The result of the ceasefire was like a power sharing agreement between the two parties. They basically split the government in half, split the Kurdistan region in half, in which case the KDP would control the northwestern half and the PUK would control the southeastern half.

And they'd also split government ministries and stuff like that. And then in 2003, the U.S. invaded, and this Kurdistan Autonomous Region became very much not only a de facto autonomous region, but a de jure autonomous region. It was included in the new Iraqi Constitution, as was this power-sharing agreement, and a bunch of other more complex stuff that I don't really want to get bogged down in. But suffice it to say, the power-sharing agreement between the PUK and the KDP continues to this day.

However, over time, the faction that has definitely gained much more power and influence is the KDP faction under the leadership of Masoud Barzani who is the head of that faction. His father, Mustafa Barzani was fighting against Saddam way back in the 60s and 70s and then Masoud Barzani has continued the

family line, although he isn't fighting against Saddam anymore. He's mostly fighting against diabetes or something. A true enemy. He's a bit of a chonker, if you know what I mean. It's not his fault he's thick. Yeah.

Basically, what he does is he goes around, he his his red turban and he smiles benevolently and like blesses new malls that are opening or new um well not torture facilities i mean very open um liberal and democratic prisons yeah absolutely no human rights violations whatsoever. Absolutely none. Doesn't happen. No, it doesn't. If we hear a large crashing noise followed by screams in Kurdish... That would be the Asayish kicking down my door. Asayish is like

the internal security forces of the Kurdistan region. There's also Parastan, which is more the secret police, the ones that people don't want to talk about. And then there's also Parastan, which is more the secret police, the ones that people don't want to talk about. And then there's also Ajans, which is like, well, I couldn't find any

information about them, so they're probably the really secret people. So they have a pretty thick state security apparatus that Saddam would probably smile about, it sounds like. Honestly, saddam would probably smile about it sounds like honestly saddam would be jealous i think of the state security services here in kurdistan not because

they're like necessarily you know equally brutal but i think they're far more effective largely due to the um close relationship between the kurdistan regional government and the united states after the uh overthrow of saddam hussein in 2003 um which was and wow yeah so i mean our third our third co-host the cia shows up once again yeah so if there's a loud crash on your end of things and people start shouting get on the ground get on the ground yeah Yeah, Travis swatted me. Yeah, no, that's what I'm here for. Yeah, so basically the Kurdistan government after 2003 became, because of their friendly relationship with the U.S., they helped the U.S. overthrow Saddam.

Peshmerga forces joined up with U.S. special Operations to invade from the north in 2003. And there's been a pretty tight relationship between the U.S. military, the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and the Kurdistan regional government ever since. And that has also resulted in the Kurdistan regional government being very invested in the kind of what you talked about earlier, in this perception of the Kurdistan region as the kind of the good Iraq, the good part perception of the kurdistan region as um the kind of the good iraq the good part of iraq the part where you can come and invest your money basically and what that led to is after 2003 all the foreign companies who came in for be it oil production or humanitarian aid development or other import-export kind of stuff,

they all came to the Kurdistan region to be based here in Erbil. And here we are 15 years later, and that's kind of why I'm here too. Because this is where the jobs are in Iraq. If you're an American, Brit, Canadian, Australian, whatever, and you want to come work in Iraq, odds are you're going to start out in the kurdistan region because they've very much made business here friendly for foreigners um and so i think that's a lot of what's led to this perception of the kurdistan region as this uh you know the real iraq or the good iraq guess you could say. So it's not so much a perception of Kurdistan as a whole. It's just like Kurdistan has the free market, so they're cool.

Basically, yeah. Yeah, like the Kurdistan region has definitely, they stayed very secure. There's not a whole lot of the instability that plagued the rest of iraq after 2003 because you know the kyrgyzstan region had already been largely kind of taking care of itself since the the mid 90s and so the the kind of the sectarian civil war that kicked off after the invasion and the overthrow saddam didn't really affect the kyrgyzstan region very much and also um the need of the kurdistan government to maintain that level of foreign investment meant that their level of security is much much higher um and like the the control over the country is much higher um because they have a very real

material um need to maintain that security and ensure that no americans get kidnapped and beheaded on tv that's bad for business it's bad for business yeah i mean obviously i don't think they really care very much about us as people they care about us as big dollar signs um and you know i don't necessarily fault them for that right because that any other government's any better we have a pretty solid history of fucking them over like all the time yeah even before we promised them liberation during the gulf war we kind of bankrolled their genocide yeah i mean the um the u.s has a pretty pretty bad relationship with Kurds. But also, it's kind of interesting because I think we talked about a little bit earlier about how Americans have a very short memory. In many ways, I think the Kurds of Iraq do too because they don't remember that. They remember the genocide.

They remember Al-Anfal. But I have yet to see any memory of the American involvement in that. Do you think that has to do with, I mean, they can very rightly point to Saddam for that. So maybe that has to do with it? Yeah, and also, I mean, rightly or wrongly, a lot of Kurds see the u.s as liberators um from saddam because of 2003 um and um you know i'm very much opposed to the iraq war but i

understand why they feel that way because i can too yeah i mean after i mean saddam it's really hard to to overstate how bad he was to Iraq as a whole and especially the Kurds. And so the fact that after 2003 they no longer had to worry about him directly because of the U.S., I mean a lot of people have very positive feelings about the U.S. in the

Kurdistan region. In the meantime once obviously the provisional authority gave power over to the Iraqi government. What was the Iraqi government's policy during that time towards Kurdistan? Was it completely hands-off, or was the U.S. kind of telling them, keep your hands off, they're still functioning? Yeah. Yeah. So officially in the new Iraqi constitution after the overthrow of Saddam, the Kurdistan region was included as an autonomous region that could maintain a certain amount of its own security services, economic planning, as well as maintain some of its own visa and immigration controls,

while also receiving 17% of the overall oil revenue made by the state of Iraq. Basically, what that meant, so basically the U.S. forced the new Iraqi government to sign a constitution that's extremely favorable to the Kurdistan region. Because in terms of economic output and population, the Kurdistan region is not 17% of Iraq, and yet they're receiving 17% of the oil wealth. Right. And they have some kind of ancestral claim to Kirkuk as well, correct? And they have some kind of ancestral claim to Kirkuk as well, correct? Yeah, that's a very complicated political argument because everyone – there's no such thing as an unbiased source. And so, for example, the Kurds say Kirkuk is a Kurdish city, the Arabs say Kirkuk is an Arab city, and the Turkmen say that Kirkuk is a Turkmen city. And I personally lean more towards it's a combination of all three

because that's the real truth. It's none of their. I mean, I just, ethnic history in Iraq is really interesting. But the problem is, so Saddam kicked out all the Kurds from Kirkukuk and also all the Turkmen too.

Just don't tell the Kurds that. And then when ISIS came in in 2014, Iraq came in – or sorry, the Kurdistan region came in. The Peshmerga came in and occupied Kirkuk. And then they kicked out the Arabs and the Turkmen. And then – You didn't hear about that part. No. And then the, the Iraqi army came back in, um, in October of 2017 and, uh, reoccupied it. And as far as I can tell, I haven't seen any credible claims of like removing Kurds or like

re-Arabizing it or anything anything but like that doesn't stop the uh the twitter press from making wild claims about like the you know saddam 2.0 kicking out all the kurds but the truth is kirkuk doesn't really belong to anybody other than maybe the broader nation of iraq or state of iraq and so i mean we could we could go on a long rant about my opinions about ethnic nationalism as an ideology and the benefits of balkanization, but that's kind of neither here nor there. But the basic idea is… As an Eastern European, I support that. Well, I mean, let's not even start talking about Azerbaijan versus Armenia because I have some very strong opinions on that. Nothing bad ever happened there other than

the Azeri war crimes. Trust me, it's fucking terrible. I think I said in the episode I did with Nate that there ain't no racism like Eastern European racism. It's very fitting.

I was in Azerbaijan a couple of months ago and well, they haven't gotten over the hojali massacre let's just say that uh my family still talks about a genocide from over 100 years ago so i understand completely it's hard to get over that kind of stuff and so for example so you know iraq's kind of no different everyone is still like well we should get this because you did that and so on um and none of them are like invalid because everyone did probably commit some kind of horrific crime

against everyone else oh yeah um but but yeah and so basically so the the the the constitution signed by the new iraqi government after the false saddam was very favorable towards the kurdistan region which led to a lot of economic development a lot of foreign investment and a lot and you know generally more stability among the kurdistan government um and uh so then we fast forward to 2014 summer 2014 and the uh the rise of is. So ISIS, not to go into too much detail, but they swept across western Iraq, they captured Mosul,

they were within 10 or 20 kilometers of Erbil here in Kurdistan, they were within war range at Baghdad airport, all within the space of one or two months. It was really crazy. Yeah, I remember almost watching that in real time um it's definitely that whole uh the the isis invasion of iraq is definitely going to be a mainline episode eventually um because it's just so interesting

to me and but yeah it's fascinating and uh just really really strange and all the various things that happened like isis briefly had an air force yeah um isis with m1 abrams things like that yeah oh my god they're doing fucking burnouts and bmp ones in the street yeah it was insane um and there was a huge amount of panic um that at that point like in places like airbiel because all of the, the, you know, the thousands of American, European,

and other expats who are in Erbil, obvious were, obviously were looking for any way they could possibly get out of the city, not of Kurdistan before ISIS came in and started, you know, beheading people in the, yeah. I mean,

look what they did to camp Spiker. Oh God. Honestly, the fact that that particular war crime is not talked about more is a travesty. And that's just truly awful. I mean, I understand that. I'm 30, so I lived through the Balkans genocide. I lived through the All-Ion Fall genocide.

But that was in the early 90s. I don't remember those. that was in the early 90s i don't remember those um easily the the camp spiker massacre is one of the worst things that ever happened in my in my memory yeah i mean it was 1700 people killed in the space of a day uh executed video oh i remember i saw a couple of clips of it and it's um it's just depressing thinking about it. I'll be asking you many questions when I go to cover that. So prepare yourself. Hit me up.

I've got some interesting tidbits, I guess. But yeah, so they were very close to Erbil. All the expats were fleeing. People were panicking. And it was at that point when the U.S. military stepped in and Obama started authorizing airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and I believe Syria at the same time. Yeah, I think it was as well. This is also – yeah, this is also when the Battle of Kobani was going on. And this is around the same time the Yazidis were trapped in Tel Afar, correct? Oh yeah. Oh, about that. So, um, one thing, you know, they, with a capital T, don't want to tell you about the Yazidi genocide, um, is that a large part of the reason it happened is because of the,

well, here's where the door is going to start getting kicked down cowardice cowardice and the more the failure of the Kurdistan regional government to provide protection and not only that but the basic so basically what happened so the the region in which most of these yes these lived as well as a region known as the Nineveh Plains. ISIS was coming across this area, which was ostensibly at the time under the protection of the Peshmerga forces. The Peshmerga, what they did in response to this was they disarmed all of these Yazidi villages,

basically took all the guns from the people's houses and then left. Didn't take any of the occupants of these villages with them. Jesus Christ. So when ISIS came into town, obviously the Yazidis and everyone else in the village was left completely unable to defend themselves. And so they either fled or died or, you know, unfortunately, many of them were taken and taken into like sex slavery. And what was the reasoning for that? I know I know very little about the Yazidis and the Yazidi religion, but I understand that generally speaking, almost everybody in the region thinks of them as apostates.

And is it like is that kind of why the Kurds had no intention of protecting them and they just stole their shit and bounced? Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably part of the reason. I haven't I haven't looked. I'm part of the problem is that there's not a whole lot of good sources on this kind of stuff because, A, it was very recent and be like it's extremely political. And it's still ongoing for the most part. And there's still Yaz these in slavery in syria no exactly um but basically part of that was probably you know that the religious aspect was i'm sure involved but also i think just the fact that the kurdistan government is

very much a nationalist government and you'll see a lot of issues with just across the board with disenfranchisement of non-Kurdish populations and non-Muslim populations. So it's just good old-fashioned racism. I mean, yeah, pretty much. There's a lot of reasons, but the bottom line is basic prejudice by the government against non-Kurdish populations. That's awful. You know, it's really awful. The Yazidis fled. A lot of them went up onto Mount Sinjar

where they were saved basically by the PKK. The PKK was the only organization that stepped up to actually fight to the death and stand their ground and help hold out. And they succeeded. And then the U.S. Air Force came in and started launching airstrikes.

And that kind of paused the ISIS advance in that area. And similarly, the Peshmerga finally grew a pair around 15 kilometers outside of Erbil and turned around and started shooting back. And also, more importantly, the U.S. dropped tens of thousands of tons of ordnance. That probably helped a little. Yeah. There are also instances where the Peshmerga would be standing across, like they'd withdraw to the official area of Kurdistan. Like, for example, there would be a river dividing the Huk governorate, which is under the Kurdistan region, from the Nineveh governorate, which is under the Iraqi control.

They'd stand across the river and ISIS would be on the other side and they'd be like, you don't come over here, we're not going to bother you. So there was definitely... So they appeased ISIS? Yeah, basically.

I know I'm laughing, but that's so cartoonishly awful that it's kind of mind-blowing because i understand they're they're different uh like they're they're have they have their own sovereignty from iraq to an extent but they're still iraqis yeah exactly um they're still iraqis and more importantly they're still humans and i think anyone could at that point we are we definitely knew how bad ISIS was. There was no hiding it. Yeah.

I mean, that was their brand. Exactly. Brutality was their brand, and everyone knew it. And so the Peshmerga knew, the Kurdistan government knew. Everyone knew about how bad they were. And that's when—sorry, it's interesting that the pkk came in and saved the yazidi i know there's there's no end of differences between the two but uh the kurdistan workers party is that is the pkk and those are um now i understand that that is the

major group that the turk Turkish government has issues with. And I also remember the Turks bombing Iraq to get to the PKK. They did that a couple of days ago, I think, yeah. So they're still doing that, okay. Yeah, they're occupying part of Iraq at the moment, yeah. And so the PKK, they're communists, correct? Or are they just leftists? They started out Marxist-Leninist, kind of in the vein of all the other marxist leninist or maoist rebel groups in like the

late 70s right and then they eventually morphed into what they are now which they call democratic confederalism which is kind of a vein of kind of general anarchism um so but yeah they are explicitly socialist or leftist however you want to describe them so they don't have the same nationalist qualms that the the more supposedly more powerful and organized kurdistan government had and they came in and saved the yazidis yeah so like yeah like the pkk may be a kurdish kurdish nationalist movement but ideologically they are also genuinely a socialist movement, which includes a kind of like a more international focus, um, than just a general, like a nationalist

group, like the Kurdistan government. And so, yeah, they came in and helped save a lot of Yazidis from genocide. And you don't hear that. I mean, you hear Kurds save them. You don't hear the PKK save them because the PKK is a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, isn't it? Yes. That's what I thought.

Yeah. So technically any aid to the PKK is material aid to a terrorist group, which is why it's interesting when the U.S. provided lots of air support to the PKK and Sinjar. So technically the U.S. government is in violation of terrorist aiding clauses. Not that I think anything is ever going to come of that, of course. That's kind of the thing that we do. It's kind of the job of the U.S. government is to support terrorist organizations. Yeah, I mean, normally they're not on our own list of terrorists, though. They are later, like when they turn against us, but not normally during the act.

Get me on for an episode about the Syrian civil war and U.S. support of Syrian rebel groups and we'll revisit that topic. I am more than willing to do that. So the actual Kurdistan regional government appeased ISIS. Yeah. But was it ISIS knew that they weren't going to be able to take Kurdistan because of U.S. air support or did they just, we'll save you guys for later? Well, I mean, something saved them. Yeah, well, I think so. Basically, you know, ISIS, for all its faults, still acted in kind of a rational manner. Um,

you know, they may have been crazy murderers, but they, they weren't idiots. And so they knew that, um, they, they knew how to pick their battles.

And I guess they continue to know how to pick their battles cause they're not done yet. Um, and they knew that, um, at that point, the weakest link in the chain was the, the Baghdad government. Um, the chain was the Baghdad government.

Because, I mean, the Baghdad government has always been just horribly corrupt and incompetent since 2003, and the Kurdistan government for all its faults was never nearly on the same level of corruption and incompetence. In comparison, they look pretty competent.

Yeah. And that's saying a lot because the Kurddistan government is uh once you get to know it a little bit better you start to realize that it's an incredibly perfect and has no flaws whatsoever that's right um remember tap on your mic if there's a gun to your head but um but yeah so isis and and at this point knew that the Baghdad government was the weakest link. of shia um and since the baghdad government is um was at the time ruled by uh maliki who was very much a kind of a shia pro-shia kind of guy um and the southern iraq is you know just chock full of juicy shia that they wanted to kill um that's where they're really focusing their effort on.

Because, I mean, the Spiker Massacre, where they killed 1,700 Iraqi Air Force cadets in the space of a day, all of them were Shia. They separated out the Sunnis and let them leave, right? Yeah, exactly. They let the Sunnis leave and they killed the Shia. And this was a pattern that repeated itself throughout this whole time.

They'd go into a village, they'd be like, alright, you know, pray, and we'll see who prays in the Shia way, or something like that. And we'll just kill all of them. Even Christians, they often wouldn't kill them, they'd just be like, okay, either pay the Jizya tax,

or we'll kill you. With the Shia, they just killed them. And so that's why when they were within mortar range of Baghdad, that's when things were starting to look really scary. Because my opinion, my personal opinion, is that if ISIS had been able to make it into Baghdad, or even beyond, especially beyond Baghdad,

we would have seen a genocide, um, on the scale of like the Rwandan genocide or worse, um, if they'd have been able to get there because that was the real goal was to just kill as many Shia as possible. Oh yeah. And I think without you, I mean, I'm, uh, I think I've said this a couple of times for a military historian, I'm shockingly anti-war. But without U.S. support, that was probably an inevitability. Yeah, I'm not 100% sure if I agree, but definitely U.S. support helped stop them outside of Baghdad.

Because basically once they got within spitting distance of Baghdad, the Shia of southern Iraq basically came together and were like, all right, we're not going to let this happen. The government, the militant armies failed. And so they formed an organization which they called the Hashdashabi or the, in English they call it the Popular Mobilization Units, which is basically Shia militias. In the U.S. press, you'll see a lot of people calling them like Iranian-backed shia militias um in the u.s press you'll see a lot of people calling them like iranian backed shia militias sure and like all that people

criticizing you know oh we don't want iran in iraq or whatever well it's like you know the iranians came in and they helped organize some of these militias which were then the first people in the front line stopping isis from entering baghdad and committing genocide. So, like, we can fault Iran for a lot of things, but nonetheless, for better or worse, well, for better, their support helped stop a genocide in Iraq. And those same groups ended up butting heads with the Kurds, correct? Yeah.

So, fast forward a couple years, Iraq has eventually managed to get its shit together with the regular army, uniting with the popular mobilization and they push back across ambar province they retake you know fallujah ramadi to create baiji how each uh and so on eventually they gear up for the mosul battle which is going to be the big one because mosul is the second largest city in iraq um millions of people live there and it was ISIS's capital. So they start up the Mosul offensive. All the camera crews go to the Peshmerga

who are kind of like on the northern half of Mosul. Their goal is to capture kind of the northern area above Mosul and the Iraqi army is going to come in and take the city itself. And so all the camera crews, of course, go into where the Peshmerga are and they'll interview all these Peshmerga about like yeah like us we're the peshmerga we're gonna go

kick the shit out of isis and mosul like yeah it's gonna be amazing like go peshmerga bg kordistan etc and then the iraqi army goes in and does 99 of the fighting it loses thousands of soldiers and probably the most or the largest urban battle since Stalingrad. It has to be. The battle was massive. It was huge. I mean, the casualty estimates from just civilians are like 20,000 to 30,000 on the low end. Thousands and thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed. I still don't know how many, I don't think.

I haven't seen any solid numbers on it yeah they're probably still finding them yeah i mean i wouldn't believe any of the numbers that you see because everyone has a good reason to lie but um at a minimum tens of thousands people total died in that battle it lasted eight months it destroyed pretty much the whole city it was just really really awful and the peshmerga did basically none of that they secured basika and that was about it um which is like a little village west or east of mosul like that's about all they did um but nonetheless i think there are still a couple articles that came out around the time and you know rags like the national review or things called like patriot daily or like american freedom

magazine and shit like the daily wire the daily caller or whatever and like they they can't say hey that army that we've been making fun of all this time teamed up with iranian-backed militias and took the city like no no no it was the kurds exactly yeah i mean it's hard to give the good press to organizations like Kataib Hezbollah, which are responsible for killing like a crapload of American soldiers in 2006, 2007. Right. Like the Shia militias, which are some of the most effective fighting forces against ISIS were coincidentally also some of the most effective fighting forces against American occupation forces. Right. And that's when that Abu Israel guy popped up.

Abu Israel, the angel of death. He said he personally killed at least like eight American soldiers, I think, in one interview. And he still fucking hates them. Yeah. I mean, these Shia militias have very good reason to be anti-American. I mean, I don't think I don't remember if you covered it during the Iran-Ira. I mean, I don't think, I don't remember if you covered it during the Iran-Iraq war series. I don't think so.

But after the first Persian Gulf War, basically the U.S. said, hey, Shia, if you rise up against Saddam Hussein, we'll totally support you. Oh, yes, yeah. And so they rose up, and the U.S. was like, psych, never mind.

War's over, gotta go. Yeah, and then Saddam Hussein proceeded to kill over 150,000 people, um, drain the marshes of Southern Iraq, basically destroying the livelihood of all of the people who live there and proceeded like on a 10 year long reign of terror against the Shia of Iraq. Um,

so basically the U S betrayed them and led to the deaths of several hundred thousand people um several hundred thousand shia so there's a very good reason for that distrust and of course then the u.s invaded and occupied it again in 2003 and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people yet again right but um i digress back to the kurdistan issue. The U.S. has since invested probably tens of billions of dollars in military investment in the Kurdistan region. another one a couple of miles east of erbil probably so that they're within uh you know spitting distance of the iranian border which i think is kind of funny because by building the closer they build it to iran the more easy it is for iran to just immediately hit it with ballistic missiles right in the event of a war so like i really you know i pity whoever whatever poor like you know logistics unit gets stationed there um it's like being stationed on the border with korea you're the first one going

to die yeah you're a tripwire basically yeah um but also now that i've spent a little bit of time in those mountains um the u.s is not going to invade Iran through those mountains. That would be a disaster. We would lose so hard. Those mountains are gnarly. It's really hard to understand. Was that the Zagros Mountains or is that a different mountain range? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's all kind of the same or some branch of the Zagros.

They're intense mountains. Those are gnarly. I've been in a couple of other mountain ranges around the world, and these are probably the toughest that I've seen. They're not the tallest, but they're intense. I mean, you know that they were bad, because even Saddam Hussein's like, yep, not invading over those.

That's a limit. Yeah, that's why he went to Khuzestan, which is like not mountainous. Yeah. And he still failed um so you know learn a lesson america of course we won't we won't learn the lesson yeah historically we're great at learning lessons from from other points which is why we never invaded afghanistan it's been 17 years doing the same thing again and again and failing every time yeah it's just ridiculous We would never do that.

So when the popular mobilization groups and the Kurds butted into one another, that happened in Kirkuk, correct? Yes. Yeah, so basically what happened is in October of 2000, or September, sorry, of 2017, Massoud Barzani, who's losing control and influence because of being extremely unpopular and putting off presidential elections for like 20 years, basically saying, oh, we'll have them next year, I promise. And then he was actually given an excuse when ISIS invaded. Exactly. So he suspended all that crap.

And so eventually ISIS was kind of on its way out and he knew that he had to kind of regain his popular momentum. And so he kind of dangled the carrot in front of the Kurds who have wanted independence and sovereignty forever, you know, very understandably and said, OK, we're going to hold a referendum on I think it was September 25th, 2017. And surprisingly, he actually held it. I thought he was going to cancel it um but yeah i thought for sure he was going to cancel that because the whole time that government in baghdad is like we're gonna fuck you up basically yeah the baghdad government was like you know try it bitch try it and uh and everything like obama was this no that would have been trump

trump was well not trump but whatever his underlings were said, don't do that, please. Erdogan said, don't do that. Iran said, don't do that. Everyone was like, no, seriously, don't do that. That's stupid. But he did it. The absolute madman. So the referendum happened. There's almost certainly a lot of voter fraud, suppression, faking, stuff like that. Not in the Democratic Freedom Republic of Kurdistan. Exactly. But nonetheless, I'm sure, like, no matter how unfair the election may have been, I think the yes would have won anyway. Simply because, like, Kurds want independence, understandably. They may not believe that it's going to happen but they want it and not like i was talking to a guy who said i think he ultimately

didn't vote because he knew it wasn't going to work out but he said that like i didn't vote because i couldn't vote no i can't as a kurd vote no for independence right um which i totally understand but so yes would have won anyway um so it did win and the iraqi government was like oh okay now i see how it is and so they immediately invaded um kirkuk occupied it without firing a shot um and pushed basically all the way back to the original borders drawn under the 2003 constitution they closed the airports in kurdistan for a while not allowing domestic flights they cut off all you know economic aid or whatever and basically crippled the country the kyrsten region was unable to pay its salaries to government employees in peshmerga there were

riots protests on and so on um and eventually the kurdistan government was like okay they backed down they discarded the results of the referendum and they lost a lot of, uh, the kind of the de facto autonomy that they had gained from the, um, with the ISIS war. Um, and, uh, so that was just a huge disaster for the Kurdistan government. Politically, they lost a lot of popularity. But nonetheless, I mean, Barzani resigned, but now he went from being the president to the leader of the Kurdistan regional government. What's the difference?

Did they just change the title? I don't really know. But basically nothing changed. Because he's never going to really step down. Well, it's pretty clear he doesn't have to. Everybody seems to be, I mean, nobody really demanded it. Well, I mean, a lot of people do want him to go, but nobody can say it.

Because there were a lot of protests over the summer due to the salary issue. A lot of protesters got shot summer due to the salary issue. A lot of protesters got shot, beat up, tortured, stuff like that. Um, and so, I mean, like there is technically democracy here. Um, and by the, by that, I mean, it's the freest country in the entire world. Um, and they should have independence now because it would be extremely successful under the perfect benevolent leadership of dear leader Barzani. Supreme leader. But like for our intelligent listeners out there, you can listen between the lines and kind of get where I'm going with this.

I genuinely can. I probably shouldn't say too much more about that. uh, I genuinely can. I probably shouldn't say too much more about that. Um, so changing the subject, so you don't get your fingernails ripped out. Um, one of the reasons why I wanted to, um, to do this episode is one, uh, I thought it'd be interesting because how often do we get to talk to somebody actually in Kurdistan? Um, other than, you know than the last episode. And because the mythos that the Western world has and one of those was

the kind of trope that came around, well, we're not fighting ISIS so I'm going to go volunteer and fight ISIS. Followed by just all these fucking Facebook tough guys would actually pay like and the the kurdistan militias or the kurdish militia militias weren't paying for anybody's trip uh they're like yeah sure if you come over here we'll fucking let you we'll throw

you out there that's fine um but nobody seemed to grasp the reality of the various different Kurd groups. Because from my understanding, the Peshmerga did not accept foreign fighters. There were a couple of, I think, Kurdish diaspora fighters and others who worked for units. Maybe not officially Peshmerga, but affiliated with. But broadly, no. officially peshmerga but like affiliated with but broadly no and so the the vast majority of um of the of the foreign fighters i guess is a fair assessment to call them would funnel into the pkk and the the ypg or the ypj which are all very very communist or at the very least left-wing militias from uh now the the pkk is mostly turkish and uh iraqi correct yeah and so the way and the ypg and ypj are syrian

yeah well sort of it's i mean if you ask a turk they'll just say the ypg is just the pkk renaming itself in syria well they all work together for the most part, don't they? There's an element of truth to that. I mean, they're the same parent organization. But the YPG is officially a Syrian organization fighting against ISIS in Syria. And we're definitely not shit-talking these guys because, you know, politics aside, even though myself, I am a leftist um i'm not a militant leftist uh but politics side they are one or at least were one of the most effective fighting forces against isis and they still control like the syrian democratic forces for the most part don't they

yeah yeah no that's that's kind of an interesting complicated factor but yeah broadly the the ypg is the biggest um milit like armed group of the the the syrian democratic forces which is the u.s supported like faction in northeastern syria um and yeah the ypg is like the pkk they have the same political ideology of democratic confederalism so basically anarchism like militant anarchism um and they're pretty cool in a lot of ways um but yeah they don't they don't hide their political not even remotely um not even a little we looked beforehand um just to see okay maybe these guys weren't as badly informed we're going to give them the benefit of the doubt literally the third line in the pkk's wikipedia article says they are a left-wing militant organization yeah um and if

you believe the u.s government they're a left-wing terrorist organization now the way ypj and ypg haven't been officially uh declared terrorist groups no but they're you know the the connection is irrefutable but i mean they're basically they're the same organization in syria with a different name and different leadership right but everything else is basically the same and barring a few things um they were incredibly open to anybody who had come and fight for them because they were you know they're in the fight for their lives if they lost there was no going back to the drawing board there's a fucking genocide in the future um and there's actually yeah and there's a facebook group called the lions of rojava which would actively facilitate your travel into the region in case you were wondering i don't know if they still operate but um probably not but yeah no so how that that

would work basically you'd get in touch with them via an encrypted email um and you would then travel to probably well depending on what time it was um probably you'd go to uh erbil or sulaymaniyah in the kurdistan region where you'd meet up with a contact and then they would smuggle you into syria uh where you'd be trained and then spend uh it'd be like three months training much of it ideological by the way um and uh then a couple of months like guarding checkpoints and stuff like that when then once they figured they could trust you they'd send you into a like frontline um combat positions and so i imagine that was pretty un um uh not what a lot of people are looking for. We'll get into the ideological stuff because that's my personal favorite of this whole thing

is how funny it is. But I imagine for a lot of people, because the foreign fires will want to drop in for a couple of weeks and bounce back out. So they probably were pretty unhappy they found themselves on a fucking checkpoint watch for months at a time. There was definitely during kind of the height of it

when it became clear that the YPG probably wasn't going to get exterminated, but they're also doing a lot of legit fighting. I think a lot of people went to Syria to join the YPG for kind of a war tourism kind of thing. Right. It's kind of gross, but yeah. I mean, there are genuine ideologues as well and people oh yeah fight but there are also a lot of people who were who were going to kind of

you know fire a couple of rounds get shot at and then take the pictures take the video and then go back to right australia or new york or yeah you know berlin or whatever and they could be like yeah i fought i fought against is. I'm a fucking badass. Yeah. Our, our producer for our show, uh, interviewed,

um, was it piss big granddad or piss pants? Brace Bendel. And, uh, yeah, he was there because he was, uh,

a communist and wanted to fight with, but like mine individuals, it was kind of like an, uh, Middle Eastern version of the Spanish civil war, except that it's still going on. Yeah. That I've seen that parallel a lot. And I think it's fairly valid in a lot of ways. Yeah, and it's still mostly valid because it seems like the fascists are going to win.

I think so. Which brings us to our ideologues who had no idea what they're getting themselves into. Yeah, so I've got an article. they're getting themselves into uh yeah so i i've got an article um i've got an article about uh titled uh christian foreign fighters deserting kurdish ypg in syria because they're quote damn reds um which is funny because there's multiple christian militias fighting for Assad, but they picked a fight with the Kurds. Oh man. No,

it's well, I mean, no foreigners have gone to fight for the Assad. Okay. There's several Armenians who traveled from LA. They were fucking LA gang members. Yes. They're from,

uh, they're members of Armenian street gang called Armenian pride. One of them died and one of them's now in Armenia. I know that. Yeah, well, I'm not sure who which one was which, but when I saw that, I was like, fuck, I hope I'm not related to

them. Yeah, that would suck. You're never going to get a security clearance. Oh, no, I'm fucked. I had to get checked at the airport one too many times oh yeah yeah no but yeah so i mean the reason they went to go and join the ypg was because it was visible and they were okay another big reason is because the ypg has the ypj which is the all-female subsection right and that's another thing that people like to bandy about about the courage is like look they're equal in. And that's another thing that people like to bandy about, about the Kurds is like, look,

they're equal in a region that's unequal. How true is that? Well, it's kind of, it's a, it's an interesting question because a lot of the reason organizations like the YPG and the PKK are very leftist and very pro, for example,

um, women's empowerment and kind of a form of feminism. Right. Is the culture from which they come from is very, very conservative. I don't mean Middle Eastern or Islamic culture. I mean specifically Kurdish culture in these regions is probably the most conservative within the broader Middle Eastern region. Like, for example, in Turkey, the Kurdish regions have the highest levels

of things like female genital mutilation, honor killings, things like that. Which explains why the PKK was the natural leftist offshoot of that, I suppose. Exactly. So, like, a revolutionary organization is always going to have, like, very opposing ideology

to the kind of the base society because it's revolutionary it's kind of you know inherent to the to the game and so the pkk very much like their number one or one of their number number one tenants is uh female equality or women's equality and like their form of kind of, um, communist feminism. So the, the Peshmerga or the Peshmerga, they don't have, uh, secret or they don't have inclusive combat units. No,

the Peshmerga is still very much a kind of conservative, traditional, um, militia unit. Um, because they're not, you know, Marxists or anything.

Well, the PKK very much in the YPG very much are Marxist and pro-women's empowerment. And so they have dedicated female units, and those women fight on the front line just as much as men. They're carrying PKMs and RPGs and actually using them and not just posing for pictures. I can imagine they fight a little bit harder than men knowing what happens if they get captured. Yeah, I imagine that's true. Their death is not going to be a good one.

There was also this myth going around that ISIS fighters didn't want to get killed by female soldiers because they thought that they would go to hell or something, that's not true they don't care you can't tell that whole premise is fucking absurd

like you think I saw the faces of people who are trying to shoot me? I couldn't tell if they had a fucking side pony yeah exactly and that's why i was really interested in this because personally before going in today um i knew that there was obviously difference between the kurdish groups but i assumed that the the peshmerga also dipped into the female, I guess, manpower pools, the person power pool to staff their military

from desperation, but it wasn't the Peshmerga at all. No, the Peshmerga never really did a whole lot of serious fighting. I mean, that's another big secret is they didn't do a whole lot of serious fighting at all during the war against ISIS. They basically retreated to their lines,

built an enormous sand berm, and sat behind it um and then called in american airstrikes every once in a while you know there would be fighting of course but by and large it was mostly defensive small skirmishes and stuff like that and the real bulk of the fighting in iraq was done by the iraqi military and the popular mobilization um so the peshmerga never really had any manpower shortages they didn't take a whole lot of losses across the board and so they never really needed any manpower shortages. They didn't take a whole lot of losses across the board. So they never really needed to enact any sort of radical war mobilization while organizations like the YPG very much, you know, women had to fight out of necessity.

Also children. There's a lot of accusations against the YPG for using child soldiers. And the accusations are probably true. But I don't know how much I blame them. Like, yeah, exactly. Like if you're a 14 year old kid in Kobani,

um, during the summer of 2014, like, are you going to be like, no, I'm not going to pick up this AK 47 and shoot back because technically I'm a year under the internationally accepted definition of child soldier. Right.

Um, of course not. The kid's going to pick up the gun. I mean, Kobani was surrounded. There's no way out. And you're either going to die fighting or be executed by ISIS, or ISIS is going to press your child into service.

There's no good explanation. I mean, obviously, we're not supporting the usage of child soldiers. But I mean, when the only other option is dying, I don't like it, but I get it. Like, there's a lot of things in history that you just have to understand. I mean, war is, I mean, I've never been in a situation as serious as the battle for Kobani or similar. Yeah, the bullets don't have age discrimination.

So going back to that article, because this is getting depressing. Yeah. So a Christian militia organization from the United States. How many people was it? Does it say? Unfortunately, no, it doesn't. This article is fairly general, but it does have a couple of uh interesting tidbits um so for example um uh let's see let me find the section so one u.s army veteran referred to as scott claimed that he decided not to join the ypg after finding out they were a bunch of damn reds. And this has led to

an exodus of US and other Western volunteers from the YPG due to their left-wing stance. Another British volunteer named Alan Duncan also said that he had left the YPG who are based in blah, blah, blah

because of their leftist views, and said he knew a number of other people who were planning to leave soon for the same reason. Now, did they go home, or did they just join a different group? Well, the very next sentence of this article says, many have instead chosen to join Dweck Nausha, a Christian militia in northern Iraq, whose ideology chimes more with Western Christian volunteers than the intensely secular YPG. And see, this is interesting because I've now visited some of these places in northern Iraq, in the Nineveh province and Dahuk province, which are very Christian areas, kind of Assyrian Christians, I think.

That's the Chaldean church, isn't it? Or is that a different church? Is Chaldean Catholic? I think, no. I'm not sure. I'm not a religious scholar. Now I'm just showing my ass. I'm not sure.

I don't know enough about the specifics, but it might be. But it's Iraqi's you know it's it's it's iraqi christians or arab christians and northern iraq northern syria and there's a huge difference between you know an american evangelical and a caldian christian or a you know a syrian yeah i mean evangelicals are by and large an american creation that that is very different from the rest of the world yeah very much so and so i can't really imagine what that interaction would have been like because like they're still arabs you know like

so these these guys can't be not racist. Like, I cannot believe that these, like, American evangelical Christians go to, you know, kill the Muzzies or whatever. I hate saying that. And then they don't. I mean, that's what they want to do. And it was probably pretty upsetting to them. They found out, like, they showed up and the Kurds were not only Muslims but also leftists. Like, it's like the worst nightmare. Unless only Muslims but also leftists. It's like the worst nightmare unless one of them was

also black. I don't think there are very many black Kurds but there are black Iraqis and black Iranians which is a very interesting cultural history thing that is not really relevant. The Christians of northern Iraq are a very

unique group of various communities and so on. They're very fast, very interesting, incredibly different, very different, completely opposite of your average American evangelical. And also these Christian militias weren't doing a whole lot of fighting. They were more just like self-defense for their villages and stuff like that sure and like so it's just so funny to me that they could they literally couldn't even plug that shit into google i know like if you're gonna go all the way to iraq or syria like jesus christ like spend five minutes on google like you'll find it out you'll google like ypg you'll click the wikipedia. You'll read to sentence number three and you'll say it'll say like leftist organization.

And then you'll be like, hmm, maybe I should keep reading before I spend thousands of dollars on plane tickets and combat boots and AK-47s and all that kind of shit. Yeah, because they don't supply anything. Like, no, you need to buy stuff. We're horribly poor. Yeah, I mean, you buy your own equipment. We're horribly poor. Yeah, I mean, you buy your own equipment. Because how are they going to... If they give you a rifle, it's going to be one that they picked up off a dead ISIS guy.

Yeah, well, at least it'll probably be an M4 then. Yeah, it might be. Oh man, I've seen so many good AKs here. I love AKs, but... Yeah, that's the only rifle I own is an AK-74. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's sweet. I I own is an AK-74. Really? Yeah.

That's sweet. I haven't seen one of those yet, mostly because I just feel like the 74 hasn't really made it to the Middle East because who's going to buy a separate factory to produce the different kind of cartridges? Right. And that's one of the reasons why the Soviets put it out during the Soviet-Afghan War. Totally off topic, but yeah, they put it out during the Soviet-Afghan War and then nobody ended up liking it. I think it's one of the coolest. I'm a huge fan of the AK-74. But yeah, I mean, I've seen Type 56s, like East German AKMSs, a bunch of Bulgarian ones. Never a Russian one, just all the Eastern European and Chinese.

I think my personal favorite weapon that surfaced over there was somebody found a whole bunch of STG-44s in a box. For the people who aren't gun nerds, because I'm not a super huge gun nerd or anything, but the STG-44 was like the sturmgewehr 44 from world war ii was the first functional assault rifle ever made well i will hold you up there and say it probably wasn't the first assault rifle i've ever made but that's just me being a nerd i literally pushed up my glasses before i said that actually yeah. Like I said, I'm not a gun nerd.

I understand guns in the extent of what I used when I was in the Army and what crops up during history class. Yeah. I was a long period where I was a huge gun nerd and now I'm basically like I don't think it really matters when it comes

to a military because as long as you pull the trigger and a bullet flies out because like, as long as the thing that, you know, you pull the trigger and a bullet flies out the end, like the end, it doesn't really matter that much for your average. And we talked about during our, our, uh,

episode on Iraqi weapon procurement, that sometimes the best weapon isn't the best weapon for you. Exactly. so Travis, uh, in closing, uh, one thing that,

uh, cause we're already at, at over an hour here. Um, yeah, which is, is fun with me, but, Travis, in closing, one thing that because we're already at over an hour here. Yeah. Which is fine with me. But. So you are kind of in a precarious position here talking about what you're talking about. And I thank you for that. What do you see as a realistic future for Kurdistan as it stands?

Like, is independence really an option or is that pretty much dead? I would say... I don't really think it's an option. Not in the next 10 to 20 years, I don't think. Obviously, if something huge changes, you can't predict that. But assuming things continue along more or less the same path

that they have been continuing on, Iraqi Kurdistan in particular and obviously greater kurdistan as a whole i don't think it's ever really going to be independent um specifically with iraqi kurdistan because nobody wants them to be yeah um they don't really have any economic like you know they don't have an economy um outside of the nation or state of iraq um a little bit of oil oil and a little bit of agriculture and stuff, but really not very much at all. The Kurdistan government invested all of its money in construction projects

and oil that they then lost when they lost Kirkuk, and not factories and infrastructure and things like that. So they have to import everything from Turkey or Iran or Europe or something like that. So things aren't, aren't looking too good. No, it's not looking too good.

Um, there's also the, the fact that the, the recent, there's a recent parliamentary election a couple of weeks ago. Um, and there's always the chance of the, the PUK,

the KDP deciding to try and one upup the PUK and the PUK getting angry and there being another civil war. Probably not a serious shooting war with tanks in the streets and stuff like that, but enough violence to throw out a lot of the foreign investment.

A lot of foreign people like me who are working here spending hard-earned US dollars at Curtis stores and stuff like that. And so, yeah, I mean, I just – I don't think there's a whole ton of future. The government's – well, I've discussed the government and its quality. But – and then, of course, for greater Kurdistan as a whole. I mean, all the various Kurdish factions hate each other just as much as they hate their oppressive governments. Like the PKK and the Kurdistan government hate each other and they fight each other.

The Kurdistan government hates the YPG and fights the YPG. Then there's also the Iranian Kurdish groups like the KDPI, which fights against the Kurdistan government, sort of. But it's sort of allied with the PKK, but not really. And they all hate each other and of course you know the turkish government's never going to let their part of southeastern turkey be part of kurdistan iran's never going to give away the kurdistan part of iran and syria is never going to let the kurdish part of syria be independent and so you've got this kind of like semi-autonomous region northern iraq with no economy um as your only kind of sort of success story with no

allies other than ones of convenience exactly no allies and then you run into the other problem of there being like two main kurdish dialects and they're they only being sort of mutually intelligible um even within iraqi kurdistan there's saraniani and Badini in terms of dialects. And it's a very stark split and like they don't interact as much. And it's like there's not really there's this idea that there are the Kurds and there are a lot of Kurds guy um but there's no such thing as like a broader united kurd or like kurdish polity or entity um or nation whatever what have you not yet at least um and it was all just like propaganda for the most part a lot of it is i mean this is a hot take with a capital h and a capital t and And I will welcome criticism because, you know,

who am I really to say these kinds of things? But I think for Kurdistan as a whole, and I think especially Iraqi Kurdistan, to gain the level of independence, be it literal national sovereignty or something else, there needs to be much more of a broader cultural reckoning around what

the idea of Kurdishness is and like a broad level because right now it's this very petty low-level fit like you know the two family parties fighting against each other and suppressing you know Yazidis Assyrians Arabs kick I and other minority groups in the Kurdistan region because it's all just these petty power, you know, like Game of Thrones but like even dumber and with BM-21 rocket launchers instead of swords

so it's I like Winterfell's chants as if they had machine guns yeah that's true Travis, thank you again for coming on and giving us uh an hour and a half long primer on recent kurdish history and it still was not nearly enough um no we i'm sure we could have talked for hours longer but yeah i need to go to bed and

the episode can't be too long but But no, it was great to come on and I hope I won't get my fingernails pulled out because of a podcast. Yeah, yeah. My Patreon dollars can't pay you ransom. So thanks again, man. I'd love to have you on any time. Do you want to have anything you want to plug?

I mean, I don't really have anything beyond my very small Twitter following. So I guess if you want more of this kind of stuff, but in 240 characters, you can follow me on Twitter at Heycraft underscore Travis. I mostly post about cats and T-55s. That's the only two things that make the world go round. What else do you need? It's the only two things that if you drop the land on their feet.

Well, I'll leave you alone because I know it's really late over there. I'll talk to you again and stay safe. Don't get kidnapped. I'll do my best. Thank you so much. Hi, this is Nate Bethea and I'm the producer of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. This show is brought to you by Audible. and I'm the producer of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast.

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