Continuing my thought: What happens to the Kurds is the great unanswered question of the middle east

[Recursion]

This war will force that question, or at least it may. That's not a good thing. We support the Kurds in each sector, except that we deny their overall strategic goal. This is a circle that there is no squaring, and the end of Ba'athism in Syria leaves us nowhere else to hide.

[The Magistrate]

1. Always Has Been, Sir

They were led to believe they would have a state after the Great War, but events developed otherwise, with the oil at Mosul and the rise of Ataturk, among other things. The Turks used them against the English in Iraq in the twenties, sort of a continuation of an old pattern; they had been the Ottoman's chosen enforcers against unrest in the lowlands for a long time. They have been a reliable source of irregular activity against every state whose boundaries include them throughout the modern period. Denial of a Kurdish state is probably the one thing that would unite Shia and Sunni, Arab and Persian and Turk. We would wash our hands of them without a qualm in a crisis; we have done it before.

[Harmony Blue]

2. The Kurds have established a foothold in northern Iraq

but AQ viciously attacked them recently. This is why it is unlikely that Turkish Kurds, Iranian Kurds and Syrian Kurds will work with most of the forces opposing Assad. The forces opposing Assad are mostly composed of foreign religious fighters, Al Nursa Front, and AQ which all are not welcomed in Northern Iraq controlled by the Kurds.

Turkey has been very quiet about the surging cohesion of various Kurdish groups, but given that the Iraqi Kurds have recently reached an uneasy alliance with the Iraqi government to fight AQ in Northern Iraq...Turkey is deciding to stay out of it for now.