Expand on support of Kurdish Militia

[Eyas]

An unconvinced commenter wrote:

Hillary is likely to support Kurdish Militia, which will make Middle East more volatile and unstable.

The comment was made in the experience article, but it might also belong in the hawk article.

Let's link to well-researched papers or articles (from foreignpolicy, Carnegie Middle East Center, or some other institute) on role of Kurdish military in the middle east.

[durka]

Some links:

• Syria’s Kurds at the Center of America’s Anti-Jihadi Strategy (Dec 2015)
• How the Kurds Became Syria’s New Power Brokers (Feb 2016)
• The Perils of a Post-ISIS Iraq (Sep 2016)

[Eyas]

@machen1 can you take this on? Otherwise, @durka would you be interested in helping with this content?

[robmyre]

I've been really struggling with this one. The problem is that by backing the Kurds, the US potentially jeopardizes our relationship Turkey. Also, the Kurdish organization we back has been labeled as a front for a group that we designated as a terrorist organization in 1997, and then, at the urging of Turkey, upped their terror "rating" even higher in 2001. Not to mention that the Kurds, Sunnis,and Shites all hate each other.

So, here's what I'm thinking. Rather than gloss over the fact that arming the Kurds is not without it's risks, I'm thinking I will approach this from the perspective of "international relations is hard; the situation is never perfect; and the Kurds are the one group that are willing to fight and die to defeat ISIS, and have made tremendous progress."

Thoughts?

[Eyas]

Sorry for the delay. Yes, with international relations there is always risk, if a critic of HRC criticize every avenue she intends to explore by stating the risks, then that's just a reason to go full-on isolationist (which has inevitable problems, not just risks).

Kurds are an ethnic group so linking an entire ethnicity to terrorism in Turkey decades ago can easily be countered.. but maybe we don't even want to go there. But yeah.. the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) had a militant / terrorist (depending on who you ask) past in Turkey. The Kurdish fighters who are fighting against ISIS is the Peshmerga, they are fighters in the Kurdish regions of Iraq.

[Eyas]

Fixed with #169.