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5 days agoMy short commentary on this:
A collapse of the Barzani-led Kurdistan Regional Government with the return of the Federal Government to Iraqi Kurdistan would be a net-positive for the region. The KRG colludes with Israel and the US, oppresses all revolutionary activity, and is a neoliberal hellhole with no redeeming qualities unlike Rojava. They are only good at building nice apartment buildings and trafficking women, they can’t even pay salaries to their teachers and sanitary workers. Anything that breaks this separatist project is good.
The crypto jew thing is pure anti-semitism, but the town of Barzan where the Barzani clan originates is a genuinely interesting place to study. Other villages and towns in the now Iraqi Kurdistan region were always domianted by one tribe or one religious group. You had Christian towns, Sunni Kurdish towns, Shia towns and so on. But Barzan is unique in the region, because it became some kind of refuge for all kinds of tribeless Kurds, Jews, Christians and other outcast groups. The Barzani clan itself isn’t a tribe or a clan in a traditional sense, but more of a Barzani “nation” that indicates allegiance to the pre-modern concept of the town itself. A Jew in a normal Kurdish town like Akre would be considered a foreigner or a stranger, but in Barzan they would be treated as a “first class” citizen. There’s a very interesting Jewish history that is connected with Barzan, that stretches all the way back to the Assyrian Exile chapter of Judaism.
There’s an interesting book that I read about Mulla Mustafa Barzani and his relations with Israel many years ago when I was a teen. One thing that I remember that still sticks out in my mind is that he sought the help of Israel in the first place because he genuinely thought that Jews controlled America, so in his mind he thought that being friendly with Israel meant that America would help him. The relationship then soured because Israelis kept dragging him into massive issues with the Iraqi state, while he just wanted some concessions. The Israelis for example helped him plan an ambush against Iraqi troops. He wanted to kill a few soliders and take some hostages, but the Israelis embellished later the scale of the ambush and claimed that they helped kill 2000! soliders, which would be a suicidal move for Barzani and drag him into a massive problem. When he was later in hospital in the US, they didn’t even help him with the hospital bills when he asked them.