Prior U.S. Letdowns Worry Iraq Kurds

[Barrett808]

Prior U.S. Letdowns Worry Iraq Kurds
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - No group in Iraq was more thrilled by the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq last year than the country's Kurds, who suffered severe repression under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s rule.

Kurds can only hope that the American unfaithfulness to the Kurdish cause in the 1970s, '80s and '90s doesn't repeat itself.

"I am worried," says Mike Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute, which looks after the interests of Kurdish minorities in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.

Kurds constitute the world's largest population of stateless people. Besides Iraq, they can be found in Turkey, Iran and Syria.

Iraqi Kurds are eager for autonomy in the post-Saddam era so that they can protect themselves against the kind of disaster that occurred on Sunday when twin suicide bombings killed more than 100 people in the Kurdish city of Irbil. It was one of the deadliest postwar terrorist attacks in Iraq. The targets were the headquarters of Kurdish political parties generally supportive of U.S. policies.

After a long history of rejection, the former Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani once asked: "Have the Kurdish people committed such crimes that every nation in the world should be against them?"

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=ap/us_iraqi_kurds

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Sorry Kurds, in the toss up between making you

happy and keeping Turkey on-side, chances are good you'll draw the short straw again.