Alexander Martinez
POLSC 1353
Professor Steve Miller
April 20, 2015
The Iraqi Solution
The topic that I had researched for my Human Rights violation was the Genocide and Persecution towards the Iraqi Kurd Population of the northern area of Iraq in the Zagros Mountains region that is popularly known as Kurdistan. The crimes reported against the Kurdish People range from ethnic cleansing to being forced into slavery both sexual and regular to forced Religious conversion to Islam from their respective religions. The reasons behind these attacks are related to conflicts that go back hundreds of years, since the Kurds who are seen as their own Ethnic Group have never had autonomy and have attempted to take it for themselves through force have strained relations between them and Baghdad. This relationship was further strained when the Kurds sided with the Iranians during the Iran- Iraq war in the 1980’s, this course of diplomacy lead to one if the major genocidal acts against the Kurds.
This was the “An-Anfal” Campaign (Translated to Spoils of war) whose primary directive was to lead soldiers in counter insurgency operations against Kurds, but in reality was a cover to target not only the Kurdish population but other minority groups in the area. The most heinous of these attacks was the gas attack on Halabja in northern Iraq where the military used several different chemical agents against the village that would eventually lead to the death of 5,000 people in the village. This does not include those negatively affected by the gas which was a combination of Nerve Agents, Sarin, Tabun, and Mustard Gas. This being just one offence with the total numbers as a result of the An-Anfal campaign being the destruction of 4,000 villages, 180,000 Kurds being killed, and around 1.5 million being deported. This all a result of the leadership of Iraq under Saddam Hussein and various other members of his Baathist Party who was the political party in power at the time.
In connecting this case to political theorists that we have discussed in the current course the ones whose political ideologies would be relevant is Machiavelli, Hannah Arendt, St. Augustine, and Paulo Freire. They are those whose ideas of Government, Violence, and Education take precedence in this issue due to their relevance. Machiavelli’s ideas apply strictly to the actions that were taken by the government. There way of responding to the aligning of the Kurds with the Iran was in the self-interest of the state, which one could apply to Realpolitik. The term Realpolitik is used to define the use of force in the interest of the government at the stake of the people’s interest and welfare thus putting the government first and ignoring moral points. These are the ideas stressed by Machiavelli through his treatise “The Prince” which outlines the importance of deontological thinking to morale thinking.
While the Ideas of St. Augustine applied to the justification aspect that the leaders of Iraq tried to apply to justify the tactics they used against the Kurds and Iranians. The main points behind St. Augustine’s ideology was that the use of war was to be limited to use as a last resort, it must be waged by the proper authorities, there must be a just cause for it to be waged such as threat of human lives, there must be a probability of success, and the one who uses force must have the right intentions in joining the war as well as apply the right amount of force not ignoring proportionality.
The next theorist is Hannah Arendt whose political view on how the use of violence can get out of hand is extremely relevant to the topic as Violence was used to quell the rebelling of the Kurds. Hannah Arendt in her Book “On Violence” goes into detail about the differences that power, strength, force, authority, and violence have in the political world than the terminology that they have in everyday conversation. The focus here is on the violence aspect that Arendt stresses in her book is there and is used but one must be careful to apply proportional amount of violence if not the situation gets out of hand and only more damage is caused.
The final theorist that one can connect to this situation is the Brazilian author Paulo Freire, who in his book “The Pedagogy of the Expressed” details the situation between the oppressed and the oppressors and how the education of the oppressed is crucial to fixing relations with the latter and holds the key to establishing a new system where everyone is treated fairly. His theory applies to the old and current Iraq due to the lack of a proper educational system in which the general population can receive a proper education. This coupled with the oppression of small tribal minorities which lack the education holds the same to the situation that Freire had to deal with working in Brazil to educate illiterate lower class laborers.
Since the Horrendous An-Anfal Campaign of the 1980’s we have seen that up until recently that there was still oppression based on ethnic affiliation, then with the rise of the militant Islamic State of Iraq there came a resurgence in violence as they began a genocide targeting minorities and those who were of different religious standpoints. The only way that to permanently solve the situation in the country besides defeating the Islamic state with airstrikes and bombings, is that you have to help either establish a Kurdish state in the north which is most likely to happen already since the retreat of the army last year opened the way for the Islamic State to take over. It allowed the Kurds in the north who were almost defenseless to band together and with the help of the regional government which is mainly Kurdish and successfully set up a militia to fight the militants. If there is not the ability to create a separate state for the Kurds to gain autonomy for themselves, then there must be a more active involvement by the international community to try and modernize the country to western standards in the way of economic opportunity and education. The economic opportunity will help in building up the countries infrastructure which at the moment has little to none in some regions and if there is it has poor quality. The equality in education in order to have a more educated populace to better make decisions when voting for their leaders and to prevent the oppression from the upper class which currently is the most educated group in the country. If some solutions like this are not implemented we can expect to find another situation like the one that is currently developing to happen again in a few years with another group oppressing another to the point of ethnic cleansing.
POLSC 1353
Professor Steve Miller
April 20, 2015
The Iraqi Solution
The topic that I had researched for my Human Rights violation was the Genocide and Persecution towards the Iraqi Kurd Population of the northern area of Iraq in the Zagros Mountains region that is popularly known as Kurdistan. The crimes reported against the Kurdish People range from ethnic cleansing to being forced into slavery both sexual and regular to forced Religious conversion to Islam from their respective religions. The reasons behind these attacks are related to conflicts that go back hundreds of years, since the Kurds who are seen as their own Ethnic Group have never had autonomy and have attempted to take it for themselves through force have strained relations between them and Baghdad. This relationship was further strained when the Kurds sided with the Iranians during the Iran- Iraq war in the 1980’s, this course of diplomacy lead to one if the major genocidal acts against the Kurds.
This was the “An-Anfal” Campaign (Translated to Spoils of war) whose primary directive was to lead soldiers in counter insurgency operations against Kurds, but in reality was a cover to target not only the Kurdish population but other minority groups in the area. The most heinous of these attacks was the gas attack on Halabja in northern Iraq where the military used several different chemical agents against the village that would eventually lead to the death of 5,000 people in the village. This does not include those negatively affected by the gas which was a combination of Nerve Agents, Sarin, Tabun, and Mustard Gas. This being just one offence with the total numbers as a result of the An-Anfal campaign being the destruction of 4,000 villages, 180,000 Kurds being killed, and around 1.5 million being deported. This all a result of the leadership of Iraq under Saddam Hussein and various other members of his Baathist Party who was the political party in power at the time.
In connecting this case to political theorists that we have discussed in the current course the ones whose political ideologies would be relevant is Machiavelli, Hannah Arendt, St. Augustine, and Paulo Freire. They are those whose ideas of Government, Violence, and Education take precedence in this issue due to their relevance. Machiavelli’s ideas apply strictly to the actions that were taken by the government. There way of responding to the aligning of the Kurds with the Iran was in the self-interest of the state, which one could apply to Realpolitik. The term Realpolitik is used to define the use of force in the interest of the government at the stake of the people’s interest and welfare thus putting the government first and ignoring moral points. These are the ideas stressed by Machiavelli through his treatise “The Prince” which outlines the importance of deontological thinking to morale thinking.
While the Ideas of St. Augustine applied to the justification aspect that the leaders of Iraq tried to apply to justify the tactics they used against the Kurds and Iranians. The main points behind St. Augustine’s ideology was that the use of war was to be limited to use as a last resort, it must be waged by the proper authorities, there must be a just cause for it to be waged such as threat of human lives, there must be a probability of success, and the one who uses force must have the right intentions in joining the war as well as apply the right amount of force not ignoring proportionality.
The next theorist is Hannah Arendt whose political view on how the use of violence can get out of hand is extremely relevant to the topic as Violence was used to quell the rebelling of the Kurds. Hannah Arendt in her Book “On Violence” goes into detail about the differences that power, strength, force, authority, and violence have in the political world than the terminology that they have in everyday conversation. The focus here is on the violence aspect that Arendt stresses in her book is there and is used but one must be careful to apply proportional amount of violence if not the situation gets out of hand and only more damage is caused.
The final theorist that one can connect to this situation is the Brazilian author Paulo Freire, who in his book “The Pedagogy of the Expressed” details the situation between the oppressed and the oppressors and how the education of the oppressed is crucial to fixing relations with the latter and holds the key to establishing a new system where everyone is treated fairly. His theory applies to the old and current Iraq due to the lack of a proper educational system in which the general population can receive a proper education. This coupled with the oppression of small tribal minorities which lack the education holds the same to the situation that Freire had to deal with working in Brazil to educate illiterate lower class laborers.
Since the Horrendous An-Anfal Campaign of the 1980’s we have seen that up until recently that there was still oppression based on ethnic affiliation, then with the rise of the militant Islamic State of Iraq there came a resurgence in violence as they began a genocide targeting minorities and those who were of different religious standpoints. The only way that to permanently solve the situation in the country besides defeating the Islamic state with airstrikes and bombings, is that you have to help either establish a Kurdish state in the north which is most likely to happen already since the retreat of the army last year opened the way for the Islamic State to take over. It allowed the Kurds in the north who were almost defenseless to band together and with the help of the regional government which is mainly Kurdish and successfully set up a militia to fight the militants. If there is not the ability to create a separate state for the Kurds to gain autonomy for themselves, then there must be a more active involvement by the international community to try and modernize the country to western standards in the way of economic opportunity and education. The economic opportunity will help in building up the countries infrastructure which at the moment has little to none in some regions and if there is it has poor quality. The equality in education in order to have a more educated populace to better make decisions when voting for their leaders and to prevent the oppression from the upper class which currently is the most educated group in the country. If some solutions like this are not implemented we can expect to find another situation like the one that is currently developing to happen again in a few years with another group oppressing another to the point of ethnic cleansing.