By Asad Khailany, Emeritus Professor
Kurdish National Congress of North America,
23rd Annual Conference, April 30, 2011, Calgary, Canada
The simple meaning of self determination is nations have the rights to establish their own governments on their own lands, adopt any system they wish; such as capitalist, Islamic, Jewish, communist, socialist, or any other system. Nations may also choose to create union or federation with other nations.
Kurdistan people like any other people have the right for self-determination. History proved that self-determination rights have never been granted, but taken. Many nations succeeded to gain self-determination rights, some achieved it by taking advantageous of some unpredictable historical opportunities; some others did it through political, or nonpolitical struggles, or armed revolutions.
Kurdistan people struggled for self-determination in all forms with exception of adopting terrorist tactics for a very long time perhaps for several centuries. Few years ago in a special election in southern Kurdistan, over 95% of legitimate voters voted for an independent Kurdistan. In spite of that all political parties accepted the federation. The question is if they accepted it.
The answer is they realized during 2003 through 2007 when America needed badly the Kurdish support in Iraq and the Kurds did not asked for independent a golden opportunity for independent was lost. The leadership concluded that federation is the best thing that they could get at this time.
They accepted a less promising alternative maybe hoping to bring all Kurdistan territories in Southern Kurdistan including Kirkuk, Khaniqeen, Mendly, Sinjar, Maghmoor, etc. to be under KRG