Iraq Kurds collect history at CU, want 'new Israel' Kurdistan
University of Colorado Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano, right, hands Ako M. Wahbi, of the Zheen Archive Center, a disk containing digital copies of captured Iraqi Secret Police files. (Mark Leffingwell, Daily Camera)
BOULDER A Kurdish delegation in Colorado retrieving cached documents detailing Iraqi persecution say Kurdish fighters can provide the increasingly sought ground force to defeat the Islamic State because this will help Kurds gain independence and be "the next Israel."
But battle-hardened Kurdish forces, credited with gains in Syria, need better weapons like night vision, artillery, anti-tank, delegation members said Tuesday.
And U.S. officials must realize that trying to keep semi-autonomous Kurdish Iraq as part of a united Iraq ultimately "will fail," said Woshiar Rasul, an adviser to the governor in Kurds' main city Sulaymaniyah.
Kurdish leaders since the 1970s have accepted limited autonomy but even within Iraq's latest coalition government "there is no full trust," Rasul said.
"We've acted exactly according to what the United States requested. We've remained in Iraq," he said. Yet, for nine months, Iraqi officials in Baghdad haven't even paid salaries of Kurdish participants in the government, Rasul said.
The U.S. government's insistence on a unified Iraq is understandable, said Ako Wahbi, owner of a contracting firm and leader of Kurdish efforts to build up history archives for museums.
"You came to the Middle East. You spent a lot of money and lives of your young soldiers. And the outcome is not what you tried to do," Wahbi said.
But even if Kurds stay temporarily as part of Iraq "there will be another conflict," he said, adding that Iraq's Sunni and Shia factions "hate each other more than they hate the Kurds."
A robust role repelling Islamic State militants "can give a good advantage for our future," Wahbi said. "Our only dream, up until now, is a Kurdistan independent state."
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Iraq Kurds collect history at CU, want 'new Israel' Kurdistan