The author was born in Ukraine, once part of Poland which disappeared as a country for a century. He only learnt English in his 20s as he navigated the oceans, writing stories in his cabin, after escaping the clutches of the Tsarist Empire, which had caused the premature deaths of his patriotic parents.
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski became Joseph Conrad, the author of seminal novels such as the Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo, based in Costaguana.
We are so used to the current map of the world that we often forget its history, and therefore the possible fates of trapped and repressed nations. Poland was gobbled up by the Tsarist Empire and only re-emerged out of the chaos of the collapse of empires at the end of the First World War and because it suited the needs of British and French imperialism, which also found that an independent Kurdistan was not a priority.
Thanks to academic Bill Park for highlighting this comparison at a recent Centre for Kurdish Progress debate, which I chaired in the Commons on the causes and consequences of the Kurdistani independence referendum in 2017.
Poland enjoyed two decades of independence before it was carved up by the Nazis and the Soviets and then turned by Stalin into a vassal state in the Soviet Empire. The collapse of the Soviet bloc allowed its freedom, that of other states in Moscow's orbit, and the (re)creation of countries such as the Baltic States, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine.
Even then, the status quo exercised a strong hold with Mrs. Thatcher initially opposing the rebirth of a single German state. The international community is not generally geared, despite several seminal declarations on the right to self-determination, to accept new countries. But this is not a permanent condition.
Clearly, the US, the UK, France, the EU, and the UN were not ready to accept a new Kurdish state last year. Larger claims on their policy priorities and fears of what would happen drove them to conclude that the Kurds should remain in Iraq.
You can argue that this was an unfair reaction to a decisive and peaceful vote to seek eventual independence by negotiation with Baghdad. Kurdish leaders were entitled to conclude that this could be the Kurdistani moment following positive discussions with leaders in Baghdad, Turkey, and two successive American administrations.
Yet, as many suggested at the Commons meeting, things changed dramatically as the referendum drew nearer. Political leaders avoid decisions until they have to and perhaps they thought that the referendum was a bargaining tool that would be kicked into the long grass. It was only in the last stages of the referendum that America sought to persuade the Kurds to defer it.
The balance of forces shifted suddenly against independence in an inadvertently dialectical manner: America's tardy decision-making emboldened Iran, which identified a vacuum it could fill to its advantage by deploying its military prowess and that of its Shia militia allies and bolstering a harsher Baghdad reaction, despite Abadi's participation in negotiations that included the possibility of a later referendum if internal negotiations failed.
So the Kurdish quest was crushed in a spectacular manner but Kurdistan is not weaker than pre-independence Poland before it waited decades for freedom. One speaker concluded that Kurdistan is too big an issue to ignore but not yet big enough to solve.
Kurdistan remains an odd entity in international relations: it is more than a collection of provinces but not quite a nation. Peshmerga officers are formally enrolled in the UK Defence Academy, which is the case for no other sub-sovereign state, and the Peshmerga receives separate funding and assistance from America and others.
The London Times underlined the uniqueness of Kurdistan with a leading article, entitled Stand by the Kurds. It argued that "more secular, more democratic in inclination than many others in the region, and with an understandable claim for nationhood, the Kurds have attracted a degree of sympathy from people in the West," and those who have fought hardest against Isis deserve America’s support.
It concluded that "there are no easy solutions in the fragmented, sometimes chaotic and all too often horribly violent geopolitics of the region. But insofar as a good policy can be discerned, it is for the world’s greatest democratic and military power not to abandon its friends and allies. This is a principle that holds true, whatever expediency suggests."
But it based its case on a significant error: that "one of the most serious foreign policy failures of the past 30 years was the desertion of Kurdish and Shia Iraqis by western governments in the wake of the first Gulf War. A defeated Saddam Hussein unleashed terror on those who had been unwise enough to heed the call from the first President Bush to rise up against the dictatorship. No one came to their aid, and the lesson seemed clear, the rhetoric in Washington about liberation and democracy was self-serving."
APPG Chairman Jack Lopresti MP replied that Iraqi Kurds "were not actually left in the lurch after their uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991. British people were shocked to see two million Kurds flee to the freezing mountains and this encouraged John Major to win support for a no-fly zone and safe haven. This undoubtedly saved the Kurds from likely further genocide for 12 years. The Kurds regard Sir John as a hero for this; Tony Blair is also greatly respected there for supporting the 2003 liberation of Iraq."
He concluded that "The Kurds now in Iraq deserve greater support. They are militarily reliable and their secular and religiously moderate politics make them a powerful antidote to extremism. ISIS has not been eliminated and Iraqi Sunnis, among whom it found support, have yet to resettle. The Kurds could be pivotal in Iraq and the wider Middle East. [The Times article] does much to encourage practical and political support for a people who are natural allies."
The safe haven was a massive gain for the Kurds, and inserted them into UK foreign policy planning on an unprecedented scale. Kurdistani leaders and people do not, in the main, escape to join foreign fleets and, one day, a different configuration of forces in the Middle East could make a Kurdistani state viable.
The consensus at the Commons meeting was that it is too early to know the consequences of the referendum: whether it ends or is a milestone to independence. Conrad's Costaguana may have been a fiction and Conrad's Poland was reborn. Kurdistan remains pivotal in geographical, political and security terms and need not face a dark future if it gets its act together in league with a savvy solidarity movement.
Gary Kent is the Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). He writes this column for Rudaw in a personal capacity. The address for the all-party group is appgkurdistan@gmail.com.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
