Saudi trial balloon goes unnoticed

Anwar Majed Eshki let float one hell of a trial balloon at a Council on Foreign Relations conference with Dore Gold. 

“Working, peacefully, for the creation of Greater Kurdistan to curb the ambitions of Iran, Turkey and Iraq. The new state will embrace one-third of the territory of each of the said three states,” Bas News Agency, http://www.basnews.com/en/news/2015/06/06/ex-saudi-general-calls-for-independent-kurdistan/

The media has largely ignored this statement but the idea is very radical because it would upend the map largely created out of Sykes-Picot and it would represent a second non-Arab group seeing their rights to self determination met after Israel itself within the so called Arab world and the person calling for this is a Saudi Arab in a position to float these kinds of trial balloons.  This was all in the context of Anwar stating that Israel should accept the “Arab Peace Initiative” which was largely seem as more gestural than substantive by Jerusalem at the time as Saudi Arabia could not speak for all Arab Nations nor would the Armistice lines be an appropriate position to bargain from the Israeli point of view.  The repetition of the office in the context of Kurdish rights suggests there may be more flexibility than before, especially since both Libya,  Syria and to a lesser extend Iraq have ceased exist in any meaningful way as regional diplomats.

One can’t ignore that statement was made just before the Turkish elections in which the Kurds were expected to make gains but Kurdistan is growing more autonomous generally but this is first instance of another Muslim state and an Arab State potentially supporting the Kurds. Anwar Majed Eshki as a recently retired Saudi insider is the perfect person to send a trial balloon while standing next to an Israeli diplomat. The seriousness and unity of the Saudi regime is impossible to measure by a single statement from such a person but that it was made at all is worth considering. 

It wasn’t so long ago that Saudi only exported Wahabism, supported Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and was instrumental in seeing the Middle East as an exclusive Arab Zone. While it is too soon to suggest that Saudi Arabia has suddenly become more pragmatic than Europe on the Middle East, the pragmatism is worthy of notice and could benefit a lot of people.