Lemonde.fr | By Kendal NEZAN *

A people mistreated by history, survivors of massacres, deportations and genocidal campaigns of Saddam Hussein, organizes a referendum to peacefully express its aspirations.

This consultation, scheduled for 25 September, will take place in the three governorates of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Duhok, which form the Kurdistan Region, and in the Kurdish territories outside this region freed by the Peshmergas from the occupation of ISIS. It will be held in the towns and municipalities where the elected and legitimate municipal councils have voted in favor of it. The Kurdish, Aramaic, Arabic and Turkman ethnic or religious minorities in these territories, with a large Kurdish majority, are called on the same footing as the Kurds to express themselves by yes or no on the same question in four languages: "Would you like the Kurdistan region and the areas lying outside its regional administration to become an independent state?”

Rather than de facto annexing these territories liberated at the cost of enormous sacrifices, the Kurdistan government decided to democratically consult the populations in a referendum which was, moreover, prescribed by Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, which stipulates its holding before the end of 2007 that the government of Baghdad has never consented to implement.

Any democrate should applaud this democratic process of self-determination, the principle of which is enshrined in the Chart of the United Nations. All the more the Kurdish leaders affirm that they will not unilaterally proclaim the independence of Kurdistan in the aftermath of this referendum, the outcome of which is hardly doubtful. The reason? Kurdish people in Iraq suffered the ordeal since its forced annexation to Kurdistan, in 1925 to an Iraqi state created by British imperialism in spite of a survey by the League of Nations, finding that about 7 / 8th of the inhabitants of this region wished to live in an independent Kurdish state.

Kurds and Arabs have failed to live together in the same state on an equal footing. The Kurds have tried everything from Britain's promise of "self rule" to the various projects of decentralization or autonomy mirrored by successive governments in Baghdad until the federalism enshrined in the Iraqi Constitution of 2005. In vain. It is always the law of the strongest, that of the brute force or the majority refusing a respectful and egalitarian partnership, which prevailed. The agreements signed, or even a constitution adopted by popular referendum, like that of 2005, have remained dead letters. This has led to the absurdity in which the Baghdad government is paying, in the name of the continuity of the state, Iraqi employees and officials in the ISIS-controlled territories and the Shiite militias led by Iran, and since 2014 refuses to pay to Kurdistan its budgetary share stipulated by the Constitution.

The Kurds have no choice but to take their destiny into their own hands, have their own state, currency, freely export their oil and gas to finance their economy and defend their territory. They want to do it peacefully, after a process of negotiations with Baghdad for an amicable divorce.

In 25 years of autonomous management of their affairs, they have, despite a most difficult environment, rebuilt a devastated country, set up a democratic system, imperfect but respectful of human rights, political, cultural and religious pluralism , the rights of women. They have invested heavily in culture and education by creating some thirty universities, some of which teach in English. They welcome and protect the persecuted Christians, the Sunni Arabs fleeing from ISIS terror, honor Western values ​​in a part of the world where they are demonized.

In 1925, it was in the name of oil and geopolitical interests that the British Empire, France and the United States imposed, for their own sake, the straitjacket of annexation of Kurdistan to Iraq. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, the same powers created a “safe haven” for the estimated 2 million Kurdish refugees fleeing the bombing of the Iraqi army. François Mitterrand's France was at the initiative of Security Council resolution 688 which authorized the creation of this "Safe haven" which has evolved over the years towards the present autonomous Kurdistan.

Without forgetting the past, the Kurds are the most pro-Western Muslim majority population in the Middle East and the best allies of our democracies in the war against ISIS. In the name of what should they now be prevented from democratically expressing their aspirations and condemning them to remain in the galley of a chaotic Iraq undermined by the Shiite-Sunni conflict, subdued by Iran.

"United Iraq" has lived longer than the USSR and the former Yugoslavia whose defense of territorial unity was for a long time the leitmotif of the proclamations of our routine chanceries obsessed with the specter of the famous Pandora's box. Borders and states are made for the happiness of peoples and not the opposite liked to recall the very regretted Czech President Vaclav Havel. We cannot force people who no longer want to live together within the same state. The right to divorce so long forbidden by the Vatican in the name of the sacred bonds of an indissoluble marriage, is now a common practice in private life. It should also be accepted by the international community for the suffering peoples, victims of violence and denial of rights.

Instead of aligning short-term interests with the anti-Kurdish positions of Iran and Turkey, which are not models of democracy and tolerance, Western democracies should give priority to the imperatives of justice and democracy, stability by accompanying their Kurdish allies in their long march towards their freedom. An independent Kurdistan could act as a buffer state between the Shiite, Turkish and Sunni Arab worlds, as a bulwark against jihadist movements and contribute to regional stability.

The largest human community without a state would thus finally have a seat at the UN in a world where without a state there is no salvation nor freedom for a people.

* President of the Kurdish Institute of Paris