Can Canton Zurich Learn from War? World Politics, Canva, Canon, and a Cannabis Shop in Basel.

Some days, you just can't stop shaking your head. Here we are in Switzerland, debating in the local council whether the new cannabis shop in Basel is disturbing the peace of the neighbourhood, while just a few thousand kilometres away, history is being rewritten – with blood, worthless treaties, and an age-old question: Can you ever trust the superpowers?

We're talking about the Kurds. Yet again. And yet again, they find themselves at the centre of a conflict that could upend the entire region. The headlines are coming thick and fast: Joseph Kent, the head of US counter-terrorism efforts, has resigned because he could no longer square the Iran war with his conscience. At the same time, Iranian drones are striking positions held by Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq. And right in the middle of it all: that ancient, weighty question, as heavy as the mountains the fighters call home.

A People Divided, Like a Canvas Draft

Imagine you're designing the image of a nation on Canva. You draw the borders, pick the colours, add in the peoples. What happened in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne was exactly that: a redrawing of the map where the Kurds were simply forgotten. They were promised a state – but nothing was delivered. Since then, they've been the world's largest stateless nation, and history keeps repeating itself with the cruel regularity of an endless loop.

Today, 103 years later, they're back in the same spot. The US and Israel would love for the Kurds to provide the ground troops to topple the Iranian regime. But the Kurds aren't naive. They remember 1975, when Henry Kissinger dropped them like a hot potato after the Algiers Agreement. They remember 1991, when the uprising against Saddam Hussein was crushed in blood because the West looked the other way. And they remember 2026 – just two months ago – when the Trump administration hung the Kurds in Syria out to dry once again.

The saying "The Kurds have no friends but the mountains" isn't just a poetic turn of phrase. It's the bitter, hard-won lesson of generations.

Between Canon and Kalashnikov

I spoke to a photographer last week who'd just got back from the Iraq-Iran border. He showed me pictures taken with a Canon EOS – razor-sharp, almost inappropriately aesthetic for what they depicted. Young fighters from Komala, the reform faction, camping out in the mountains. Training, waiting, hoping.

One of them, a PAK commander, told a journalist on the ground: "If we cross the border, the Americans are supposed to secure the sky for us." Sounds simple. But it's not. Because the US is hesitating. Trump first said he'd be "all for it" if the Kurds struck – then he backtracked: "The war is complicated enough without dragging the Kurds into it."

For the Kurds, it's a total déjà-vu. They know they're being used as a bargaining chip. They know their dreams of autonomy, let alone statehood, are only important in Washington as long as they serve the purpose of weakening Tehran. A senior Kurdish official put it in a nutshell: "The Kurdish people overwhelmingly reject the regime of the Islamic Republic. But they're also terrified of being let down yet again."

A New Unity – Or Just a Flash in the Pan?

There is one glimmer of hope. For the first time in decades, five major Kurdish parties in Iran have joined forces: the PDKI, Komala, the PAK, Khabat, and the PJAK. They're calling themselves the "Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan." It's a mouthful, but politically, it's dynamite. These groups used to fight each other; now they're united by a common enemy.

Mustafa Hijri of the PDKI, often called the "Barzani of Eastern Kurdistan," is driving things forward. And they even have a plan: federalism. Not an independent state, but an Iran where Kurds finally get their rights – education in their own language, cultural autonomy, their own administration. "We are Iranians, but we are Kurdish Iranians, and we want to remain in Iran," stresses Razgar Alani, the PDKI's representative in London.

Will that message get through in Tehran? Unlikely. The regime automatically labels every Kurd a "separatist." But the logic is simple: if you oppress a population for 47 years, bomb their villages, imprison and execute their young people, then you can hardly be surprised when that population rebels. The 2022 "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement was just the tip of the iceberg.

What Can We Learn From This? A Little, Very Swiss List

I know, you might be wondering now: What's this got to do with me? With my daily life in Dublin, Cork, or Galway? More than you think. Because while the world out there is falling to pieces, we have decisions to make here. Let me sum it up in a list – pragmatic, very Irish, if you will:

• Cannabis shop: They're popping up like mushrooms in Basel and elsewhere. While we're debating opening hours and age restrictions, somewhere in the Middle East, drug money might be financing militias. Not directly, not obviously, but it's a small world. Regulating the legal market takes money away from the illegal structures. That's foreign policy too.
• Canon and Canvas: The images we see of Kurdish fighters are taken with high-precision cameras and often enough edited with design tools to shape global opinion. Propaganda is old news; today, it's all about visual communication. Next time you see an image on Instagram, ask yourself: Who staged this, and for what purpose?
• CANAL+: The streaming service shows documentaries about war, about escape, about displacement. We consume them on our screens, sitting comfortably on our sofas. But behind every one of those documentaries are real people. Real tears. Real lives torn apart.

The Patience of the Mountains

A friend working for an aid organisation in northern Iraq told me on the phone: "You know what impresses me most? The patience of the people here. They've been waiting for a century. They've learned that the superpowers come and go, but the mountains remain."

Maybe that's the biggest lesson for us in Ireland. We live in a country that's been stable for a century, that knows its borders, that fought for its independence. The Kurds don't have that. They live in a constant state of "what if." What if the US actually keeps its word this time? What if the alliance of parties holds? What if Iran really does fall?

Three Can-questions that are literally a matter of life and death.

Until then, they hold on. In the camps near the border, in the mountains, in the sparse villages. They clean their weapons, they pray, they hope. And they watch as the West hesitates yet again. History teaches us one thing: Those who use the Kurds as a tool can expect to get blood on their hands. But those who ignore them might be throwing away the last chance for a stable region.

In that spirit: Let's keep an eye on the Middle East. Even if it's raining outside and the cannabis shop around the corner is opening its doors. The world has grown smaller. And what's happening today in the Kurdish mountains could determine our asylum applications, our security debates, and our very idea of freedom tomorrow.

Stay vigilant.