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 in disbelief. Here in Switzerland, we're debating in the local council whether the new cannabis shop in Basel is disturbing the suburban peace, 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 major powers?

We're talking about the Kurds. Yet again. And once more, they find themselves at the centre of a conflict that could reshape the entire region. The headlines are coming thick and fast: the head of US counter-terrorism, Joseph Kent, resigned because he could no longer reconcile 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 same heavy, enduring question, as weighty as the mountains the fighters call home.

A nation divided, like a Canvas draft

Imagine you're designing the image of a nation on Canva. You draw borders, choose colours, add in the people. That's essentially what happened with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne: 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 relentless cruelty of an infinite loop.

Today, 103 years later, they're back in the spotlight. The US and Israel would like 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 brutally crushed while the West looked the other way. And they remember 2026 – just two months ago – when the Trump administration once again threw the Kurds in Syria under the bus.

The saying "The Kurds have no friends but the mountains" isn't just a poetic phrase. It's the bitter reality, earned over generations.

Between Canon and Kalashnikov

I spoke last week with a photographer who'd just returned from the Iraq-Iran border. He showed me pictures taken with a Canon EOS – razor-sharp, almost inappropriately aesthetic for their subject matter. Young fighters from Komala, the reform faction, camping 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 skies 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 backtracked: "The war is complicated enough without dragging the Kurds into it."

For the Kurds, it's déjà vu. They know they're being used as a bargaining chip. That their dreams of autonomy, or even independence, are only important to Washington as long as they serve the purpose of weakening Tehran. A senior Kurdish official summed it up perfectly: "The Kurdish people overwhelmingly reject the regime of the Islamic Republic. But they are also terrified of being let down once again."

A new unity – or just a flash in the pan?

There is a 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 call 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 the initiative. 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 stay in Iran," stresses Razgar Alani, the PDKI representative in London.

Will that message get through in Tehran? Highly unlikely. The regime automatically labels every Kurd a "separatist." But the maths is simple: if you suppress a population for 47 years, bomb their villages, imprison and execute their youth, 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 very Swiss-style list

I know, you might be wondering: What does this have to do with me? With my daily life in Zurich, Bern, or Geneva? More than you think. Because while the world out there is falling apart, we have decisions to make here. Let me break it down in a list – pragmatic, typically Swiss:

• The cannabis shop: They're popping up like mushrooms in Basel and elsewhere. While we debate opening hours and youth protection, 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 illegal structures. That's foreign policy too.
• Canon and Canva: The images we see of Kurdish fighters are captured with high-precision cameras and often 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, flight, displacement. We consume them on our screens, comfortably seated on our sofas. But behind every one of those documentaries are real people. Real tears. Real lives destroyed.

The patience of the mountains

A friend working for an aid agency 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 major powers come and go, but the mountains remain."

Perhaps that's the biggest lesson for us in Switzerland. We live in a country that's been stable for centuries, that's never been conquered, that knows its borders. The Kurds don't have that. They live in a constant state of "what if." What if the US actually follows through this time? What if the party alliance holds? What if Iran really does fall?

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

Until then, they hold on. In the camps along the border, in the mountains, in the sparse villages. They clean their weapons, they pray, they hope. And they watch as the West hesitates once more. History teaches us one thing: Those who use the Kurds as a tool must be prepared for bloody hands. But those who ignore them might be throwing away the last chance for a stable region.

With that in mind: let's keep our eyes on the Middle East. Even if it's raining in Basel right now and the cannabis shop around the corner is opening. The world has grown smaller. And what's happening today in the Kurdish mountains could shape our asylum applications, our security debates, and our very idea of freedom tomorrow.

Stay vigilant.