This is an article I wrote way back that was published in a Washington DC student news paper called- The Washington Spark.
The Kurdish Plight Edited by Tarek Maassarani & Holly Smith
By Yogev Yehros
Foreigners on their own land
Indigenous to their land, there is no real
"beginning" to Kurdish history. The
Kurdish culture and people, as they are
today, are the end outcome of thousands
of years of continuous internal adaptation
and assimilation with the different peoples
introduced sporadically into their land.
They speak a language closely related to
Persian and adhere largely to the Sunni
Muslim faith. Genetically, the 25-30 million
living Kurds are the descendants of all
those who ever came to settle in Kurdistan
- "the land of Kurds" - and yet not any
one of them alone.
In the absence of any internationally
observed borders, the extent of the areas
in which Kurds constitute a majority is a
source of much controversy and dispute.
Neighboring ethnic groups consistently
Kurdish domains, whereas the Kurds tend
to exaggerate them.
Nonetheless, it is safe to say that
Kurdistan borders the territories
of the three major ethnic groups of
the Middle East: the Arabs to the south,
Turks to the north and Persians to the
east.
According to the post-WWI Treaty of
S'evres, which created the modern states
of Iraq, Syria, and Kuwait from the ruins
of the now-fallen Ottoman Ataturk of
Turkey, the heads of Iraq and Iran, and all
leaders since have vigorously rejected the
demands of Kurdish nationalism. As borders
crisscrossed over their pastoral lands,
the Kurds were forced to live as minorities
and to abandon their traditional nomadic
way of life. About half found themselves
in southeastern Turkey, oppressed by a
nationalist government in Ankara; the rest
minorities over Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
Many Kurds longed for complete independence;
however, the controlling governments
were highly possessive of their
territorial holdings in part because the
mountainous region of Kurdistan is
strategic, oil-rich, and fertile ground.
Mostof the area extending from the Zagros
mountain range to the Mediterranean
known as the "Fertile Crescent" falls within
Kurdistan. Both Syria and Iraq's life-giving
rivers originate in the plateaus of
Kurdistan. Furthermore, most of Iraq,
Iran, Syria, and Turkey's oil resources are
located in the Kurdish regions.
Uprisings
"The Kurds are not a minority, but a
nation; the government in Ankara is the
government of the Turks as well as of the
Kurds". Despite this conciliatory proclamation
by the Turkish representative at the
signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey
soon banned the Kurdish language, traditional
dress, local schools, and other
organizations, denying their identities,
even as a minority. This led to uprisings
and armed militias that have persisted in
Southern Turkey throughout the century
and were often met with an iron hand.
Kurdish revolts elsewhere met a similar
fate. In Iraq, the greatest Kurdish resistance
campaign began in 1961, lead by
Mustafa Barzani, and continued until the
Kurds were falsely promised autonomy by
the Ba'athists in 1970. During the 1980s
Iran-Iraq War, the Iranian government
supported the Iraqi Kurds, while the U.S.
supplied the Ba'athists with the toxins
used to kill 5,000 of them in Hallabja and
crush their resistance.
In the 90s, it was the U.S. that encouraged Iraqi Kurds to
rise up against Hussein's despotism,
though it did just as little to protect them
from Saddam's in-discriminate air strikes
as it had done to prevent their gassing just
a decade before.
In response to the many atrocities of
the 1980s and early 90s, the international
community began to take notice of the
Kurdish plight. In 1991, the Security
Council adopted Resolution 688, the first
UN document ever to mention the Kurds
and their basic human and minority rights.
Starting in the 20s and 30s, the Kurdish
resistance spawned numerous nationalist
movements and political parties throughout
dismembered Kurdistan, however factional
hostilities between these groups
stood in the way of a united Kurdish
voice. The most prominent groups
included the Kurdish Democratic Party
(KDP) - later KDP-PL, the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and more
recently the Kurdistan Worker's Party
(PKK) in Turkey.
Hope and despair
After the Hallabja massacre, the PUK
and KDP-PL decided to unite and form
the Iraqi Kurdistan Front (IKF). A
Kurdish coalition government was formed
in July 1992, following the Allied victory in
Iraq and the establishment of a northern
"No fly zone."
Though fractured by violence
a few years later, the two parties have
since brokered a power-sharing agreement
and formed a political alliance, the United
Kurdistan Coalition, which captured a
quarter of the Iraqi vote in the January 30
elections
.
While the Kurds in Iraq enjoy stability
and political representation in the new
Iraqi federal government, in Turkey
improving minority rights and recognition
- prerequisites to Turkish admission into
the European Union - have not quelled the
guerilla insurgency and its nationalist supporters
nor lifted the region out of poverty.
Emblematic of both the idealism and
animosities of the Kurdish struggle, the
PKK has consistently rejected the aims of
its Iraqi counterparts for local self-government
within a federal Iraq, believing that
any independent Kurdish state should be a
united homeland for all Kurds.
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