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Iraq and the Kurds have received much discussion on this list
recently. The following few paragraphs from Samantha Power's "Problem from
Hell" provides a little background on the Kurds. While I have absolutely
no sympathy for Saddam Hussein and how he dealt with the Kurds, one can see that
they might have been a bit of a problem.
Ed Weick The Kurds are a stateless people scattered over Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq. Some 25 million Kurds cover an estimated 200,000 square miles. The Kurds are divided by two forms of Islam, five borders, and three Kurdish languages and alphabets. The major powers promised them a state of their own in 1922, but when Turkey refused to ratify the Treaty of Sevres (the same moribund pact that would have required prosecution of Turks for their atrocities against the Armenians), the idea was dropped. Iraqi Kurds staged frequent rebellions throughout the century in the hopes of winning the right to govern themselves. With a restless Shiite community comprising more than half of Iraq’s population, Saddam Hussein was particularly determined to neutralize the Kurds’ demands for autonomy The Kurdish fighters adopted the name peshmerga, or "those who face death." They have tended to face death alone, Western nations that have allied with them have betrayed them whenever a more strategically profitable prospect has emerged. The Kurds thus like to say that they "have no friends but the mountains." U.S. policymakers have long found the Iraqi Kurds an infuriating bunch. The Kurds have been innocent of desiring any harm to the Iraqi people, but like Albanians in Kosovo throughout the 1990s, they were guilty of demanding autonomy for themselves. Haywood Rankin, a Middle East specialist at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, made a point of visiting Kurdish territory several times each year. ‘You have to understand," Rankin says. "The Kurds are a terribly irksome, difficult people. They can’t get along with one another, never mind with anybody else. They are truly impossible, an absolute nightmare to deal with." |
