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Sir, Damjan De
Krnjevic-Miskovic and Nikolas Gvosdev, in their
article "Kurds should not let language deepen
divisions" (November 16) describe young Kurds in
semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan not speaking Arabic
as "a disturbing trend". They seem not to be happy
that young Kurds prefer, besides Kurdish, to learn
English instead of Arabic. They forget that Kurds
are not Arabs (or Turks or Iranians), and that they
have been forced for centuries to speak Arabic (or
Turkish and Persian in Turkey and Iran).
They talk about "language separation" as a cause of
"dissolutions of a panoply of other shared
political, social and economic interests". First of
all, Arabic is not a common language between Arabs
and Kurds, which means it is not a matter of
separation at all.
Second, these shared political, social end economic
interests do not exist between Arabs and Kurds. The
artificial union within Iraq is based on force and
mass murders by Saddam Hussein and his predecessors.
The price of this "union" was the lives of thousands
of Kurds. For Kurds this is not a "union" but
subordination to Arabs.
Mr De Krnjevic-Miskovic and Mr Gvosdev's comparison
of the Kurdish issue with the problems in the
Balkans is wrong: Kurds are divided into four
countries and desire to reunite with their families
and language companions and not with their age-old
oppressors. Recently more than 1.7m signatures were
collected in Iraqi Kurdistan from people calling for
a referendum about the future of Kurdistan. This is
the desire of the Kurds to separate from their
occupiers and to unite with other parts of
Kurdistan.
Do the authors want Kurds to become Arabs and learn
the "lingua regionala" Arabic? What about the Kurds
divided into Iran, Turkey and Syria? Should also
they melt in the culture and language of these
countries?
This is not about Iraq only - it is also about
Kurdistan. This is not about language only - it is
also about recognition of a nation and its
participation in the political field. Maybe even
more important, it is about the young Kurds'
rediscovery of their roots. The authors make the
same mistake as Tito and Atatürk did in Yugoslavia
and Turkey, respectively. Do not forget: there are
between 30m and 40m Kurds living in Kurdistan.
Alan Kabki, Almere, The Netherlands
http://news.ft.com
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