When growing up in a small town, close to the Iraqi border in the Kurdish part of Iran, we were well aware of presence of millions of Iraqi Kurds across the border in neighbouring Iraq. These Iraqis were people who looked like us and spoke a dialogue little different than our Kurdish dialogue, we were told, but were separated from us by border police on both sides, the ongoing political tension between the Iraqi and Iranian governments and the politics of the Cold War.
On summer nights, we would sit on the flat roofs of our houses to catch a breeze, chat and munch on sour cherries and apricot kept cold on ice. We would lay on our backs and count the stars, so close you could close your eyes and feel their weights on your eyelids. We would nervously keep an eye on the sky toward Iraq too. Some nights, the stillness of the night would be broken by the angry sounds of canons and the sky would lit up with the artillery fire of the Iraqi army targeting the Iraqi Kurdish villages and towns. The military campaign carried out decades ago by Saddam Hussein's regime was designed to displace the Kurdish population from their lands to make possible the Arabization of the Iraqi Kurdistan. It was successful in  destroying hundreds of Kurdish villages and it did result in the permanent disappearance of local Kurdish communities.
With the sky mirroring the tragedy of burnt villages, the cool breeze of  those summer nights of my childhood years smelled of death and sorrow. Even now, I still feel the sting of salted tears on my cheeks being dried off by the sandy breeze blown from the flat, dry desert of Iraq.

Our vulnerability as Kurds in Iran and the possibility of facing the same fate as was faced by our people across the border was not lost on our elders. As we watched with terror the black night sky being brightened by  fires of Kurdish farms and homes, our elders cursed under their breaths  but continued playing fierce games of backgammon, defeating imaginary enemies  in a game that was invented in ancient land of Persia centuries ago.
Kurds, whether in living in Iran, Iraq or elsewhere, live in fear. As  members of a minority, in some cases unrecognized and with little or no legal protection, Kurds struggle for survival in a world that makes no room for the weak and unprotected.
As a child, I would hear my mother telling us the Kurdish mothers had to have many sons, as only a few would survive the frequent uprisings, the imprisonments and the exile. Most families would have a son or a daughter in prison or killed by the government. Little did my mother know that I, her favourite son, would too escape my homeland in fear in order to survive the  harsh reality of being a Kurd in a cruel time and place.
The misfortune of being born a Kurd is a tale written in blood of innocents and universal language of suffering. The troubled history of Kurds is filled with betrayal on hands of friends and foes, and missed historic opportunities to live with dignity.

Such historic opportunity for Kurds to become free seems to be in reach of Kurds, once again, this time in Iraq.  The U.S. war in Iraq that I opposed on moral grounds for the untold suffering that it brings could ironically give Kurds what wars mostly fail to bring; peace and prosperity. Or it could be a false hope, as the needle of Kurdish history is getting threaded with yet another promise on part of a western power with a poor record of delivery. Soon after the invasion, the joy in witnessing the fall of a tyrant in Baghdad was eroded by doubts, fear and a rise in violence. Today, most Iraqis dislike the foreign occupation as much as the tyranny that the invasion was to end.
To the world's dismay and to humanity's shame, suicide bombing, political assassination and murder of innocent civilians has become part of the daily life in Iraq.  Interestingly, American soldiers were welcomed by the Kurds. In the new and more violent Iraq, the American forces feel safest in the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Sadly, in the same Iraq, the Kurds feel anything but safe these days. Their political gamble to reach out to the Americans at the cost of making their Iraqi neighbours unhappy is yet to pay off. Before the invasion the Kurds in northern Iraq, thanks to the air protection provided by the Americans and the British, were practicing home grown democracy, enjoying, for the first time in centuries, a life of dignity and free of oppression. In their safe enclave in Northern Iraq called the "no-fly zone," Kurds made history by establishing a working democracy in the troubled region.
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With Americans bent to invade Iraq, however, the Kurds had no choice but to gamble their safe heaven of self-determination for cooperation with the American and the British invading forces to topple a dictator responsible for murder of great many Kurds. The Kurds in Iraq, rightly or not, saw an historic opportunity to side with the Americans in return for a guaranteed better future. After all, the saying that "the enemy of my enemy is my  friend" was coined in the Middle East.  The reality of today's chaotic Iraq, however, offers little hope for  Kurds. Increasingly, the Kurds, mostly because of their cooperation with the  Americans, are being targeted by those opposed to the occupation.  The existence of secular Kurds is threatened both by a rise in the new  religious fundamentalism in Iraq and by the intolerance of the neighbouring Turkish government to see free Kurds in next-door Iraq.  However naïve and unrealistic it was for Americans to establish a  pluralistic democracy in a fractured society such as Iraq, a partnership  based on mutual respect among the Iraqi Shi'ite, Sunnis and Kurds would  have benefited Kurds greatly.
The willingness of the Arab Shi'i'te and Sunnis  to make room for Kurdish aspiration, were it to happen, could be the Kurds'  reward for their support of the invasion.  Alas, these days, the majority Shi'ite's powerful mullahs and the Turkish  government - whose voices U.S. officials seem to hear most - oppose giving  Kurds a meaningful role in the Iraq of tomorrow.  The Kurds' political future might rest more on the goodwill of the  Shi'i'tte mullahs and the Sunni Sheikhs than the American occupiers. The nightmare  for the Kurds is if any of the these scenarios happen:
Americans leave, voluntarily or not, and give up on a so-called "democracy" in Iraq, placing a dictator incharge who would continue the old policy of Saddam's regime. Kurds are denied a role in the government after an election that the Sh'i'te majority could easily win. The Sh'i'te decide to punish the Kurds for their support of Americans. And still worse, the possibility of a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq to occupy Kurdistan, to access oil in the Kurdish part of Iraq while engaged in military actions targeting Kurds in the region.

It seems that even with Americans present in Iraq, the holy dream of  Kurds there to live unmolested and free is still mixed with dangerous  possibilities. The Turks, Iranians and Arabs in Iraq and Syria, all with their  indigenous Kurdish populations, might disagree on most things but they share a neighbourhood taste for killing Kurds. But the crime committed against defenceless Kurds by the Turkish, Syrians, Iraqi and Iranian governments,  present and past, is only one part of a mostly untold story of suffering  of this ancient people.  The missing part is how the western powers have and continue to support  the oppression of Kurds one way or another. Dig deep into the history of Kurds  and you see traces of criminal behaviour of Western governments, including  Americans, toward Kurds.  If there were ever to be a court of law to charge those guilty of  genocide involving Kurds, culturally and physically both, the front rows of the  courtroom would be reserved for the puppet governments of past and present  in Turkey, Iran and Iraq - sharing the spot with few western governments  that supported and financed their criminal activities.
But the courtroom's back seats would surely be reserved for some Kurds  themselves. Indeed, the betrayal of the Kurds has happened with the  cooperation of some Kurdish political leaders.  Now learning from mistakes of past, the Kurdish leadership could change  the face of Kurdish struggle by regionalizing the struggle and by speaking  with one voice. The first step for the Kurdish groups, as demonstrated  successfully in Iraq by the two Kurdish factions working with Americans,  is to seek unity rather than factionalism.  A cohesive movement based on non-violent means could benefit Kurds more  than anyone. Reaching out to a larger international audience, to articulate the  aspiration of this large minority, could make the difference between  survival and extinction.  The U.S., in turn, could learn from the European Union in its insistence  on improvement in treatment of Kurds by Turkish government before considering  Turkey's application to join the union. A universal standard for protection  of minorities, including Kurds everywhere, created and implemented by the  international community, would offer needed protection.

WHO ARE THE KURDS?
Kurds, the First People to land in the region of the Middle East 4,000 years ago, are a distinctively different ethnic group than their neighbours in the Middle East, the Persians/Iranians (in Iran), Arabs (in Iraq and Syria) and Turks (in Turkey). Kurds, mostly Sunni Muslims, differ from the others in the Middle East in heritage, culture and language. The Kurds probably descended from tindo-European tribes who settled in today's Iran, most likely in the middle of the second millennium BCE. Lore claims the Prophet Abraham's wife Sarah was a Kurd, a native of Harran. If true, this validates Kurdish identity within the mainstream of monotheism, thus offering Kurds some protection in the religiously charged Middle East. Mostly good farmers and warriors, Kurds are known for their hospitality and kindness to strangers. They, too, are known for turning against each other on encouragement of their enemies. Kurdistan, which covers parts of (see map) Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria has been populated by Kurds for centuries. The largest minority without a homeland, there are 25-30 million Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and in Armenia/Azerbaijan. Today's Kurds, though united by their yearning for freedom from tyranny of their masters, are divided by their political ideology, necessities of geography and aspirations. While some desire self-determination within federal system, others demand total independence. As victims of atrocities, Kurds can be distrustful of others.

The fact that the disputed areas which are claimed by Kurds and populated by them are rich in oil and water resources is not lost on leaders in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, who might fear the emergence of an independent, oil-rich and democratically minded Kurdish country in the region. And Kurds seem to be in the way of Turks, Persians and Arabs who have their own national and religious aspirations. The misery of the Kurds had begun by the end of World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the western powers that caused the redrawing of the boundaries of Middle East with new nation-states being created out of tribes of different aspirations. With Kurds becoming outnumbered in different countries, the loss of access to traditional trade centers and new restrictions to moving around as nomads cost Kurds power, prosperity and identity. Soon even being a Kurd and speaking Kurdish would become a crime. The collective memory of the Kurds is stained by the failure of the Treaty of Sevres. In 1920, the treaty, which created the modern states of Iraq, Syria and Kuwait, was to have included a Kurdish homeland. When U.S.President Woodrow Wilson, as part of his Fourteen Points for World Peace, affirmed the right of Kurds to independence, the Kurds believed their misery could end soon.

During the Cold War, the Kurds, too, were forced to take sides. In Iran, the uprising of Iranian Kurds that led to the establishment of the Republic of Mahabad was short-lived as the Russians decided to stop their promised support when the CIA-backed Shah of Iran crushed the uprising. In Iraq, Americans asked the Shah of Iran to finance and arm Iraqi Kurds fighting the Iraqi regime. Later, the Shah stopped the support, resulting in the massacre of thousands of Kurds. By the end of the Gulf War, the first President Bush asked the Iraqi Kurds to rise against Saddam. Saddam crushed the uprising and with no help from Bush administration. Kurds began a mass exodus for the mountains. Despite this history of broken promises, the Kurds in Iraq are still hopeful that this time the Americans will keep their promises.
 

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