WHO ARE THE KURDS?

KURDS, THE FIRST people to land in the region of the Middle East 4,000 years ago, are a 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 heritage, culture and language.

THE KURDS PROBABLY descended from indo-European tribes who settled in today's Iran, most likely in the middle of the second millennium. 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.

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On summer nights, we would sit on the flat roofs of our houses to catch a breeze, chat and munch on sour cherries and apricots kept cold on ice. We would lie 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 cannons and the sky would light 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 Kurdish communities.

With the sky mirroring the tragedy of burnt villages, the cool breeze of those summer nights of my childhood 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. Kurds, whether 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 escape my homeland in fear in order to survive the harsh reality of being a Kurd in a cruel time and place.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

The misfortune of being born a Kurd is a tale written in the blood of innocents and universal language of suffering. The troubled history of Kurds is filled with betrayal at the 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 threaded with yet another promise on the 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 neighbors unhappy has 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 homegrown 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.

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 the 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.

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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'ite 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'ite mullahs and the Sunni Sheikhs than the American occupiers. The nightmare for the Kurds is if any of these scenarios happen:

Americans leave, voluntarily or not, and give up on a so-called "democracy" in Iraq, placing a dictator in charge who would continue the old policy of Saddam's regime.

Kurds are denied a role in the government after an election that the Shi'ite majority could easily win. The Shi'ite 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.

WESTERN FAILURES

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 a 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 the 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 United States, in turn, could learn from the European Union in its insistence on improvement in the treatment of Kurds by the 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.

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