America's best friend in Iraq: book review 15.4.2006
book review: by John F. Fink | |
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The Kurds :
A People in Search of Their Homeland. By Kevin McKiernan
You won't find Kurdistan on a map. The Kurds, though, have lived in
the Middle East at least since 700 B.C. Today there are 25 to 30
million of them -- about 5 million in Iraq, 14 million in Turkey, 7
million in Iran, 1 million in Syria and 200,000 in Russia.
Wherever they live, they historically have been treated as
second-class citizens. They have been victims of genocide, gassed
and tortured. They would like their own homeland, but it has always
been denied them.
Kevin McKiernan has lived among the Kurds for lengthy periods, often
as the only American journalist. A veteran war correspondent whose
career has taken him to some of the world's most troubled regions,
he has reported for ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. His new book, "The
Kurds," is part history, part journalistic reportage and part
personal memoir.
He undoubtedly is correct that few Americans are aware of Kurdish
history because our media have ignored them. We are aware of them
now, though, because they play a role in the government of Iraq.
Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd.
The book is divided into four parts: a history of the Kurds, their
war against Turkey (yes, they did rebel in the 1990s even if most
Americans were unaware of it), the war in Iraq and the present
situation of the Kurds there.
Perhaps the most fascinating parts, though, concern McKiernan's
adventures while covering the wars in the mountains and cities of
Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan. He was on his own to get stories by
making friends with the Kurdish leaders. He is one of a few
reporters who have interviewed members of al-Qaida, photographed the
militants and lived to write about it. |
The Kurds : A
People in Search of Their Homeland. By Kevin McKiernan
BUY The from Amazon- click here
|
He devotes a chapter to his arrangements for "60 Minutes" to
interview Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1995. This included
sneaking Ocalan into Syria and then to Beirut, where Ed Bradley
interviewed him.
Like nearly everyone else, McKiernan was convinced that Saddam
Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Hussein had, after
all, used them against the Kurds in 1988 when chemical bombs killed
5,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja. McKiernan feared that Hussein
would use them again and was angered that the Kurds were not issued
gas masks after the United States promised to provide them prior to
the invasion of Iraq. He raised the issue with Sens. Joseph Biden
and Chuck Hagel, who visited northern Iraq in December 2002, and
they assured McKiernan that they would raise the issue with the Bush
administration.
A human interest story concerns McKiernan's driver, Karzan Mahmoud,
who was shot 23 times by al-Qaida in an assassination attempt on the
Kurdish prime minister. McKiernan brought him to the United States,
where a friend in a Boston hospital arranged for multiple
operations. Eventually, Karzan joined the staff of the Iraqi Embassy
in Canada.
Today, McKiernan says, the Kurds are "America's best (and perhaps
only) friend in Iraq." They have their independence in all but name.
They may use the Kurdish language, which had been forbidden before.
Kurdish rather than Iraqi flags fly in the three Kurdish provinces.
There is greater prosperity than the Kurds have ever known and
passports of visitors entering northern Iraq are stamped "Iraqi
Kurdistan."
Kurdish politicians proclaim that they are Iraqis first. However,
McKiernan says, "The talk of 'Iraqis first' remains a fiction for
outside consumption, a necessary means to an end." The yearning for
Kurdish independence runs counter to U.S. plans for a unified
country, and any moves toward formalizing independence would risk
the loss of U.S. protection from hostile neighbors like Turkey.
McKiernan says that the Kurds are more estranged from other Iraqis
than they had been before the invasion. Most Kurds, he says, "want
nothing to do with Iraq's Arab majority or the growing anarchy in
the rest of the country."
The Kurds are convinced that they have a homeland and want the rest
of the world to recognize it.
THE KURDS: A PEOPLE IN SEARCH OF THEIR HOMELAND
• Author: Kevin McKiernan
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Price: $18.45 used 10 $
BUY The from Amazon- click here
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