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The Supercilious Kurdish leaders
25.2.2011
By Rauf Naqishbendi - ekurd.net |
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February 25, 2011
The wicked do wrong and see no wrong in their doing.
When they are confronted, they attribute such to
unfair provocation by their opposition. They blame
everyone else while they exonerate themselves, as if
they had never done wrong. The subject matter is the
two egregious Kurdish leaders who have been acting
with impunity and behaving kinglike. Ironically,
President Massoud Barzani appeared to his people and
blamed everyone but himself for the demonstration
against his reign. He labeled demonstrators as
trouble makers. The only tool he was acquainted with
was to marshal his armed men and have them shoot
live ammunition through the crowd of peaceful public
demonstrators, gunning down one person and injuring
scores of others.
Mr. Barzani and Mr. Talabani:
I cite the unfortunate experience of my family and
my hometown people, not to solicit attention, but
rather to reflect upon your atrocities and betrayal
of our nation.
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Rauf Naqishbendi |
Obviously, neither you nor Talabani apprehend or
care about the painful tragedies the Kurds have
endured during the period of the armed revolution
you initiated. When revolution failed, you and your
family escaped unharmed, leaving the rest of us to
burden the ensuing consequences. I lived through the
1961 Kurdish revolution. We were all hopeful about
the revolution and its prospect for independent
Kurdistan. Then, Mr. Massoud, in 1966 your father
Mustafa Barzani, sold himself to the Shah of Iran.
Mr. Talabani, you became Bath’s agent. You both
forfeited the Kurdish cause and, instead, you fought
one another.
Halabja and its surrounding landscape turned into a
theatrical battlefield. From the roofs of our houses
we watched daily occurrences of bloody fighting. We
witnessed just about daily delivery of dead young
Kurds for burial. This continued for nearly five
painful years. We realized the pain of these
causalities for they were our community’s losses. It
was a heartless and cruel power struggle with
bloodshed not for the sake of our liberty but for a
fight over leadership. It appeased Kurdish enemies;
they sponsored it while our communities were torn
apart as Kurds were killing each other.
In 1974, Halabja was bombarded with Napalm bombs,
and more than 500 people perished, bodies burned
beyond recognition. Another thousand were crippled
and injured and the town was left ruined. The same
occurred in the town of Kaladeza, where the
university is based, where scores of young students
perished and hundreds were injured. Mr. Massoud, did
your father, Mustafa Barzani visit Halabja or
Kaladeza,www.ekurd.netsurveying
the tragedy for himself and offering condolences to
the victims? We know your father was busy deer
hunting at Haji Homran. But how about you, King
Massoud?
In 1976, Mustafa Barzani abandoned the Kurdish
revolution for the Shah of Iran’s edification. He
and his family were all taken care of, living a
luxurious life provided for by the Shah of Iran in
return for the services they rendered to his regime.
Then, $150 million from the Kurdish revolution was
funneled into Mustafa Barzani’s coffer and treated
as his own. Participants of the revolution returned
home. Saddam made good on his genocide plan: he let
tens of thousands die in prison or bulldozed them
alive.
Mr. Massoud, this is what your father Mustafa
Barzani did. You wrongly inherited what was the
people’s money. Delinquently, you held it as your
legitimate inheritance. Afterward, you kept on
looting nonstop, ravenously, as if the people’s
money wasn’t enough.
Then came the chemical and biological bombing of
Halabja, Saddam’s weapon of mass destruction, upon
my hometown. My father was blinded. My grandfather,
grandmother, aunt and uncle, along with scores of my
other close relatives were among the 5,000 people
who died in the first five minutes of the bombing.
Did either one of you, Mr. Talabani or Mr. Barzani,
visit the survivors of this tragedy when they
wearily trod a desolate journey to arrive in Iran
and be housed in a refugee camp? Did it ever cross
your mind that these victims wanted to hear that
their leaders cared? My family was in that
unfortunate refugee camp in Iran, and my father
conveyed to me that an Iranian minister had
personally visited him while in the camp and prayed
for him, and I was told that many other Iranian high
officials visited them.
Talabani and Barzani never cared for their people,
and they used them as an instrument to entertain
their wealth and power. They have proven to be
uncompassionate, tearless and heartless men, without
the slightest sense of humility. These are the
detestable personal qualities that rationalize the
Kurdish national call to relinquish their power.
Truly they are unfit and improper to serve in any
public office in any capacity.
Speaking of justice, consider the disheartening
story of Kawa Muhammad reported in Hawlati, August
2008. He was a survivor of the 1988 chemical bombing
of Halabja. His entire family has been devastated as
a result. After enduring agonizing experiences in
life, he has been left homeless and sick in
Sulaimaniyah. He sought work as a day laborer to
survive. Police found him sleeping in a street; he
was beaten and jailed—a consequence of what has
become a war against the homeless, instead of a war
against poverty.
In the meantime, consider Mr. Qubad Talabani, who
was an auto mechanic before the American Invasion of
Iraq. Thereafter, he was appointed as Kurdish
ambassador to Washington, with his only obvious
credentials being the son of President Talabani,
without ever having any role in the Kurdish
revolution. In the meantime, it is commonplace in
Kurdistan to hear deplorable stories like that of
Kawa and thousands of abusive stories like that of
Qubad.
Yet, Messrs. Talabani and Barzani don’t understand
why people consider them moral and ethical
abominations. Hopefully, when they are taken to the
court of justice, they won’t be confused when their
wickedness is played back to them, and it should be
as such for the sake of a fair trial. Let us pray it
will happen soon.
Rauf Naqishbendi is a contributing columnist for
Kurdish Websites, ekurd.net and American Chronicle , americanchronicle com and has written
Op/Ed pages for the Los Angeles Times. He has just
completed his memoirs entitled "The Garden Of The
Poets" which reads as a novel depicting his
experience and the subsequent 1988 bombing of his
hometown with chemical and biological weapons by
Saddam Hussein. It is the story of his people's
suffering. Rauf Naqishbendi is a software engineer
in San Francisco Bay Area.
Copyright © 2011 ekurd.net
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