generalspeaking

Kurdistan

The Kurds have been traditionally marginalized in Arab-majority countries, seen as a threat to stability through their long struggle for national identity to culminate in a state of their own.  When the colonial powers of Britain and France, embroiled in the Middle East in the early days of oil discoveries finally decided to withdraw, leaving only their industrial-extraction interests, they re-drew the map of the Middle East to benefit those whose interests mirrored their own.

Much as was done in Africa and in India with the partition of Pakistan, then Bangladesh.  After the initial furor, the unfortunate and foreseeable ethnic and religious strife, the newly-created states settled down for posterity.  While Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey had defined borders, greater Kurdistan and its ethnic Kurd population was trapped within those borders.  The great Muslim warrior Saladin, celebrated as a hero in Arab mythology was a Kurd, yet the Kurds continue to be marginalized.
Even during the Ottoman Empire under Turkish hegemony, the Kurds revolted time and again resorting to any means possible to attempt to come away with their own sovereign territory.  Within the new Iraq with the downfall of Saddam Hussein and the violent dissonance between Sunni and Shia Muslims, the Kurdish population has been able to achieve a remarkable degree of autonomy, building for themselves the infrastructure of an independent state.

Their presence so close to Turkey where the PKK independent movement recognized as a terrorist group because of their violent tactics, is a source of concern to Turkey.  Unsurprisingly, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey have no wish to turn part of their geography over to the Kurds for their long-desired Kurdistan.  Not only because those countries cling to their territory but because within that contested territory lies most of the natural resources that are of greatest value in today's world; oil.

In Syria the Kurds make up 10% of the total population.  They speak mostly Kurmanji, and were forbidden to speak their own language, denied cultural expression, and citizenship on the pretext that they were not truly Syrians.  Because of the insurrection by the Sunni majority Syrians against the minority ruling Shia Alawites of President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey, incensed at the bloodshed and supporting the Syrian uprising, also fears the influence of the Syrian Kurds on Turkish Kurds.

Kurdistan, the inherited land of the Kurds, represents a wide geographical span covering south-eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and the northernmost parts of Syria representing altogether about 30 million Kurds.  As such the Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a defined and sovereign land of their own.  And, if those four Arab countries have anything to do with it - and they do - despite the efforts of the PKK the Kurds will never attain their own land.

Self-rule represents the yearning of a people to represent themselves to enable them to live as a stable ethnic group with a shared inheritance, history and culture.  They have been deprived of their basic cultural rights, resented by Arabs, and have struggled to make an impact on the world's consciousness of the appropriateness of their aspirations.  For some peculiar reason, the world remains unaware and disinterested.

Labels: Heritage, Human Rights, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Traditions, Turkey

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, September 11, 2012