“We have no friends but the mountains”.
So say the disappointed Kurds who, for almost a century now, were hoping for a land they can call their own.
Said to be around 40 million strong, they are from the rough geographic region currently spread in the countries of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia, and also in the diaspora.
The blurb on a book I have with me, titled ‘No Friends but the Mountains – The Tragic History of the Kurds’, says: “…split between five countries and welcome in none, constantly caught up in regional rivalries, repeatedly spurred on to rebellion, and then abandoned by the Great Powers, for decades the Kurds have known little but disaster….”
But now, with the increased role of Kurds in the recent geo-political turbulence of Syria and Iraq – particularly, of their Peshmerga, the military forces of Iraqi Kurdistan - is there hope, once again?
Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region in the northern Iraq, with capital city Erbil, has its own President. It also has its MPs sitting in Iraq’s Parliament.
With the very powerful and strategic role Masoud Barzani, its current President, is now playing, I was not surprised that he was fourth in TIME magazine’s the short-list for Person of the Year 2014.
In June 2014, according to TIME, “After Iraqi forces fled the lightening advance of ISIS forces, Barzani dispatched fighters to capture Kirkuk, the oil-rich city claimed by both Kurds and Sunni Arabs”.
He took control of Kirkuk and stopped sending oil south! And he started distributing it abroad.
But with US troops coming down to fight ISIS, alongside his Peshmerga, he was under pressure – from US and from his own region’s bankers – to temporarily rejoin Iraq.
Probably disappointed, he signed a pact on 2 December 2014 to send oil to Baghdad instead of aboard.
It pacified the new Iraqi government. But the disputes are still not over yet.
Yesterday, on 15 January, Asharq Al-Awsat, reported that, “A political delegation from the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq will meet with the central Baghdad government “soon” in order resolve a number of disputes between both sides”.
Though the ‘soon’ is unclear, and though the ‘disputes’ they will discuss are clear, what is clear is this. That they are not happy.
In Iraq, even during the Baath Party administration of 1970s and 1980s, this region was called the "Kurdish Autonomous Region”.
If we look back a little more we can see that the hopes of a "Kurdistan" were very high after the First World War. With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies had even made a provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.
But within three years, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey, and a new 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was signed. It left Kurds once again with a minority status in their respective countries.
“Kurds are the largest stateless minority in the world”, says an article in the Foreign Policy Journal of April 2011.
Well, there cannot be any mirages in mountains. But the dream of Kurdistan seems as elusive as the mirage to these people.
Maybe they are right in saying, “We have no friends but the mountains.”
So say the disappointed Kurds who, for almost a century now, were hoping for a land they can call their own.
Said to be around 40 million strong, they are from the rough geographic region currently spread in the countries of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Armenia, and also in the diaspora.
The blurb on a book I have with me, titled ‘No Friends but the Mountains – The Tragic History of the Kurds’, says: “…split between five countries and welcome in none, constantly caught up in regional rivalries, repeatedly spurred on to rebellion, and then abandoned by the Great Powers, for decades the Kurds have known little but disaster….”
But now, with the increased role of Kurds in the recent geo-political turbulence of Syria and Iraq – particularly, of their Peshmerga, the military forces of Iraqi Kurdistan - is there hope, once again?
Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region in the northern Iraq, with capital city Erbil, has its own President. It also has its MPs sitting in Iraq’s Parliament.
With the very powerful and strategic role Masoud Barzani, its current President, is now playing, I was not surprised that he was fourth in TIME magazine’s the short-list for Person of the Year 2014.
In June 2014, according to TIME, “After Iraqi forces fled the lightening advance of ISIS forces, Barzani dispatched fighters to capture Kirkuk, the oil-rich city claimed by both Kurds and Sunni Arabs”.
He took control of Kirkuk and stopped sending oil south! And he started distributing it abroad.
But with US troops coming down to fight ISIS, alongside his Peshmerga, he was under pressure – from US and from his own region’s bankers – to temporarily rejoin Iraq.
Probably disappointed, he signed a pact on 2 December 2014 to send oil to Baghdad instead of aboard.
It pacified the new Iraqi government. But the disputes are still not over yet.
Yesterday, on 15 January, Asharq Al-Awsat, reported that, “A political delegation from the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq will meet with the central Baghdad government “soon” in order resolve a number of disputes between both sides”.
Though the ‘soon’ is unclear, and though the ‘disputes’ they will discuss are clear, what is clear is this. That they are not happy.
In Iraq, even during the Baath Party administration of 1970s and 1980s, this region was called the "Kurdish Autonomous Region”.
If we look back a little more we can see that the hopes of a "Kurdistan" were very high after the First World War. With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies had even made a provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.
But within three years, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey, and a new 1923 Treaty of Lausanne was signed. It left Kurds once again with a minority status in their respective countries.
“Kurds are the largest stateless minority in the world”, says an article in the Foreign Policy Journal of April 2011.
Well, there cannot be any mirages in mountains. But the dream of Kurdistan seems as elusive as the mirage to these people.
Maybe they are right in saying, “We have no friends but the mountains.”
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