The Kurds

Kurds in History Introductory Notes The Kurds are ancient Indo-European people that inhabited a mountainous region known as Kurdistan in the Middle East more than four thousand years ago. As a stateless nation, Kurds, were of little interest to the West and Western journalists, writers and researchers except a few linguists, anthropologists and historians. However, the name Kurds and Kurdistan suddenly cropped up in the Western Mass Media when the Allied UN Army liberated Kuwait from Iraqi invasion in 1991. It was then that the long ignored Kurds began to appear in the daily newspapers of the democratic world. Kurdistan, homeland of the Kurds, covers 409,000 square kilometres. It is larger than the combined areas of England, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Denmark (Qasimlu 1970, p.12). The Taurus and Zagros chains of mountains form its backbone, and it stretches to the Mesopotamian plains in the south. In the north and northwest, it runs up to the steppes and plateaus of Armenian Anatolia. In 1991 Western journalists, writers and politicians became interested in the history of Kurds and published a number of studies in Europe and the United States about Kurdish political, economic and cultural life. Linguistically, Kurds speak an Indo-European language, a branch of the Indo-Iranian family of languages. It is a written language and has a long history of literature, particularly in poetry. However, the Kurdish language, is beset by having no unified standard written language, due to having no political entity of their own. Kurdish has several dialects: Sorani, Kurmanji, Fayli and Zazayi, in addition to a number of locally spoken dialects. The Sorani dialect is used in the North East of Iraqi and in North West Iran. Sorani is well developed and used in Iraqi Kurdistan at all educational levels as well as in the mass media of broadcasting and television programmes. It is also used in publications. The Sorani dialect uses a modified Arabic alphabet for writing. The Kurmanji dialect is used by Kurds in Turkey and Syria, and in certain parts of Iraq and Iran. The Kurmanji dialect is used for writing and in schools in Iraq. Like the Sorani dialect, Kurnanji is used in the mass media and in publishing books, newspapers, and magazines. Kurds in Turkey and Syria speak Kurmanji. Nowadays, Kurdish in both Sorani and Kurmanji dialects is used over radio, television, and satellites, especially in Iraqi Kurdistan, Europe, and the United States. Kurds are Sunni Moslems, but some of the Kurds in Iran and Iraq are Shi’aits. A few Kurds are Christians, Jews, and Yazidis. Kurdish Jews lived in relative harmony in many places in Iraqi Kurdistan before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, when almost all of them went to Israel. Kurds claim to be descendents of the Medes, though a number of historians do not share this belief. They also attest to be descendents of the “Karduchi, Kardu and Gutu” mentioned by the Greek writer, Xenophon, in his Anabasis, wherein he related the epic of the retreat of the ten thousand Greek soldiers in 401 B.C. Xenophon tells of the hardships they faced in fighting the Karduchi (Randal 1997, p.21). In the 16th century, Kurdistan was battlefield for recurrent wars between the Sunni Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Shi’ait Empire of Iran. The war ended with the victory of the Ottoman Empire at the battle of Childeran in 1514 wjth the support of Sunni Kurds tribes. The fighting of the two empires ended with signing the treaty of Zuhab in 1639 slicing Kurdistan into two parts: one under the domination of Iran and the other under the Ottoman Empire. The delineated borderline remained unchanged until the present time. KURDISTAN OF IRAQ Kurdistan of Iraq, known as ‘Southern Kurdistan’, occupies the mountainous north part of modern day Iraq. It covers an area of 72,000 square kilometres and has a population of six millions. Religously, the majority are Sunni Muslims, but there are also Christians and Yazidis. Until the end of World War I, 1918, Kurdistan of Iraq was a colony of the Ottoman Empire. But when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, the victorious Allied Powers, Britain, France and Russia, stripped all the Middle Eastern colonies of the Ottoman Empire and divided them among them among themselves in accordance to Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Present day Iraq became a mandate of Britain according to the decision of the League of Nations. Mosul Vilayet and British Policy Britain occupied Mosul Vilayet, (where Kurds are predominant) in October 1918, four days after World War I hostilities ended. Thereafter, it kept control of the Vilayet and its oil deposits. Kurds welcomed Britain and their relief operation against the famine in the area. On 1 December 1918, Britain gathered sixty Kurdish chiefs, including Sheikh Mahmoud, the most authoritative leader in the city of Sulaimania to sign an agreement including the following three ambiguous and contradictory statements ( see McDowall 1997, p.152 for more information): 1. That British intention was ‘the liberation of Eastern people, … and grant of assistance to them in the establishment of their Independence’; 2. That ‘the sixty chiefs, as representatives of the people of Kurdistan have asked His British Majesty’s Government to accept them under British protection and to attach them to Iraq’; 3. That ‘if His British Majesty’s Government extends its assistance and protection to them, they undertake to accept His British Majesty’s orders and advice’. The agreement contains nothing but contradictions and false claims that Kurds leaders have ‘agreed to and accepted’. Reading this apocryphal agreement, one immediately realizes that the British political officers in Kurdistan intended to deceive the naive Kurdish chiefs. Certainly those who signed the agreement did not understand what was written in it since few Kurds could speak, read or write English. They trusted the British, who promised them independence in the first clause of the agreement, but in the second clause they (the sixty chiefs) agree to be annexed to Iraq. The third clause asserts that Kurds undertake to abide by anything Britain says and does. Apparently, the agreement was no more than a set of rules set down by Britain’s political officers for the Kurds to accept without argument what the British political officers suggest although they did not understand what they mean. However, the Kurds leaders were quite pleased to learn that the Ottoman Government in Istanbul signed a treaty with the Allied Powers which included clauses for an independent Kurdish state. The Treaty of Sevres On 10 August 1920, the Ottoman Government in Istanbul signed the Treaty of Sèvres with the Allied Powers whereby Non-Turkish colonies would be stripped off the Ottoman Empire, and divided amongst the Allied Powers. Mosul Vilayet was not decided by the League of Nations while the Sykes-Picot agreement had earlier set the boundaries of Iraq. Some writers suggested that “National Communities like Kurds were intended to be exploited in local wars by world powers; but there was never any real intent to secure a homeland for them” (Horsman and Marshall 1995, p.32). Modern States of Iraq and Syria became independent in the inter-war years, although they were hardly nations-in-waiting before then. Britain’s political officers in Baghdad suggested in October 1918 to annex Mosul Vilayet to Mesopotamia’s political and economic future. Britain was thereore planning from the very beginning of occupying Iraq to take control of Mosul Vilayet and try to take it from France (McDowall 1996, p.117).