THE
INDIANAPOLIS STAR
April
15 , 2006
The Kurds: A People in Search of Their
Homeland
by
John Fink
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.
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.
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