Book Reviews
THE KURDS: A People in Search of Their Homeland

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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