Good Kurds, Bad Kurds Film Reviews

Minneapolis City Pages - Apr. 26, 2000

Good Kurds, Bad Kurds
by Jelana Petrovic

Photojournalist Kevin McKiernan stumbled upon the Kurdish cause nine years ago while reporting on the convoluted aftermath of the Gulf War. The Iraqi Kurds, slyly coaxed by the U.S. government into rebelling against Saddam's forces (and then unexpectedly abandoned), had been dying like flies. McKiernan tracked down the story, but he discovered upon returning to sunny California that no one really wanted to hear about this particular brand of ethnic cleansing.

Yet the story didn't end there.

Instead of repackaging his product to appease the networks, the doggedly persistent McKiernan dug deeperīthis time into the cause of the Turkish Kurds, an invisible minority of 15 million with no rights in an ostensible democracy. Kurdish refugees in southeast Turkey number more than 2 million; the majority have lost their homes following a bestial scorched-earth campaign by the Turkish army. And, yes, you guessed it: The U.S. still doesn't want to hear about it, not least because we sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to their diligent military each year. Good Kurds, Bad Kurds is an education in how Machiavellian U.S. foreign policy really is, and the footage, which includes some embarrassing interviews with State Department robots, is sharply edited and compelling. Don't miss it.


 

 

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