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PRESS RELEASE
Kurdish Quest for Independence and Prospects for Statehood

The Kurdish National Congress of North America concluded its 18th annual conference on Sunday March 19th. The focus of this year's conference was to encourage in-depth discussions on all four parts of Kurdistan and to bring political leaders, intellectuals and independent activists from East, West, North and South together. As in the past 17 years, the 18th Annual Conference got under way with the raising of the Kurdish flag. Dr. Wafa Khorsheed welcomed the attendees on Friday by briefly mentioning the last year's achievements and encouraged everyone to fully participate in the three day events.

Mr. Shwan Karim, KNC board member and chair of the Youth Committee introduced the first panel by listing some of the activities of The Kurdish American Youth Organization (KAYO), a KNC affiliate, and pointed out the importance of youth in the future of our nation. Subjects ranged from runaway youth and honor killings to inter-racial and arranged marriages. Panel members included Ms. Aryan Akrayi, Ms. Sheinei Saleem, Mr. Nezar Ahmed Tovi, Mr. Ara Alan and Mr. Butan Amedi. Much emphasis was given to young Kurdish women's rights and the value of communication between parents and their children who have been raised outside Kurdistan. Goran Sadjadi, the president of KAYO also spoke of the organization's web site and the services they provide including a place for youth to publish their own articles and opinions.

Several guest speakers followed with a diverse set of topics. Dr. Jaques Wilson of Kurdish Human Rights Watch (KHRW) listed many projects in Southern Kurdistan that are in process and answered questions on status and focus of these projects. Dr. Kamal Artin highlighted the importance of unity to achieve independence, which has been described by some leaders as wishful thinking. He argued wishful thinking of other oppressed nations as well as noble ideas of anti slavery movement, woman's rights activists, and many others who have made an improvement in people's lives have come true. He differentiated between ideas and behaviors that serve humanity and those that are against it. He concluded that Kurdish dream of independence is just a matter of time and achievable with unity among Kurds and support from international community, since it is a noble and humanistic idea or "wishful thinking". Dr. Kirmanj Gundi focused his talk on Northern Kurdistan and mentioned the legacy and birth of the Turkish state that resulted in banning of Kurdish culture as well as denial of its existence and attempts to obliterate the Kurdish identity. He followed by saying that: "In the 1980s, our people saw another terminology added to describe their identity, the so-called Good Kurds, Bad Kurds". He followed by discussing the role of the United States' government, for coining the term "Good Kurds" for the Kurds in Iraq, who assisted the U.S. in its war to remove Saddam Hussein's regime. And that: "The term "Bad Kurds" the U.S. has graciously applied to describe our brethren in Turkey". Mr. Bakhtyar Zuhdi, stressed that Kurdish independence can only be secured by economic independency. He reminded us that, our rural areas should be revitalized and become more productive and that our light industries need to grow to a level of providing sustainability in case economic blockade is imposed on an independent Kurdistan. He believes that we are a long time away from economic independency in Southern Kurdistan.

Chairman of the 18th Annual KNC Conference, Mr. Thomas Ver Ploeg opened the Saturday sessions by welcoming attendees and guests and touching on the current events of Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Kurdistan. He stated that these are times of great change and that this has been said for the past 18 years which is testament to rapidly changing political climate in the Middle East. He also repeated the emphasis of this year's conference on different parts of Kurdistan and encouraged all attendees to engage in discussions that were planned specific to each occupied region as well as the free region in Southern Kurdistan.

* The views expressed in these articles do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Institute for Kurds, it's staff, or it's members.