Brief History

The Kurds are most well-known in modern history for being the largest ethnic minority without their own nation-state. However, the Kurds have a long history that dates back to the emergence of the first Caucasian races, with many scholars believing that they are the descendants of the ancient Medes. Despite the sweep of empires that ravaged the region until the modern nation-state era, they managed to maintain their own unique culture, language, and traditions. This was due in part to the economic role that the Kurds played, roving across the mountains as nomadic herders and traders. Today, they still inhabit an extensive mountain and plateau area known as Kurdistan which is centered on the Iraqi, Turkish, Iranian, and Syrian border crossings and the great mountains of this homeland have now become symbiotic with Kurdish identity.

In fact, the mountains are often referred to as the Kurds’ “only friends” because their modern history has developed into such an epic story of struggle to survive domination by outside groups. Beginning with the Arab conquering of their land in the seventh century, the Kurds have periodically faced invasion from large Persian, Turkish, and Arab empires. By World War I they were split between the Ottoman and Safavid Empires and were consequently promised their own nation-state by the Treaty of Sevres that was negotiated by the defeated Ottomans to end the war. However, this state would never come to be as the Turks rallied to reclaim much of the land promised to the Kurds under the leadership of the nationalistic Attaturk.

The Turkish victories and rise of nationalism in the Middle East led to a new peace conference in Lausanne, which subsequently produced a treaty that stripped the Kurds of their promised homeland and denied them the much touted “right to self-determination,” which American President Wilson had professed to be the guiding ideology to determine the future of the liberated at the end of the First World War. The new Treaty of Lausanne set the modern national boundaries that still divide Kurdistan between Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria and is responsible for much of the ensuing conflict between the Kurds and their neighbors throughout the twentieth century. Kurds across the region were consequently left out of the major decisions that would set their modern future.

Throughout the twentieth century the Kurds would rise in protest against this injustice, rebelling against the central administrations in Tehran, Ankara, and Baghdad. However, as a mountain people, they were outgunned by the modern centralized bureaucracies that were given legitimacy by international law and international organizations, such as the United Nations. Their uprisings were considered in the West to be internal matters or civil conflicts, rather than valid attempts to assert local, popular rule.

Yet, the Kurds were often willing to work within the bounds of the set boundaries and be governed by the national entities they were divided amongst, if only their rights as a minority were respected and they were given some voice over local matters. However, the states given jurisdiction over them were classically weak states, that adopted ideologies which left little room for the continuing existence of a unique minority within their bounds. National leaders felt that the existence of a distinct minority within their countries threatened their attempts to legitimize new national boundaries and identities, thus justifying their forcible destruction of the Kurdish way of life.

These campaigns were particularly brutal in Turkey, where Attaturk established a state governed by five principles that included an absolute belief in the Turkish identity of the state. All government documents were to appear in Turkish only and even the mentioning of the Kurds was strictly forbidden. Schools throughout the eastern part of the country were forced to teach in Turkish and an extensive government campaign was waged against the “mountain Turks” of Kurdistan in order to settle them into non-nomadic communities. Kurdish religious and political leaders were targeted as traitors to this ideology, jailed, assassinated, and often murdered for asserting any form of leadership over their fellow Kurds. This legacy has left the eastern part of Turkey underdeveloped to this day and contributed to the Kurds being left out of the democratic processes in the country. Although armed conflicts have broken out between Kurds and the Turkish government throughout the twentieth century, the dominant result of this disenfranchisement has been on a political battlefield, culminating in the jailing of many famous Kurdish nonviolent, democratically elected representatives to Ankara such as the most recent case concerning Leyla Zana, who was only recently freed from Turkish jails after years of a concerted campaign by the international communityto achieve this objective under the guidance of such groups as Amnesty International.

In Iran and Iraq, the campaign to bring the Kurds under central rule was less racially motivated, but equally destructive to the way of life the Kurds had known for centuries. Consecutive administrations in Baghdad and Tehren believed that the Kurds had to be forcibly subjugated to their rule, and thus targeted local Kurdish leaders for assassination or relocation campaigns designed to assert central control over the region. The Iranian Kurds were most successful at the outset in their resistance to this effort, taking advantage of the power vacuum left by World War II to set up their own country known as the Mahabad Republic. However, the country was quickly overrun with British backing of the shah in Tehren, causing its now infamous military leaders under the Iraqi-born Mustafa Barzani, to engage in a desperate flight through the mountains, successfully eluding a litany of pursuers to safety in Soviet territory. The remaining political leaders under President Ghassemlou that chose to stay behind were subsequently executed by the Iranians for treason. Today, the Kurds in Iran, who are predominantly Sunni in a country governed by Shia mullahs are left out of decisions effecting their own governance and in the great Kurdish city of Mahabad, only thirty-two percent of the population even participated in the recent Iranian elections.

However, despite the tragic history of the neighboring Kurds, it is the grievances that have been waged against the Kurds in Iraq that have become most infamous in the United States. Their tragic history does not begin with Saddam Hussein’s genocidal chemical attacks on them, but rather dates back to the inception of the country which was originally supposed to give the Kurds much of the autonomy they are still fighting to secure today. Iraq did not gain its independence from British protectorate status until post-World War II, quickly succumbing in its awkward boundaries and illegitimate rule to a series of coups that left it destabilized throughout much of the twentieth century. With each new turnover came promises that the Kurds’ political, cultural, and economic rights would finally be respected, only to be broken as soon as the administration had re-asserted its dominance over the country. Their sustained struggle against Baghdadi injustices would produce the greatest nationalist leader in Kurdish history, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, who would lead the effort to defend Kurdish rights until his death in 1979. Throughout this period, the Kurds asserted their right to have a say in their own governance and refused to relegate their fellow Kurds in important strategic or economic zones, such as oil-rich Kirkuk, to exploitation by Baghdad. Their determination eventually led Saddam Hussein, who was still receiving political, economic, and military aid from the United States at the time, to develop his own “final solution” to the Kurdish problem. With the help of his uncle, “Chemical Ali,” Saddam set about gassing Kurdish villages and forcibly relocating Kurds from the Northern part of the country in an attempt to end the existence of the Kurds. Thousands of Kurds of all races and genders were rounded up, summarily executed, and buried in the mass graves that are just now being uncovered . Attempts to censure Saddam at the United Nations were blocked by the US on the Security Council and it wasn’t until his invasion of Kuwait that the killings subsided.

Even Saddam’s defeat in the First Gulf War did not ensure the Kurds safety from his wrath. Claiming they had colluded with the enemy after the Kurds began an uprising against his regime based on American encouragement; Saddam turned his gunned helicopters on the fleeing Kurdish refugees heading to Iran and Turkey for safety. Hundreds of Kurds who were lucky enough to evade his gunships ultimately died in the mountains or refugee camps from disease and starvation before the UN mandated “No Fly Zone” was established.

Over the next decade, the Kurds would use their autonomy under this mandate to hold free parliamentary elections, rebuild villages, and begin to work toward a developed, modern society that was tolerant of all the religious and ethnic proclivities of its population. Kurds became leaders in the exiled Iraqi National Congress that worked to end the destructive Iraqi regime, aiding fellow Iraqis and Arab dissidents. The foundation they built would enable them to play a vital role in the eventual American-led invasion that ended Saddam’s regime in 2002, with the Kurds providing the predominant share of on-the-ground cooperation with the invading coalition forces. Since the invasion, Kurdish areas have not seen a single coalition death and act as home to only 200 foreign troops, with Kurdish peshmerga and police effectively maintaining order over their own population. Iraqi Kurds have also been full participants in the Iraqi Governing Council and Transitional Government , with the main Kurdish parties, including the two largest-- Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan – running on a joint ticket in the national elections. This gave Kurds x seats in the parliament and led them to garner enough votes to elect Iraq’s first president of all Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani , and Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani. Despite widespread predictions that the Kurds would push for independence and Turkish demands to prevent Kurdish autonomy, the Kurds of Iraq have proven to be cooperative partners in their country’s great endeavor for democracy.