Kurds - 30 million People Without a Country The Kurdish people are an ethnic group in Middle East, mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. No one can define exactly where Kurdistan is, for it cannot be found on a map. It is a region made up of southeastern Turkey, northern Syria and Iraq, and western Iran, where people of Kurdish origin have resided since the time of Ancient Persian Empire in 600BC. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed in World War I, the borders of these four countries were established and a treaty to grant Kurds their own state was rejected by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first president of Turkey. The British government, who at the time had control over Iraq, was also not in favor of a free state. The Kurds are a people with their own language and a culture distinct from the countries they inhabit. It was not until March 16, 1988 that international attention was drawn to the long-repressed Kurds. It was on this date that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made a genocidal attack, launching poison gas on the dominantly Kurdish city of Halabja, killing at least 5,000 people and injuring more than 10,000. Britain controlled Iraq through the Sunni minority, hoping the three groups could live together. When Saddam Hussein came to power, the Sunni government persecuted both Shiites and Kurds with Shia majority Iran sometimes retaliating. Today as the Sunni backed ISIS fights with a Shia majority Iraqi Government, the kurdish militia have tried to separate their land from the fighting. Nationalist movements in the other Kurdish-populated countries (Turkey, Syria, Iran) push for Kurdish regional autonomy or the creation of a sovereign state. Kurds have suffered the most and yet the Global media is silent for Decades...
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 10:42:55 +0000
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