Deployment to Sather AB, Iraq - 2

30Dec08

Well I haven't deployed yet but I thought I would send some history of some of the Iraqi people. Here is a little information on the Kurds in Northern Iraq:

The Kurds are non-Arab people who live in the mountainous area straddlingthe borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.Scholars believe their culture was strongly influenced by the ancientHurrian and Persian peoples.The Kurds are mainly Sunni Muslims, but some are members of other religionsor sects, including the Yezeidis.Political events in the 20th century prompted a Kurdish diaspora and smallKurdish populations have since developed in a number of European countriesas well as in the US.Over 80 per cent of Kurds in the West come from Turkey, while Kurds fromIraq form the second largest group.Throughout their history, there has never been a formal Kurdistan while inmodern times Iran, Iraq and Turkey have all resisted the creation of anindependent Kurdish state.Western powers have seen no reason to help establish one.Kurds in TurkeyKurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s as the Ottoman Empire was failing.The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which divided Turkey's Ottoman Empire after WorldWar One, did promise the Kurds independence, but three years later KemalAtaturk, the Turkish leader, abandoned the treaty.The Kurds were not recognised as a separate people. Kurdish revolts throughthe 1920s and 1930s were put down by Turkish forces and the Kurds were notallowed to speak their language in public.The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, was established in 1978, and it took uparms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland inthe southeast.Since then, the conflict has claimed 30,000 lives.While the PKK is generally supported by Turkey's Kurds for championing theirrights, not all Kurds support the PKK's separatist aims or approve of theirmethods.Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader, was captured in 1999, tried and sentencedto death, though his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment in October2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty.Turkey lifted its ban on the use of the Kurdish language in 1991.Kurds in IraqUnder a British mandate, revolts by the Kurds in Iraq were put down in 1919,1923 and 1932. After World War Two, the Kurds, led then by the nationalist Mustafa Barzani,conducted an intermittent struggle against Baghdad.In the 1980s Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, conducted theso-called Anfal campaign -using conventional and chemical weapons to attackIraq's Kurdish population and destroy Kurdish settlements.In 1991, with US help, Kurdish northern Iraq won autonomy from Saddam.The area developed economically and, subsequent to the US-led invasion ofIraq in 2003, has become the country's most secure region.The fall of Saddam brought the Kurdish area closer to autonomy and inSeptember 2006 the president of Iraq's Kurdistan ordered the Kurdish flag tobe flown on government buildings instead of the Iraqi national flag.

Marwan Saba Consulting Services