• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1010 0

Kurdish princes and tribes turned into wars. Plagues devastated the region, and, by the mid-1800s, Kurdish high culture had again all but collapsed. Entire tribes were eviscerated or deported, and the Kurds’ sedentary agricultural communities gave way to their more traditional nomadic lifestyle, already in existence for thousands of years. A chaotic tribal order, with an economy based on raiding, emerged. European travelers passing through Kurdistan in the nineteenth century wrote of meeting ruthless bandits and warring tribes, adding more fuel to the Kurds’ by-then well-established reputation for ferocity. “It is better to fight than to sit idle”; “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name,” go two old Kurdish proverbs.

Many Kurds today downplay their tribal heritage, fearing that it portrays them as a primitive people. But to many outsiders, it is part of their distinction. There are dozens of tribes, and hundreds of subtribes, some of which date back centuries. In the past, many tribes had their own distinct dress, folktales, music, and social customs. Some were known for specific characteristics, such as red hair, broad builds, boorishness, or courage. Tribal affiliations united as well as divided people and, though much diminished in importance today, are still central to many Kurds’ identity and to Kurdish politics. There are also many nontribal Kurds, living primarily in the cities and on the plains. The nomadic tribal lifestyle has all but disappeared. Only “seminomads” remain, living in villages in winter and in goat-hair tents in summer as they move their flocks between their lowland and mountain pastures.

After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds came close to achieving national independence. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres recognized their political rights and left open to possibility the establishment of an autonomous Kurdistan. But the treaty was never ratified, and, three years later, with the rise of Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, another treaty was negotiated. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne recognized a new Turkish republic; paved the way for the new British Mandate of Iraq to acquire the oil-rich Kurdish province of Mosul; and made no mention of the Kurds, then in a state of political disarray, torn apart by tribal loyalties. Shortly thereafter, the Western powers finalized the modern international borders of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq—new countries carved out of the old Ottoman Empire—while reaffirming those of Iran, then known as Persia. In a few short strokes of the pen, Kurdistan—never more than a vaguely delineated land divided among many tribes—was literally erased from the map and the Kurds were parceled out among four nation-states.

Then a foreign concept to the Middle East, the nation-state is still an idea with which the entire region struggles. Many Kurds have never really accepted the West’s imposed borders, which in some places severed tribes and even families in half. “A thousand sighs, a thousand tears, a thousand revolts, a thousand hopes,” goes an old Kurdish poem about the Kurds’ determination to be masters of their own lands. Meanwhile, the erstwhile nation-states, desperate to establish a national identity based on a unified culture, have marginalized and persecuted the Kurds.

Yet the Kurds have also been their own worst enemy. Their history is strewn with gut-wrenching tales of infighting, brutality, and betrayal. One recent definitive instance occurred in 1996, when the Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani turned to Saddam Hussein—the Kurds’ most lethal modern enemy—to help him defeat his rival Jalal Talabani, who had earlier solicited help from another traditional Kurdish enemy, the Iranian government. Saddam had been instrumental in manipulating the two leaders’ actions, which occurred in the wake of a failed CIA-backed coup attempt to oust him from office, and the events enhanced his standing internationally while diminishing that of the Kurds.

Just what is it about the Kurds, I thought as I read about one revolt after another, that gives