"To Look Death in the Eye" -- The Kurds of Iraq

Part FIVE of a FIVE-part series on Iraq's ethnic minorities. 

• Go to Part One: Iraq's Yazidis -- A Minority within a Minority

• See Part Two: The Turkomans of Iraq -- A Minority with Major Impact

• See Part Three: Iraq's Assyrians -- Four Beleaguered Christian Minorities

• See Part Four: The Ma'dan -- Iraq's Marsh Arabs 

ALSO: Sunnis and Shi'ites for Beginners (Basic facts about these two sects of Islam)
  

Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi was Sultan of Egypt and Syria, defender of Islam during the Third Crusade, and the conqueror of Jerusalem. Yet he was neither an Arab nor a Turk, but a Kurd, born in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in 1138. He is known in the West by his Kurdish name, Saladin. [1] Years before his battles with the Crusaders, Saladin had unified the Muslim lands of northern Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. He founded the Ayyubid Dynasty and, in the words of Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary, is considered "the greatest Muslim hero of all time." [2]

No wonder the modern Kurds are such a proud people. There is evidence that their ancestors were the Medes who conquered Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrians, in 612 B.C.[3] One clue to the Kurds' origin is their language, a member of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European "family" of languages. The Medes' language would have been an Indo-Iranian tongue. Although most Kurds are illiterate, their language is rich, with over 50,000 words in its vocabulary. [4] Storytelling is a treasured part of Kurdish culture.

NOTE: For a comparison of Kurdish with Indo-Iranian Farsi (Iran) and Pashto (Afghanistan), as well as a number of other Indo-European languages, see the listing at the end of this article.

Chris Kutschera observed that "there is a Kurdish proverb or saying for every situation; daily life inspires popular songs (love and death, but also war and hunting); stirred by the feats of their leaders, poets have written epics that are memorized and transmitted from generation to generation -- one of these is Ahmad Khani's Memo Zin, the Kurdish Romeo and Juliet." [5]

In the poem, Khani said: ""So that it can not be said that the Kurds are illiterate in their nature. I have done all this for the Kurds so that they may know about love and are not deprived, either of reality or of their dreams." [6]

Kurdistan, the territory that the Kurds see as their birthright, stretches through areas of Turkey, Syria, Armenia, Iraq and Iran. This "Land of the Kurds" includes in the rugged mountains, steppe-like plateaus and foothills. If temperatures during Kurdish summers can be scorching, up to 113º F (45º C), winters can be cruel (as low as -86º F, or -30º C). Heavy snows cut off some mountain villages from other settlements for as long as six months. [7]

The harsh terrain and remoteness in which the Kurds live have made a head count almost impossible. Estimates of their population in all countries range from 5 million to 22 million. [8] In Iraq, however, the numbers are more precise: the Kurds are the largest non-Arab minority in the country, at 17% of the population. The Turkomans, Assyrians, and other minorities account for only 3%. Arabs, at 80%, are the overwhelming majority (including the Ma'dans, or Marsh Arabs). [9] Although Iraqi's Kurds are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims, members of the Faili and several smaller tribes are Shi'ites. [10] The Yazidi Kurds make up a distinctive religious group outside of the Islamic faith.

Rural Kurds are farmers and herders of goats and sheep, who sell leather, cheese and wool (some of the mountain Kurds are still nomadic). Among the cash crops are cotton and tobacco. Women make carpets and cloth for sale, and themselves wear distinctively colorful skirts and blouses.

In the towns, some Kurds work as plumbers, shopkeepers, bankers, teachers and other such trades and professions, while many others work as unskilled laborers.[11]

According to the Library of Congress, Kurds form "the overwhelming majority in As Sulaymaniyah, Irbil, and Dahuk governorates. Although the (Baath) government (of Saddam Hussein) hotly denie(d) it, the Kurds are almost certainly also a majority in the region around Kirkuk, Iraq's richest oil producing area. Kurds are settled as far south as Khanaqin. ... Although the largest numbers live in Turkey ... , it is in Iraq that they are most active politically. ... Once mainly nomadic or semi-nomadic, Kurdish society was characterized by a combination of urban centers, villages, and pastoral tribes since at least the Ottoman period. Historical sources indicate that from the eighteenth century onward Kurds in Iraq were mainly peasants engaged in agriculture and arboriculture. By the nineteenth century, about 20 percent of Iraqi Kurds lived in historic Kurdish cities such as Kirkuk, As Sulaymaniyah, and Irbil. The migration to the cities, particularly of the young intelligentsia, helped develop Kurdish nationalism. ... Since the early 1960s, the urban Kurdish areas have grown rapidly."

Kurdish migration--in addition to being part of the general trend of urban migration--was prompted by the escalating armed conflict with the central authorities in Baghdad, the destruction of villages and land by widespread bombing, and such natural disasters as a severe drought in the 1958-61 period." [12]

Kurds and Arabs have been at odds since 1958, the birthdate of the Iraqi republic. First hopes of founding a separate Kurdistan within Iraq faded in 1975, when the Shah of Iran withdrew his crucial support of the dynamic Kurdish dissident Mulla Mustafa Barzani as part of a treaty with Baghdad. Resistance amounted to sporadic guerilla activity until 1980, when the Iraq-Iran War broke out, exposing the Arab government to increased opposition from well-organized political groups. [13]

Government retaliation hit hard in 1988, when Iraqi forces flew over Kurdish regions. The troops dumped poison gas on some villages, killing more than 5,000 Kurds in just one of the strikes. Then, in the Gulf War of 1991, Iraqi Republic Guard retreated from Iraq and headed into Kurdish territory on a punitive mission, seeking revenge against the Kurds for their refusal to support Saddam Hussein. The troops burned towns and villages, forcing out the Kurdish residents. Many refugees ended up in camps in Turkey and Iran. [14]

"The Kurdish aspiration that Iraq should be organized as an ethnically-based federation," wrote Bill Park, "dates back at least to the Kurdish Regional Government's establishment in 1992. A draft constitution adopted by Iraq's two Kurdish parties in 2002 envisaged that the oil-beating Iraqi Kurdish provinces to the south of the KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) zone would be incorporated into any future Kurdish self-governing area within a loose Iraqi federal framework, that Kirkuk should be the Kurdish capital, that the Kurds would retain control over their own armed forces (the peshmerga), and that the proposed Kurdish state should have the constitutional right to secede. In December 2003, the Kurdish leadership sent a proposal along these lines to the Iraqi Governing Council, where it was met with profound disapproval.As Henry Kissinger has put it, 'Kurds define self-government as only microscopically distinguishable from independence.'" [15]

Park added that "the more than a decade of self-rule which Iraqi Kurds have exercised in Iraq's three northernmost provinces appears to have strengthened Kurdish determination to seize the historic opportunity presented by Iraq's current circumstances to cement their autonomy." [16]

"The Kurds," said Annette Busby, "maintain that to be a Kurd is 'to look Death in the eye,' because expressing and passing on the culture has often entailed breaking laws and engaging in armed resistance. ... Men speak of having many children to ensure that some Kurds survive the violence to carry on the culture." [17] In that struggle, women fight alongside men in the peshmerga, where they number over 1,000. [18]

KURDISH COMPARED TO OTHER INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
[Numbers 1-10]

Kurdish (Indo-Iranian): yek, du, se, cuwar, penc, ses, hewt, hest, no, de.
Farsi (Indo-Iranian): yak, do, se, chaha:r, panj, shesh, haft, hasht, noh, dah.
Pashto (Indo-Iranian): yaw, dwa, dre, tsalór, pindzé, shpag, owé, até, ne, les.
Sanskrit (Indic, extinct): éka, dvá, trí, catúr, páñca, sas, saptá, astá, náva, dáça.
Hindi/Urdu (Indic): ek, do, ti:n, ca:r, pã:c, chai, sa:t, a:th, nau, das.
Hittite (Anatolian, extinct): a:nt- (1), da:- (2), tri- (3), meiu- (4), shipta- (7).
Latin (Italic, extinct): unus, duo, tres, quattuor, quinque, sex, septem, octo, novem, decem.
Classical Greek (Hellenic): heis, dúo, trei,s téttares, pénte, héx, heptá, októ, ennéa, déka.
Tocharian (Extinct): sas, wu, tre, s'twar, päñ, säk, spät, okät, ñu, s'äk.
Albanian: një, dy, tre, katër, pesë, gjashtë, shtatë, tetë, nëntë, dhjetë.
Classical Armenian: mi, erk'u, erekh, chorkh, hing, vech, evthn, uth, inn, t'asn.
Russian (Slavic): odín, dva, tri, chety're, pyat', shest', sem', vósem', dévyat', désyat',
Lithuanian (Baltic): víenas, dù, try~s, keturì, penkì, sheshì,septynì, ashtuonì, devynì, de:shimt.
Gothic (Germanic, extinct): ains, twai, þreis, fidwor, fimf, saíhs, sibun, ahtau, niun, taíhun.
Welsh (Celtic): un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith, wyth, naw, deg.
Proto-Indo-European (Prehistoric, reconstructed): oynos, duwo, treyes, kwetwores, penkwe, sweks. septm, okto, newn, dekm. [19]

• ALSO: See how Kurdish is written in the various parts of Kurdistan, learn how to write Kurdish numerals and hear a sample of spoken Kurdish on the Omniglot website.

 RELATED NEWS:  Kurds Tackle 'Honor Killings' of Women (Associated Press story, October 6, 2007, over Earthlink Network)

Sources Cited:

[1] "Saladin." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. Accessed on October 2, 2007.

[2] "Saladin," Merriam-Webster's Biographical Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Incorporated, 1995. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. Accessed on October 2, 2007.

[3] Busby, Annette. "Kurds" in the Encyclopedia of World Cultures: Africa and the Middle East. Boston: G. K. Hall & Company, 1995; p. 174.

[4] Kutschera, Chris. "Kurds" in the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, Simon & Schuster MacMillan, 1996. Volume 2, p. 1048.

[5] Ibid.

[6] "Kurdish Literature" web page, http://www.kdp.se/?do=literature. Accessed on Oct. 3, 2007.

[7] Busby, p. 175.

[8] "Kurds," reviewed by H. Attalah, in the Worldmark Encylopedia of Cultures and Daily Life. Volume 3: Asia and Oceania. New York: Gale Research, 1998; p. 414.

[9] "Iraq." The Statesman's Yearbook 2005: The Politics, Cultures and Economics of the World. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004; p. 914.

[10] Hassig, Susan M. and Laith Muhmood Al Adley. Iraq: Cultures of the World (Series). New York: BenchmarkBooks, Marshall Cavendish, 2004; p. 55.

[11] "Kurds," Worldmark Encyclopedia, pp. 416-417.

[12] Countrystudies website, web page http://countrystudies.us/iraq/32.htm. This website contains the on-line versions of books previously published in hard copy by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress as part of the Country Studies/Area Handbook Series sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Army between 1986 and 1998. Each study offers a comprehensive description and analysis of the country or region's historical setting, geography, society, economy, political system, and foreign policy.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Hassig, p. 55.

[15] Park, Bill. "Iraq's Kurds and Turkey: challenges for US policy." Parameters 34.3 (Autumn 2004): 18(13). General Reference Center. Gale. DISCUS Remote Patron Access ITWeb. Accessed on October 3, 2007.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Busby, p. 177.

[18] Kurds," Worldmark Encyclopedia, pp. 416.

[19] "Numbers from 1 to 10 in Over 5000 Languages" website, "Numbers in Indo-European Languages" web page, http://www.zompist.com/euro.htm#ie. Accessed on October 3, 2007.