The Kurds and Kurdistan
Derk Kinnane
Oxford University
The bitter war which began in 1961 between the Kurds of northern Iraq and the Iraqi army is only the latest in a scries of struggles for autonomy by this ancient people. There arc Kurds also in Turkey, Syria, Iran and the U.S.S.R.; they number upwards of six million in all, and like many minorities their sense of nationhood has only been strengthened by centuries of division and alien rule. Should the remarkable effectiveness of the Iraqi Kurds’ guerilla tactics win them even limited autonomy, it would be a clear incitement to Kurdish nationalist wars in the surrounding countries. This probability, and the significance of Arab reaction when faced with the dilemma of a rival nationalism, give great interest and international importance to the problem of the Kurds in Kurdistan.
Derk Kinnane first encountered the Kurdish question while in Iraq as a lecturer at Baghdad University, lie has visited Iraqi Kurdistan and keeps in close touch with events there and among Kurds elsewhere.
Contents
Authors Preface / v
I. The Country and the People / 1
II. Kurdish Society / 8
III. Kurdish History / 21
IV. The Turkish Republic / 30
V. Iraq Between the Wars / 35
VI. Syria / 43
VII. The Soviet Union / 45
VIII. Persia in the Twentieth Century / 46
IX. The Present War in Iraq / 59
Postscript / 82
Select Bibliography / 86
Map / viii
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
This small work is an introduction to a nation which, despite its distinct culture and millions of people, has yet to achieve a durable government of its own. Part of the people described here have been at war since 1961 in a struggle to establish such a government within the Iraqi Republic.
This war, little known to the world, has been fought with appalling savagery assisted by the advanced military equipment supplied to Iraq chiefly by Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
But it is not only the Kurds of Iraq who are discontented with the government which rules over their homeland. The Kurdish nation suffers peculiarly as a subject people whose homeland is divided between four states (excepting the small part in the Soviet Union) and three foreign peoples.
The international concern which the Kurdish problem arouses has been amply reflected in the varied responses of Ankara, Teheran, Damascus, Cairo and Moscow to the events in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1958. Washington, too, cannot be indifferent to these people who populate the marches of Arab, Turkish and Persian states.
My direct experience of Kurdistan is small and this work is indebted to the extensive experience and scholarship of G. J. Edmonds, William Eagleton Jr., Basile Nikitine, and Vladimir Minorsky.
I am also most grateful to Taufiq Wahby Beg for giving so generously of his erudition in Kurdish culture and history and to Prince Kamuran Aali Bedir-Khan, Professor of Kurdish at the Sorbonne, for the benefit of his experience and learning.
Tp David Adamson of the Sunday Telegraph goes my deep appreciation for sharing his knowledge of the current situation. I eagerly look forward to his forthcoming author’s preface book The Kurdish War. And a particular acknowledgement to Silvio van Rooy, President of the International Society Kurdistan, who has accumulated and made available so much information on all aspects of the Kurds and their circumstances.
My grateful thanks to Mr. F. J. E. Hurst and the staff of the Library, Trinity College, Dublin, for enabling my research. And finally, my special thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Raymond McGrath for their kind hospitality during the preparation of this work.
February 1964 / D.K.
Somerton Lodge
County Dublin
I. The Country and the People
In this introduction to the Kurds and their national problem, Kurdistan means the land where the Kurds form the overwhelming majority of the population, far outnumbering any of the minorities living among them.1 This land is a complex of mountains enclosing valleys and descending to foothills and plains. It is a land of mountain Kurds, some still nomadic, and plains Kurds growing grain or living in cities, some of vast antiquity.
Otherwise poor in mineral wealth, Iraqi Kurdistan contains one of the richest oil fields in the world. At its southern end this field passes through Kirkuk town. The refusal of the Baghdad Government to include this part of Kurdistan in a proposed Kurdish autonomous area has been one of the major obstacles to a settlement of the rebellion. There are other fields in the north at Ain Zalah and Butmah and many wells elsewhere but Kirkuk field is the great prize. The rebels have not demanded that revenues from these northern fields should go exclusively to them; they are asking that the oil revenues be divided according to the ratio of Kurds to Arabs in Iraq.
Oil has also been drilled and copper and iron have been found in Turkish Kurdistan. But none of these minerals are in important deposits. The greatest undeveloped resource of Kurdistan is water. The numerous rivers and mountain streams offer a great potential for improved irrigation and electric power.
The Kurds are good farmers and the plain of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan produces a high grade of wheat. Tobacco is an important source of income for the Iraqi Kurds and is also of a high quality. Goats and sheep are the principal herds. Horses and donkeys supply transport and …
1 See map opposite.
Derk Kinnane
The Kurds and Kurdistan
Oxford University
Oxford University Press
The Kurds and Kurdistan
Derk Kinnane
The Institute of Race Relations is an unofficial and non-political body,
founded in England in 1958 to encourage and facilitate the
study of relations between races everywhere.
The Institute is precluded by the Memorandum and
Articles of its incorporation from expressing a corporate view.
The opinions in this work are those of the author.
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First published 1964
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