Contents
Acknowledgements / 4
Map of Kurdistan / 8
Foreword / 11
Introduction / 12
1. Kurdish Exodus, April 1991 / 15
2. Amadiya, May 1991 / 20
3. The Violated Villages, July 1991 34
4. Penjwin, July 1991 / 42
5. Suleymaniye, August 1991 / 48
6. Qala Chwalan, August 1991 / 54
7. Barzan, December 1991 / 59
8. The Kurdish Election, May 1992 / 68
9. Zakho and Lalish, September 1992 / 77
10. Salahaddin, October 1992 / 83
11. Christmas in Kurdistan, December 1992 / 89
12. Cizre, March 1993 / 99
13. Van, April 1993 / 108
14. Benaslawa, April 1993 / 113
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My journey was not one I embarked upon alone. I made many friends and met many colleagues along the way, all of whom added to my knowledge and pleasure. Thanks to them and to the varied experiences we shared, I returned, as one should from a journey, with new perspectives on life and the world that will serve me as well in Texas as in Kurdistan.
Mine was a woman’s “journey among brave women,” to paraphrase the title of the 1964 book about Dana Schmidt’s travels in Kurdistan. While Kurds of both sexes offered me the generous hospitality for which they are justifiably famous, I usually was the guest of women and was often passed from hostess to hostess as I made my way through Kurdistan. I remember my Kurdish women friends warmly, cherish their friendship, and admire their courage and tenacity in the face of many hardships. As Gulbihar told her husband Emer of the Golden Hand in the Kurdish epic poem The Fortress of Dimdim, Kurdish women and men are equally brave. “The strength of all lions is the same, and it is the lion’s blood that runs in both our veins.”
In homes and communities’ Kurdish women encourage and help one another. Through laudable organizations such as Zhinan, the Women’s Union of Kurdistan, Kurdish women who are able aid their bereaved and tragedy-stricken sisters to get back on their feet and strive to take the story of Kurdish women to the outside world. Among such women who contributed their time, talents, knowledge, and possessions to create this exhibition and book Journey through Kurdistan were Hero Talabani, Nazanin Mohammed Rasheed, Kafiya Suleyman, Faima Barzani, Dr. Atia
Salihy, Ala Talabani, her cousin Kurdistan, and most especially my very dear friend Leila and her daughter Aisha.
It is said that the knights-errant of medieval Europe based their code of chivalry on the x example of civility and bravery set by the valiant leader of their foes, the most famous of all Kurds, Salah al Din al-Ayyubi, known in the West as Saladin, King of Jerusalem. Certainly, the peshmerga (literally “those who face death”) who guarded and guided me throughout Kurdistan embodied the service, loyalty, bravery, and politeness worthy of Kurdish warrior-knights. Gallant Kurdish lances at my service included young men known as Hoyshar, Naryman, Samir, Aziz, Asad, Younis, Hasan, Raoof, Kawa, and Kak Ahmad and his son Samde. Peshmerga who graduated to be Kurdish politicians and leaders were also of great assistance to my travels, particularly Omar and Bekir Fatah, and their mother Aisha Khan, Bekir Haji Saflr and his wife Kafiya Khan, Rustum Mohammed (“Mam Rustum”) Rahim, Rust Shawals, Pir Khadir Suleyman, Hussein Sanjauri, Hoyshar Zebari, Jamal Aziz, Haquim Qadir, Sami Abdulrakhman, Sheikh Abdullah Barzani, Siamand Bannah, the two Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, and Kurdish elder-statesman Ibrahim Ahmad.
The Ali Sheban family of Amadiya, who were my hosts for three months in 1991 and whom I continued to visit throughout my stay in Kurdistan, received me into their home like a member of the family. Mr. Ali, his wife Leila, and their sons and daughters, nieces and nephews were dear to me as few people have been in my life. Their friend Mr. Naji, the retired geography teacher-turned-farmer at Ribar, was a fountain of Kurdish history, customs, and ideas. He, his wife Selwan, their seven children, and his kinswoman Huriya helped make my stay at Amadiya happy and informative.
The Kurdistan that I knew also became home to the allied soldiers who created the Safe-haven in northern Iraq, to the relief workers who made it inhabitable, and to the scholars, journalists, human-rights activists, and photographers who took advantage of the opportunity to visit parts of Kurdistan that had been closed to inde-pendent investigators for years. “American peshmerga,” as Colonel Richard Naab sometimes called the soldiers of the rescue mission Operation Provide Comfort, often facilitated information and travel for me. I am grateful to Colonel Naab, Colonel Richard Wilson, Colonel Robert Young, who were commanders of the Military Coordination Center at Zakho between 1991 and 1993, General John Shalikashvili, who commanded Operation Provide Comfort from Incirlik, Turkey, in 1991, and most especially, to General Jay Garner, commander of Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq in 1991.
The brave doctors, nurses, engineers, and relief workers who helped restore the ravished area were my friends and informants, as well as the heroes of Kurdistan. Interviews with Fred Cuny, singled out by Kurdish leaders as the one relief-worker most responsible for bringing Kurds out of the mountains and establishing them in the Safe-haven, were particularly helpful in comprehending the rescue and subsequent relief effort.
Scholars from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London were on the forefront of inves-tigative studies in Kurdistan and diligently disseminated firsthand knowledge of the area through symposia, publications, lectures, and public discussions. Dr. Philip Kreyenbroek, founder of the Society of Iranian Oral Studies, generously shared his knowledge with me, helped organize the material for my exhibition script and this book, and advised the development of both. Christine Allison made her translations of women’s oral literature available to me, and Maria O’Shea kindly read my text and offered many valuable suggestions.
Commentary on the Jews of Kurdistan is based on conversations with Dr. Yona Sabar of the University of California at Los Angeles, with whom I traveled to his home town of Zakho, Iraq, and to visit Kurdish Jews in Israel, and on sections of his book The Folk Literature of the Kurdistani Jews. My firsthand impressions of Kurdish rugs were checked against William Eagleton’s authoritative An Introduction to Kurdish Rugs and Other Weavings-, Ambassador Eagleton kindly met with me at SOAS in London and clarified my questions about Kurdish weavers and their response to the difficult circumstances under which they produced. Publications of Middle East Watch and discussions with Joost Hiltermann, project director of their Kurdish investigations, and Andrew Whitely, director of Middle East Watch, confirmed and expanded the stories that I heard about the Anfal operation. The staff of the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and Dr. Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, director of The Kurdish Library in Brooklyn, New York, provided important support on researching both cultural and political matters and in putting the current situation in historical perspective.
Turkish journalists and politicians examining the tragic conflict between Turks and Kurds provided useful insights into the struggle in their country. Outstanding in their comprehension of the problem were Uluq Giirkan, editor-in-chief of Sabah turned parliamentary deputy, and Ragip Duran, who worked with the Cumhuriyet, BBC, and the French Agency. Seyfi Tashan, president of the Turkish Institute for Foreign Affairs, meticulously explained the historical development of Turkey’s policies to me. Musa Agacik of the Milliyet arranged my first visit to Kurdish Turkey in May 1990; former deputy prime minister Erdal Inonii and current deputy prime minister Hikmet Qetin hosted that investigative tour. Ertugrul Gunay, Secretary-General of the People’s Republican Party, arranged for me to accompany leaders of that party on their February 1993 examination of the growing tension in the troubled region. Former Turkish first lady Semra Ozal first told me of the problems in southeastern Turkey, where her Foundation for the Elevation and Strengthening of Turkish Women was working, and she was the first person to encourage me to visit the area.
This exhibition and catalogue were made possible by the sponsorship of Texas Memorial Museum, The University of Texas at Austin, the Texas Committee for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the J. E. Smothers, Sr., Memorial Foundation. Lynn Denton and Jeff Jeffreys of Texas Memorial Museum of The University of Texas, and Mary Bean, Art Director at Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar, Noble and Associates, in San Antonio, Texas, helped edit the photographs for the exhibition and the catalogue, and Dr. Abraham Zilkha and Elizabeth Fernea of The Middle Eastern Center of The University of Texas joined the staff of the museum in editing the text for the exhibition. Many thanks are due Cindy Hughes and Pamela Shepherd, the ever patient and encouraging editors of the text section of this catalogue, and Alice Evett who copy edited and proofread the final text.
My words and images are meant to be but an introduction to the world of the Kurd. I hope that they will encourage readers along their own exploration of the culture of the Kurds and of the problems that plague their region, one which should include reading the books of earlier travelers and those of my colleagues with whom I shared my journey.
Mary Ann Smothers Bruni
San Antonio, Texas
For Zhinan, the brave women of Kurdistan
Since Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, neo-Aramaic, and several dialects of Kurdish are all used in Kurdistan, it is not unusual for a Kurdish place or person’s name to have several spellings. Those in this book are ones which the author/photographer saw most often and felt best represented local usage. The Turkish c is pronounced like the English j, the 5 like ch, and the s like sh. The Kurdish x is pronounced like the Spanish j.
Foreword
During the year 1991, our nation was engaged in armed conflict with Iraq. This sad culmination led immediately, however, to examination by our citizenry of precipitating events and also to a desire to further understand the cultures of the Middle East, about whose complexities most of us had been very poorly instructed. Information in the press concerning the treatment of the Iraqi Kurdish population by its own government led to expanded appreciation of the Kurds as a complicated group in its own right, whose geographic distribution, generally called Kurdistan, includes significant parts of five countries—Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Armenia.
With great interest, therefore, we at the Texas Memorial Museum learned of the repeated travels of Mary Ann Smothers Bruni through parts of Turkey and Iraq from 1990 through 1993, photographing the Kurdish people and recording her impressions of their day-to-day life under varying conditions of civil war, trade embargoes, and United Nations political involvement. From the photographic results of these trips, Ms. Bruni selected the images that form the substance of the exhibition Journey through Kurdistan at the Texas Memorial Museum and also provide the heart of this book. Interpretive labeling of the exhibit and text of this volume reflect Ms. Bruni’s views of conditions within this part of Kurdistan.
In this sponsorship, the staff of Texas Memorial Museum take pride in adding, in a small way, to understanding of the character and plight of the Kurdish people.
William G. Reeder Director
Texas Memorial Museum
Introduction
Kurdistan, “land of the Kurds,” is not, and has never been, a country. It is, simply put, “where the Kurds live,” a crescent-shaped territory about the size of Texas where the approximately twenty-six million people who call themselves Kurds predominate. The area has also been home to Armenian, Christian Assyrian, Jewish, and Turkoman communities, which in varying degrees feel akin to the Kurds and in a broad sense are part of the Kurdish mountain culture. The land known as Kurdistan is, in fact, a lively patchwork of diverse people and cultures.
The heart of Kurdistan lies high in the Zagros Mountains where the modern countries of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq come together, and it extends into Syria and Armenia. The Zagros and the eastern Taurus Mountains, stretching from northwest to southeast, form the region’s backbone. The high mountain ranges that distinguish Kurdistan lie parallel to each other, northwest to southeast. Beginning with the foothills near the Tigris River, each range rises higher than the last until they reach the elevated Persian plateau. Long, narrow valleys separate the ranges, through which rivers flow, cutting magnificent gorges to join the Tigris. To the north the Anatolian highlands border gigantic Lake Van, and beyond lies Mount Ararat, where Biblical tradition says Noah’s ark landed.
The mountain ranges, impassable much of the winter, protect the Kurds from their hostile neighbors, as well as separate them from each other. The protection and isolation offered by these mountains have shaped the character and history of the Kurds and are part of what has made them different from their Arab, Turkish, and Persian brothers of the surrounding plains civilizations. Over the centuries the Kurdish mountains have allowed their inhabitants to preserve their traditions and have given refuge to peoples who were persecuted elsewhere. As a proverb says, “Take away their mountains, and you destroy the Kurds.”
About 2,500 years ago, the Persians and the Medes created empires that included Kurdistan. Xenophon described the area in the Anabasis (401-400 B. C.) and characterized the Carduchi, possible …
