| Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society, n°1
Vol. lX No. 1, 1995
KALEIDOSCOPIC KURDISTAN:
WHITHER THE ASSYRIANS?
Francis Sarguis
Agha, Shaikh & State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan
by Martin van Bruinesen
Zed Books, Ltd., 1992 373pp.
The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview
(ed.) Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Stefan Sperl
Routledge, 1992 250pp.
A People Without A Country: Kurds and Kurdistan
(ed.) Gerard Chaliand
Olive Branch Press, 1993 259 pp.
No Friends But the Mountains
by John Bulloch and Harvey Morris
Oxford University Press, 1992 242 pp.
History is what is written. This deceptively simple proposition - and its inherent subtext - is seldom grasped by populations or movements functioning on the periphery. Applying this idea to the Kurdish experience, it is clear that unless the international community focuses on them, these millions of people (along with their problem) might as well be non-existent.
On the assurance of Andy Warhol, we are each to get our fifteen minutes of fame. Taken figuratively, one might say that the Kurds experienced their moment in the klieglights just four years ago. Unfortunately, it appears that little came of this rare opportunity. As for the Assyrians, one must wonder if circumstances will ever combine to put their plight front and center. If ever there was an occasion when their predicament should have captured world attention also, surely it was in 1991. Yet not a book, not even an article is to be found about them in mainstream publishing. It may be worth speculating whether an Assyrian-sensitive media attitude in those notable weeks and months would have made any difference for them? Put another way, were the Assyrians any better poised than the Kurds to profit from such an benchmark? The answer cannot be gratifying.
Our focus here is on four books about the Kurds. While it is unfortunate that there are no comparable books about the Assyrians, the works in question are replete with themes and challenges of reciprocal relevance. The implicit lessons should not escape the attention of Assyrians seeking to devise a strategy for the future. Many Assyrians, including certainly many members of this reviewer’s family, have related stories of great suffering, and injustice at the hands of Kurdish banditry. Shrill condemnations aimed at the Kurds by those who have personally experienced such horrors is an understandable human reaction. Nothing less can be expected from them; this is similar to the unequivocal abjuration of all things German by survivors of World War II concentration camps. But while history cannot be forgotten, care must be taken that it does not paralyze. Whether or not “Kurdistan” is considered chimerical, and whether or not there is to be a reconstituted Iraq, Assyrians cannot escape certain realities merely by ignoring them. One reality is that a very large Kurdish population happens to be an inseparable part of the Assyrian landscape, in itself a good reason to study it.
For an evanescing moment, the world and its media did turn to the Kurdish predicament in north Iraq, which explains in large measure the spate of books written about them recently. Yet by most recognized international norms, the Kurds have had an impressive set of grievances for quite some time; these are hardly new. They date back at least to the 19th Century. Just in the past IS years, the region has witnessed the revolution in Iran, the PKK insurrection launched in 1984 in south eastern Turkey, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. But none of these — not even the genocidal chemical attacks at Halabja, nor the atrocious persecutions of 1988-89 — drew much attention in the West. In the end, it was Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, followed by the Gulf War, which proved impossible for the West to ignore. The plight of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees (thousands of Assyrians among them), freezing and starving in the mountains, was not sufficient per se to command outside attention. It was finally the events of 1991, embellished with Saddam-Bush mono a mono repartees, that brought some attention. But even then, the media’s focus was on the demonization of Saddam, or pontificating on the legitimacy of intervention by the Coalition, or on the magic of modem weaponry.
The belated arrival of the Kurds on the front page, and then their abrupt return to unwelcome anonymity, represents a valuable lesson regarding the limits and the mysteries of public attention. If an aggrieved population of 15 to 20 million (3 to 5 million of them in Iraq) is unable to generate outside interest in its condition in the face of cataclysmic events, one has to ask; “What does it take?” What are the obstacles? What are the opportunities? What, if anything, have the Kurds learned from the experience? And can Assyrians learn anything from this?
A watershed difference between Kurds and Assyrians is in their religion. This is certainly not an absolute criterion. The literature of the region attests to the existence of a number of Kurdish converts to Christianity, as well as Assyrians who have converted to Islam (more often than not, the circumstances leading to these crossovers was tragic in nature; but that story is beyond our purview). In a multitude of ways, Kurdish society evokes compelling parallels to Assyrian society. Thus, a sociological dissection of one, perforce suggests a better understanding of the other, whether it is by analogy or by contrast.
Martin van Bruinessen’s Agha, Sheik and State benefits from the many field trips taken by the author to Iraqi, Turkish, Syrian and Persian Kurdistan. His presentation is also enriched by a detailed study of written sources, van Bruinessen seeks to explain the political and social stratification of the Kurds. With candor, he makes clear all along his pro-Kurdish sympathies. Moreover, he is the first to acknowledge that while the West highly prizes “academic objectivity”, its attainment in the social sciences gets a lot murkier than in the physical sciences. After confessing his leaning and admitting to the challenge, the author proceeds to a first-rate introductory work about the principal players, from the agha (tribal chieftain) to the shaikh (the popular mystic and head of a religious brotherhood). It can be said without hesitation that by dint of its scholarship, this book clearly stands well above the rest.
van Bruinessen originally wrote this study in 1978, in the form of a doctoral dissertation. The present book includes revisions prompted by the drama of the ensuing 14 years. Yet some things have not changed. “Kurdish nationalism and the tribal and religious loyalties stand in an ambivalent relation to each other... [T]he perpetual conflicts and rivalries between these traditional leaders prevented and still prevent the Kurds fromr really uniting. The very fact that a certain chieftain participated in the national movement was often sufficient reason for his rivals to oppose it...”
Through his careful study, van Bruinessen displays the gyroscopic scenario that plays itself out in Kurdistan. Current news reports vividly illustrate how the multi-faceted currents in ... |
