| General Introduction
Known for his Spartan modus vivendi and widely admired, Mustafa Barzani (March 3, 1903—March 1, 1979) was the leader of the Kurdish national move- ment for half of the twentieth century. The frequent incidence of wholesale sellout of Kurds by regional as well as Western powers throughout his lifetime cor- roborated the credence of his incisive and oft-quoted dictum, "The Kurds have no friends but their mountains."
"Barzani's life was the stuff of legend," and was "intertwined with the vicissi- tudes of Kurdish nationalism for half a century," writes Jonathan C. Randal (After Such Knowledge What Forgiveness?, 1997). "His battlefield spoils, told and retold hundreds of times wherever Kurds live, are a rare cause for pride and kept the very notion of Kurdish nationalism alive for decades. He possessed that essential ingre- dient of leadership, the gift of commanding emotional loyalty, which moved men and women to drop everything and follow him despite impossible odds."1
Barzani spent most of his life fighting various governments partitioning Kurdistan. The life-long odyssey of his struggle began in 1907 when he was barely three years old. At that age, he and his mother were incarcerated at Mosul Prison in the aftermath of a raid on their region by the Ottoman Turkish forces led by Muhamed Fadil Pasha Daghistani.2 His father was subsequently brought to the same city to face the gallows. Not only did he fight successive Iraqi regimes, be they under Ottoman or British rule or independent, but he also pursued the struggle inside Iranian Kurdistan, where he participated in the founding of the ephemeral Kurdish Republic of Mahabad by Qazi Muhammed in 1946. In the wake of the collapse of the nascent republic, Barzani and his men set out on a daring march into the Soviet Union on foot for a sojourn of a dozen years before they returned to Iraqi Kurdistan in 1959. A bloody coup in Baghdad brought the Ba'thist regime to power in 1963, and Barzani had to fight back collaborating combatant units of Iraqi and Syrian armies in Iraqi Kurdistan. The concluding episode of this odyssey was the collapse of the hitherto most formidable and momentous Kurdish liberation movement when, in 1975, reconciled Iran and Iraq joined forces in fighting it after the shah of Iran and then Iraqi vice president Saddam Hussein personally signed the Accord of Algiers. Mustafa Barzani had to bid another farewell, which unbeknownst to him would be his last, to his cherished land and made for the United States this time. He died in Washington several years later after a bout with cancer on March 1, 1979. Interment in Iraqi Kurdistan precluded, Barzani's remains were flown to Hallaj, a northwestern vil- lage of Iranian Kurdistan, to be buried there. Wrapped in the Kurdish flag, his body was subsequently moved to his birthplace, Barzan, where he was laid to rest on October 8, 1993.
Pride
Such was Mustafa Barzani's pride that he did not set foot in Baghdad again after his estrangement with the Iraqi ruler Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1960. In subsequent years and regimes, then Vice President Saddam Hussein and, prior to that, President Abd al-Rahman Arif had to go to Kurdistan to meet him.3
In a meeting in Soviet Azerbaijan, Communist leader Baqirov threatened Barzani, telling him to accept his recommendations or bear responsibility for the consequences. Baqirov was an assistant to and close friend of Stalin's Interior Minister, Lavrenti Beria, through whom he enjoyed special privileges with Stalin himself. Barzani replied,
Comrade Baqirov, we did not come here for you to threaten us. If we were to yield to threats, you would not see us here. We came here to put the cause of the oppressed people of Kurdistan before the peoples of the Soviet Union, to defend our honor and the dignity of our people. Please understand that we will not submit to threats. We emphatically will not accept to be appended to a people who is [sic] no better than ours, even if it is the people of Azerbaijan, whom we consider a friend and a brother. We are an independent people and not a part of Azerbaijan. We will not accept the obliteration of the identity of the Kurdish people.
Memoirs
Mustafa Barzani did not write his memoirs, nor did he publish. He was not very keen on narrating the circumstances that he had encountered in his life. His son, Massoud, has put together a dossier of documents, stories, and letters, as well as rare photos, and pieced them into a narrative with his reflections and analyses of historic events during the period 1931-1961.
Discussing various aspects of this specific three-decade-long period of Kurdish history with Massoud Barzani in an exclusive interview, he stated that he consid- ers these years to be "the formative years of the Kurdish nationalist movement." Although he has appended, analyzed, and commented on subsequent events and provided updates up to the early 1990s, Mr. Barzani told me that he would like to have the time to write a sequel to the book before long to cover the ensuing events up to this time.4
Massoud Barzani was born on August 16, 1946 in the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, the same day his father, Mustafa Barzani, and others founded the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), of which he is currently president.5 In the ensuing 12 years, he did not see his father, who was living in exile in the Soviet Union. Fortuitously, Massoud arrived in Iran from the United States on the day his father passed away in Washington D.C. in 1979.
Massoud Barzani admits his limitations in writing at the outset. In his intro- duction to Part I of this book, he relates, "Admittedly, I am neither a writer, nor a specialized researcher, nor a historian. I have fought hard to set aside my biases to command objectivity and fairness in meeting this challenging project, and to bring to readers and those interested in the Kurdish cause the fruits of this labor."
He underscores honesty in narrating facts and equates skewing them with treason. " [W]riting history is a trust that must be kept for those who decide to take it on. No objection ought to be raised for expressing views or for commenting on events that do not correspond to an author's persuasion. However, to distort facts and history is an unequivocal treason," states Barzani in his introduction to Part IV.
Of the late Sheikh Rashid of Lolan, the archenemy of the Barzanis, writes Massoud Barzani, "Sheikh Rashid was known to have continued to abhor the Barzanis to his dying day. In spite of this hatred, I must point out some facts about him. Of all the Sheikhs in Kurdistan, he was the firmest and the most unshakable in his beliefs. Unlike other chiefs who vacillated, he upheld his values, especially those germane to issues of honor." On the other hand, Barzani has no such savory remarks for his own political party, the KDP, when he thinks it has erred. For instance, in 1959, "When al-Shawwaf was killed and officers loyal to Prime Minister Abdul-Karim Qasim regained control over the Fifth Brigade and the city of Mosul, Popular Resistance Militia squads under the Iraqi Communist Party's command committed atrocious retaliatory crimes against the population of Mosul, with the complicity and at times the help of the KDP branch in Mosul, which led armed men from Kurdish tribes to march on the city." Barzani's conclusion is that "from the beginning to the end, the Mosul events ushered in a new era of bloody struggle in Iraq, and no one escapes blame and responsibility. Nationalists, Communists, and Kurds all committed sins and errors against themselves, their country, and people. They sinned against Iraq."
This book sheds light on confidential telegrams of the British government that reveal what may not be realized by many observers, i.e., the intention that Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) member states, Turkey and Iran, harbored to expropriate Iraqi Kurdistan in the wake of the July 14 revolution of 1958.
In the Documents section are some "documents from 1943 [to] 1945 which [Mustafa] Barzani had kept in a special valise," writes Massoud Barzani. "He told me that he had kept all the documents from that period henceforth. However, some of them were lost in the Araxes River when [the Barzanis] crossed into Soviet territory. I have tried to shed as much light as possible on the ambiguous aspects in these documents."
Of interest in the same section is a protracted letter to Mustafa Barzani, hand- written on October 5, 1959 by (then KDP member) Jalal Talabani, who was attend- ing the International Youth Festival in Peking, China, at the time (Document no. 21). He signed off using his nom de guerre, "Pivot." Talabani wrote another letter to Barzani on July 30, 1957 (Document no. 22) before the two men would meet. Mr. Talabani is currently the chairman of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
Bearing the Brunt
Massoud Barzani and his immediate family, as well as his Barzani tribe, have sacrificed beyond description. Iraqi government agents have assassinated three of his brothers. He, himself, was the target of an assassination attempt in Vienna, Austria, on January 8, 1979. His six children grew up as refugees in Iran. Iraq has destroyed his hometown of Barzan 16 times. Thirty-two of his family members were among the 8,000 Barzanis of the Quashtappa camp, whom Iraq eliminated in one instance in 1983.
The Barzanis had been forcibly relocated to a camp adjacent to and closely monitored by the military camp in the town of Quashtappa, in the plains about 20 kilometers (km) south of Arbil. There, they first came under aerial bombard- ment from Iranian Air Force fighters at the beginning of the Iraq—Iran war, which lasted from 1980 until 1988. Accused of collaboration with the Iranians this time, the Iraqi army extracted all the male Barzanis between the ages of 10 and 80 from the camp in July 1983, paraded them in Baghdad as Iranian prisoners of war (POWs), and then propelled them into oblivion. They have not been heard from since.
A decade after the incident, when London-based author, journalist, and film- maker from New Zealand, Sheri Laizer, went to Iraqi Kurdistan, she talked to bereaved Barzani women.
The women spoke in short anguished sentences, searching their memories for words which could begin to describe what had happened ... 'We don't know anything about what happened to our men," she explained. "They were all taken away by the government ... I had four sons. At the time they were captured, the youngest was 10 years old, the next 15, the third about 20 years old, married with two children, and the eldest was 25 years old. He was also married and had four children. We don't know why they were taken. It happened very early at about five one morning. Those who were awake had already got up to pray. Others were still in bed. The army came and surrounded our village. Saddam's soldiers commanded everyone to come out- side and then they rounded us up and took all the men. Whoever was awake was taken first, then those still sleeping were sought and taken from their beds ... One time they came to the camp we'd been moved to by night, and surrounded us as before. They rounded up any men who were there, even those who were sick or injured, even those who were mad, even those whose two eyes were blind. The sol- diers tied their feet with animal tethers and dragged them off. No one was left, not at all. By God, there was not an adult male left in the village old enough to slaugh- ter the chickens. They took everyone and just dumped them into lorries and went away. Year after year, we women were left to wash the bodies of our dead and guard the camp ourselves." Tears filled her eyes. She didn't try to wipe them away. She looked far into the distance, not seeing us any more (Martyrs, Traitors, and Patriots: Kurdustan after the War, Lazier 1996).6 Flimsy hopes that had lingered for half a decade about the possible survival of the disappeared Barzanis were dashed. In 1988, when asked about the missing Barzanis, Saddam made a television announcement in which he declared they had been sent to the "engravers" (in other words, the cemetery). But the bodies have still to be located.7
The Book leader and provides a veritable mine of photos, documents and correspondence in Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, and Russian. Much of this material has rarely been seen before. Massoud Barzani narrates events in the first person, analyzes them, and updates some of them up to the early 1990s, when he finished writing the manu- script in Arabic. The work first appeared in the form of a series of four rudimen- tary booklets in Arabic. They were printed at the local KDP Press with very limited circulation between December 1986 and December 1990. Mr. Nemat Sharif had diligently attempted the laborious first-draft translation of the book into English before the task was passed on.
This version of the work is the first book by Massoud Barzani available in English to date. To preserve the original format, the book comprises four parts, each corresponding to one of the original Arabic booklets and each prefaced by an introduction by Mr. Barzani.
To facilitate the reading of each part independently, transition from one part to the next occasionally may entail some repetition of background events. To pre- serve the narrative and convey it verbatim in the English translation, all necessary additions have been inserted within brackets. Consequently, any item found between brackets, i.e. [...], be it within the body of the text, in the footnotes, or elsewhere in the book, has been added to the original work for the purpose of elucidation.
Barzan and Barzani
The namesake of Mustafa Barzani, the Barzani tribe, and the other Barzanis is the region of Barzan, from where they come.
Barzan is located in the northernmost part of Iraqi Kurdistan, 158 kilometers/ 95 miles (80 air kilometers/48 air miles) to the north of Arbil City. Adminis- tratively, it is in the Mergasur District within the jurisdiction of Arbil Province.
Orthography of Names An attempt has been made to bring some uniformity to the disparate English spellings of the same names transcribed from Middle Eastern languages. Nonetheless, direct quotations have retained their original method of spelling. The following observations are intended to elucidate the orthography of names.
Personal Names. Throughout the book, Barzani, The Barzani, Mulla(h) Mustafa, or Mulla(h) Mustafa Barzani all refer to Mustafa Barzani unless stated otherwise.
The spelling of the word Mulla(h) as in Mulla(h) Mustafa Barzani, reflects its Arabic pronunciation. In Kurdish it sounds like Mala (with the second vowel being long and accented). It means clergyman. However, when prefixed to male names among the Kurds, this word does not always imply that the person is a man of religion.
The definite article al, which means "the" in Arabic, is prefixed to one of the names of God to form compound proper nouns beginning with the word abd (servant) like Abd al-Qadir (the Servant of the Omnipotent). Its pronunciation is contingent upon the nature of the following letter: Abd al-Qadir is pronounced Abdul Qadir, but Abd al-Rahman is pronounced Abdur Rahman (the Servant of the Compassionate). The letter I of the definite article is pronounced in the former but assimilated in the latter. The prefix has been invariably spelled al in such names regardless of its pronunciation.
Although its Arabic spelling is identical, the late Egyptian President Abd al-Nasser's first name could be found spelled in English as Gamal (the way the Egyptians pronounced it) or Jamal (as pronounced by others). To maintain con- sistency in this work, the full name has been spelled Jamal Abd al-Nasser rather than Gamal Abdel Nasser, which is often found in pertinent English literature.
When the word martyr precedes a name, it does not necessarily have a religious connotation or undertone as it once did. Kurds often use the Arabic word sha heed (martyr) to refer to a fallen comrade in battle.
Geographical Names. Like personal names, albeit to a lesser extent, geographical names of many loci in Kurdistan lack a harmonious orthographical representa- tion in English. For example, Kurdistan has been spelled Kordestan (based on its Persian pronunciation) and Koordistan, among other spelling forms. The regional capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan, Arbil, is also spelled Erbil and Irbil almost as frequently. As if that were not confusing enough, Arbili Kurds themselves, includ- ing yours truly, call their city Hawler. Founded before 2300 B.C. by the Sumerians, who called it Urbillum, this thriving city of about one million inhabitants today is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited communities. In the Battle of Gaugamela, also known as the Battle of Arbela, fought near the town in 331 B.C., Alexander the Great decisively defeated the Persian king, Darius III, opening the way for his conquest of Persia (cf The New Encyclopedia Britannica 1987, p. 378).8
Province, District, and Subdistrict
Since antiquity, the Kurds, as a homogeneous community, have occupied a vast, cohesive region called Kurdistan, which means the land of the Kurds or Kurdland. It comprises northwestern parts of present-day Iran, northern Iraq, parts of northern Syria, and southeastern Turkey, with overlaps into the Republic of Armenia. According to David McDowall (Modern History of the Kurds, 1997), "The term 'Kurdistan' was first used in the twelfth century as a geographical term by the Saljuqs."9 According to G. Chaliand (People without a Country, 1980). the geographical term Kurdistan, "covers a part of the regions peopled by Kurds. There are Kurds from the Taurus mountains to the Western plateaus of Iran and from Mount Ararat to the foothills adjoining the Mesopotamia plain."10
However, Kurdistan" is more than just a geographical term. "Although the term Kurdistan appears on few maps, it is clearly more than a geographical term since it refers also to a human culture which exists in that land. To this extent, Kurdistan is a social and political concept," says McDowall (The Kurds, 1989).12
Under the British mandate (1920-1932), three former vi/ayets (provinces) of the Ottoman Empire, which were known as Mesopotamia in the West, were renamed Iraq. They were Mousul, Baghdad, and Basrah. Administratively, the new country consisted of 14 (now 18) provinces, called liwas (later renamed muhafazas). Within the jurisdiction of each muhafaza, there are a number of districts called qazas, within the boundaries of which there exist some nahiyas, or subdistricts. Within the administrative boundaries of each nahiya are some villages. The Kurds were concentrated in the provinces of Mousul, Arbil, Kirkuk, Sulaymaniya, and Diyala.
The Kurdish areas of Iraq cover roughly 74,000 km2 (17 percent) of the total territory of the country's 438,446 km2 according to Ismet Sherif Vanly (Kurdistan in Iraq, 1980)'3 In March 1975 about half of Iraqi Kurdistan was granted a form of autonomy and officially named the Autonomous Region comprising three muhafazas: Arbil, Sulaymaniya, and Duhok, which was upgraded to a muhafaza. It used to be a qaza within the jurisdiction of Mousul liwa.
Barzan is a nahiya (subdistrict), and its villages are within the qaza (district) of Mergasur, which in turn is within the administrative jurisdiction of Arbil muhafaza (province). The province is named after Arbil City, the regional capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
On the Issues
Although the book narrates events up to 1961, the author provides comparisons and analyses that encompass the situation in subsequent years and offers his insight when this becomes relevant in Part IV of the book, especially in his preface to it. For instance, on successive Iraqi regimes since the formation of the Iraqi State and the perpetual suffering of all the Iraqi people, Massoud Barzani says,
The Iraqis have suffered tremendous agony. They have never tasted true liberty and independence. Historically, they have found themselves either ruled by a Turkish Governor, a British Commissioner or a small band that leaped to power through a bloody coup d'etat. They have never elected a Parliament or a President freely, not even once. They have never willingly pledged allegiance to a ruler. The Iraqis are a people whose freedom has been usurped. However, their rulers have ruled in their name, killed in their name, destroyed in their name, waged wars and compromised their sovereignty and independence all in their name. The Iraqi people [has] never had the right to express [its] opinion. All this happens while Iraq is being ruled by a political party claiming to be "the bearer of the banner of unity, freedom, and social- ism"" and accusing its predecessors of treason, dictatorship, and being agents [to foreigners].
He depicts as "black" the coups d'etat in Baghdad that have brought the Ba'th Party to power twice, first for a brief period in the wake of the bloody coup of 1963 and then in 1968. (The full name of the Ba'th Party is the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party.
The word ba'th means "resurrection" in Arabic.) Its grip on power has not been dislodged ever since. He argues that a power struggle in the government of Republican Iraq's first ruler, Abd al-Karim Qasim, paved the way for deviation from the revolutionary path and for a loss of values that led to the incident of the black coup of February 8, 1963, and the ensuing black coups d'etat. Owing to the crimes committed against them and against the national sovereignty of Iraq since the February 8, 1963 coup and espe- cially since the coup d'état of July 17, 1968, the Iraqis have forgotten the ills of their erstwhile leaders. The number of all those executed during the periods when Nuri al-Sald [the perennial prime minister under monarchy] and Abd al-Karim Qasim reigned is less than half the number of those executed in a single day by the present regime. Even leaders of the Ba'th Party did not escape the collective purges that occurred in the 1979 massacre, which cost the Ba'th Party some of its best and most principled leaders, including the honorable fighter, Abd al-Khaliq al-Samarral.'s
The Ba'th Party's stance on the issue of national minorities in the Arab World was discussed in the booklet that was printed by the Dar al-Thawra Press in Baghdad in 1979. The thesis had been deliberated on and approved at the party's Eleventh National Congress:
... [Title condition the Party provided for affiliation with the Arab nation as the Constitution states in its General Principles is as follows:
An Arab is anyone whose language is Arabic, who lives or aspires to live on Arab land, and who believes in his affiliation with the Arab nation.
This definition means that Arab identity extends to all individuals and groups who meet this condition, without regard to race. This leaves the door wide open to absorb minorities and smaller ethnic groups into the Arab nation. As for nationali- ties with relatively larger populations within the Arab homeland, which have languages and ethnic traits that are fairly different from the Arabic language and traits like the Kurdish nationality, we must recognize their specific local ethnicity and resolve any contradiction between their characteristics and those of the Arab national movement. These nationalities possess languages and traits which are dif- ferent from those of the Arab nation but at the same time it is erroneous to consider them as different from Arabs as the Persian, Indian, and other nationalities are.
Nationalities with languages and traits different from those of the Arab nation that have lived within the Arab homeland for a long time, such as the Kurdish nationality, have established deep-rooted ties with the Arab nation. In fact they have lived, ever since they emerged and over this long period of time, in what is historically known as the Arab Homeland regardless of different names of its parts, and of the different names taken by states founded on it. This is an important issue, since the land these nationalities live on was a part of the Arab states which emerged thousands of years ago, the last one being the greater Abbasid State. This land was, therefore, home to other nationalities at the same time. Accordingly, the Arab identity of the land, home to these nationalities, was not acquired through coercion, imperialism, or usurpation. It was acquired through a historical reality extending for thousands of years. Over that, there was not any dispute or discord over all that long period.
These nationalities were, throughout various historical eras, a living component of the Arab entity, tied to and interacting with it. They were not foreign bodies [within the Arab entity] and did not contradict it. Ties between these and the Arab nation have thus become profound and inclusive within the framework of the Islamic creed for many centuries.
In his rebuttal, Massoud Barzani discredits this claim, saying, "This document claims that the Kurds are a nation inhabiting Arab land. This is a falsification of history and of reality. It is a position stemming from blind racism. The Kurds are the most ancient of all the nations that have inhabited Kurdistan, their homeland. They have never conceded, either in the Abbasid era or at any other time, that Kurdistan is a part of the Arab homeland, and they will not do so ever." He emphasizes that "The fact that the Kurds are a nation and that Kurdistan is their land cannot be erased by merely issuing a 'yellow document.' This is a chauvinis- tic mentality whose time has passed," and calls on scholars to address the issue: "Indeed, this is an extremely dangerous document and represents the culmination of the despicable racist thought. I hope that Arab and Kurdish writers, researchers, and historians will give it the attention it deserves, study it scientifically, and respond to it according to the rationale of history and reality which are supported by the facts that repudiate these misleading allegations."
Massoud Barzani exhorts the Kurds to undo what has befallen the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which used to have a Kurdish majority. The Ba'thist government altered its ethnic makeup by expelling most of its Kurdish and Turkoman inhabitants and replacing them with Arab tribes.
A word of advice to every Kurd and to future generations: Remember that the Ba'thist regime is the one which arabized Kirkuk and many other areas of Kurdistan for no reason other than its blindly racist outlook. It behooves the Kurds to strive with might and main to erase all effects of arabization from Kurdistan.
Whither Kurdistan?
At the end of the twentieth century, the number of the member states of the United Nations (UN) rose to 188 when the tiny island state of Nauru joined the world organization on September 14, 1999. Nauru has a population of 9,300.16 On the other hand, Kurdistan, which is almost the size of France17 and has a popula- tion of about 30 million, remained terra incognita. The Kurds had to walk alone throughout the twentieth century. "From Sheikh Sald's rebellion against the Turks in 1925 to the legendary Mulla Mustafa Barzani and his son Massoud, Kurds have grabbed the occasional headline and challenged central authorities more or less continually throughout the 20th century," writes Nicole Watts of the University of Washington (Expanding Kurdish Studies: A Review Essay, 1998).18 They have had to walk long and hard into the new century, and, unless their call is heeded, their arduous march is bound to continue. "If they heed not thy call; walk alone," said the Indian poet and Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore.
Ahmed Ferhadi, Ph.D.
New York University
September 1999 |
