Éditeur : Routledge | Date & Lieu : 1992, London |
Préface : | Pages : 250 |
Traduction : | ISBN : 0-415-07265-4 |
Langue : Anglais | Format : 140x220 mm |
Code FIKP : 2219 | Thème : Politique |
Présentation
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Table des Matières | Introduction | Identité | ||
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The Kurds a contemporary overview |
Introduction Sami Zubaida The collection of papers in this volume brings together many aspects of Kurdish history, politics and culture. They are valuable scholarly contributions. Their interest, however, at this particular point in time, goes beyond the scholarly. The Kurdish nation is living and suffering a particularly critical conjuncture in its history. At a time of advances in democracy and respect for human rights in many parts of Europe and elsewhere, the transgressions against Kurdish lives and liberties are getting worse. The outcome of the two recent regional wars frame the problems and the prospects for the Kurds. The aftermath of the Iraq - Iran war brought calamity to Iraqi Kurdistan, which suffered the concerted savage onslaught of Iraqi forces, killing thousands with chemical weapons, uprooting and relocating even larger numbers, and razing towns and villages which have been Kurdish habitations for centuries. The face of Iraqi Kurdistan has been dramatically transformed, making the very territorial identity of the Kurds precarious. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds, uprooted by the war, by Iraqi deportations, first of Faili Kurds to Iran before and in the early years of the war (estimated at 130,000, see Morad in this book), then more recently of Kurds expelled from their towns and villages and resettled in government "new towns" with no tangible means of subsistence, and refugees in make-shift camps in Turkey estimated at 60,000. These are in addition to the many thousands deported to other parts of Iraq since the early 1970s. In Iran, Kurds suffered the depredations of war, being in the border regions between the combatants, and coming in, in the earlier years of the war, for the special attention of the Revolutionary Guards fighting Kurdish insurgents, destroying villages and generally imposing a harsh and violent regime on …
Contributors The position of the 19 million Kurds is an extremely complex one. Their territory is divided between 5 sovereign states, none of which has a Kurdish majority. They speak widely divergent dialects, and are also divided by religious affiliations and social factors. It has taken the tragic and horrifying events in Iraq this year to bring the Kurds to the centre of the world stage, but their particular problems, and their considerable geopolitical importance, have been the source of growing concern and interest during the last two to three decades. There is a remarkable dearth of reliable and up-to-date information about the Kurds, which this book remedies. Its contributors cover social and political issues, legal questions, religion, language, and the modern history of the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the Soviet Union. The Kurds will be an invaluable source of reference for students and specialists in Middle East studies, and those concerned with wider questions of nationalism and cultural identity. It also offers extremely useful background information for those with a professional concern for the numerous Kurdish immigrants and asylum seekers in Western Europe and North America. |