A Modern History of the Kurds

A Modern History of the Kurds

Over the past thirty years the Kurds have been slowly gaining international attention. This reached a climax at the time of their flight from Saddam Hussein in March 1991. Today there are over 25 million Kurds. Yet the slow emergence of the Kurdish nationalist movements, and the reasons why successive governments in the region have sought to stifle them, are not widely known or understood.

In this narrative, the first comprehensive account of recent Kurdish history, David McDowall traces the roots of Kurdish nationalism from the collapse of the Kurdish emirates in the nineteenth century and the consequent crisis in tribal politics, through the post-1918 peace settlement for which the Kurds were wholly unprepared, to the slow emergence of an educated non- tribal class during the middle years of this century. This new class faced two enemies. Externally, it had to resist the recently established regimes in Iran, Turkey and Iraq, all of which equated modernization with state nationalism, ethnic subordination and centralization. Internally, it had to transform a society based primarily on the socio-economic ethic of tribal patronage to one based on ethnic identity.

McDowall shows how in each of these countries the struggle has taken on its own characteristics, problems and prospects; why pan-Kurdish unity still proves so elusive; and how governments have used the internal fault lines of Kurdish society to impede national progress. He also explains why the Kurdish question is unlikely to disappear and examines the likely prospects for the future.