Kurds Better Off Now
As the world discusses the legacy of the Iraq war on the 10-year anniversary of the US-led invasion, one group that appears to have clearly benefited from the conflict is Iraq’s Kurdish minority.
Call Me Stormy
Finding righteous currents in turbulent times
Archive for the tag “Kurds”
Arrest Made in Paris Killings
Police in Paris, France, have charged a 30-year old, Turkish-born Kurdish man with the murders of three activists from the Turkish Kurdistan Worker’s Party — or PKK – who were shot dead earlier this month. The motivations for the execution-style shootings are still unclear.
Political Assassinations in Paris
The pointblank murder of Kurdish activist Sakine Cansiz in Paris last week has called into question whether it’s the PKK or Turkish hit squads who deserve to be brandished as terrorist organizations. Cansiz was killed along with two other female activists at a Kurdish information center in Paris on Thursday, in an attack the French authorities called an execution. The news of the deaths has outraged Kurds, who claim the killings were political assassinations.
Lady Warriors of Kurdistan
From Boudica of the British Celts to Corporal Klinger, few things unsettle the male mind like a lady in arms. The Kurds of Northern Iraq have long recognized this principle and incorporated it into their quest to build a Kurdish homeland in the overlap between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. Fighting alongside their male comrades in a region not exactly known for its progressive stance on women’s rights, the female Peshmerga guerillas of the Kurdish Liberation Movement built a reputation for themselves in the 70s and 80s as demure diaboliques with the deadly poise of Leila Khaled or Tania-era Patty Hearst.
Having secured the northern third of Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the Kurds have spent the last two decades divesting themselves of their guerilla jamjams, building up a stable and booming economy in their semi-autonomous little hamlet, and generally enjoying not being in the middle of the current Iraq War. Up in the hills abutting Iran and Turkey, however, the struggle for a Greater Kurdistan continues for boy and girl alike — Thomas Morton, Vice News http://vice.com
