Most Westerners have heard very little about the ancient people referred to as the Kurds. Probably , if you watched an old ‘Sinbad the Sailor” movie with Douglas Fairbanks you might remember the heroine referring to her homeland in the Kurdish Hills… but that — if anything — is all most people know.
The Kurds are faced with two greedy sophisticated armies that have historically lusted over their resources and strategic position as the gateway to Iraq. Will this be Ruwanda or Afghanistan?
Who will stand up for Kurdistan in their struggle for complete independence?
The Kurds in iraq have been an autonomus democracy for 10 years. Christianity has been around since the Byzantine era:
“An educated guess for the total number of Christian Kurds (excluding the Assyrians, whose claim to a separate ethnic identity must be honored) would place them in the range of tens of thousands, most of them living in Turkey.”
Recent developments indicate a more ominious future for the Kurds once again:
“Our military sources report 5,000 Kurdish rebels of the anti-Iran PJAK and anti-Turkish PKK are holed up in bases in the Quandil Mountains (picture). Iranian and Turkish troop concentrations are already 7-8 km inside Iraq. Washington suspects Ankara-Tehran military complicity and fears a general Iranian-Turkish-Armenian-Kurdish conflagration will ensue, which Iran will use to grab itself a strategic foothold in northern Iraq and Turkey to seize oil-rich Kirkuk”
Kurdistan is on the brink… who will listen and who will help?
Roger Freberg