Stateless Nation: The Kurds
Unreliable, untrustworthy
traitors, or nationalist, freedomloving patriots, or what?
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Point of View
• Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria may see
the Kurds as unreliable, untrustworthy
traitors who want to break apart those
countries.
• The Kurds are a nation – a people with
a sense of common ethnicity, history,
and purpose. They see their cause as
nationalist patriotism.
• Neither the UN or any country has
taken up their cause and supported the
creation of an independent Kurdistan.
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Where the Kurds Live
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One View of a Kurdish State
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Some Productive Areas
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Hard work pays off
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Some Marginal Land
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Some Barren Land
Once a part of the Roman Empire
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Some
Scenic Land
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Some Urban Landscapes – The Old
and the New
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Iraq &
Genocide
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Halabja Gas Attack, 1988
After the attack
and before
reconstruction
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Saddam Hussein ordered the use of
weapons of mass destruction
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Desolation After the Attack
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Those who didn’t die were left
scarred physically and emotionally
The
mourners
The
wounded
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Halabja has been rebuilt, but the
horror has not been forgotten.
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1991 Gulf War
• Kurds backed the attacking allied forces
against the government of Iraq.
• The northern No-Fly Zone was
established to stop Saddam Hussein
from retaliating against the Kurds.
• What will happen to the Kurds in Iraq if
there is another war in 2003?
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The Future?
• As long as there
are Kurdish
people, there will
be a Kurdish
nation.
• Will there ever be
a Kurdish state for
the Kurdish
nation?
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