I Am A Kurd !

[kars]

Re title of this topic: “I am a Kurd!”

 

Fine. In fact, I am impressed. But why the exclamation sign?

 

Then comes the second part of the header (it gets even better):

 

“Do you like Kurds”?

 

What kind of stupid question is this? Is this on of those “blonds or brunettes?”, “vanilla or chocolate?” type questions?

 

[Not to mention it is still unclear: who, in particular, was this question addressed to?]

[kars]

I like rich red wine with my lamb dishes.

[Kurdistan]

Medya how can you write that it is better to not fight for that little

bit for Kurdistan if we get independent because it is better to have an ally the Armenia. We will not forget any bit or city in our Kurdistan and will take it sooner or later and never give up our kurdish and kurdistani land.

 

 

Iran for you my friend I am to against Islam and se that today the new generation of kurds dont take Islam like their parent did.

But you write that you belive in a ultra nationalism, you can do it or what ever you want in your Iran. But Kurdistan is never yours. The kurdish nation has the right to govern them self.

 

We kurd here in South Kurdistan ""Iraqi" have today own government with own peshmerga force that controll International borders and in fact the Iraqi flag is forbidden here in kurdish are and just the Kurdish flag is raised. In reality we have a mini Kurdistan here and on the map it is Iraq. We dont bring Islam in to politics and since 91 when we took thecities from Baghdad control we have established a democratic government. We can govern ourself in the interest of the kurdish nation. We have three part left of the great Kurdistan and one of this is the East Kurdistan who is occupied by Jemhori Islami.

 

We dont want your land or to force anything. we just want a simpel thing and that is our land Kurdistan the land of kurds. Our struggle continue even if it takes 100 years. The land that the kurds are in majority belongs to the kurds.

 

We have our federation with Iraq today and that is our first step to declare independence and divide from that damn Iraq. I dont feel that I am an Iraqi, I am kurd from Kurdistan. I have own culture, own language and history. I have right to govern myself.

None of these countrys can control this with force. You can not in future force a nation to live with a country that they do not want to do in a democratic country.

 

//Hawar

- Kurdistan, Sulaimani

[Harut]

i heard there is a kurdish village in syberia... when are you liberating that piece of kurdistan?

[MiG-35]

And the main population of Nakhijevan, too, consist of Kurds (in particular, Aliyevs are Kurds, and in Azerbaijan everybody knows that).

 

So do Kurds declare nakhijevan as a part of future Kurdistan?

[ED]

chgites inchu Hagop Paronian-in hishetsi........

 

yes al gudam Kurdistan@ dzez, qatseq areq

 

The fact that Kurds don’t have any collective idea what future boundaries of Kurdistan would include, according to most Kurds, much if not all of western Historical Armenia, chunk of Modern Armenian republic, northern Iraq, western Iran and some parts of Kgazer-baijan are Kurdistan.

 

Got to me thinking about us Armenians, dispite of overwelming evidance which Armenians left behind, where did my people live for 5000 years?

And according to all of these Kurds which all claim Armenia is there lands, and by Turks, kgazeris, Iranians, our very own existence has to be one of the phenomenons of world history

 

I like to ask our dear Kurd members of this forum, what is your opinion on this, lets assume you are right, and answer me please, where did my people live in all this time?

[TMNT]

The fact that Kurds don’t have any collective idea what future boundaries of Kurdistan would include, according to most Kurds, much if not all of western Historical Armenia, chunk of Modern Armenian republic, northern Iraq, western Iran and some parts of Kgazer-baijan are Kurdistan.

 

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

Collective idea? They are clueless and the irony behind it is that the "ancient homeland" he speaks of was already taken by Kurds in the name of Turks. They were promised a Kurdistan a long time ago. He should vent his anger towards the Turks. In Turkey, 1 in 4 Turks are Kurds and 1 in 3 soldiers in the Turkish army are Kurds, therefore, he has a much better chance forming a Kurdistan out of Turkey then Armenia. Kurdistan, Armenia will never succeed any territory for Kurds nor do we have obligation to. If any nation has a debt of gratitude that needs to be cashed it is Turkey, go seek your fortune there.

[Nakharar]

Got to me thinking about us Armenians, dispite of overwelming evidance which Armenians left behind, where did my people live for 5000 years?

And according to all of these Kurds which all claim Armenia is there lands, and by Turks, kgazeris, Iranians, our very own existence has to be one of the phenomenons of world history

 

I wonder what he would think after reading the following self-confession by the Kurdish author Mehrdad Izady in his book "The Kurds: A Concise Handbook", a major reference work on the Kurds, where he asks himself why there aren't any architectural monuments, not a single pottery artifact and not even a shred of glass that can be identified with the Kurds.

Maybe that's why they are so desperate to find such fictitious links to their "glorious Medean ancestors" and the Medean empire. An empire that nobody has heard of. Or bask in their empty pride that Saladdin, the Sultan of Egypt, happened to be a Kurd.

Only those people and nations with a very serious inferiority complex are that irrational and obsessed with geographical grandeur, because they have nothing else to gloat about. Only Hitler with his “livingspace” and the Serbs come to my mind. It must be quite an accomplishment to be the largest “nation” of nomads with a population of more than twenty million people, but not have accomplished a single thing except looting and brigandage. Even the Turkoman nomads were more succesful. Afterall they have a country named after themselves.

[Stormig]

I, too, have read Izady's book, or quotes referred from it - not sure which - and those which you mention weren't the only jewels. Very reminiscent of a number of Turkish "scholars" claiming Hittites were Turks, too.

[Kurdistan]

It is so sad that just because you have your Armenia today you write about what we have done..

The thing is when the kurds got promised a land it was in the same meeting Armenia got promised to.

It was before the war agians the greece. We unfourtnly trusted the Turks and helped them against the greece it was after the declaration of the turkish republic Ataturk hanged the kurdish leader when he arrived in Istanbul because he was invited and to thank him for the help in the war.

 

After that all kurdish names and kurds and kurdistan were forbidden and the area were a military zone until beginning of 90-th

 

You can travel in reality and see the North Kurdistan that you claim.. there is just kurds living there.. you can not get a land that armeninan lived there for 90 years ago. I am sorry for the genocide and hope that Turkey admitt it and the kurds have apologise for that event. Even if we were not in power but some kurdish clan helped the turks when it happened.

 

Biji Kurdu Kurdustan

[Nakharar]

It is so sad that just because you have your Armenia today you write about what we have done..

The thing is when the kurds got promised a land it was in the same meeting Armenia got promised to.

It was before the war agians the greece. We unfourtnly trusted the Turks and helped them against the greece it was after the declaration of the turkish republic Ataturk hanged the kurdish leader when he arrived in Istanbul because he was invited and to thank him for the help in the war.

 

After that all kurdish names and kurds and kurdistan were forbidden and the area were a military zone until beginning of 90-th

 

You can travel in reality and see the North Kurdistan that you claim.. there is just kurds living there.. you can not get a land that armeninan lived there for 90 years ago. I am sorry for the genocide and hope that Turkey admitt it and the kurds have apologise for that event. Even if we were not in power but some kurdish clan helped the turks when it happened.

 

Biji Kurdu Kurdustan

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

Well tough luck. You can take your infantile nationalism to another forum if you like.

[Nakharar]

Maybe I should have posted this in the Meet the US thread instead. It's quite interesting:

 

Salah-ad-Din

 

Palden Jenkins

 

September 30th 2001

 

 

Recent events, together with the news that the al Queda terror group and the Taliban look up to the medieval Muslim hero Saladin, have prompted me to write some notes about this notable man. Salah-ad-Din means 'Light of the Faith'.

 

He lived from 1138-1193, a Kurd who reunited Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) and almost succeeded in driving the incursive European Crusaders out of the Holy Land. The Crusades were the very first manifestation of European imperialism. Saladin was a great general and sultan, respected in the West, and one of history's only Muslim leaders to acquire a Westernised name. When the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 they murdered virtually all of its inhabitants, boasting that parts of the city were knee-high in blood. When Salah-ad-Din re-took the city in 1187, he spared his victims, giving them time to leave and safe passage - it was, after all, a holy city, and this was fought as a 'just war' by the Muslims.

 

So recent allusions to Saladin are apposite in many respects - though the full point has not been publicly made, to my knowledge. There are many different lessons to be learned from Saladin's example and from Crusader history in the current circumstances. A few examples follow.

 

1. A personal rule of Saladin's was never to take wars into cities or besiege them, or involve innocent civilians. He eventually broke this rule when he had the Crusaders penned up after too many years of war: he laid siege on the port of Acre. The Crusaders, cornered, played dirty - or desperate - resorting to medieval biological warfare (spreading diseased bodies). Result: tens of thousands on all sides died. Saladin soon died too, broken-hearted, a year or two later, having broken his principles and received his pay-back. He had laid siege because he was tired of war and losing his allies, and he wanted 'closure' - this, today, could be a weak point when Bush and Blair approach re-election time or when USA and its allies suffer diminishing resources or success. The West had better watch out for this trap. But, on the other side, al Queda too have seemingly underestimated the extent to which Western opinion stiffened after the WTC attack - civilian deaths thus suddenly raised the moral standards of the West.

 

2. Take a tactical lesson from Saladin: he specialised in laying traps for the Crusaders. Look at the decisive battle of Hattin in 1187: Saladin lured the Crusaders onto an exposed hill, roasting them under the sun in their own heavy armour (the sun nowadays being world public opinion) and, once 'cooked', debilitated and dying, he went in for an easy kill. This was his greatest single victory, won on strategy rather than might. In other words, the West had better watch out for being checkmated through al Queda's tactical manipulation of the Western media and public-opinion, and outwitting of clumsy, top-heavy Western might. Current references to Salah-ad-Din are pertinent not solely because al Queda idolise him. Take a tactical note here: al Queda is probably intending to set traps for the new, heavily-armed Crusaders of today, preying on their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

 

3. Another crafty tactical example. Saladin deployed female warhorses on heat, not only, of course, because fillies were more mobile than the heavy, armoured, male Crusader stallions! The handsome stallions fell into veritable chaos and the Crusader knights had to avoid close engagement with the Muslim warriors, who then picked them off one by one! The modern version? Al Queda are catching the West on its own weaknesses: its enormity, its dependence on oil, 'open skies', 'free markets' and globalised, widely-spread predominance. Saladin employed the ancient Chinese general Hsun Tzu's adage: "understand and anticipate your enemy". Exploit their weaknesses. Draw them into your own chosen field of battle. Force them to fight uphill. Such as in Afghanistan. The West needs to watch its logistical supply-lines, the appropriateness of its munitions, its tactics and insider intelligence-sourcing, as well as re-examining the inherent structural weaknesses of its global, techno-economic hegemony.

 

4. One of the big under-told stories of history is that, after re-taking Jerusalem, Saladin offered the Crusaders a power-sharing arrangement in the Holy Land. He realised they had a point, even if he didn't like their methods. It was the Crusaders' rejection of this option which caused him to despair and declare 'jihad' against them, initiating the idea of driving them into the sea (an idea applied to the state of Israel in the last 50 years). Within the Crusader camp, internationalists (Euro-residents of Palestine who respected Muslim civilisation) clashed politically with the Euro-isolationists (Papist fundamentalists and land-grabbers with European interests), and the latter won the argument. The Crusaders thus rejected the deal with Saladin, and war was guaranteed. This isolationist Euro-bombast set in motion the Muslim jihad, in its aspect as territorial war. Islam had, until then, been tolerant of Christians, as long as they behaved themselves. Had the Crusader internationalists won, the story of the Crusades and of subsequent history would probably have been very different, possibly to this day - it would have brought interaction rather than aversion between Christian and Muslim worlds. This points to the need for a great-heartedness on both sides if true conflict resolution is to be established between Islam and the West.

 

5. Saladin took a long view. He realised these Crusaders were nasty people, lacking principle and honour. Once the power-sharing offer was dead, he knew that getting rid of them would take time. Once the symbolic challenge of re-taking Jerusalem was achieved, he had great problems keeping his emirs locked into the holy alliance against the Crusaders. He knew that if the Crusaders were not entirely cleared out of Palestine, they would await their moment and try for Jerusalem again. But Saladin's emirs - contributors of troops and logistics - proved a major problem over the years, unwilling to go for the long haul. This is a lesson about the longterm weakness of alliances.

 

6. Saladin was famous as a tactician and general, yet he was deeply dedicated to peace and liberality. Take a lesson here concerning the background motivation of Usama bin Laden, who sees himself as a philanthropist. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist-philanthropist too. He and the ANC reluctantly resorted to terror as the only way they could achieve their aims against an unfair, overwhelming opposition. One might disagree with bin Laden, but his position has been similar. Though Saladin was the re-inventer of 'jihad' as territorial 'holy war' (called, in the West, 'just war'), he believed deeply in the spiritual meaning of 'jihad', as a soul-searching struggle within oneself for truth. Bearing in mind an apposite quote from the late Indian teacher, Meher Baba ("...wars in themselves do not constitute the central problem for humanity, but are rather the external symptoms of something graver which is at their root"), the concept of jihad needs a thorough re-examination by both sides, whether seen as Muslim 'holy war' or Western 'just war'. In the West, the true concepts of jihad are unconsciously being played out both in public opinion and in tactical assessments of the current crisis - and it is clearly known that a degree of moral rectitude is crucial in winning the 'war against terrorism'.

 

7. Saladin's greatest enemies, who scared him most, were not the Crusaders. They were the Hashishiyun, dedicated martyr-assassins who derived from his own homeland, Kurdistan. They were true terrorists with precision-strike capabilities (the cut-throat knife and poison - chemical warfare). As fundamentalists, they opposed his overwhelming power in the Muslim world. He never beat them - this was left to the Mongols. This says something about the might of generals when pitted against the stealth of terrorists.

 

The lessons from Salah-ad-Din's time are many and varied, and they are applicable to all sides of the current conflict. If the West wishes to know its enemy, it would do well to take a good look at this man, his strengths and weaknesses and the reason why al Queda study his form.

 

One of the best sources I have found, summing up the history of his time, is Karen Armstrong's book "Holy War - the Crusades and their impact on today's world" (MacMillan, London, 1988 on). And thank you to Jo Buchanan in Australia for prompting me to write this piece.

 

http://www.palden.co.uk/palden/p4-saladin.html