couldn’t read and write to write him
a petition to
a government official explaining his
grievances. The scribe wrote
the petition and then read it to him.
To his surprise,
the man started to cry, so he asked
him, “Why are you
crying?” “Because,” he replied, “ I
didn’t
realize I had been treated so
unjustly.”
Like the man in this real
story, we Kurds--- including those of us who have written dozens of articles on
the plight of our people --- don’t really realize how badly we have been treated
by those who have partitioned our homeland and committed untold crimes against
our people, our language, our culture, our history, and our very existence as
individuals and as a people. And the surprising result --- perhaps not so
surprising -- of this criminal behavior by the occupiers after decades of
abusing us is that they are worse off than ever and feel more insecure than
ever. Surely, we have lost a lot due to the denial of our rights as a people,
but the occupiers have gained nothing except eternal shame.
But are we Kurds as angry as
we should be, considering our unbearable condition and all the suffering we have
endured throughout our history at the hands of our neighbors/occupiers? Are we
as angry as we should be at our tormentors for standing between us and our
freedom, for denying us the rights they have sought and gotten for themselves,
for accusing us of offences they themselves are guilty of, and for killing us
just because we want to preserve our identity as Kurds instead of adopting
theirs?
Did we react as we should
have, for instance, when the Iraqi vice-president Tariq Al-Hashimi spoke in
Halabja recently and added insult to injury by claiming that the Iraqi officers
who planned and executed the Anfal campaign and the gassing of the people of
Halabja and elsewhere in Kurdistan were “merely officers following Saddam’s
orders” and, therefore, should not be held accountable for their crimes? Should
we have afforded him the undeserving honor of a visiting dignitary and listened
to his insults in silence, or should we have run him out of town? Should we have
allowed him to soil the grounds of Halabja by letting him go there in the first
place, knowing his hostile views towards our people? If he weren’t counting on
our wimpy reaction, would he have dared to come to the scene of one of the
twentieth century’s worst crimes and try to exonerate the criminals right in
front of the victims’ families, some of whom still suffer from the after effects
of the chemical attack of twenty years ago?
Did we react as we should
have when the Arab Parliaments’ Secretary General dared to claim in a statement
in Hawler (Arbil), the capital of South Kurdistan, during the Arab Parliaments’
conference in March, that “Kurdistan is an integral and inseparable part of
Iraq”? (We know all the implications of such a statement.) Should we have kept
silent, as we did, or asked him and his colleagues to pack up and take their
conference to Baghdad, where they would have been welcomed with the hospitality
they deserved?
Do we react as angrily as we
should because Turkey, Syria, and Iran trample on the rights of our brethren and
don’t even recognize them as a distinct people entitled to their human and
national rights? Do we react as angrily as we should when Kurds get killed for
something as simple as celebrating their national New Year, Newroz?
It is time that we Kurds
stopped living, thinking, acting, reacting, and speaking in a way that
perpetuates the tyrannical rule of the occupier and demeans us as a people. It
is high time that we freed ourselves from the ridiculous notion, which some of
the defeatists among us have brain-washed us with, that we were dealt an unfair
hand by history and fate and there is no escaping it. We must stop behaving like
victims and, instead, become masters of our destiny. We must free ourselves from
the mindset created by the occupiers that is plaguing us and preventing us from
thinking and behaving like a free people. We must take down the prison walls in
our mind before we can take them down in the world without.
We must believe in our hearts
that we are an occupied nation and occupation is a crime. We must internalize
the belief that the term “Iraqi Kurdistan,” or “Turkish Kurdistan,” or “Iranian
Kurdistan,” or “Syrian Kurdistan,” is unnatural because it reflects this
occupation and must give way to a “Kurdish Kurdistan.” Calling the occupation we
are under by its proper name is the first step towards ending it. How is the
occupation by Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria any different from the occupation by
the colonial powers of the past centuries? If one wasn’t legitimate --- and it
wasn’t --- why is the other legitimate? If one was condemned, why is the other
not condemned?
We must start thinking and
talking like the Arab caller to a National Public Radio program who said “You
can’t occupy Arab land!” We, too, must say loudly and clearly and without any
timidity “You can’t occupy Kurdish land!” We must start thinking and acting like
all the enslaved people who have gained their freedom just in the last fifteen
years, from Kosovo to Bosnia to East Timor to the countries of Eastern Europe
and the defunct Soviet Union. Since freedom was attainable by them why not by
us, too?
