What the slave analogy of Kani Xulam has to do with the Kurds?

By: Khasraw Koyi

Feb 16, 2005

Those who have read several of Kani Xulam’s written speeches and articles, by now, they must be consciously readied to expect coming across the word “slave” in reading his next ones. He has used such a term to describe the role of the Kurds in relation to their Turk, Arab, and Persian occupiers. Regardless of the fact that Kani is free to place the whole Kurdish nation in the personal frame of his views and emotions, nevertheless ‘as a rational and responsible intellectual’ he should know better that the exercising of such a free choice should not result in violating others’ rights to their sense of dignity, as well as insulting the truth and reality via using his ‘individual’ thoughts and experiences as a standard yardstick for the rest of the 40 million Kurds.

The Definition of Slave, as per Webster's Dictionary

Reading the four definitions above, one wonders which of them justifies Kani’s describing of the Kurds as salves! Are the Kurds slaves because they are subdued by force and they fight back against oppression? Are the many thousands of the nationalist Kurds who linger in the jails of the repressive states of Turkey, Iran and Syria all slaves? Should the tens of thousands of North Kurdistan’s freedom lovers who ‘just in the last 20 years’ lost their lives to Turk brutality be considered dead slaves? Should we remember the hundreds of thousands of victims of Anfal and the chemical bombardment of the towns and villages in South Kurdistan as Saddam’s wasted slaves? What about the tens of thousands of Peshmargas whose pride in the freedom of their Kurdish nation and the sacredness of Kurdistan’s soil has been and continues to be their only motive and incentive for which they pay the ultimate sacrifice? How about just the average of the Kurds whose dream of freedom and independence is bigger than life itself? Are these people who make up the Kurdish nation all slaves? Were the many European nations who for hundreds of years have been occupied and oppressed by the Ottoman Turks, and for decades more by the Soviet Communist Empire all slaves?

Other than the out-of-place usage of such words, I doubt that there are those amongst the Kurds who wish to underestimate Kani’s sincere efforts and outstanding intellectual capacity in highlighting the grievances of the Kurds to everyone he can reach. As much as I admire Kani for his persistent and tireless dedication, I am also puzzled with his choice of using the word ‘slave’ in such an irrelevant manner.

I have never participated in his presentations, nor do I know anything about the demographic environment Kani lives in. Yet, based on some of his written references, I gather that he designs his speeches mainly to target those whose race have had suffered from slavery in the past. May be, if Kani was a salesman of some commercial product, he would have been politically right in over-riding the rule of observing the facts and resorting to the scheme of erroneous parallels in striking ‘misguiding’ analogy; hence generating sympathetic response from the audience and succeeding in maximizing the impact of his sales pitch.

Kani must remember that the Kurds have lived in a homeland of their own ‘Kurdistan’ as one of the most proud people in the region with admirable resiliency to forced attempts of giving up their language, identity, heritage, as well as their land at any cost a freedom-loving people have ever proven to be willing to pay. Regardless of being ruled by the others, the Kurds always have thought of themselves as more free, worthwhile, and dignified people than their enemies; they have always pitied their enemies as being slaves to their inhuman nature and characteristics ‘such as passion for violence and brutality in favour of viable humanity’.

It is never fair of Kani or any one else to put the image of the Kurdish nation out of its realistic context in such a bizarre manner. No Kurds will appreciate to have their new and future generations be impacted with such insulting descriptions and analogies. As for the Kurds’ quest to have the other nations get the truth about the nature of the relationship between the Kurds and their oppressors, Kani should spare such humiliating sympathy-seeking tactics and let such truth reveal itself through Kurds’ collective role and output in serving the cause of universal freedom, democracy, peace and prosperity, and many other proud and uplifting ways. Kurds rather do it the hard way in their proud ways, than through humiliating beggary for others sympathy and support.

Following is a quote from Kani’s latest article (The Elections in Iraq, What Do They Mean to the Kurds?), published on Kurdistan Observer website, on February 15, 2005:

“A slave Kurd in the Middle East has no time to wait and can hardly find solace in the status quo”.

khasrawkoyi@yahoo.com