The Kurds of the Middle East, though embraced by much of the West as idealistic free-dom fighters, have committed a range of human rights abuses, mainly targeting non-Muslim minorities. Their dark history of violence includes kidnapping, enslavement, and genocide.
Exposing the modern day Kurdish/Israeli alliance that both parties have tried to keep hidden in order to avoid drawing the public’s attention to their ultimate plan, as well as the U.S.’ use of Kurdish factions in destabilizing the Middle East. The Kurds have en-gaged in such relationships because of internal divisions and disunity, which have also made it difficult to fulfill their goal of establishing a fully autonomous Kurdistan span-ning over the four countries they currently occupy.
Examined also are the Syrian government’s attempts at keeping the country united by addressing and implementing constitutional changes that benefit the Kurds – attempts that have still failed to convince separatist Kurds to abandon their goal of Balkanizing and illegally confiscating parts of Syria at the cost of the people who reside there.
Kurds and Assyrians: a tumultuous past and present
Much of what the Kurds claim as their own unique culture is actually borrowed from older cultures, such as the Assyrians, Armenians and Suryoye. In fact, much if not all of the land in Eastern Turkey that the Kurds claim as their own once belonged to the Armeni-ans. It is hardly surprising, then, that the Kurds assisted in the Turkish genocide of Assyrians and the 1915 genocide of Armenians.
Also known as “Shato du Seyfo,” or the “Year of the Sword, ” this genocide tar-geted Christians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, mainly in 1915.
The size of the Assyrian population was reduced by as much as 75 percent as a result.
On the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq, the Kurds dwell in cities such as “Dohuk” (formerly known by the Assyrian name of Nohadra). But these cities are “theirs” only in that they have established a relatively recent presence there.
Employing the criteria of cultural identity and thousands of years of historical authenti-city, these lands are, and have been, uniquely Assyrian. The Kurds were essentially “given” these lands in the early 1970s as a means of drawing their eyes away from the oil-rich lands in and around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. To this end, there were large migra-tions of Kurds into Dohuk which displaced, often forcibly, Assyrians who had far greater legal and historical claims to these lands.
This is a tactic commonly employed by the Kurds when attempting to ascribe validation to their “sacred quest” of establishing a Kurdish state – something which has never existed at any point in recorded history. There was only a short existence of the „King-dom of Kurdistan“ from November 1922 to mid-1924 when Sheikh Mahmud Barzinji de-clared himself king of an area that included the city of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq and its en-virons.
By defining “Kurdistan” as any place where Kurds happen to dwell at any given point, they seem to be going by the maxim “possession is nine-tenths of the law” – which may work well in determining criminal liability, but not so well in determining one’s homeland.
In the early 1970s, the Kurds of Nineveh began to fall into what would become a familiar pattern of being used as a pawn of U.S. interests. In this instance, they betrayed their host country when the U.S. – through its puppet, the Shah of Iran – began arming them and encouraging them to rise up against the government.
The Iraqi government cracked down, which resulted in many Kurds being forced out of the lands they had only recently acquired. Iraq and Iran came to a diplomatic resolution and the Kurds were left holding the proverbial bag in what would also become a recurring scenario. Nearly the exact same phenomenon occurred in the 1980s and 1990s when, during the first Gulf War, a no-fly zone was established that granted the Kurds a tangible measure of international support and protection.
“Despite the oppression the Kurds have suffered at the hands of the Turks, they have not learned to be tolerant. In the Kurdish autonomous of North Iraq, The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) are acting in the same way as the Turkish government has for 90 years against Kurds and Assyrians.
Reports of systematic abuses against Assyrians within the Kurdish autonomy in Iraq are constantly increasing in number. There is organized harassment, sanctioned by the Kur-dish authorities. The aim is obviously the same as that of the Turks, to assimilate or expel the Assyrian indigenous people who have lived in these parts of the country for more than 7,000 years.” Augin Haninke wrote in her article The Kurds: Victims and Oppressors with Assyrian International News agency.
In 2011, imams in Dohuk encouraged Sunni Kurds to destroy Christian churches and businesses. In response, shops were attacked and clubs were besieged by mobs of people numbering in the hundreds. Hotels and restaurants were attacked with small arms fire.
In recent years, Kurds have continued acting disingenuously towards Christian minori-ties, including Assyrians and even Yazidis. Their abuses have gone far beyond historical revisionism. This was also seen when they took refuge in northern Syria in the early 19th century and proceeded to drive Arabs and Armenians out of numerous towns.
Modern day horrors as Kurds allow Daesh to murder Assyrians
In July 2014, as Daesh began its incursion into Iraqi territory, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) began its systematic disarmament of Assyrians and several other ethnic groups so that it could use their weapons in its own struggle.
The impeccable Kurds | When they think nobody watches
Notices were circulated threatening severe punishment for noncompliance. Assurances were given that the Peshmerga would provide some degree of protection.
But as Daesh advanced, the Peshmerga took the weapons and fled, following the same example as the Iraqi Army.
This left the Assyrians and Yazidis with no means to resist or defend themselves against Daesh. Reports even surfaced of these same Peshmerga gunning down Yazidis who tried to prevent them from fleeing with all the weapons.
Haydar Shesho, a Yazidi commander who managed to procure weapons from the Iraqi government, was then arrested by KDP authorities for organizing an “illegal” militia.
This scene was repeated elsewhere throughout the country, as 150,000 Assyrians were forced to flee the Nineveh plains, their ancestral land.
These actions can only be seen as a deliberate ploy by the Kurdish leadership to allow foreign forces to violently cleanse these areas of all non-Kurdish residents and then, with the help of their U.S. allies, retake and “liberate their lands.”
Many testimonies have surfaced, such as a statement given to the UK Parliament by Yazidi ex-captive Salwa Khalaf Rasho, in which it is said that the Peshmerga, eager to flee first ahead of Yazidi civilians, has refused requests to stay and protect Yazidis or at least leave them their weapons. They had even reassured the Yazidis that they should return to their homes, where they would be defended.
Some Peshmerga ultimately started firing on Yazidis when their protests grew forceful – killing some of them – in order to clear the way for their convoy of vehicles to pass un- hindered. Yazda, an organization that campaigns for Yazidi genocide recognition, wrote in its last report in January 2016: “Had they [Yazidis] been defended for one day, they could have been evacuated safely and the massacres and enslavement crisis could have been averted.”
A history of human rights abuses
In light of these horrors, it should easily be understood why the Kurds would have a vested interest in claiming Arab, Assyrian or Armenian history as their own. Failing in that endeavor, they often resort to destroying any relevant history altogether. In this aspect, they operate in a similar manner to Daesh.
Every time the Kurds failed in an attack against Turkey, they would migrate to Syria and try to claim Syrian land as their own. For instance, they tried to claim the Syrian city of Ayn al Arab, naming it “Kobani.” The origin of the name is the word “company,” a reference to a German railway company that built the Konya-Baghdad railway. The Kurds also claimed Al Qamishli, another Syrian city, as their illegal capital and renamed it Qamishlo.
It’s worth mentioning that the Kurds are not even a majority in the land they claim as theirs in northeast Syria. For example, in the governorate of Al Hasakah, they amount to about 30 to 40 percent of the population. That number has decreased since the outbreak of the current Syrian conflict, as many Kurds have left for European countries.
Most of the have fled to Germany, where their numbers are about 1.2 million, a little less than the number of Kurds living in Syria. However, they do not seem concerned about seeking autonomy there. They only seek it in the Middle Eastern countries that have provided them with refuge all of these years – these are the countries they want to stab in the back instead of thanking them for their hospitality.
Amnesty International’s many refutable allegations against the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army cannot be taken at face value in the absence of other corroborating reports. In some cases, however, they do report truthfully, such as when they released a report in 2015 accusing the YPG, the militia of Syria’s Kurdish population, of a range of human rights abuses.
“These abuses include forced displacement, demolition of homes, and the seizure and destruction of property,” the group wrote. “In some cases, entire villages have been de-molished, apparently in retaliation for the perceived support of their Arab or Turkmen re-sidents for the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS) or other non-state armed groups.” Amnesty International has also documented the use of child soldiers, according to Lama Fakih, a senior crisis adviser for the group.
The Kurds claim that their “Kurdistan” is “multicultural and multi-religious,” which is dis-ingenuous when you consider that those additional cultures consist of people now dwelling amongst a Kurdish majority in lands the Kurds took by force. These people will be faced with the prospect of casting meaningless votes on Kurdish independence since, even if they all voted “no,” they would nonetheless be outvoted by the Kurdish “yes” ma-jority and as a result would still find themselves subject to a Kurdish government and agenda.
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