Kani Xulam, a Kurdish activist with 11 years of experience serving in Washington, D.C. as an advocate for Kurds in the Middle East, spoke Wednesday night at a packed Moot Courtroom in the Law Building. With nearly 50 people in attendance, many USM students, Xulam presented a detailed history of Kurdish “oppression and genocide” at the hands of a divergent range of Islamic nation-states with a “culture of violence” in the Middle East.
“The marriage of evil with power in Saddam Hussein has led to a need which has been cultivated in the West to go to war with Iraq,” Xulam explained to an audience which grew increasingly more eager with each word.
Since the heated debate, which continues to be prevalent on college campuses across the U.S., is mainly focused on questions regarding the Bush administration’s justification for the war in Iraq, the plight of the Kurds-a moral and humanitarian issue-is often overlooked.
Xulam recounted a story relating to the March 11th terrorist attacks in Madrid, which left approximately 200 dead. “[The rescue workers] heard the constant ringing of cell phones on the bodies of the victims. The families of the dead were calling, but no one was there to respond,” the mood of the room became more somber as he related this to the long-standing Kurdish situation in Iraq and Turkey, “the Kurds have been calling the world, but no one will answer!”
An older woman in the middle row appeared to wipe a tear with her sleeve.
“Except for the people like those in this room,” Xulam continued, “the world has gone deaf.”
Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in the world without a defined homeland, described as “the Native Americans of Asia Minor,” are once again the “victims of U.S. involvement in Iraq”. The only difference is that this time, the potentiality for the pursuit of the establishment of a Kurdish presence vis-?-vis representative politics presents itself as an achievable possibility. The Kurdish people, an Islamic society with antecedents mentioned in the Bible, are concentrated in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union, but have a dispersed population in the Americas as well as Western Europe.
More notably regarded as ignored regarding an unfulfilled U.S. promise to assist them in the uprising against Hussein in the post-Gulf War era which led to the subsequent killing of thousands of Kurds, they are also the intentional victims of Turkish aggression, which is supported by foreign weaponry, 84 percent of which has been supplied by the United States. In addition to facing genocidal adversity, Kurds continue to endure totalitarian social suppression.
While the story of Iraqi Kurds is more well-known, the Turkish attitude toward Kurds within their borders, Xulam illuminated, is widely overlooked.
According to the U.S. State Department (SD) website, the Turkish Government severely restricts freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion, and movement, which effectively removes personal Kurdish identity from this ethnic minority with a track record of relentless persecution comparable only to the Jews. This reflects the presence of a policy which propones ethnic cleansing in Turkey, a NATO ally of the U.S.
The U.S. State Department human rights report page reports that 33,028 Kurds have been killed, 4,472 of them civilians, as a result of U.S.-sponsored weapons given to Turkey.
The human rights report for Iraq, in which 18 percent of Kurds reside, reflects similar methods of genocide, this time at the hands of recently ousted President Saddam Hussein of Iraq’s Ba’th party. As part of Iraq’s “prison-cleansing” campaign, tens of thousands of prisoners have been executed, the majority as a remedy for overcrowded prisons.
“Gassing, displacement, rape,” and other methods of ethnic cleansing, according to the SD, “continues… [the] Arabization campaign… to harass and expel ethnic Kurds.”
Portland resident Tennessee Watson, 23, said her reason for attending Xulam’s lecture was to “understand more deeply what is happening in Iraq. When I talk to my friends and family about the war, I want to be more prepared to ask the question relating to the oversimplification of the Kurdish plight in Iraq.”
Philosophy Professor George Caffentzis of USM remarked that Xulam’s speeches are “bringing truths to us that the standard media is not. It’s crucial to hear these voices. We’re not hearing those voices because they are not blasting guns. The Kurds have a case of justice. If we don’t hear them now, we will hear them later.”
Currently, there are over 40,000 Kurds living in the United States and approximately 25 in Portland. Kamal Soleimani, a Kurdish student at USM with a major in Philosophy commented that “it is very important for students to be effective in influencing foreign policy decisions…I share the view that if there’s anything that should be changed in the world it should be in the United States. They are the power in the world, and anything that happens in the U.S. will affect the whole world. Every person has duty to care about what’s going on in the world… As the future leaders of the society, it is very important for students to have a role in the political process.”
Xulam, as a long-time advocate and activist with the American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN), as well as a native Kurd, recounts how he became involved. “When I first saw the gassing of the Kurds, I was a student in 1988. I froze. I literally was numb,” after pausing to distance himself from the emotions which were apparently gripping him, Xulam continued, “I looked at my friends in the Middle East. There was no choice. I had to do my part.”
After comparing the plight of the Jews at the hands of the despot-driven German population during the years preceding World War II to the current situation faced by the Kurds in Iraq, Xulam extended a prescription for the future. “When we look at things like war, we must look at all of the issue. We are out of whack. We have to gravitate toward love, justice, peace, and understanding,” to lead the assertion of the promotion of Kurdish freedom, Xulam added, “the time to strike for Kurdish liberty has arrived. These are the times that try a man’s soul. From the ideals that make the U.S. great: liberty, justice, and truth will lead to the restoration of dignity to Kurds to uphold their honor from the blasphemous rape of their nation. I echo the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Luther King, Jr., when I say ‘together, we shall overcome.’ This time as well.”
This event was sponsored by Maine PeaceAction, World Affairs Council, Multicultural Student Affairs, the USM School of Social Work, the OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute, and the USM Philosophy Department.
For more information regarding Kurdish issues visit the AKIN website at www.kurdistan.org.
For the U.S. State Department’s human rights report, visit http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/
Contributing writer Jason T. Toothaker can be contacted at [email protected]