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The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland, by Kevin Mckiernan
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Kevin McKiernan has reported on the Kurds of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria since 1991, but he began his career as a journalist in the 1970s covering armed confrontations by Native Americans. In The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland he draws parallels---using examples of culture, language, and genocide---between Native American history and the experience of the Kurds. With a population of more than twenty-five million, the Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state, but until recently their long struggle for autonomy has received relatively little attention. Following World War I, the Kurds were promised a homeland, but the dream collapsed amid pressures of Turkish nationalism and the Allied realignment of the Middle East. For the remainder of the century, the story of the Kurds was one of almost constant conflict, as Middle East governments repressed Kurdish culture, language, and politics, destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages, "disappeared" and even gassed the Kurds---often as the West provided military assistance or simply looked away.
The Kurds are politically and ideologically diverse and were never a "nation" in the modern sense, but their struggles for self-determination have been repeatedly betrayed by outside powers. Yet in 1996, a Syrian Kurd would boldly inform the author that the Kurds "were a key to the stability of the Middle East"---prophetic words today, McKiernan writes, as the fallout from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and other developments join to make Kurdish independence a likely, if not imminent, prospect.
McKiernan mixes Middle East history with personal narrative, as he comes face-to-face with Kurdish refugees in the mountains of Iraq and Iran, a hidden war in Turkey, guerrilla safe houses in Syria and Lebanon, backpacking trips behind army lines, scrapes with hostile soldiers, and, finally, the discovery that his personal translator during the Iraq war was also a spy for Saddam Hussein. His complex portrait of the Kurds includes interviews with Jalal Talabani, the first Kurdish president of Iraq, members of the legendary Barzani family, and Abdullah Ocalan, the now-imprisoned leader of the lengthy Kurdish uprising in Turkey. Interwoven throughout is the story of the author's charming and resilient driver who survived a terrorist attack in Iraq, and the American doctors who nursed him back to health.
McKiernan's coverage of the war in Iraq includes a visit to the camp of militants linked to al-Qaeda who were responsible for a series of suicide bombings in the Kurdish region, and he examines how U.S. preoccupation with toppling Saddam Hussein allowed many of these insurgents to escape to Iran, regroup, and later turn their jihad against the American occupation. McKiernan also examines the role of journalists in the run-up to the war as he tells how his Kurd-provided "scoop" about Iraqi scientists came to be used in U.S. claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
- Sales Rank: #1746673 in Books
- Published on: 2006-03-07
- Released on: 2006-03-07
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.53" h x 1.41" w x 6.36" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 400 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The world's largest ethnic group without a state of their own, the Kurds saw their historic lands divided by colonial powers early in the last century, and their recent history at the hands of the Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian governments has been dismal. In this groundbreaking book, experienced war reporter McKiernan traces the path of the Kurds since 1975. It's a journey planted in realpolitik and signposted by poverty, genocide, terrorism, war and, finally, maybe, liberation. As McKiernan recounts his travels among the Kurds, a picture emerges of a diverse and disconnected people, riven by internal disputes even as they are set upon by rapacious foreign rulers. McKiernan's engrossing tale—told in the first person—brings to life a population that, despite its geopolitical importance, has rarely been covered so thoroughly for a general audience. Recounting in detail the situation of the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq (though not Iran), McKiernan sometimes presents overly simplistic explanations for complex regional trends and conflicts, but the sympathetic and compassionate treatment he gives his subjects makes up for many of his book's shortcomings. Finally, McKiernan asks American readers to examine their own responsibility for—and, indeed, culpability in—the mistreatment of the Kurds. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Praise for The Kurds
"Kevin McKiernan's astonishing book is investigative journalism at its best. He lays bare the open secret of Kurdish genocide that fuses past to present, the Then to Now. His storytellers offer us an oral history that reveals the sources of all genocide. It is as contemporary and prophetic as tomorrow's news."
---Studs Terkel
"This searing record of many decades of 'secret horror,' of scandalous betrayal, and willful silence could not be more timely or important. Written from intimate knowledge and rich personal experience in war and peace, laced with sympathy and understanding, this remarkable memoir-history is at once painful and inspiring. It provides incomparable insight into the suffering and courage and undying hopes of people who have suffered far too much, not least at our hands."
---Noam Chomsky
"Kevin McKiernan demonstrates what hard work, insight, and familiarity can produce---a wholly refreshing and informative piece of journalism. His countless days and nights in Kurdistan provide a window on an immensely complex and important society, not merely its renowned tragedies and betrayals, but its vibrancy and potential. This may be the best work on the Kurdish people in Iraq that has ever been written. A must read."
---John Tirman, executive director, MIT Center for International Studies, author of Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade
"Kevin McKiernan turns an unblinking eye on the Kurds, warts and all, and presents vivid accounts of some of their lives. He also tells us much about the life of a journalist committed to tell his reader truths obtained at great cost to himself."
---E. Roger Owen, the A. J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard
About the Author
Kevin McKiernan has been a war correspondent for over thirty years. He covered the Iraq war for ABC News in both Kurdish and Arab areas. Prior to that, he coproduced The Spirit of Crazy Horse for PBS Frontline and wrote and directed Good Kurds, Bad Kurds, the award-winning PBS documentary. McKiernan has published articles about and photographs of the Kurds in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and other publications. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Most helpful customer reviews
19 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
the truth and the courage to talk about it
By mazzam
this book deserves kudos and nothing else. the fact is, mckiernan has spent several decades researching the kurds' story "in the field" inside turkey and he has had the courage to write about the truth, an unsettling truth for those of us who honor human and cultural rights. do not believe the turkish government and military forces, and what is said for example in the review by oki oki on this book. that is all sheer propaganda, exactly what the usa and turkey want the world to believe. i encourage all to read this book and think about it profoundly. it speaks the truth.
10 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland.
By Michael Rubin
In The Kurds, journalist and filmmaker McKiernan offers a gripping tale of travel among the Kurds of northern Iraq, Turkey, and, briefly, Iran. Based on trips taken over fifteen years, his anecdotes give depth and perspective to Kurdish society. He augments his narrative with historical background. In describing the origins of the Kurds, for example, he relays not only the local Kurdish explanation that they are descended from the Medean Empire (seventh century B.C.E.) but also the scholarly debate which pours cold water on that myth.
McKiernan's tale begins in Iran where he headed at the behest of a nongovernmental organization to assist Iraqi Kurdish refugees fleeing the 1991 uprising. He relates a midnight interrogation by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards while the hotel manager, "a Kurd in a police state," looked on, "a look of embarrassment on his face." Over the next chapters and years, McKiernan shuttles between Iraq and Turkey where he meets local Kurds, as well as officials and others. Importantly, he traces the evolution of the Kurdish issue in Washington, recalling how in 1992, Kurdish officials such as Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Jalal Talabani--Iraq's current president--had difficulty getting meetings at the State Department.
It is easy to romanticize the Kurds - the perennial underdogs who have overcome great odds - and too many journalists do so. But McKiernan does not, nor does he whitewash Kurdish history in Iraq. He addresses the 1994-97 internecine civil war in which Talabani and his rival, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) president Masoud Barzani, sent each other's supporters to mass graves. He also describes the KDP obsession with spying upon and controlling foreign press and visitors.
Such balance, however, does not extend to the Turkish Kurds. McKiernan's account oozes with antipathy toward Turkey. He wrongly calls Kurds "second class citizens" in Turkey, ignoring that presidents, foreign ministers, and scores of parliamentarians have been Kurdish. Lack of education and urban-rural divide better explain the social differences in Turkey than ethnicity. Too often McKiernan uncritically accepts the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) narrative, though many Kurds consider it a terrorist group.
The second half of The Kurds discusses the 2003 Iraq war. McKiernan captures the atmosphere of anxiety that [...] might again launch chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds. His provides a gripping account of the [...] attempt on PUK prime minister Barham Salih. He describes how Iraqi Kurds would sell stories about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to U.S. reporters willing to pay for them. This raises an important but unaddressed question: how much of what entered U.S. news accounts originated with Kurdish political parties?
McKiernan's writing is eloquent, but uneven analysis weakens his narrative. That U.S. government officials cite the open press in speeches should not lead to the conclusion that they derive their information from newspaper stories. Conspiracy theories lace his account, such as the silly idea that the Pentagon hid the death of U.S. servicemen during the 2003 war. While a frequent theme of Baathist propaganda, such cover-ups are impossible given soldiers' parents, wives, and children, as well as the U.S. government's pension system. It is unclear how representative McKiernan's encounters are, or whether he reinterprets or revises observations in order to appear more astute. He appears to exaggerate Kurdish-Shi'ite distrust. Analogies to American Indians and false predictions of civil war cheapen what is ultimately a good read but an uneven account of an important time and region.
Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2007
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Kevin started a Kickstarter project on Wounded Knee and raised ...
By zerogame
Kevin started a Kickstarter project on Wounded Knee and raised over $60.000 dollars from donations. No one has heard from him since.
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