Donald Trump betrayed the Kurds, America's most reliable allies in
the fight against ISIS, by announcing in a tweet that US troops
would withdraw from Syria. Betrayal is nothing new in Kurdish
history, especially by Western powers. The Kurds, a nation with its
own history, language, and culture, were not included in the Treaty
of Lausanne (1923), which contained no provision for a Kurdish
state. As a result, the land of Kurds was divided into the
territories of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In this updated and
expanded edition of the 2016 The Kurds: A Modern History, Michael
Gunter adds over 50 new pages that recount and analyze recent
political, military, and economic events from 2016 to the end of
2018. Gunter's book also features fascinating vignettes about his
experiences in the region during the past 30 years. He integrates
personal accounts, such as a 1998 interview with the now-imprisoned
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader, Abdullah Ocalan, his
participation [or attendance if that's more accurate] at the
Kurdistan Democratic Party Congress in 1993, and a meeting with the
leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran in Iraqi Kurdistan
in 2012. In 2017, the University of Hewler in Irbil invited him to
give the keynote address before a gathering of 700 guests from
academia and politics, including the prime minister of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Nechirvan Barzani. In his
speech, Gunter praised the KRG's positive achievements and
highlighted continuing problems, such as KRG disunity, corruption,
nepotism, and financial difficulties. Within hours, reactions to
his address went viral throughout the land. Several TV channels and
other news outlets reported that officials had tried to interrupt
him. A few months later, this event would prove a harbinger of the
Kurdish disaster that followed the ill-timed KRG referendum on
independence. As an indirect consequence of the referendum, the KRG
lost one-third of its territory. The book concludes with a new
chapter, Back to Square One, which analyzes the KRG election in
October 2018 and the latest twists and turns in the Syrian crisis.
General
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