Iraqi Kurds Experience.

Disgusted with ISIS, some Kurds turned away from Islam following the fall of Mosul in 2014. Many became atheists, while others sought comfort in Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism, according to converts, was the “original” religion of the Kurds before they embraced Islam. In 2015, two Zoroastrian centers opened in Sulaimani, both of which are recognized by the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. Notably, neither has tried to recreate Zoroastrianism the way it is currently and has been historically practiced in Iran and South Asia. Instead, they have created their own versions of Zoroastrianism, which is nationalist, postmodern, and liberal. Kurdish Zoroastrians argue that the reason Kurds are “backward” is Islam. They seek to rectify the present situation through a Kurdish “authenticated” and “original” form of Zoroastrianism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at these two centers, the present article examines this new religious movement in Sulaimani, an important city in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. It analyses the rise and distinctiveness of Kurdish Zoroastrianism looking at how Zoroastrian Kurds articulate their views on Islam, women’s rights, human rights, and Kurdish independence.

Die Debatte um das Unabhängigkeitsreferendum, dass Masoud Barzani im vergangenen Monat für den 25. September 2017 ankündigte, offenbart die Wirren und die Empfindlichkeiten der kurdischen Frage. Es offenbart, wie unter-schiedlich, wie streitbar, wie sensibel Diskurse innerhalb der Bevölkerung Kurdistans geführt werden. Wer hier eine Streitschrift für oder wider das Referendum erwartet, wird enttäuscht. Vielmehr soll hier ein kleiner Einblick in sich wiederholende Argumente innerhalb der Diskussion um das Referendum wiedergegeben werden um so ein besseres Verständnis für die Motive der Bürgerinnen und Bürger der Autonomen Region Kurdistan zu schaffen, die gegen das Referendum sind. Der Traum von einem unabhängigen Kurdistan ist gleichzeitig jedoch einer, der über allen kurdischen Köpfen schwebt, auch wenn das zuweilen verleugnet wird. Das Fazit dieses Textes argumentiert für einen differenzierteren Umgang mit den Motiven derjenigen, die für das Referendum sind.

For two years Kurdish peshmerga, the forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government, have been fighting Islamic State on the hills and plains around Mosul. Since reconquering Sinjar city in the fall of 2015, frontlines have inched closer to the Iraqi capital of ISIS. However politics and the progress of the Iraqi army have hampered a final push for the liberation of the city. As forces close in towards the end of 2016 it is clear that this final battle for the city could determine the future of Iraq and will be key to Kurds determining their future. This strains relations between Baghdad and Erbil and also concerns regional powers such as Turkey and Iran.

*This article was written for presentation at a Rudaw conference in October, 2016; it has the drawback of being written before the Mosul offensive began on October 17 and does not take it into account.

The rise and desired fall of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have reopened the question of borders in the Middle East. Many commentators point to the long-term negative effects of joining disparate ethnic and religious groups within artificial borders, and view both the Syrian civil war and the dissolution of Iraqi federalism as indicators of the crumbling nation-state. Others insist that citizens always adapt to arbitrary boundaries, noting that the problem rests not in the states themselves but in their governments. Perhaps political structures are to blame, particularly authoritarian leaders who have pressed ethnic and sectarian alliances rather than fostering a unified populace. Still other critics fault transnational forces, first colonial and then Isla-mist, and hang onto national democracy as the redemptive paradigm. I enter the discussion as someone who researches the history of the oil industry in the Levant and writes about the various ways in which twentieth-century colonial borders have been domesticated and nationalized. From my perspective , the main issue is not borders but, rather, the historical configuration of sovereignty in the Middle East. The problem, furthermore, is not primarily one of territorial sovereignty but of sovereign claims to underground petroleum stores. The history of the modern Middle East is also a history of pipelines, infrastructure that can " transform who controls the flows of petroleum and who profits from them " (Jones 2014: 124). A pair of pipelines, in particular, reflects a hundred years of corporate resource extraction and extreme mili-tarization on the ground. The first pipeline, completed in 1934 to carry oil from Kirkuk in Iraq to Tripoli in Lebanon, was the colonial French line built

Towards the end of the decade long Iran–Iraq war, Saddam Hussein launched a deadly attack against the Kurds, known as the Anfal Campaign, killing more than a hundred thousand. One of the largest acts of genocide occurred on 18 March 1988 in the Kurdish city of Halabja. On that day, sweet-smelling poison gas was poured over the city, killing at least five thousand. Since 2001 Kurdish moviemakers have memorialized the tragedy of the Halabja massacre by producing cinematic dramas and narrative documentaries. These films are part of a discourse of authenticity and a politics of culture that permeate the Kurdish independence movement. This essay proposes that Halabja films can be divided into three stages: the era of consolidation, 2000 to 2009; the golden era, 2009 to early 2014; and the fall which followed the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Each era reveals new attitudes towards politics, society, and the massacre.

Imminent ISIL attack against Turkmen town Emirli

One of the most disregarded aspects of Mesopotamia's aggravated descent into the Hell is the desperate situation in which Iraq's Turkmen have been exposed over the past few years. More recently, the life conditions of the Turkmens, one of Iraq's most important nations, have been gravely deteriorated.

Türkmeneli, the land of the Iraqi Turkmens, has long been exposed to vicious colonial policies of precipitated Arabization ever since the Ottoman rule ended during WW I. More recently, under the cruel minority regime of Saddam Hussein, Arabization was intensified, and thus hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Turkmen were forced to emigrate from their native land to Turkey, Europe, America and other countries.

Following the calamitous US interference in Iraq (2003) and the even more devastating administration of the occupied country, Turkmens' right to self-determination, national independence, and nationhood was suppressed by the paranoid division of Iraq into three zones (Shia, Sunni, and 'Kurdish') that did not bode well for the future of Iraq's other nations, notably the Turkmens, the Aaramaean Christians, the Yazidis, the Shabak, the Yarsanis (Ahl-e Haq), the Mandaeans, etc. The scandalous trichotomy opened the Pandora's Box, as it was a time capsule for the ensuing multilevel genocide. Over the past three months, we have only started watching its nefarious consequences.

Arbitrarily and dictatorially placed under 'Kurdish' tutelage, the Turkmen found themselves exposed to a new policy of disfigurement, identity loss, ethnic cleansing, and national persecution at the hands of the madly and criminally armed by US & EU thugs and gangsters of Talabani and Barzani that were fallaciously reported by the falsifying mainstream mass media as 'Kurdish militias' or 'Kurdish army'.

Absurd Arabization was thus followed by Hellish Kurdification.

The policy of the thuggish 'Kurdish' militias' toward the Türkmen nation proved to be no different from Saddam's Arabisation policy, which was supposedly what the Americans came to Iraq to cancel, granting freedom and Human Rights to all.
First published on 18th September 2014 under the title "Iraq’s Türkmen reject ‘Kurdish’ tutelage" here:
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/iraqs-turkmen-reject-kurdish-tutelage/
Republished on 18th September 2014 here:
http://www.bharatbhasha.com/politics.php/483825

''In my work I present images that can speak for themselves, that are metaphoric and that work on several levels to evoke a response in the viewer, to have him or her reflect on their deeper sense, to enter the painting like a door to another world. " Sulaimaniyah-born Tahir Fatah has a long and illustrious career behind him in the United States living from his art work following retirement from the long hours of labour in California's top film studios including Universal and Disney where he painted sets used on some of the best known shows 1. Maintaining a keen focus on Kurdistan in relation to international developments Tahir's latest canvasses have moved away from the abstract forms of previous periods to rich irony and visual metaphor. Speaking by Skype, Tahir explained his symbolism to me: in one of his latest canvasses, a youthful Mulla Mustafa Barzani sits astride a pale horse that leaves behind a dark past – that of the background with the Islamic crescent in the sky, progressing to the Kurdish destiny of nationhood and the light of future history. The four vivid red poppies the mythic hero holds represent the four parts of Kurdistan. Above him in the sky, the first lines of the Kurdish national anthem, Ey Raqib, are lettered. In another painting of this most recent period, Tahir explains how he was roused by anger over the Jihadist forces assaulting the region to put his feelings down in paint. In a reference to classical art, Venus can no longer see her beauty in the mirror: instead a bestial female, her head encased in a green hijab with animal ears protruding above, blocks the celestial vision with ugliness and corruption. In another work, the symbol of victory has lost a wing and the light of the sun is blocked by the emblem of the Turkish flag in a swirl of surrounding darkness. The ancient world of noble philosophy and classical beauty is being dismembered. In yet another vivid rendition of Tahir's intellectual vision, the cupids, or angels, have grown old. Obama plucks the string of his lyre. Again, the Turkish emblem replaces the light of the sun. Earlier paintings from the period of the 1991 Kurdish uprising and mass exodus are soon to be pledged to the new museum being constructed in Kurdistan, a gift from the painter. But like other hardworking artists, the painter must sell his work to survive. Living in the desert this is not so easy. Tahir left Los Angeles for the quiet beauty of the desert south towards Palm Springs but found himself alone and cut off. Painting day and night, often till after midnight, his external environment sometimes feels like a place of lonely exile. 2 His planned visit home to Kurdistan to visit the extended family still living there has been delayed time and again by the economic crisis hitting the United States. " People aren't buying art like before, even the wealthy and every amateur that starts painting fruit or a portrait of their pet thinks himself an artist or applies paint to paper as a form of therapy. It's mostly superficial. In the Kurdish language we speak in images, we use symbols, but here in the US they don't understand what we are saying. In my work I present images that can speak for themselves, that are metaphoric and that work on several levels to evoke a response in the viewer, to have him or her reflect on their deeper sense, to enter the painting like a door to another world.