The Experience of Genocide (1988 Halabja) and the right to self determination under International Law:
Case Study: Iraqi Kurdistan.

Chapter One:The Iraqi Kurds- A Brief Introduction

Kurds, Kurdistan and the Kurdish Identity

The Kurds are native inhabitants of their land therefore, there are no strict beginnings for Kurdish history and origins. The modern Kurds as an ethnic group are the end product of thousands of years of evolution beginning with tribes such as the Guti, Kurti, Mede, Mard, Carduchi, Gordyene, Adianbene, Zila and Khaldi and the migration of Indo-European ribes to the Zagros mountain region about 4000 years ago. The term ‘Kurdistan’ means ‘the land of the Kurds’ and was first used in the Twelfth century when the then Turkish Seljuk prince Saandjar created a province with the name. However, the phrase ‘Kurdistan’ did not come into common usage until the sixteenth century and It was not until the early twentieth century that the Kurdish people acquired a sense of community as Kurds.

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Kurdistan is neither a politically defined entity nor a state. There are no recognized international boundaries to the territory and even internal administrative boundaries within the states are sometimes controversial and commonly ephemeral. Rather, it is an area of about 191,600 square kilometres straddling the boundaries of several countries, notably Turkey, Iran and Iraq. Globally, the Kurds are the largest nation in the world to have been denied an independent state. It is believed that there are over fifteen million Kurds in Turkey (20% of the population), four million in Iraq (25% of the population), seven million in Iran (15% of the population), over one million in Syria (9% of the population), seventy five thousand in Armenia (1.8% of the population) and two hundred thousand in Azerbaijan (2.8% of the population). There are no more definite figures largely because censuses in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran do not recognise ethnic identity as a legitimate category of registration. These countries have better served their interests by downplaying the size of their Kurdish communities to prevent them from becoming politically powerful.

Two inter-related questions must be considered in an examination of the modern history of the Kurds. One is the struggle between the Kurdish people and the governments to which they are subject for the control of the lands which they live in. The other is the struggle of the Kurds to move form being merely a people who happen to share some common attributes which had come to be described as ‘Kurdish’ to becoming a coherent community with the essential characteristics of nationhood. For most of the twentieth century, the Kurds have fought to obtain greater autonomy within their different states with a vision of creating an independent Kurdistan.

The Sykes-Picot Agreement.

During World War One, the French and British Governments concluded a secret treaty- The Sykes- Picot Agreement 1916 which effectively divided the Ottoman territories between French and British zones. When Imperial Russia became aware of the treaty, they were promised a share of the empire to cooperate.. Russia was to get Istanbul, the Straits and the eastern provinces, Italy was to get south west Anatolia and Greece was to get the region around Izmir. The secret plans were revealed by the Bolsheviks when they took over power in Russia in November 1917. The Bolsheviks wanted nothing to do with the plan but only sought to expose and humiliate the British and French. The regions that would have gone to Russia were then awarded to Britain as ‘zones of influence’.
In a bid to take the moral high ground, President Woodrow published his Fourteen Points for World Peace in January 1918. The points atressed the importance of self determination of nations. The twelfth point was that the non-Turkish minorities of the Ottoman Empire should be assured of absolute, unmolested opportunity of autonomous development.

1.3The Treaty of Sevres

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, there was a new preoccupation with the situation of minority groups driven not so much by concern for the minority peoples but by strategic political considerations.

1.4Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan is a fragile project that was born out of unlikely circumstances following ‘Operation Desert Storm’ to ‘liberate’ Kuwait and is largely dependent upon Allied Forces for protection.

For over ten years, Iraqi Kurdistan acted as a de facto state. It remains part of Iraq but is ethnically distinct. It has its own government- the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) which consists of two political parties that have administered the region under their territorial control since 1991. Despite a largely unstable first 6 years, since 1997, Iraqi Kurdish politics have stabilized significantly.

Chapter Two: Self Determination and the Iraqi Kurds
The History and Historical Basis for the Fight for Autonomy of the Iraqi Kurds.

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