For centuries, Kurds have yearned for a homeland, an independent state. Instead, They’ve been united only in disunity; scattered between Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. I
It’s a stateless society of more than 25 million. The Kurds’ plight entered the world’s screen most powerfully in 1988 when Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of villagers in northern Iraq. Since the Gulf War’s end, the Northern no-fly zone has become a de-facto Republic, its relative freedom fostering a kind of Kurdish Golden Age.
All of that, some fear, is at risk if the United States declares war on Iraq. And that means major tensions in this ad-hoc mini-Kurdistan, flourishing at the mercy and whim of the West’s military might.
Guests:
John Burns, reporter for the New York Times
Carole O’Leary, specialist on the Kurds at American University
Jalal Talabani, general secretary of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan;
Najmadin Karim, president of the Washington Kurdish Institute