Kurds protest in Paris streets, Saturday 11 October 2014
I have huge admiration for the Kurdish people. Yet again the US have let them down…
Context : First Gulf war 1991, after 100 hours, Iraq agrees to a cease fire, Iraqi troops have retreated from Kuwait. The US (under leadership of George H.W. Bush and defence minister Dick Cheney) is satisfied with UN objectives and does not push on to Bagdad.
Within Iraq Saddam brutally crushes Sh’ite and Kurdish opposition.
Part of this brutality is the gassing of thousands of Kurdish people in the north of Iraq, they flee to the mountains bordering Turkey – it becomes a humanitarian crisis.
I spent a month (a bare bones affair) with Phil Kier of Rolling Stone covering their plight. The people we met left an indelible impression, under such extreme and heartbreaking conditions they could still be so warm and generous. The Peshmerga, Kurdish fighters, (“whose name means “ those that face death”) were particularly kind to us.
Yesterday in Paris and across Europe tens of thousand of Kurds protested – the crowd in Paris looked very young – over ISIS inaction in Europe.
Really…. are we about to see history repeated?
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