20th Century Refugees-- Arab Caused Refugees--The Kurds
Figure 1.--This little Kurdish boy is part of the Kirdish refugees fleeing Iraq's Arab army and the atrocties being committed by Safam Hussein. The press caption read, "He's Safe from the Soldiers: Kuredish refugee child sits Friday in a tent camp along the Iran-Iraq border well inside Iranian terririry. The child is one of some 80,000 Kurdsish Iraqis who fled into Iran in face of Ieaqi soldiers. About 2 million of Ieaq's 10 million people are Kurds -- a militant ethnic group concentrated in the north." The photograph is dated August 31, 1974.
In modern times the Kurds came inder pressure during the final years of the Ottoman Empire as the young Turks worked to build a more ethnically pure Turkish state. It was nothing like the Armenian genocide, but thre were incidents. The difference is that the Kirds werebpromarily Muslim. The Kurdish tribal confederations were split as to their lualty to the Ottomans. After World War I and the formation of Iraq, the Fertile Cressent was removed from Ottoman control. The Kurds attempted to achieve autonomy/independence from the Arab-dominated Baghdad Government which included armed conflict---the 1919 Mahmud Barzanji revolt. The tension reached a new level mof violence after the Bathist overthre the monarchy (1968). The Government Arabization pooicy reached new levels of violence under the Bathists, especially after Saddam Hussein seized power (1979). Saddam sought to cleanse northern Iraq of its Kurdish majority. Tens of thousands of Kurds fled the war zones following First and Second Kurdish Iraqi Wars (1960s and 1970s). The Iran–Iraq War (1980-88) and the first Gulf War resulted in a faileddupeusing af=gainst Saddam resulted in a brutral repression campaign aimed at the Shi'ia, Marsh Arabs in the south and the Kurds in the north. The Iraqi campaihm botderd on genocide. The conflicted resulted in several million refuggess, the largest refugee group was the Kurds. Saddam used poison gas on the Kurds. Many fled to Iran. Others became part of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe and the Americas. Iran provided asylum for some 1.4 million Iraqi refugees, again mostly Kurds. The United States provided himanitarian aid and military assustance. As a result, today more Kurds live outside the Kurdish araeas of Iraq than in Iraq.
