(Iraqi) Kurdistan - (April 2005)  Words by Phil Sands    Photographs by Christian Payne

For more than a Century the Kurds have been at war, fighting governments and powerful armies, fighting amongst themselves, fighting for the right to be an independent people.

The conflict has ebbed and flowed, through bloody days of total war against the Ottoman Empire, guerrilla battles against the Turkish, the Syrians and the slaughter of Saddam Hussain's Iraq.

The Kurds have no friends, an old saying has it. And they've had precious few; betrayed and spurned by the Great Powers at the end of World War One; ignored by the international community ever since as they were murdered, locked up, had their language banned and culture denied. It is the Kurds who saw their city of Halabja destroyed by chemical weapons one awful Friday in 1988, as the world also watched, doing nothing.

They are also their own enemy, persistently fighting among themselves, a long running civil battle between power hungry tribal warlords, willing Kurd to murder Kurd.

Proud people, the Kurds have a reputation as indefatigable warriors. The most famous Muslim fighter of them all - Salahadin, who defeated the Crusaders and won back Jerusalem - was a Kurd, from the village of Tikrit.

And their culture has endured, a bridge between East and West. The Kurds are now by majority tolerant, pragmatic Sunni Muslims descended from an obscure sect, the Yezidis – “devil worshippers” - who remain in villages of northern Iraq.

Finally too, there is a feeling the darkest days are past - a bright new dawn is breaking on Kurdish lands, spread as they are across Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. The dawn began in 1991, when a US-led coalition declared a no fly zone across northern Iraq - it's Kurdish enclave.

That act handed the Kurds a relative autonomy, the first real chance for them to run their own affairs, to be a self-governing people.
The latest Iraq war, launched in March 2003 amid such controversy, was seen in many quarters as the next big step towards Kurdish freedom. There are billions of people across the globe opposed to the Iraq war – but some 30 million Kurds are resolute to this day that removing Saddam by force of arms was unquestionably right.

And now, from being an oppressed people in Iraq - gassed, executed, arrested, ethnically cleansed - the Kurds this year saw themselves taking symbolic control of the country.

Iraq is a lawless land, beyond any man's will to impose order, but it's newest President - the man who replaced Saddam Hussain in that role - is a Kurd; Jalal Talabani, known to the Kurdish as Mam Jalal, 'uncle'. Once he led Kurd against Kurd, now he’s restyled and repackaged: no longer the warlord who did deals with the Kurds' enemies but a unity leader.

News of his appointment sparked a three-day celebration across Iraqi Kurdistan - that internationally unrecognised state which still refuses to be denied. The Kurdish saw, at last, evidence their war was beginning to be won.

And they responded by pushing ambitious territorial claims that sparked outrage in Iraq’s Arab communities: the Kurdish insisting vast tracts of land as far south as Baghdad were their own.

Officially, the Kurdish in Iraq wish to stay part of that nation. On the streets of Northern Iraq, no one pretends that is the case. The aim is a Kurdish state and political games must be played if it is to be achieved.

And the inescapable fact is that there will be more fighting. Kurds in Iraq enjoy an unprecedented liberty - though heavily dented by the frequent horrific insurgent attacks that wrack the nation. Yet elsewhere Kurds continue to be denied their dream of self-determination.