Numbering some 20-25 million people, the Kurds’ traditional territory is divided among the modern states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Just over 4 million of these Kurds live in Iraq, constituting about one fifth of
the population.
I can safely impart that, to most people in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, the Kurdish question is an enigma. This is regrettably the case despite the fact that Iraq and its future provide ample reason for them to show interest in the plight of the Kurds.
Besides local issues, the Saudi press is much more interested in Sudan and Yemen, for example, than it is in the Kurds.
To illustrate this point, I searched through the website of Saudi Arabia’s mass circulation daily Asharq Al-Awsat for the term “Kurds.” The search returned 355 references. When I searched for “southern Sudan,” however, the site returned 364 articles. Not a big difference, I have to admit.
Not so with the next comparison I made. Searching for references to Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, the Asharq Al-Awsat search engine returned 209 articles, compared with no less than 815 for Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army leader John Garang!
Though unscientific, my test showed that interest in the Kurds and their cause is not among our priorities here in the Gulf.
The Berbers of North Africa are another minority people that ordinary Arabs are almost totally ignorant of.
I once attended a discussion in Algiers with a group of Egyptian and Algerian journalists, most of whom were either Islamists or Arab nationalists. All the participants agreed that there were plots concocted abroad to foment ethnic strife between Arabs and minorities that have long lived in their midst in (relative) peace. These conspiracies, the journalists were convinced, will lead to the Balkanization of many Arab countries.
One of the Egyptian journalists present went so far as to smear the entire Kurdish nation by suggesting that they were being used by the West to undermine the unity of Iraq.
The exchanges that went on in that small Algiers gathering epitomized the misunderstandings that have characterized the relationship between Kurds and most Arabs since Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani cooperated with Israel and the shah of Iran in the 1960s and 1970s ­ a fact that was seized upon by Iraqi propaganda to besmirch the image of the Kurds in the Arab world.
When the Americans finally launch their offensive against the Iraqi regime (in which the Kurds are slated to play a starring role), I expect the Kurds to come in for a torrent of Arab abuse in late-night chat shows.
In fact, this abuse has started already. Various writers and columnists are already accusing the Kurds of being a backward tribal people, and “revolutionaries for hire.”
Syrian writer Ali al-Rabioturki recently questioned (in an Egyptian newspaper) whether the Kurds were again going to wage war on behalf of others, and whether they were going to agree to act as guides for the Americans in their attack on Baghdad.
This Syrian, who should have known better, failed to propose any alternatives. What should the Kurds do? Just sit back in Suleimaniya and Arbil while the Americans redraw their country’s future? Assuming of course that they still view Iraq as being their country. The Kurds have been religiously assuring jittery Arabs that they are against the dismemberment of Iraq, and that their only aspiration is to live under a federal, democratic Iraqi state.
Rabioturki’s position is echoed by a number of Saudi Islamists who, in the 1980s, came to know former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani when he was still fighting the Soviet occupation of his country. When Rabbani was forced to side with the Americans in their “war on terror,” however, these Saudis wished that he had not legitimized the US campaign against the
Taleban. They wished he had ordered the Northern Alliance not to cooperate with the Americans against their Afghan brethren.
These Saudis were too far away from where the events took place to be affected by their suggestions. They were also too ignorant to realize what atrocities the Taleban committed.
Rabbani, on the other hand, knew very well what the Taleban were. He realized that the Taleban rejected the very idea of sharing power. Had Rabbani listened to the Saudi Islamists, he would have retired to his home village of Badkhshan. His party, meanwhile, would have been split down the middle, some following him, while the rest seizing the historic opportunity to overthrow their Taleban foes.
For Rabbani in Afghanistan, substitute Kurdistan Democratic Party chieftain Masoud Barzani and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani in Iraqi Kurdistan. Like the former Afghan president, the two Kurdish leaders are faced with an historic opportunity. They can either seize it, or they can lose it forever. It is highly unlikely that they will listen to Arab advice and allow such an opportunity to pass them by.
Consequently, Barzani and Talabani urgently need to launch a public relations campaign to convince the Arabs of their intended actions. This won’t be easy. When we Arab journalists meet with Kurdish leaders, we seldom ask them about conditions in Iraqi Kurdistan proper. All we ask about is whether the Iraqi Kurds will take part in the American campaign against Saddam Hussein, and whether they are for or against the unity of Iraq.
To my knowledge, no Arab newspaper has correspondents in Iraqi Kurdistan. Neither does any Arab satellite TV channel. This is because Kurdistan is still technically part of Iraq, making it difficult for MBC or Egyptian state TV to send correspondents to Suleimaniya or Arbil. The only exception has been Al Jazeera satellite channel, which produced the only Arab documentary about the Kurds.
On the whole, Arabs know very little about the suffering of the Kurds. When they are told of what has been done to the Kurds, the latter have to work hard to convince them that it is true. The 1988 genocidal Anfal campaign mounted by the Iraqi regime, for example,
in which more than 100,000 Kurds lost their lives, was on the same scale as the Palestinian Nakba, the Jewish Holocaust, and the Armenian genocide. But you can scarcely find
Anfal mentioned in Arab newspapers, despite the fact that the Iraqi regime has very few friends nowadays.
I searched for Anfal in Asharq Al-Awsat, and could only find 15 references mostly written by Kurds or by the Iraqi opposition. I have never heard of pro-Kurdish demonstrations being organized in any Arab country, or of any seminars discussing the Kurds and their plight.
The sensitive situation in Iraq, and fears of the country’s possible breakup, led many Arab states ­ including Saudi Arabia ­ to shun the Iraqi opposition. No prominent Iraqi opposition figures have visited Riyadh since the mid-1990s; Saudi officials, it seems, have chosen to leave the issue of Iraq to the country’s immediate neighbors like Syria, Turkey and Iran.
But the fallout from any chaos that might befall Iraq will surely affect us in Saudi Arabia. Iraqi Sunni Arabs (who feel targeted by the country’s Kurds and Shiites because of their association with the Baathist regime) will quite naturally look to their co-religionists in Saudi Arabia for help and support. That is why we must reach out to the Kurds, if only to ensure that no massacres take place.
Saudi Arabia must also use the friendship with Iran, cultivated by Crown Prince Abdullah, to ensure that Tehran’s Shiite allies in Iraq behave themselves, so that all Iraqis can work together to build a strong and unified country.
The Saudis should embark on these efforts now, so long as the region is relatively peaceful, rather than waiting until Iraq is in turmoil when it would be too late.

Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi is a Saudi political analyst and the deputy editor in chief of Saudi Arabia’s English-language Arab News. He wrote this commentary for The Daily Star

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