POL Politiek
Discussies en diepgaande gesprekken over de politiek in de breedste zin van het woord kun je hier voeren.
vind van welquote:Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 12:46 schreef Senor__Chang het volgende:
Van democratie in Zuid-Koerdistan kan je niet echt spreken natuurlijk.
er is een sterke oppositie en de grote partijen zijn lang niet meer de machtigste
Laat me niet lachen met je Koerden en joden zijn broers..quote:
[..]
Koerden en Joden zijn broers!
in Israël leven ook zo'n 150.000 Koerden
Nefret etmeye bile usendigim insanlar var.
Ik wil iedereen aanraden om het eerste hoofdstuk van dit boek te lezen. Geeft wel een goed inzicht in de oorsprong van het Koerdische vraagstuk.
http://books.google.nl/bo(...)#v=onepage&q&f=false
(Het eerste hoofdstuk is volledig leesbaar.)
http://books.google.nl/bo(...)#v=onepage&q&f=false
(Het eerste hoofdstuk is volledig leesbaar.)
"But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."- Edmund Burke
Hmm, nee. Israel heeft meer gedaan voor Koerden dan welk moslim land dan ook (zoek maar op Kurdish-Jewish relations).quote:
[..]
Joden zijn denk ik de grootste vijanden van de Koerden. Trouwens het zijn jullie zionisten die Koerdistan hebben verdeeld in 5 stukken.
Er leven 150000 Koerden in Israel, oke. Maar er leven ook 300000 Turkse joden en 1.000.000 Marokkaaanse Joden in Israel, dus zo bijzonder is het ook weer niet.
Daarnaast zijn er 250,000 - 300,000 Koerdische Joden, er leven nog Koerdische Joden in Iran & buiten Israel.
Het aantal ''Turkse'' Joden is overdreven. Het gaat om ca. 120-150 duizend ''Joden UIT Turkije'', dit betekent dat het net zo goed Koerdische Joden kunnen zijn die in het Zuid-Oosten (Noord-Koerdistan) van Turkije woonden, wat zeer mogelijk is aangezien de meesten Joden uit Zuid-Koerdistan, in de Badinan regio woonden, wat grenst aan Noord-Koerdistan.
Het aantal Marokkaanse Joden overdrijf jij ook, het gaat in totaal om zo'n 450 a 500 duizend.
Het verschil zit hem niet in het aantal, maar in het volk. Koerdische Joden beschouwen zich nog altijd als KOERDEN die het Jodendom als religie hebben. Marokkaanse, Algerijnse, Libische, etc. Joden zien zichzelf niet echt meer als ''Marokkaan'' of ''Algerijn'' maar gewoon als Jood of als Israelier.
Dat komt vooral omdat hun mede volksgenoten, dus niet-Joodse Marokkanen en Algerijnen, schijt hebben aan hun Joodse volksgenoten en zwaar antisemitisch zijn.
Koerden zijn dat niet.
Een oma van iemand die ik ken (woonde in de Koerdische stad Slemani) vertelde ooit eens wat voor een trieste dag het was toen de Koerdische Joden uit Koerdistan werden gedreven door de Arabieren. Zij vertelde dat zij zelfs moest huilen, omdat goede vriendinnen van haar weg moesten en de Joden waar een belangrijk en hecht gemeenschap. Koerdische Moslims, Christenen, Yezidi en Joden bezochten elkaar en respecteerden elkaar, er was geen ''religieus probleem'' zoals dat er is in de achtergestelde Turkse/Arabische landen.
Ik heb ook veel respect voor Koerdische joden. Ik wil juist dat ze allemaal terugkomen naar Koerdistan.quote:
[..]
Hmm, nee. Israel heeft meer gedaan voor Koerden dan welk moslim land dan ook (zoek maar op Kurdish-Jewish relations).
Daarnaast zijn er 250,000 - 300,000 Koerdische Joden, er leven nog Koerdische Joden in Iran & buiten Israel.
Het aantal ''Turkse'' Joden is overdreven. Het gaat om ca. 120-150 duizend ''Joden UIT Turkije'', dit betekent dat het net zo goed Koerdische Joden kunnen zijn die in het Zuid-Oosten (Noord-Koerdistan) van Turkije woonden, wat zeer mogelijk is aangezien de meesten Joden uit Zuid-Koerdistan, in de Badinan regio woonden, wat grenst aan Noord-Koerdistan.
Het aantal Marokkaanse Joden overdrijf jij ook, het gaat in totaal om zo'n 450 a 500 duizend.
Het verschil zit hem niet in het aantal, maar in het volk. Koerdische Joden beschouwen zich nog altijd als KOERDEN die het Jodendom als religie hebben. Marokkaanse, Algerijnse, Libische, etc. Joden zien zichzelf niet echt meer als ''Marokkaan'' of ''Algerijn'' maar gewoon als Jood of als Israelier.
Dat komt vooral omdat hun mede volksgenoten, dus niet-Joodse Marokkanen en Algerijnen, schijt hebben aan hun Joodse volksgenoten en zwaar antisemitisch zijn.
Koerden zijn dat niet.
Een oma van iemand die ik ken (woonde in de Koerdische stad Slemani) vertelde ooit eens wat voor een trieste dag het was toen de Koerdische Joden uit Koerdistan werden gedreven door de Arabieren. Zij vertelde dat zij zelfs moest huilen, omdat goede vriendinnen van haar weg moesten en de Joden waar een belangrijk en hecht gemeenschap. Koerdische Moslims, Christenen, Yezidi en Joden bezochten elkaar en respecteerden elkaar, er was geen ''religieus probleem'' zoals dat er is in de achtergestelde Turkse/Arabische landen.
Er wonen wel opvallend veel Noord-Afrikaanse joden in Israël hoor. Dat waren zowel Berberse joden, Arabische joden als Sefardische joden. Marokko had eerst de grootste Koerdische gemeenschap van de hele islamitische wereld. Ik snap niet waarom ze al die Joden daar verdreven hadden.
ik haat ook niet alle Joden, ik heb alleen schijt aan zionisten
(ook christelijke en islamitische zionisten).
We moeten er gewoon voor zorgen dat die Koerdische joden "TERUGKOMEN".
Helaas zijn de meeste daar geassimileerd en spreken ze alleen maar Hebreeuws en Engels.
Kijk CS die zionisten gebruiken ons maar alleen maar. Oke misschien steunen ze ons eerst in een toekomstige Groot-Koerdistan maar straks verzinnen ze een reden om Koerdistan binnen te vallen samen met het westen.
Saddam Hussein was ook ooit een vriend van de VS. Drie keer raden wat er met hem is gebeurt.
Haha, ja, vast. Jij komt nooit ver in de politiekquote:
[..]
Ik heb ook veel respect voor Koerdische joden. Ik wil juist dat ze allemaal terugkomen naar Koerdistan.
Er wonen wel opvallend veel Noord-Afrikaanse joden in Israël hoor. Dat waren zowel Berberse joden, Arabische joden als Sefardische joden. Marokko had eerst de grootste Koerdische gemeenschap van de hele islamitische wereld. Ik snap niet waarom ze al die Joden daar verdreven hadden.
ik haat ook niet alle Joden, ik heb alleen schijt aan zionisten
(ook christelijke en islamitische zionisten).
We moeten er gewoon voor zorgen dat die Koerdische joden "TERUGKOMEN".
Helaas zijn de meeste daar geassimileerd en spreken ze alleen maar Hebreeuws en Engels.
Kijk CS die zionisten gebruiken ons maar alleen maar. Oke misschien steunen ze ons eerst in een toekomstige Groot-Koerdistan maar straks verzinnen ze een reden om Koerdistan binnen te vallen samen met het westen.
Saddam Hussein was ook ooit een vriend van de VS. Drie keer raden wat er met hem is gebeurt.
.Bezoek het marokko of moslim forum maar, kun je daar samen met die antisemiten over complottheorien praten
.
Ik kom wel ver in de politiek hoor als ik strategisch speel.quote:
[..]
Haha, ja, vast. Jij komt nooit ver in de politiek
Bezoek het marokko of moslim forum maar, kun je daar samen met die antisemiten over complottheorien praten
Op die Marokkanen forum praten ze alleen maar over onzin. En daar zijn ze alleen maar anti-Israël niet anti-Joods.
Die Marokkanen en Turken weten niet hoe je moet discussiëren op een forum dus ik wordt er maar geen lid van.
Ben je zelf lid van die achterlijke forums of zo.
En is er een Koerdenforum hier in Nederland.
Goedzo.quote:Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 22:29 schreef RoW_0 het volgende:
Ik ben met TS eens. Koerdistan mag van mij best bestaan.
In plaats van Israël.
Waar slaat dat op dan? Dit is geen complottheorie dit is gewoon hoe hij het wil, vertel mij eens hoe jij het wil zien dan?quote:
[..]
Haha, ja, vast. Jij komt nooit ver in de politiek
Bezoek het marokko of moslim forum maar, kun je daar samen met die antisemiten over complottheorien praten
Nefret etmeye bile usendigim insanlar var.
Wat is er erg aan dat er eindelijk een moslim is die inziet dat de vervolging van Joden als enge reactionaire actie op de Nakbah verkeerd was en Midden-Oosterse Joden terug verwelkomt in hun thuisland (itt het kraken van Palestijns land)?quote:
[..]
Haha, ja, vast. Jij komt nooit ver in de politiek
Bezoek het marokko of moslim forum maar, kun je daar samen met die antisemiten over complottheorien praten
"But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."- Edmund Burke
INSIGHT: Kurdistan – Just Being Independent
Iraq is going to break up. It is already happening, but no one wants to acknowledge it because no one wants to be perceived as being responsible for the disintegration of a major Middle Eastern country.
There is not much about the Kurdish region of Iraq that is Iraqi. When you arrive at Erbil’s brand new international airport, there are no signs that welcome you to Iraq. I am sure somewhere at the entrance to the airport there is an Iraqi flag, but I didn’t notice it. The only hint that I was actually in Iraq was the stamp a Kurdish police officer put in my passport that says in tiny letters, “Republic of Iraq-Kurdistan Region.”
The Kurds have a foreign ministry (actually two, maybe even three, but that is another story), a military, interior ministry, intelligence services, a parliament, president, prime minister, investment authority, and a flag. No one under the age of 30 speaks Arabic (English being the favored second language) and not a single person I met of any age believed themselves to be Iraqi. Why would they? What is the common idea that ties someone from Sulaimaniyah to someone in Basra? There isn’t one.
None of this should be much of a surprise to anyone who has even been paying half attention to Iraq over the last decade – or rather the last two decades when the Kurds quietly began building the institutions and structures of independence under the Anglo-American no-fly zone established after Operation Desert Storm. Beyond solemn declarations that, “the Kurds will not be responsible for breaking up Iraq” and not-so-believable assertions about the differences between “the dream of independence” and the constitutional reality of a unified Iraq, you get the sense that the Kurds believe that the environment for their independence is slowly ripening. They have serious reserves of oil and gas as well as significant amounts of foreign direct investment from Turkey, the Gulfies, Lebanon, Egypt, the United States, Europe, and the Russians. A lot of investment is in the energy sector, but not all of it. There are, for example, more than 1,000 Turkish companies – both large and small – operating in the Kurdistan region. Kurds are munching on Ulker biscuits, cooling off during the brutally hot summers with Arcelik air conditioners, and I stayed in the Koc family’s Erbil outpost – the Divan Hotel. Speaking of Erbil, it is a bit dreary, but definitely booming. The most oft-sighted bird in the Erbil sky is the “construction crane.”
“…it is likely that one day everyone is going to wake up and there will be a new country called Kurdistan.” – Steven A. Cook, Council on Foreign Relations
Combined with good economic times in Kurdistan is the pervasive dysfunction in Baghdad and the sectarian violence that threatens to tear the country apart. Just last Sunday there were ten bombings killing at least 41 people in Shi’ite majority areas of Baghdad. The death toll is up to 1,000 a month, which is not quite 2006 levels, but close. In contrast, the Kurdish area has experienced three bombings in the last decade, the most recent on September 29, the first major attack since 2007. In addition, the Kurds and the federal government – officials in Erbil chafe at the term “central government” – are forever in conflict over the electoral law, hydrocarbon law, and the Kurdish share of the budget, which is supposed to be 17 percent, but is always less. People in Erbil and in Baghdad, I am told, wonder whether the effort to maintain the fiction of a unified, federal Iraq is worth it both politically and economically.
As good as it looks for the Kurds, they still have serious challenges before realizing their ultimate goal. The first is Kirkuk. The oil-rich region around the disputed city is in the central government’s hands, but the disposition of Kirkuk remains a powerful nationalist issue for Kurds. There have been censuses in the city in 1957, 1977 and 1997. And while there is agreement that the 1957 tally was the most accurate, no one actually knows the current demographic balance of the city. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Arab population surged as a result of Saddam Hussein’s Arabization policies and there continues to be a large Turkoman population that claims Kirkuk to be culturally Turkoman rather than Kurdish. Even if the non-Kurdish populations were considerably smaller, Kirkuk remains in the hands of Baghdad and there is no way the Kurds are going to “liberate” it without force, something that seems farfetched despite the apparent bravery and legend of the peshmerga. At least one Kurd said to me, “If we have a lot of oil and gas in other places, we do not really need Kirkuk.” He freely admitted that his view was not widespread.
Second, the Kurds have their own internal political difficulties. Despite burying the wounds of a civil war they fought in the mid-1990s, it is clear that the two parties that have controlled the Kurdistan region – the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) eye each other warily. The PUK has largely controlled Sulaimaniyah, though a breakaway party called Ghorran (meaning “change”) secured more votes than the PUK in recent elections. The KDP has a virtual lock on Erbil and Dohuk, the other governorate that makes up the Kurdistan region located next to most of the Turkish border. The KDP and PUK form a governing coalition, but cooperation between and even within ministries between party members can be tough going. There are other more ominous outward differences. The security forces in Erbil, for example, wear different uniforms than those in Sulaimaniyah, which would not be a problem but for the fact that my non-government Kurdish interlocutors impressed upon me that these groups are loyal to different and competing power centers.
Finally, even though the Kurds insist they will do nothing to break up Iraq, they want others – especially the United States – to approach the region in a way that reinforces the idea of the inevitability of Kurdish independence. Yet for political reasons Washington will resist deviating from its “one Iraq” policy. This, of course, produces policies that are incongruous with reality, but when has that ever stopped Washington? My favorite example is the American effort to encourage better relations between Ankara and Erbil. There was a time not too long ago when observers feared that Turkey would invade Iraq to snuff out Kurdish independence. In order to forestall such an event, the United States has encouraged Ankara to shift its approach to the Kurdistan region and since 2008 the Turks have developed (as noted above) strong economic ties with the Kurds. A great American diplomatic success, except that it is apparently too much of a success. Washington now wants the Turks to back off of a deal that would send Kurdish oil directly to Turkey, bypassing the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline that Baghdad controls. Why? Because the Turkish-Kurdish deal would demonstrate that the Kurds can act independent of Baghdad.
Unlike the first two challenges to Kurdish independence, Washington’s position is a complication not a potential obstacle. Yet even accounting for Kirkuk and internal rivalries, it is likely that one day everyone is going to wake up and there will be a new country called Kurdistan. The Kurds will not have to declare independence, they won’t dance in the streets, there will not be a need for fireworks, or a founding date, though I am sure someone will make one up so future Kurdish embassies can invite people to their national day celebrations. No, the Kurdish state will just come into being. It is already happening.
Source: http://middleeastvoices.v(...)g-independent-27399/
Iraq is going to break up. It is already happening, but no one wants to acknowledge it because no one wants to be perceived as being responsible for the disintegration of a major Middle Eastern country.
There is not much about the Kurdish region of Iraq that is Iraqi. When you arrive at Erbil’s brand new international airport, there are no signs that welcome you to Iraq. I am sure somewhere at the entrance to the airport there is an Iraqi flag, but I didn’t notice it. The only hint that I was actually in Iraq was the stamp a Kurdish police officer put in my passport that says in tiny letters, “Republic of Iraq-Kurdistan Region.”
The Kurds have a foreign ministry (actually two, maybe even three, but that is another story), a military, interior ministry, intelligence services, a parliament, president, prime minister, investment authority, and a flag. No one under the age of 30 speaks Arabic (English being the favored second language) and not a single person I met of any age believed themselves to be Iraqi. Why would they? What is the common idea that ties someone from Sulaimaniyah to someone in Basra? There isn’t one.
None of this should be much of a surprise to anyone who has even been paying half attention to Iraq over the last decade – or rather the last two decades when the Kurds quietly began building the institutions and structures of independence under the Anglo-American no-fly zone established after Operation Desert Storm. Beyond solemn declarations that, “the Kurds will not be responsible for breaking up Iraq” and not-so-believable assertions about the differences between “the dream of independence” and the constitutional reality of a unified Iraq, you get the sense that the Kurds believe that the environment for their independence is slowly ripening. They have serious reserves of oil and gas as well as significant amounts of foreign direct investment from Turkey, the Gulfies, Lebanon, Egypt, the United States, Europe, and the Russians. A lot of investment is in the energy sector, but not all of it. There are, for example, more than 1,000 Turkish companies – both large and small – operating in the Kurdistan region. Kurds are munching on Ulker biscuits, cooling off during the brutally hot summers with Arcelik air conditioners, and I stayed in the Koc family’s Erbil outpost – the Divan Hotel. Speaking of Erbil, it is a bit dreary, but definitely booming. The most oft-sighted bird in the Erbil sky is the “construction crane.”
“…it is likely that one day everyone is going to wake up and there will be a new country called Kurdistan.” – Steven A. Cook, Council on Foreign Relations
Combined with good economic times in Kurdistan is the pervasive dysfunction in Baghdad and the sectarian violence that threatens to tear the country apart. Just last Sunday there were ten bombings killing at least 41 people in Shi’ite majority areas of Baghdad. The death toll is up to 1,000 a month, which is not quite 2006 levels, but close. In contrast, the Kurdish area has experienced three bombings in the last decade, the most recent on September 29, the first major attack since 2007. In addition, the Kurds and the federal government – officials in Erbil chafe at the term “central government” – are forever in conflict over the electoral law, hydrocarbon law, and the Kurdish share of the budget, which is supposed to be 17 percent, but is always less. People in Erbil and in Baghdad, I am told, wonder whether the effort to maintain the fiction of a unified, federal Iraq is worth it both politically and economically.
As good as it looks for the Kurds, they still have serious challenges before realizing their ultimate goal. The first is Kirkuk. The oil-rich region around the disputed city is in the central government’s hands, but the disposition of Kirkuk remains a powerful nationalist issue for Kurds. There have been censuses in the city in 1957, 1977 and 1997. And while there is agreement that the 1957 tally was the most accurate, no one actually knows the current demographic balance of the city. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Arab population surged as a result of Saddam Hussein’s Arabization policies and there continues to be a large Turkoman population that claims Kirkuk to be culturally Turkoman rather than Kurdish. Even if the non-Kurdish populations were considerably smaller, Kirkuk remains in the hands of Baghdad and there is no way the Kurds are going to “liberate” it without force, something that seems farfetched despite the apparent bravery and legend of the peshmerga. At least one Kurd said to me, “If we have a lot of oil and gas in other places, we do not really need Kirkuk.” He freely admitted that his view was not widespread.
Second, the Kurds have their own internal political difficulties. Despite burying the wounds of a civil war they fought in the mid-1990s, it is clear that the two parties that have controlled the Kurdistan region – the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) eye each other warily. The PUK has largely controlled Sulaimaniyah, though a breakaway party called Ghorran (meaning “change”) secured more votes than the PUK in recent elections. The KDP has a virtual lock on Erbil and Dohuk, the other governorate that makes up the Kurdistan region located next to most of the Turkish border. The KDP and PUK form a governing coalition, but cooperation between and even within ministries between party members can be tough going. There are other more ominous outward differences. The security forces in Erbil, for example, wear different uniforms than those in Sulaimaniyah, which would not be a problem but for the fact that my non-government Kurdish interlocutors impressed upon me that these groups are loyal to different and competing power centers.
Finally, even though the Kurds insist they will do nothing to break up Iraq, they want others – especially the United States – to approach the region in a way that reinforces the idea of the inevitability of Kurdish independence. Yet for political reasons Washington will resist deviating from its “one Iraq” policy. This, of course, produces policies that are incongruous with reality, but when has that ever stopped Washington? My favorite example is the American effort to encourage better relations between Ankara and Erbil. There was a time not too long ago when observers feared that Turkey would invade Iraq to snuff out Kurdish independence. In order to forestall such an event, the United States has encouraged Ankara to shift its approach to the Kurdistan region and since 2008 the Turks have developed (as noted above) strong economic ties with the Kurds. A great American diplomatic success, except that it is apparently too much of a success. Washington now wants the Turks to back off of a deal that would send Kurdish oil directly to Turkey, bypassing the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline that Baghdad controls. Why? Because the Turkish-Kurdish deal would demonstrate that the Kurds can act independent of Baghdad.
Unlike the first two challenges to Kurdish independence, Washington’s position is a complication not a potential obstacle. Yet even accounting for Kirkuk and internal rivalries, it is likely that one day everyone is going to wake up and there will be a new country called Kurdistan. The Kurds will not have to declare independence, they won’t dance in the streets, there will not be a need for fireworks, or a founding date, though I am sure someone will make one up so future Kurdish embassies can invite people to their national day celebrations. No, the Kurdish state will just come into being. It is already happening.
Source: http://middleeastvoices.v(...)g-independent-27399/
US Vice President Biden Speaks with President Barzani
KRP
Salahaddin, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRP.org) - US Vice President Joseph Biden spoke with President Masoud Barzani by phone on Monday.
Salahaddin, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRP.org) ? US Vice President Joseph Biden spoke with President Masoud Barzani by phone on Monday.
Vice President Biden and President Barzani discussed the political and security issues facing the country, and exchanged views on the efforts to enact new legislation for next year?s parliamentary elections in Iraq.
The two agreed to continue to consult each other to address challenges facing Iraq and to strengthen bilateral relations.
Source: http://www.kurdishglobe.n(...)esident-Barzani.html
KRP
Salahaddin, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRP.org) - US Vice President Joseph Biden spoke with President Masoud Barzani by phone on Monday.
Salahaddin, Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRP.org) ? US Vice President Joseph Biden spoke with President Masoud Barzani by phone on Monday.
Vice President Biden and President Barzani discussed the political and security issues facing the country, and exchanged views on the efforts to enact new legislation for next year?s parliamentary elections in Iraq.
The two agreed to continue to consult each other to address challenges facing Iraq and to strengthen bilateral relations.
Source: http://www.kurdishglobe.n(...)esident-Barzani.html
De Koerdische President Masoud Barzani heeft trouwens gehint op mogelijke aanval op terroristen in Syrie. Ook heeft hij, na zeer lange tijd van 'voorzichtige' antwoorden te geven, aangegeven dat het hebben van een Koerdische staat een geboorterecht is voor elke Koerd.
Interessant artikel!
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Barzani to all Kurds in region: Age of ‘armed struggle’ is over!
President of Iraq autonomous Kurdistan region says Iraqi Kurdistan is prepared to strike militants anywhere, including in Syria, but must avoid being drawn into its civil war.
ARBIL - The Kurdish people have a right to self-determination and statehood, but this will not be accomplished through violence, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani said.
It is "a natural right for there to be a state for the Kurdish people, but this will not be achieved by violence, and must be done in a natural way," Barzani, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, said in an exclusive interview with AFP.
This "age is the age of understanding, and we encourage dialogue between the Kurds and... the states" where Kurdish populations live, he said.
Four countries -- Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran -- host major Kurdish populations, which have faced decades of discrimination.
Iraqi Kurdistan is prepared to strike militants anywhere, including in neighbouring Syria, but must avoid being drawn into its civil war, Barzani said.
Barzani's remarks came after militants carried out a late-September attack on a security service headquarters in the Kurdish region's capital Arbil, killing seven people -- a rare occurrence in an area usually spared the violence plaguing other parts of Iraq.
"We will not hesitate in directing strikes (against) the terrorist criminals in any place," Barzani said, when asked about the possibility of Kurdish action against militants in Iraq or Syria.
"Our duty is to protect the Kurds if we are able," he said.
But the long-time Kurdish leader made a distinction between that and being drawn into Syria's bloody civil war, which he said the Kurds must try to avoid.
"Our opinion is that the Kurds must stand at the same distance" from all parties in the conflict, so "the Kurdish people are not forced into a war" from which they will gain nothing, Barzani said.
But Syrian Kurdish forces have already been drawn into the fighting, clashing with jihadist groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad's troops who want to secure a land corridor connecting them to Iraq.
The violence has pushed tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds across the border, seeking refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan.
And Barzani has previously threatened to intervene in the Syrian conflict to protect Kurdish civilians, although officials have since backtracked on his remarks.
Barzani also said in the interview that Iraqi Kurdistan had provided military training to Syrian Kurds so they could defend their communities.
"A number of young (men) were trained, but truly not with the aim of entering the war," Barzani said.
In claiming the September 29 attack in Arbil, which killed seven security force personnel and wounded more than 60 people, Al-Qaeda front group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also pointed to Syria.
The group said the attack on the Kurdish asayesh security service headquarters with suicide bombers, gunfire and car bombs was in response to Barzani's alleged willingness to provide support to the government in Baghdad and to Kurdish forces battling jihadists in Syria.
The attack was the first of its kind to hit Arbil since May 2007, when a truck bomb exploded near the same headquarters, killing 14 people and wounding more than 80.
In Iraq, the Kurds now have a three-province autonomous region in the country's north with its own government, security forces, flag and borders.
Although Kurdistan and Baghdad moved to reduce high tensions earlier this year, they are still at odds over a number of issues.
Iraqi Kurdistan has sought to establish a pipeline that would give it access to international energy markets, sent crude across the border to neighbouring Turkey, and signed deals with foreign energy firms.
It has also capitalised on its reputation for greater safety and stability, as well as a faster-growing economy than the rest of Iraq, to solicit investment independent of the federal government.
All this has angered Baghdad, and the two sides are also locked in a protracted dispute over the Kurds' longstanding demands for the incorporation of other traditionally Kurdish-majority areas into their autonomous region.
Bron: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=61942
Interessant artikel!
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Barzani to all Kurds in region: Age of ‘armed struggle’ is over!
President of Iraq autonomous Kurdistan region says Iraqi Kurdistan is prepared to strike militants anywhere, including in Syria, but must avoid being drawn into its civil war.
ARBIL - The Kurdish people have a right to self-determination and statehood, but this will not be accomplished through violence, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani said.
It is "a natural right for there to be a state for the Kurdish people, but this will not be achieved by violence, and must be done in a natural way," Barzani, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, said in an exclusive interview with AFP.
This "age is the age of understanding, and we encourage dialogue between the Kurds and... the states" where Kurdish populations live, he said.
Four countries -- Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran -- host major Kurdish populations, which have faced decades of discrimination.
Iraqi Kurdistan is prepared to strike militants anywhere, including in neighbouring Syria, but must avoid being drawn into its civil war, Barzani said.
Barzani's remarks came after militants carried out a late-September attack on a security service headquarters in the Kurdish region's capital Arbil, killing seven people -- a rare occurrence in an area usually spared the violence plaguing other parts of Iraq.
"We will not hesitate in directing strikes (against) the terrorist criminals in any place," Barzani said, when asked about the possibility of Kurdish action against militants in Iraq or Syria.
"Our duty is to protect the Kurds if we are able," he said.
But the long-time Kurdish leader made a distinction between that and being drawn into Syria's bloody civil war, which he said the Kurds must try to avoid.
"Our opinion is that the Kurds must stand at the same distance" from all parties in the conflict, so "the Kurdish people are not forced into a war" from which they will gain nothing, Barzani said.
But Syrian Kurdish forces have already been drawn into the fighting, clashing with jihadist groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad's troops who want to secure a land corridor connecting them to Iraq.
The violence has pushed tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds across the border, seeking refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan.
And Barzani has previously threatened to intervene in the Syrian conflict to protect Kurdish civilians, although officials have since backtracked on his remarks.
Barzani also said in the interview that Iraqi Kurdistan had provided military training to Syrian Kurds so they could defend their communities.
"A number of young (men) were trained, but truly not with the aim of entering the war," Barzani said.
In claiming the September 29 attack in Arbil, which killed seven security force personnel and wounded more than 60 people, Al-Qaeda front group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also pointed to Syria.
The group said the attack on the Kurdish asayesh security service headquarters with suicide bombers, gunfire and car bombs was in response to Barzani's alleged willingness to provide support to the government in Baghdad and to Kurdish forces battling jihadists in Syria.
The attack was the first of its kind to hit Arbil since May 2007, when a truck bomb exploded near the same headquarters, killing 14 people and wounding more than 80.
In Iraq, the Kurds now have a three-province autonomous region in the country's north with its own government, security forces, flag and borders.
Although Kurdistan and Baghdad moved to reduce high tensions earlier this year, they are still at odds over a number of issues.
Iraqi Kurdistan has sought to establish a pipeline that would give it access to international energy markets, sent crude across the border to neighbouring Turkey, and signed deals with foreign energy firms.
It has also capitalised on its reputation for greater safety and stability, as well as a faster-growing economy than the rest of Iraq, to solicit investment independent of the federal government.
All this has angered Baghdad, and the two sides are also locked in a protracted dispute over the Kurds' longstanding demands for the incorporation of other traditionally Kurdish-majority areas into their autonomous region.
Bron: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=61942
The Kurds Get a Second Chance in Syria
31 Oktober 2013
More than 200,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees have moved into Iraqi Kurdistan. They have crossed an international border to be sure, yet it is, in the Kurdish world view, a passage from one part of their homeland to another. The Kurds disregard these frontiers, imposed on the Fertile Crescent almost a century ago by Anglo-French power.
No Kurd is lamenting the erosion of the borders in this tangled geography. The partition of the successor states of the Ottoman Empire brought the Kurds grief and dispossession. The Persians, Turks and Arabs secured their own states. Indeed, the Arabs were bequeathed several states in the geography of “Turkish Arabia” that runs from the Iraqi border with Iran to the Mediterranean.
Kurdistan was singularly betrayed, its people divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Kurdish history became a chronicle of thwarted rebellions. According to a deeply felt expression, the Kurds had no friends but the mountains.
Yet a new life is stirring in Kurdistan. Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, once a forgotten fortress town, is a booming city of shopping malls, high-rises and swank hotels. Oil and natural gas have remade the city, as has its political stability, remarkable when set against the mayhem of the rest of Iraq.
The Kurds are shrewd. They aren’t about to claim Erbil as the capital of a restored greater Kurdistan, but it has pride of place in their world. It is the home of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, and of almost 5 million people, who are officially part of Iraq but in reality belong to an independent nation.
Peril Remains
The realists among the Kurds know the power and ruthlessness of the nations that have divided and ruled their world, yet they are determined to make the best of this moment when borders and attachments are suddenly in flux.
It is the fate of Western Kurdistan -- Rojava in Kurdish -- that has given rise to this new sense of urgency. The war between the Damascus regime and the principally Sunni rebels presents peril and possibility for the 2 million to 3 million Kurds within Syria.
The Kurds inhabit fragments of Syria by the Turkish and Iraqi borders, in the northeast; their lands contain the bulk of Syria’s oil. Arab nationalism, the creed of the authoritarian Syrian state, was avowedly racist in its treatment of them, denying them the most basic and cherished right: use of their own language. The regime of the Assads, father and son, has been cunning and devastating in the way it pitted the Kurds against one another.
Yet in the civil war that erupted in 2011, the Syrian opposition has troubled the Kurds, too. The leaders of the Sunni Arab rebellion were committed to creation of their own centralized state. Turkey’s sponsorship of the rebels created suspicions as well. The foreign jihadists who made their way to Syria were yet another source of anxiety.
The Kurds had a small volunteer force of their own, but it was no match for Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, whose Islamist warriors had weapons aplenty, money and unchecked zeal. The group was determined to impose its rule in areas the regime had left. In mid-July, clashes broke out in Kurdish towns and have erupted intermittently since. Thousands of Syrian Kurds have made their way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they receive help, even as the authorities in Erbil don’t want to encourage an exodus from Syria.
Turkey casts a large shadow. The line that separates the Syrian and Turkish Kurds is artificial. As the prominent Turkish columnist Cengiz Candar observes, the Kurds don’t speak of Turkish and Syrian communities. For them the line of separation was a simple railroad track that allowed them to move to and fro, with ease and freedom.
Turkish Dilemma
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a dilemma. He is invested in a peace process at home with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. And Turkey has a flourishing relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, whose oil and natural gas it needs desperately. Yet the permissive attitude of the Turkish state toward the jihadists battling the Syrian Kurds has been a source of trouble for Erdogan. He has gone a long way toward keeping the jihadists at arm’s length.
The dream of greater Kurdistan is just that. History has given the Kurds a second chance in Iraq and Syria, while Turkish democracy gives them a voice in the country’s direction. Matters are stagnant in Iran, where the oppression of the Kurds is of a piece with the tyranny of a theocracy.
The Kurds can’t erase all the hurts of their modern history and those who choose to stay in Syria remain embattled, yet the isolation that had been their lot is now in the past. At the foot of those once sheltering mountains, a new and a safer life has sprung forth.
Bron: http://www.bloomberg.com/(...)chance-in-syria.html
31 Oktober 2013
More than 200,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees have moved into Iraqi Kurdistan. They have crossed an international border to be sure, yet it is, in the Kurdish world view, a passage from one part of their homeland to another. The Kurds disregard these frontiers, imposed on the Fertile Crescent almost a century ago by Anglo-French power.
No Kurd is lamenting the erosion of the borders in this tangled geography. The partition of the successor states of the Ottoman Empire brought the Kurds grief and dispossession. The Persians, Turks and Arabs secured their own states. Indeed, the Arabs were bequeathed several states in the geography of “Turkish Arabia” that runs from the Iraqi border with Iran to the Mediterranean.
Kurdistan was singularly betrayed, its people divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Kurdish history became a chronicle of thwarted rebellions. According to a deeply felt expression, the Kurds had no friends but the mountains.
Yet a new life is stirring in Kurdistan. Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, once a forgotten fortress town, is a booming city of shopping malls, high-rises and swank hotels. Oil and natural gas have remade the city, as has its political stability, remarkable when set against the mayhem of the rest of Iraq.
The Kurds are shrewd. They aren’t about to claim Erbil as the capital of a restored greater Kurdistan, but it has pride of place in their world. It is the home of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, and of almost 5 million people, who are officially part of Iraq but in reality belong to an independent nation.
Peril Remains
The realists among the Kurds know the power and ruthlessness of the nations that have divided and ruled their world, yet they are determined to make the best of this moment when borders and attachments are suddenly in flux.
It is the fate of Western Kurdistan -- Rojava in Kurdish -- that has given rise to this new sense of urgency. The war between the Damascus regime and the principally Sunni rebels presents peril and possibility for the 2 million to 3 million Kurds within Syria.
The Kurds inhabit fragments of Syria by the Turkish and Iraqi borders, in the northeast; their lands contain the bulk of Syria’s oil. Arab nationalism, the creed of the authoritarian Syrian state, was avowedly racist in its treatment of them, denying them the most basic and cherished right: use of their own language. The regime of the Assads, father and son, has been cunning and devastating in the way it pitted the Kurds against one another.
Yet in the civil war that erupted in 2011, the Syrian opposition has troubled the Kurds, too. The leaders of the Sunni Arab rebellion were committed to creation of their own centralized state. Turkey’s sponsorship of the rebels created suspicions as well. The foreign jihadists who made their way to Syria were yet another source of anxiety.
The Kurds had a small volunteer force of their own, but it was no match for Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, whose Islamist warriors had weapons aplenty, money and unchecked zeal. The group was determined to impose its rule in areas the regime had left. In mid-July, clashes broke out in Kurdish towns and have erupted intermittently since. Thousands of Syrian Kurds have made their way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they receive help, even as the authorities in Erbil don’t want to encourage an exodus from Syria.
Turkey casts a large shadow. The line that separates the Syrian and Turkish Kurds is artificial. As the prominent Turkish columnist Cengiz Candar observes, the Kurds don’t speak of Turkish and Syrian communities. For them the line of separation was a simple railroad track that allowed them to move to and fro, with ease and freedom.
Turkish Dilemma
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a dilemma. He is invested in a peace process at home with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. And Turkey has a flourishing relationship with Iraqi Kurdistan, whose oil and natural gas it needs desperately. Yet the permissive attitude of the Turkish state toward the jihadists battling the Syrian Kurds has been a source of trouble for Erdogan. He has gone a long way toward keeping the jihadists at arm’s length.
The dream of greater Kurdistan is just that. History has given the Kurds a second chance in Iraq and Syria, while Turkish democracy gives them a voice in the country’s direction. Matters are stagnant in Iran, where the oppression of the Kurds is of a piece with the tyranny of a theocracy.
The Kurds can’t erase all the hurts of their modern history and those who choose to stay in Syria remain embattled, yet the isolation that had been their lot is now in the past. At the foot of those once sheltering mountains, a new and a safer life has sprung forth.
Bron: http://www.bloomberg.com/(...)chance-in-syria.html
Yo, Heisenberg. Zit er al wat vaart in de ontwikkeling van de Koerdische luchtmacht? En is er al een datum geprikt voor de Koerdische Conferentie?
De KRG heeft 14 nieuwe helikopters aangeschaft en wat testvliegtuigen. Heb van ''iemand'' ook foto's gekregen waarin oude Ba'ath straaljagers zich op een Peshmerga basis bevinden. Hoe het hiermee zit weet ik verder niet, ging om 2 fuctionele straaljagers. Er zijn verder een stuk of 20 piloten naar Israel gestuurd (waarschijnlijk militair, zou niet weten waarom het particulier zou zijn aangezien die er al in Koerdistan zelf zijn/getraind kunnen worden).quote:
Yo, Heisenberg. Zit er al wat vaart in de ontwikkeling van de Koerdische luchtmacht? En is er al een datum geprikt voor de Koerdische Conferentie?
De KRG heeft ook zijn eerste eigen luchtvaartmaatschappij. Dus een eigen vloot, volgens mij heet het Zagros Airlines en het bestaat uit een aantal boeings (particuliere luchtvaart).
Paar interessante feiten over de legendarische Koerdische leider van de Patriottische Unie van Koerdistan, en huidige President van Irak, Jalal Talabani, of 'Mam Jalal' (Ome Jalal). Momenteel ligt hij in coma (in Duitsland), maar zijn situatie is verbeterd.
Zijn zoon Qubad Talabani heeft een aantal dingen over zijn vader bekend gemaakt;
- Sinds hij president is, geeft hij zijn salaris uit aan de behandeling van kankerpatienten. Een ander deel gaat naar weeshuizen in Zuid-Koerdistan.
- Hij draagt bij ceremonies, feesten en bijeenkomsten een rode stropdas. De kleur staat voor het bloed van de shehids (gesneuvelden/martelaren) die gedood zijn door de Turkse, Iraakse, Syrische en Iraanse regimes.
- Meestal heeft hij 3 vingers vast, behalve zijn pink (duim niet mee geteld). Dit symboliseert het tot dan/nu toe enige bevrijde deel van Koerdistan, met Noord, West en Oost (''Turks, Syrisch en Iraans'') Koerdistan nog te gaan.
Mam Jalal;
Zijn zoon Qubad Talabani heeft een aantal dingen over zijn vader bekend gemaakt;
- Sinds hij president is, geeft hij zijn salaris uit aan de behandeling van kankerpatienten. Een ander deel gaat naar weeshuizen in Zuid-Koerdistan.
- Hij draagt bij ceremonies, feesten en bijeenkomsten een rode stropdas. De kleur staat voor het bloed van de shehids (gesneuvelden/martelaren) die gedood zijn door de Turkse, Iraakse, Syrische en Iraanse regimes.
- Meestal heeft hij 3 vingers vast, behalve zijn pink (duim niet mee geteld). Dit symboliseert het tot dan/nu toe enige bevrijde deel van Koerdistan, met Noord, West en Oost (''Turks, Syrisch en Iraans'') Koerdistan nog te gaan.
Mam Jalal;
Amerikaanse ingenieurs/genien zijn bezig met het bouwen van een militaire installatie/kamp in Hewler (Erbil), de hoofdstad van Zuid-Koerdistan / de Kurdistan Regional Government.
Koerdische militairen en officieren bij de Kerkuk Hoogtes, loopgraven en een muur wordt gebouwd om Koerdistan af te scheiden van de Arabieren en de Koerdische stad Kerkuk weer in te lijven
Koerdische militairen en officieren bij de Kerkuk Hoogtes, loopgraven en een muur wordt gebouwd om Koerdistan af te scheiden van de Arabieren en de Koerdische stad Kerkuk weer in te lijven
Turkish nationalist sign removed in Kurdish Diyarbakir AMED ...More to come.
November 7, 2013 By ekurd.net
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey's Kurdish region,— The sign saying “How happy is the one who says I am Turk” has been removed in the southeastern Kurdish rovince of Diyarbakir [northern Kurdistan] by the order of Governor’s Office.
Diyarbakir Governor’s Office ordered the removal of a sign saying “How happy is the one who says I am Turk”, a city landmark installed after Turkey’s 1980 Military Coup.
Located in approximate with Diyarbakir Governor’s Office in İnaloğlu Street, the sign also included an ornament of watermelons - the symbol of Diyarbakir.
During the removal last night, several onlookers and pedestrians turned the moment eternal by taking pictures.
Around a month ago,www.Ekurd.net Diyarbakır Bar Association advocate Mahsuni Karaman submitted an official request to Diyarbakir Governor’s Office regarding the removal of the sign.
In 2012, a similar request has also been requested by Mine Lök Beyaz, AKP Diyarbakir deputy
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a0_1383841886#gstFK9XrP81q5Ttv.99
BIJI KURDISTAN
Turken... beter worden jullie wakker! En gauw! MUWHAHAHA
.
2 delen van Koerdistan zijn al vrij, nu dat de PKK de macht heeft in WK, zal dit het gevoel van nationalisme nog verder aanwakkeren in Noord-Koerdistan (bezet door Turkije).
Tegen 2030 zullen er ook meer Koerden zijn in Turkije, dan Turken. De vraag is niet of geheel Groot-Koerdistan bevrijd zal worden, de vraag is enkel; hoe snel?
November 7, 2013 By ekurd.net
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey's Kurdish region,— The sign saying “How happy is the one who says I am Turk” has been removed in the southeastern Kurdish rovince of Diyarbakir [northern Kurdistan] by the order of Governor’s Office.
Diyarbakir Governor’s Office ordered the removal of a sign saying “How happy is the one who says I am Turk”, a city landmark installed after Turkey’s 1980 Military Coup.
Located in approximate with Diyarbakir Governor’s Office in İnaloğlu Street, the sign also included an ornament of watermelons - the symbol of Diyarbakir.
During the removal last night, several onlookers and pedestrians turned the moment eternal by taking pictures.
Around a month ago,www.Ekurd.net Diyarbakır Bar Association advocate Mahsuni Karaman submitted an official request to Diyarbakir Governor’s Office regarding the removal of the sign.
In 2012, a similar request has also been requested by Mine Lök Beyaz, AKP Diyarbakir deputy
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a0_1383841886#gstFK9XrP81q5Ttv.99
BIJI KURDISTAN
Turken... beter worden jullie wakker! En gauw! MUWHAHAHA
.2 delen van Koerdistan zijn al vrij, nu dat de PKK de macht heeft in WK, zal dit het gevoel van nationalisme nog verder aanwakkeren in Noord-Koerdistan (bezet door Turkije).
Tegen 2030 zullen er ook meer Koerden zijn in Turkije, dan Turken. De vraag is niet of geheel Groot-Koerdistan bevrijd zal worden, de vraag is enkel; hoe snel?
Arabs welcoming the Kurdish liberators in Syria
The Kurdish YPG forces have liberated several Arab towns in Syria. The Arabs are welcoming the Kurdish forces and are celebrating their liberation. The Kurdish YPG forces have annihilated the rats and worms of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and the Al-Nusra Front gang members who are supported by the Turkish regime and the delusional maniac 'Sultan' Erdogan, who dreams of the revival of the Islamic Ottoman Caliphate.
Long live Kurdistan!
First video: the liberated Arab town
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f19_1383854325#Mxq4FS2ZSVgEFGAz.99
The Kurdish YPG forces have liberated several Arab towns in Syria. The Arabs are welcoming the Kurdish forces and are celebrating their liberation. The Kurdish YPG forces have annihilated the rats and worms of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and the Al-Nusra Front gang members who are supported by the Turkish regime and the delusional maniac 'Sultan' Erdogan, who dreams of the revival of the Islamic Ottoman Caliphate.
Long live Kurdistan!
First video: the liberated Arab town
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f19_1383854325#Mxq4FS2ZSVgEFGAz.99
More than 30 ISIS fighters killed in Afrin
More than 30 fighters belonging to armed groups affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) were killed in violent clashes with Kurdish fighters of the People's Defense Units (YPG) in last 2 days in the hills between the village of Marien of the city of Azaz and the village Qustul Jendo in Afrin, a sources in the YPG informed PUKmedia.
The same source added that clashes broke out Tuesday in the early morning hours when ISIS fighters attacked YPG barriers in village of Qustul Jendo , pointing out that the clashes were continuing until Wednesday evening.
Reported by: Elenda Ahmed / Afrin
Source: PUK Media
Video: Kurdish YPG forces take down Islamic Front flag in a recently liberated town
Like us on Facebook: Kurdistan Liberation Front
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1c6_1383854875#FTseiTUGohLxkLt8.99
More than 30 fighters belonging to armed groups affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq (ISIS) were killed in violent clashes with Kurdish fighters of the People's Defense Units (YPG) in last 2 days in the hills between the village of Marien of the city of Azaz and the village Qustul Jendo in Afrin, a sources in the YPG informed PUKmedia.
The same source added that clashes broke out Tuesday in the early morning hours when ISIS fighters attacked YPG barriers in village of Qustul Jendo , pointing out that the clashes were continuing until Wednesday evening.
Reported by: Elenda Ahmed / Afrin
Source: PUK Media
Video: Kurdish YPG forces take down Islamic Front flag in a recently liberated town
Like us on Facebook: Kurdistan Liberation Front
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1c6_1383854875#FTseiTUGohLxkLt8.99
Een ISLAMPARASIET staat niet op voor het Koerdische Volksklied (Ey Reqib) in het Koerdische Parlement (1e bijeenkomst).
In het Koerdische volkslied zingen we ''Koerdistan is mijn geloof en religie''.
Deze smerige baardhoer wil dat het verandert wordt naar ''Islam is mijn geloof en religie''. Waarschijnlijk omdat een Saudische Wahabi oliesheik hem in zijn reet neukt en daarvoor dik betaalt. Wtf denkt hij? Hij is ook de enige die niet op staat. Ik hoop dat Barzani of Newshirwan de Zerevani of Asayish opdracht geeft om een kogel door zijn smerige parasieten kop te jagen.
Niemand komt aan het Koerdische volkslied. Ze zouden hem meteen uit het parlement moeten kicken voor heiligdomlastering, de vlag alleen al is heiliger dan alles waarin hij gelooft
.
De worm die niet opstond voor Ey Reqib
In het Koerdische volkslied zingen we ''Koerdistan is mijn geloof en religie''.
Deze smerige baardhoer wil dat het verandert wordt naar ''Islam is mijn geloof en religie''. Waarschijnlijk omdat een Saudische Wahabi oliesheik hem in zijn reet neukt en daarvoor dik betaalt. Wtf denkt hij? Hij is ook de enige die niet op staat. Ik hoop dat Barzani of Newshirwan de Zerevani of Asayish opdracht geeft om een kogel door zijn smerige parasieten kop te jagen.
Niemand komt aan het Koerdische volkslied. Ze zouden hem meteen uit het parlement moeten kicken voor heiligdomlastering, de vlag alleen al is heiliger dan alles waarin hij gelooft
.
De worm die niet opstond voor Ey Reqib
Heb het niet over religie. Heb het over extremisten. Religieuze maniakken verdienen maar 1 ding...quote:
Makkelijk en breed toegankelijke onderwijs is het beste wapen tegen religie, geen kogels.
Het lijkt me helemaal geen slecht idee om unilateraal Friesland en Limburg af te stoten.quote:
Zelfde geldt voor veel meer regio's: Friesland, Limburg, Vlaanderen, Bretanje, Corsica, Catalonië, Baskenland, Noord Italië, Palestina, etc etc.
Dan moet er wel een meerderheid zijn (referendum) en niet alleen een luid groepje schreeuwers. Dan vallen veel van die regio's direct af voor onafhankelijkheid.
Volkorenbrood: "Geen quotes meer in jullie sigs gaarne."
Of unilateraal in een Nederlandse coalitie van 10 provincies het omhooggevallen deel 'Holland' af te steken en de noordzee op te duwen. Meer strand voor voor de rest.quote:Op vrijdag 8 november 2013 22:23 schreef Monolith het volgende:
[..]
Het lijkt me helemaal geen slecht idee om unilateraal Friesland en Limburg af te stoten.
Say what?
Als je dat blijf dat propageren dan komt die Koerdische staat er sowieso nooit.quote:
[..]
Vergeet niet dat de Koerdische Saladin degene was die de kruisvaarders versloeg en Jeruzalem onder islamitisch heerschappij plaatste. Een islamitische Koerdische staat die Jeruzalem bevrijdt, daar zeg ik geen nee tegen.
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey;
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay"
- Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay"
- Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village
Hij vergeet erbij te zeggen dat de beste periode van de Islam, tijdens Saladin's (Koerdisch) heerschappij was. Juist door deze Koerdische invloed, bloeide de Islam. Er was enorm veel tolerantie (Christenen, Joden enz. werden beschermd, Saladin vermoordde zijn troepen die hen onterecht kwaad deden). Christelijke leiders, priesters, koningen enz. hadden grote respect voor Saladin.quote:
[..]
Als je dat blijf dat propageren dan komt die Koerdische staat er sowieso nooit.
Gevangen genomen kruisvaders werden niet vermoord (tenzij zij verantwoordelijk waren voor de moord op gevangen genomen moslims).
Toen Saladin overleed, had hij geen persoonlijke bezittingen meer. Hij had al zijn welvaart uitgegeven om voor zijn mannen, armen enz. te zorgen.
Terwijl Christelijke leiders in Europa aflaatbriefjes enz. aan het verkopen waren, ''heksen'' op vuurstapels gooiden, etc. waren de moslims onder Koerdisch/Saladin's heerschappij al bezig met wetenschappen.
ca. 33% van Saladin's troepen bestond uit Koerden. De meesten van zijn officieren waren ook Koerdisch.
Het is, achteraf gezien, jammer dat hij het deed voor Islam en niet voor Koerdistan. Maar nationalisme bestond nog niet echt in die tijd, het was vooral religie (overal).
quote:
Juist door deze Koerdische invloed, bloeide de Islam.
∞
"But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."- Edmund Burke
Salahadin deed het eerder voor geld dat voor de Islam. Zijn handelskaravaan werd paar keer overvallen door christelijke soldaten.
Daarvoor had hij goede contacten met de Christelijke heersers in Jeruzalem.
Daarvoor had hij goede contacten met de Christelijke heersers in Jeruzalem.
Nope, niet waar. Als hij het voor geld deed, zou hij wel geld gehad hebben bij zijn overlijden. Hij had niets.quote:
Salahadin deed het eerder voor geld dat voor de Islam. Zijn handelskaravaan werd paar keer overvallen door christelijke soldaten.
Daarvoor had hij goede contacten met de Christelijke heersers in Jeruzalem.
Er zijn trouwens nog tienduizenden Koerdische Joden in Zuid-Koerdistan (''Noord-Irak''). Velen leiden een gesloten bestaan, omdat de situatie nog niet helemaal stabiel is (nog niet volledig onafhankelijk). Veel Koerden weten wel dat het Joodse Koerden zijn, en veel van deze Joodse Koerden zijn ook gewoon openlijk Joods, praten Herbreews op straat enz., maar het wordt op een laag pitje gehouden vanwege Iran, Baghdad, enz.
Hier een interessant artikel over Joodse Koerden die altijd in Koerdistan hebben gewoond (en dus niet zoals tienduizenden anderen vertrokken in de jaren '40).
Zij konden in Koerdistan blijven omdat ze nooit gehaat zijn vanwege hun religie. In andere landen, moesten de Joden wel vluchten.
Hier een interessant artikel over Joodse Koerden die altijd in Koerdistan hebben gewoond (en dus niet zoals tienduizenden anderen vertrokken in de jaren '40).
Zij konden in Koerdistan blijven omdat ze nooit gehaat zijn vanwege hun religie. In andere landen, moesten de Joden wel vluchten.
In Iraq’s Kurdish Zone, Israelis and Long-Hidden Jews See Hope for Revived Ties
Driving down the highway to Mosul on a late summer’s afternoon, when dust devils race across the dry and desolate Plains of Nineveh, it’s impossible not to wonder how this part of the world could ever have been known as the Fertile Crescent. Rubber tire remains, roadkill carcasses, and empty water bottles half-melted by the desert sun litter the side of the road; temperatures rise into the 100s.
Mosul is one of the most violent places in Iraq and, by extension, the world. The past months have been particularly bloody. A few days before I arrived, in September, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral, killing 36 members of the Shabak minority. Before I reached the city outskirts, my driver took a sharp left, darting down a side road, kicking up a trail of dust behind. A few minutes later a village emerged in the shadow of a small mountain: Alqosh, a bastion of Christianity in the middle of the Muslim world.
Its impressive monastery, carved into the face of a cliff, has attracted pilgrims and adventurers for centuries, though reasons for my coming here are related to another, older religious tradition. At the village entrance, security was tight—hardly a surprise, so close to an active Islamist insurgency. A mustachioed soldier with an AK-47 slung lazily around his right shoulder gave us a long stare as he radioed our credentials to his superiors. Inside, we slalomed past crumbling houses and ostentatious McMansions climbing up the slope until we came to a sudden stop in front of a dilapidated structure of uncertain antiquity: The tomb of the biblical prophet Nahum.
Once an important center of Jewish life in Iraq, it is today one of the few undisturbed physical remains of a nearly vanished community. According to tradition, there has been a Jewish presence in Iraq—or Mesopotamia, or Babylon—since the Assyrian Empire forcibly resettled the defeated Ten Tribes of Israel, creating the first Jewish diaspora. Nahum was one of those exiles, and it was in Alqosh—mentioned in the Bible by name—that he prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. It fell to the Babylonians, as Nahum foresaw, but Jews lingered for a few thousand years more, until 1948, when the vast majority left, or were forced to leave, after the creation of Israel. Today, many Iraqi Jews cling to their unique culture and traditions in Israel, the United States. and the United Kingdom, but in their historic homeland, Judaism is for all intents and purposes extinct, and there is less evidence of the region’s long Jewish history to see each year. Synagogues and shrines in Mosul and Kerkûk, Basra and Baghdad have been turned into mosques. Many houses and cemeteries have been taken over, destroyed, or damaged by authorities or opportunists.
But in the Kurdish part of Iraq, an increasingly autonomous part of the country, that might be beginning to change. In recent years, a trickle of Jews of Iraqi origin have returned for visits or to do business, and a handful of individuals have even come back to stay. Those who do keep a very low profile, and no semblance of community life exists in public. Yet many hope that, if the Kurds achieve their long-deferred dream of independence, Kurdistan may emerge as an unexpected new ally for Israel in Iran’s backyard.
***
The Arab Spring has turned the Middle East upside down, but the upheaval’s biggest beneficiaries may, in the end, be the Kurds. Old seats of power in Baghdad and Damascus that for decades oppressed Kurdish ambitions for greater autonomy have been weakened. In Iraq, and now in Syria, Kurdish-majority areas are enjoying a degree of self-rule never experienced before. A conference of delegates from Kurdish-speaking areas of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the diaspora is set to hold the first official pan-Kurdish meeting in Erbil on Nov. 25—a potentially landmark moment that has raised hackles in both Tehran and Ankara.
While independence may not be imminent, it is no longer a pipe dream. If, or when, a more autonomous or independent Kurdish entity or entities emerge, one decision Kurdish leaders will have to make is whether to establish ties with Israel.
Eliezer Tsafrir, a former Mossad operative, has been waiting for such a moment for decades. Tsafrir was the head of covert Israeli operations in South Kurdistan in 1975, the year Saddam Hussein quashed a Kurdish rebellion led by Mustafa Barzani, the father of Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government. He has fond memories of a “proud, fierce, and warm mountain people,” memories he elaborates on in his memoir Ana Kurdi—“I Am a Kurd”—which he is now self-publishing in Kurdish.
“It was a love story,” he said when we spoke. ”Under the Barzanis, Jews in Kurdistan did not suffer. On the contrary, they were their friends. Ties with Israel ran deep and began when Mustafa Barzani sent emissaries to Israel through Europe and told us Kurds, like Jews, were ignored by everybody and needed help.”
Iraqi troops fought Israel alongside other Arab armies in 1948, 1967, and 1973, so the Jewish state was happy to help Kurds against their mutual foes in Baghdad. Mossad operatives like Tsafrir ran training camps for Kurdish soldiers in Israel and Iran, under the Shah, at a time when Israel provided them with weapons and supplies. They even considered sending Centurion tanks at one point, Tsafrir told me. “We decided against it because we thought the Kurds were better off fighting an asymmetrical war,” he explained.
Tsafrir’s tenure with the rebels in the mountains of Kurdistan came to an abrupt end when, in an unabashed display of realpolitik, Iran cut a deal with Iraq at a conference in Algeria forsaking its erstwhile Kurdish allies. In the desperate hours before Iraqi troops reached the rebel Kurdish headquarters, Tsafrir said, it fell to him to erase his presence. “We were in a big hurry to burn papers,” Tsafrir recalled. “I had to get out of there before the Iraqi army turned me into a kebab.” Tsafrir said that he is certain that, if Kurdistan becomes independent, Masoud Barzani and others would be friends to Israel. “I want to be Israel’s first consul general in Erbil,” Tsafrir told me.
Of course, there are considerable obstacles to any kind of Israeli-Kurdish rapprochement—namely, Iran, which exerts considerable influence over Kurdistan. “The Iranians are our neighbors,” a senior Kurdish official recently told The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins. “They’ve always been there, and they always will be. We have to deal with them.”
The presence of Iranian agents in the KRG-controlled area is one reason Israel has issued specific travel advisories against travel to Iraq’s Kurdistan region—an extra warning, since Israeli citizens are officially prohibited from traveling to any part of Iraq. But many ignore the advisory and travel, usually via Amman, to Erbil, a city newly flush with oil and gas money that is considered among the safest in Iraq. A bombing carried out by a local al-Qaida affiliate in Erbil on Sept. 29 was the first since 2007.
On a busy street corner in Erbil, just outside a crowded shwarma joint, Dino Danil, a Kurdish-Israeli journalist, flashed his wallet showing his Israeli and Kurdish press credentials side by side. “Everybody knows that I am Israeli and Kurdish,” he said nonchalantly. “You can speak Hebrew on the streets and nobody will pay you any attention. There’s no reason to fear here in Erbil.”
For some, there is only opportunity. Aharon Efroni, who left Mosul for Israel in 1951, is investing money in the KRG and has been there too many times for him to count. “We want to introduce modern technology and industry to the country,” he said. “If they ever want to become a country at all, they need to be more self-dependent.” Though Mosul remains too dangerous to visit, Efroni frequents cities like Erbil and Duhok, where he is cultivating ties with senior politicians and businessmen. If Kurdistan wants to become independent, he said, it needs a more varied economy, and he is more than happy to provide his commercial expertise. “Right now they import everything,” he said.
I asked him if ventures like his might pave the way to the establishment of official ties between the two. Efroni took a deep breath before he answered and then said with a sense of yearning and confidence: “Everything in due time.”
***
On one of Erbil’s many new highways, I saw a silver Porsche overtake a rickety rickshaw. It was not an unusual sight in this city, where ostentatious displays of modernity and wealth are increasingly common. The sides of the roads are lined with luxury car dealerships and shopping malls, which have quickly replaced markets as centers of social and commercial life. Above, dozens of cranes and new tower buildings dominate the sky.
Oil revenues are just half of the secret of this region’s success. The rare degree of safety and stability provided by Peshmerga fighters—whose name means “those who face death”—is the other. The bustling streets of Erbil seem a million miles away from Kerkûk, Mosul, and Baghdad, where shootings and bombings are part of the daily routine. Here, entrepreneurs with the right connections and sufficient capital can acquire huge fortunes fast.
Nur Ben Shlomo is a member of the city’s new elite. He is a plump, middle-aged man who holds vast interests in construction and communication. I met him for tea in a large reception hall, where he sat in an oversized chair flanked by two Kurdish flags below a photo of Masoud Barzani. Outside, a dozen personal bodyguards clad in military fatigues and carrying AK-47s secured the area. His company’s logo is ubiquitous throughout Erbil, and he boasts excellent ties with the government. Though he leads a very public life, there is one thing about him few people know, something he shares only with his innermost circle: his Jewish identity.
“My father always told me to know wherever I go that I am a Jew,” he told me, beaming with pride. Nevertheless, he asked me to use his Hebrew name, not his real name, as a precaution. He told me both his parents were of mixed Jewish origin. He has relatives in Israel—a fact he hid growing up under the Saddam regime. “It was very dangerous being Jewish,” he said. “Until today it is not good for us to talk about it.”
These days, he said, he quietly observes Jewish traditions at home. A few weeks before we met he ate apples dipped apples in honey for Rosh Hashana and fasted on Yom Kippur. Four years ago, he went to Israel for the first time and was reunited with a long-lost uncle. He visited the Western Wall, met with other Iraqi Jews, and spent time in Tel Aviv. He has been back three times since. “The land, I felt like this is mine, a connection,” he told me, speaking softly and deliberately in English when he felt he could and in Kurdish through a translator when he did not. “Here, I feel like a guest.”
He said one of the reasons he wants to see his businesses grow is to be able to change things for Jews in South Kurdistan, so they can one day live more openly. Now, he told me, is not yet the time. “Maybe 10 years from now,” he said. “Maybe 15.”
***
The Tomb of Nahum is the exception to the region’s disappearing Jewish landscape. Thanks to its remote location and the care of a local Christian family, the shrine is one of the few that have been left untouched, though the ravages of time have clearly taken their toll. Two domes have collapsed. The others are full of crevices. If it weren’t for the ugly tin roof built two years ago by a wealthy Iraqi Jew from Britain, it might all be a pile of rubble by now. For the resting place of a prophet—even a minor one like Nahum—it’s bit of a letdown, especially in comparison to the grandeur of the nearby village churches.
Still, with a little effort one can imagine what it must have been like in its glory days, when thousands of pilgrims would camp in the surrounding fields for three days and three nights during the holiday of Shavuot. In 1948, when the last Jewish family in Alqosh left for Israel, a Christian family promised to look after the tomb. The current groundskeeper—who asked not to be identified by name—is a descendent of that family. Born years after Jews left, he said his mother often spoke fondly about them and the business they generated. “She would make food and light fires when they could not,” he told me, referring to Shabbat prohibitions. “Everybody would rent out our rooms when they came.”
Visitors, some Jewish, some not, still come—maybe five a year. Two years ago, Yosef Rahamim, a native of Mosul who has lived in Israel for six decades, was one of them. As a child, Rahamim visited Nahum’s tomb every year with his family. “We would play trumpets and bang drums,” he remembered. “Then we would walk with the Torah scrolls up the mountain slope to the top, singing and dancing before coming back down again.”
He yearns to see it restored, but time is running out. The tomb is in grave condition. His children and grandchildren, who have never known any country but Israel, are not connected to Iraq the way he is. At home in Kiryat Malachi, he sits glued to “31 Iraqi channels” on TV. He does not want to move back to Iraq, just visit more freely. Yet the rigors of travel are becoming increasingly difficult. He is not a young man, and he is not sure he will ever see the tomb of Nahum again. “In my life I’ve been all over the world,” he said. “But if I’ve ever enjoyed visiting a place it’s there. It is my culture, my language, they understand me, I understand them—what more does one need?”
http://www.tabletmag.com/(...)kurdistan-love-story
Driving down the highway to Mosul on a late summer’s afternoon, when dust devils race across the dry and desolate Plains of Nineveh, it’s impossible not to wonder how this part of the world could ever have been known as the Fertile Crescent. Rubber tire remains, roadkill carcasses, and empty water bottles half-melted by the desert sun litter the side of the road; temperatures rise into the 100s.
Mosul is one of the most violent places in Iraq and, by extension, the world. The past months have been particularly bloody. A few days before I arrived, in September, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral, killing 36 members of the Shabak minority. Before I reached the city outskirts, my driver took a sharp left, darting down a side road, kicking up a trail of dust behind. A few minutes later a village emerged in the shadow of a small mountain: Alqosh, a bastion of Christianity in the middle of the Muslim world.
Its impressive monastery, carved into the face of a cliff, has attracted pilgrims and adventurers for centuries, though reasons for my coming here are related to another, older religious tradition. At the village entrance, security was tight—hardly a surprise, so close to an active Islamist insurgency. A mustachioed soldier with an AK-47 slung lazily around his right shoulder gave us a long stare as he radioed our credentials to his superiors. Inside, we slalomed past crumbling houses and ostentatious McMansions climbing up the slope until we came to a sudden stop in front of a dilapidated structure of uncertain antiquity: The tomb of the biblical prophet Nahum.
Once an important center of Jewish life in Iraq, it is today one of the few undisturbed physical remains of a nearly vanished community. According to tradition, there has been a Jewish presence in Iraq—or Mesopotamia, or Babylon—since the Assyrian Empire forcibly resettled the defeated Ten Tribes of Israel, creating the first Jewish diaspora. Nahum was one of those exiles, and it was in Alqosh—mentioned in the Bible by name—that he prophesied the destruction of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. It fell to the Babylonians, as Nahum foresaw, but Jews lingered for a few thousand years more, until 1948, when the vast majority left, or were forced to leave, after the creation of Israel. Today, many Iraqi Jews cling to their unique culture and traditions in Israel, the United States. and the United Kingdom, but in their historic homeland, Judaism is for all intents and purposes extinct, and there is less evidence of the region’s long Jewish history to see each year. Synagogues and shrines in Mosul and Kerkûk, Basra and Baghdad have been turned into mosques. Many houses and cemeteries have been taken over, destroyed, or damaged by authorities or opportunists.
But in the Kurdish part of Iraq, an increasingly autonomous part of the country, that might be beginning to change. In recent years, a trickle of Jews of Iraqi origin have returned for visits or to do business, and a handful of individuals have even come back to stay. Those who do keep a very low profile, and no semblance of community life exists in public. Yet many hope that, if the Kurds achieve their long-deferred dream of independence, Kurdistan may emerge as an unexpected new ally for Israel in Iran’s backyard.
***
The Arab Spring has turned the Middle East upside down, but the upheaval’s biggest beneficiaries may, in the end, be the Kurds. Old seats of power in Baghdad and Damascus that for decades oppressed Kurdish ambitions for greater autonomy have been weakened. In Iraq, and now in Syria, Kurdish-majority areas are enjoying a degree of self-rule never experienced before. A conference of delegates from Kurdish-speaking areas of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the diaspora is set to hold the first official pan-Kurdish meeting in Erbil on Nov. 25—a potentially landmark moment that has raised hackles in both Tehran and Ankara.
While independence may not be imminent, it is no longer a pipe dream. If, or when, a more autonomous or independent Kurdish entity or entities emerge, one decision Kurdish leaders will have to make is whether to establish ties with Israel.
Eliezer Tsafrir, a former Mossad operative, has been waiting for such a moment for decades. Tsafrir was the head of covert Israeli operations in South Kurdistan in 1975, the year Saddam Hussein quashed a Kurdish rebellion led by Mustafa Barzani, the father of Masoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government. He has fond memories of a “proud, fierce, and warm mountain people,” memories he elaborates on in his memoir Ana Kurdi—“I Am a Kurd”—which he is now self-publishing in Kurdish.
“It was a love story,” he said when we spoke. ”Under the Barzanis, Jews in Kurdistan did not suffer. On the contrary, they were their friends. Ties with Israel ran deep and began when Mustafa Barzani sent emissaries to Israel through Europe and told us Kurds, like Jews, were ignored by everybody and needed help.”
Iraqi troops fought Israel alongside other Arab armies in 1948, 1967, and 1973, so the Jewish state was happy to help Kurds against their mutual foes in Baghdad. Mossad operatives like Tsafrir ran training camps for Kurdish soldiers in Israel and Iran, under the Shah, at a time when Israel provided them with weapons and supplies. They even considered sending Centurion tanks at one point, Tsafrir told me. “We decided against it because we thought the Kurds were better off fighting an asymmetrical war,” he explained.
Tsafrir’s tenure with the rebels in the mountains of Kurdistan came to an abrupt end when, in an unabashed display of realpolitik, Iran cut a deal with Iraq at a conference in Algeria forsaking its erstwhile Kurdish allies. In the desperate hours before Iraqi troops reached the rebel Kurdish headquarters, Tsafrir said, it fell to him to erase his presence. “We were in a big hurry to burn papers,” Tsafrir recalled. “I had to get out of there before the Iraqi army turned me into a kebab.” Tsafrir said that he is certain that, if Kurdistan becomes independent, Masoud Barzani and others would be friends to Israel. “I want to be Israel’s first consul general in Erbil,” Tsafrir told me.
Of course, there are considerable obstacles to any kind of Israeli-Kurdish rapprochement—namely, Iran, which exerts considerable influence over Kurdistan. “The Iranians are our neighbors,” a senior Kurdish official recently told The New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins. “They’ve always been there, and they always will be. We have to deal with them.”
The presence of Iranian agents in the KRG-controlled area is one reason Israel has issued specific travel advisories against travel to Iraq’s Kurdistan region—an extra warning, since Israeli citizens are officially prohibited from traveling to any part of Iraq. But many ignore the advisory and travel, usually via Amman, to Erbil, a city newly flush with oil and gas money that is considered among the safest in Iraq. A bombing carried out by a local al-Qaida affiliate in Erbil on Sept. 29 was the first since 2007.
On a busy street corner in Erbil, just outside a crowded shwarma joint, Dino Danil, a Kurdish-Israeli journalist, flashed his wallet showing his Israeli and Kurdish press credentials side by side. “Everybody knows that I am Israeli and Kurdish,” he said nonchalantly. “You can speak Hebrew on the streets and nobody will pay you any attention. There’s no reason to fear here in Erbil.”
For some, there is only opportunity. Aharon Efroni, who left Mosul for Israel in 1951, is investing money in the KRG and has been there too many times for him to count. “We want to introduce modern technology and industry to the country,” he said. “If they ever want to become a country at all, they need to be more self-dependent.” Though Mosul remains too dangerous to visit, Efroni frequents cities like Erbil and Duhok, where he is cultivating ties with senior politicians and businessmen. If Kurdistan wants to become independent, he said, it needs a more varied economy, and he is more than happy to provide his commercial expertise. “Right now they import everything,” he said.
I asked him if ventures like his might pave the way to the establishment of official ties between the two. Efroni took a deep breath before he answered and then said with a sense of yearning and confidence: “Everything in due time.”
***
On one of Erbil’s many new highways, I saw a silver Porsche overtake a rickety rickshaw. It was not an unusual sight in this city, where ostentatious displays of modernity and wealth are increasingly common. The sides of the roads are lined with luxury car dealerships and shopping malls, which have quickly replaced markets as centers of social and commercial life. Above, dozens of cranes and new tower buildings dominate the sky.
Oil revenues are just half of the secret of this region’s success. The rare degree of safety and stability provided by Peshmerga fighters—whose name means “those who face death”—is the other. The bustling streets of Erbil seem a million miles away from Kerkûk, Mosul, and Baghdad, where shootings and bombings are part of the daily routine. Here, entrepreneurs with the right connections and sufficient capital can acquire huge fortunes fast.
Nur Ben Shlomo is a member of the city’s new elite. He is a plump, middle-aged man who holds vast interests in construction and communication. I met him for tea in a large reception hall, where he sat in an oversized chair flanked by two Kurdish flags below a photo of Masoud Barzani. Outside, a dozen personal bodyguards clad in military fatigues and carrying AK-47s secured the area. His company’s logo is ubiquitous throughout Erbil, and he boasts excellent ties with the government. Though he leads a very public life, there is one thing about him few people know, something he shares only with his innermost circle: his Jewish identity.
“My father always told me to know wherever I go that I am a Jew,” he told me, beaming with pride. Nevertheless, he asked me to use his Hebrew name, not his real name, as a precaution. He told me both his parents were of mixed Jewish origin. He has relatives in Israel—a fact he hid growing up under the Saddam regime. “It was very dangerous being Jewish,” he said. “Until today it is not good for us to talk about it.”
These days, he said, he quietly observes Jewish traditions at home. A few weeks before we met he ate apples dipped apples in honey for Rosh Hashana and fasted on Yom Kippur. Four years ago, he went to Israel for the first time and was reunited with a long-lost uncle. He visited the Western Wall, met with other Iraqi Jews, and spent time in Tel Aviv. He has been back three times since. “The land, I felt like this is mine, a connection,” he told me, speaking softly and deliberately in English when he felt he could and in Kurdish through a translator when he did not. “Here, I feel like a guest.”
He said one of the reasons he wants to see his businesses grow is to be able to change things for Jews in South Kurdistan, so they can one day live more openly. Now, he told me, is not yet the time. “Maybe 10 years from now,” he said. “Maybe 15.”
***
The Tomb of Nahum is the exception to the region’s disappearing Jewish landscape. Thanks to its remote location and the care of a local Christian family, the shrine is one of the few that have been left untouched, though the ravages of time have clearly taken their toll. Two domes have collapsed. The others are full of crevices. If it weren’t for the ugly tin roof built two years ago by a wealthy Iraqi Jew from Britain, it might all be a pile of rubble by now. For the resting place of a prophet—even a minor one like Nahum—it’s bit of a letdown, especially in comparison to the grandeur of the nearby village churches.
Still, with a little effort one can imagine what it must have been like in its glory days, when thousands of pilgrims would camp in the surrounding fields for three days and three nights during the holiday of Shavuot. In 1948, when the last Jewish family in Alqosh left for Israel, a Christian family promised to look after the tomb. The current groundskeeper—who asked not to be identified by name—is a descendent of that family. Born years after Jews left, he said his mother often spoke fondly about them and the business they generated. “She would make food and light fires when they could not,” he told me, referring to Shabbat prohibitions. “Everybody would rent out our rooms when they came.”
Visitors, some Jewish, some not, still come—maybe five a year. Two years ago, Yosef Rahamim, a native of Mosul who has lived in Israel for six decades, was one of them. As a child, Rahamim visited Nahum’s tomb every year with his family. “We would play trumpets and bang drums,” he remembered. “Then we would walk with the Torah scrolls up the mountain slope to the top, singing and dancing before coming back down again.”
He yearns to see it restored, but time is running out. The tomb is in grave condition. His children and grandchildren, who have never known any country but Israel, are not connected to Iraq the way he is. At home in Kiryat Malachi, he sits glued to “31 Iraqi channels” on TV. He does not want to move back to Iraq, just visit more freely. Yet the rigors of travel are becoming increasingly difficult. He is not a young man, and he is not sure he will ever see the tomb of Nahum again. “In my life I’ve been all over the world,” he said. “But if I’ve ever enjoyed visiting a place it’s there. It is my culture, my language, they understand me, I understand them—what more does one need?”
http://www.tabletmag.com/(...)kurdistan-love-story
Mossad agenten dienen opgehangen te worden.
"But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."- Edmund Burke
Hier ben ik het echt 100% mee eens.quote:
[..]
Hij vergeet erbij te zeggen dat de beste periode van de Islam, tijdens Saladin's (Koerdisch) heerschappij was. Juist door deze Koerdische invloed, bloeide de Islam. Er was enorm veel tolerantie (Christenen, Joden enz. werden beschermd, Saladin vermoordde zijn troepen die hen onterecht kwaad deden). Christelijke leiders, priesters, koningen enz. hadden grote respect voor Saladin.
Gevangen genomen kruisvaders werden niet vermoord (tenzij zij verantwoordelijk waren voor de moord op gevangen genomen moslims).
Toen Saladin overleed, had hij geen persoonlijke bezittingen meer. Hij had al zijn welvaart uitgegeven om voor zijn mannen, armen enz. te zorgen.
Terwijl Christelijke leiders in Europa aflaatbriefjes enz. aan het verkopen waren, ''heksen'' op vuurstapels gooiden, etc. waren de moslims onder Koerdisch/Saladin's heerschappij al bezig met wetenschappen.
ca. 33% van Saladin's troepen bestond uit Koerden. De meesten van zijn officieren waren ook Koerdisch.
Het is, achteraf gezien, jammer dat hij het deed voor Islam en niet voor Koerdistan. Maar nationalisme bestond nog niet echt in die tijd, het was vooral religie (overal).
Niemand was nog nationalistisch in die tijd hoor, dus het verbaast me niet dat hij niet streed voor Koerdistan.
China en Rusland hebben goede banden met Syrië en Iran. Waarom zouden ze dan helpen hun territorium te veroveren? Onzinquote:
[..]
Dat jullie ons steunen is juist de reden dat de Arabieren, Turken en Perzen ons haten.
Sorry maar wij Koerden zijn beter af zonder jullie.
China en Rusland kunnen ons helpen om onafhankelijk te worden.
Israël levert wapens aan Koerdische strijders in Syrië, dat is goed voor de Israëlische economie
wil je wel met een zionist pratenquote:
Hey zwaaien waar ben je. We kunnen hier verder praten.
Rusland en China steunen Assad en Iran minder hier hoor. Poetin zegt ook dat Assad moet stoppen met het geweld.quote:
[..]
China en Rusland hebben goede banden met Syrië en Iran. Waarom zouden ze dan helpen hun territorium te veroveren? Onzin
Israël levert wapens aan Koerdische strijders in Syrië, dat is goed voor de Israëlische economie
Rusland en China gaan ooit erachter komen dat de Koerden hun belangrijkste bondgenoot zijn in de regio.
Op
Israël is hier al achter gekomenquote:
Rusland en China gaan ooit erachter komen dat de Koerden hun belangrijkste bondgenoot zijn in de regio.
Bron (bewijs)quote:
[..]
Israël levert wapens aan Koerdische strijders in Syrië, dat is goed voor de Israëlische economie
Israël gaat ons weer verraden als ze weer goeie banden hebben met Iran en Turkije en eventueel Irak en Syrië.quote:
heb ik geen bron of bewijs voor maar ik denk het welquote:
Israël en Koerden hebben goede banden hoor en Israël steunt de Koerdische onafhankelijkheidsgedachte en Israël produceert super modern leger apparatuur... ik denk dat je dan zelf wel daaruit conclusies kan trekken
[ Bericht 7% gewijzigd door zwaaien op 10-11-2013 15:57:33 ]
De enige die Koerden verraden zijn de Koerden zelf.quote:
[..]
Israël gaat ons weer verraden als ze weer goeie banden hebben met Iran en Turkije en eventueel Irak en Syrië.
Kan ik wel hoor, maar op dit forum willen we altijd bij een aanname bewijs zien.quote:
[..]
heb ik geen bron of bewijs voor maar ik denk het wel
Israël en Koerden hebben goede banden hoor en Israël steunt de Koerdische onafhankelijkheidsgedachte en Israël produceert super modern leger apparatuur... ik denk dat je dan zelf wel daaruit conclusies kan trekken
Daarom moeten wij Koerden leren om onze nationale belangen boven onze ideologische en/of partijbelangen te plaatsen.quote:
[..]
De enige die Koerden verraden zijn de Koerden zelf.
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