AFTER defeating Zuhak, an evil king with serpents sprouting from his shoulders, the Kurds celebrated by lighting the hillsides with fire. The fable is remembered each Nowruz, a holiday marking the start of spring and the new year in late March. The Kurds still celebrate by lighting fires—and, in the case of Kurdish soldiers near Mosul, sending flaming tyres down the hillside toward the trenches of Islamic State (IS).
The Kurdish forces in Iraq (where they are known as peshmerga) and Syria are the West’s most reliable allies in the fight against IS. They have won important victories in the towns of Kobane, on the Syrian border with Turkey, and Sinjar in northern Iraq. In the process, they have increased and consolidated the territory under their control. Thanks to the chaos created by IS, the Kurds in each country are closer than ever to achieving self-determination.
Yet a unified Kurdistan spanning the region’s borders is not in the offing. Last month Masoud Barzani, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, called for a non-binding referendum on independence by the end of the year....Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/22w3Bsi
EmoticonEmoticon