"The Kurds"

There was an interesting author interview on the L.A. based book show that was broadcast on WNYC TV I think it was. It was with the author Kevin McKiernan who recently published, "The Kurds" about those people who live in the north of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and former Soviet Union. I was once assigned a reading topic on them in anthropology, not much had been done, the particular group studied lived a semi-nomadic herding life bringing goats and sheep to higher pastures in the summer and lower altitudes in the winter. I had just caught the end of the interview, where the author stated most of the Kurds in the U.S. are in Nashville, TN, Fargo, North Dakota and San Diego, California and had been responsible for some of the information supplied leading up to the occupation of Iraq, where they control mostly the area around Kirkuk, an "Iraqi-Kurdistan" which contains the rich oil fields of Mosul. The famous archaeology site "Nuzi" is there, excavated by Starr of Harvard University in the 1930's, which I had the opportunity to read the site report from.

The author thought the Kurds more secular Sunni's than the Iraqi Shi'ite, who are ruled from Friday services from the mosque, and the country may go the way of Czechoslovakia (now separate republics) and partition off into three separate areas of defense, though the Turkish government may not allow it to happen, as recent bloody fighting has been going on there with "their" Kurds. My anthropology education has been one study, then a war, after another starting with East Timor, which nations that could have stopped but allowed an invasion to go on, right after the Vietnam debacle, said to be over off-shore oil there too. It looks like a book the leadership should be reading.