Please don't type in all CAPS, it's the equivalent to YELLING, let alone hard to read, thank you.
kurdo u right about this aliraqi.com thing. I was banned 2 coz I had American thoughts about the terrorist activities in the mid-east.
I don't agree a 100% with calling them racist. I feel they are free to run their site how they choose, and they don't want it to be a forum for the idea of Kurdistan. I think you should present the evidence has you have and let the reader decide it its racist or not. I feel their own actions will weaken the site and its meaning because they are limiting the opinions to ones they already have, which leaves them learning nothing really. They aren't helping to bring people together, which is sad.
Rich..
What is in a name ? I chose that site as an example of racism in Iraq. If a website calls itself "democratic" how can they ban a member juts coz of a name ?
Look at this report.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/
...A2C5E8FE992.htm
read this paragraph in particular :
Al-Muradi also accused some members of the IGC of co-operation with Israelis. "You must not be astonished", he said "if you saw (Ariel) Sharon wandering in the streets of Kurdistan.
If anyone want to solve the Iraq crisis they must not be afraid of a name ! A name can't be finished off just by terminating all those who call for it just like Saddam was used to do.
anyways I wanted to highlight the problems that "racism" creates in the face of builing a democratic, federal state.
regards
Rich it's the definition of racism to bann someone because of their ethnicity. remember they do not bann you because of your views, just because you sound kurdish.
Great site Kurdo,
Tino, kurd in Sweden
Aren't most Iraqis actually Summerian? There weren't many Arabs in what is now Iraq until the Arab conquests of the 7th Century.
Desert pig
Summerian where the first to settle in Iraq in the beginning of the 5500 BC they moved Iraq (and the humanity)from pre-history to history and modern city states and system. Then they established the first monarchy in the world by uniting these city states in one state, they ruled for a long time till another race toke over and rolled Iraq and they just despaired or milted in the new comers (the Akadians).
as for current Iraq inhabitants they are a mixture blend of (Arabs, Chaldean, Assyrians, Arrams, Akkadians, Turks, Kurds, Persians and even some blood from Mongols and Greek) with almost no one can prove it's clear race (nobody admit that) but that is the true history of ethnicity in Iraq
Cont.
And yes they weren't any Arabs in Iraq prior to Invading it except some tribes in the south-west of Iraq where considered Arabs but they where Christians too and they fought with the Arab Muslim against the Sasanian (that time Iraq rulers). The rest of Iraq was inhabited by Chaldeans and Assyrian mixture and they faced two options either flee or enter the new religion so must of them flee to the mountains and the rest entered the new religion and milted with the Arabs
Kurdo,the best method to preach tolerance is to practice it. Numerous Human Rights organizations have cited Kurdish mistreatment of other ethnic groups (Turkmans, Assyrians and Yezidis). Confiscation of lands; tolerance of kidnappings and killings and not pursuing the Kurdish purpetrators; denial of fair participation in political process; political manipulation and infiltration of their political organizations for the purpose of weakening and diving them. There is a real danger that blind nationalism will lead the Kurds to more and more intolerance of other groups. You would think that a people that has been oppressed would not practice the same oppression on smaller groups that live among them. However, that is not the case here.... Continued!
Continued ...
I am not anti-Kurds, otherwise I wouldn't be interested in your blog. I just hope that your personal views about tolerance will take root and spread among the Kurdish population. The Kurds should and must be better than Saddam. They must treat the Turkomans, Assyrians, Yezidis with equality and respect.
Mountaineer,
I understand your concerns..There might be some racists among Kurds (as there are in every nation) but the Kurdish governments are not racists.
There are dozens of Turkmen and Assyrian schools in Kurdistan. There are dozens of Turkmen and Assyrian political parties, all have free press, free radio, free television stations, all had its own militia (until recently disarmed by the US)..
There is a church wherever u go, there are shia mosques (though majority of Kurds are sunnis)..
So I think there is a good tolerance in Kurdistan.. In fact the Kurdistan parliament has 5 Assyrian and Chadlean members and 10 seats were offered to the Turkmens in 1991 but the Turkmen Front (which that time was the only Turkmen group) refused the offer under Tukrish pressure not to recognise the Kurdistan parliament.
cont
Trust me, the Assyrians and the Chaldeans and the Turkmens will be treated as fair as the Kurds...There is a wrong beleif among people that Kurdistan is Kurdish... Kurdistan is not Kurdish but Kurdistan is a multi-ethnic country that belongs to all..
Kurdo
Thank you so much for your blog. You are adding to the education and insight of us in the US. We want to know what is going on in Iraq. I want to also express my horror at the suicide bombing of the two Kurdish political headquarters in Irbil. It is so senseless.
This is just my second visit here; this time it was on a link from Salam Pax. I think I'll add it to my Mozilla Iraq Tab Group, which is already busting at the seams!
Kurdo -- there's no such English word as "haterous". I'm guessing, by the sound and context, that you mean "hatred". Is that right?
First, thanks Kurdo for the blog 
Let me add my "humble personal opinion" (based on FACTS and not, BIASED rhetoric)... a good percentage of the so-called Iraqis (sects, ethnicities) do NOT tell the TRUTH i.e. ALL were victims of the thugs regime (the Baathists), yet, at the same ALL (I repeat, ALL,with no exclusion) had people who worked with the thug and BENEFITED from him !! That fact is NOT said to "outsiders" who do NOT know and is not even dared to be discussed in bet. the so-called "Iraqis"...call it an autoimmune disease, parts of the "iraqi body" are fighting each other, for greed and control that "outsiders" have to know, ASAP ! Peace
hi Kurdo
found ur page from a link (salam pax)
i think racisim is an overstatement,
you can't just call them racist because you think they ban names,
on the other hand i met quite few kurds in europe & they are quite patriotic about kurdistan,& in general they don't tolerate arabs,
christian iraqis are in general patriotic about iraq & tolerant to
all the iraqi diversities
haven't met enough number of arab iraqis to make my impression,
wishing you all the best,
Mut
Hi Mut,
I'm an Iraqi Christian (Chaldean), and I used to live in Baghdad. I've also noticed the same phenomena concerning Kurds and Christians, i.e. the patriotism & the tolerance. I'm not saying this because I'm a Christian nor because I have anything against Kurds, it's just something that struck me here in Europe; I couldn't tell why. Kurdo any thoughts?
Greetings,
Dunkha
Iraq is indeed a multi-ethnic country with people of different cultures and languages and religions. In fact the whole Middle East is like that. Sometimes I get confused as to what and who is an Arab and a non-Arab or what that means. For example, I didn't know Iran was a non-Arab country until I read this site. A good place to learn about the minority groups.
http://www.freep.com/jobspage/ar...rabs/
arab2.html
I think most Americans believe that all of the Middle East is Arab. They don't know about all the different ethnic groups. It's called ignorance, which I am also guilty of. I think to overcome racism, all the people living in Iraq need to concentrate on their common goals and work together to achieve them. There must be many ways through the media to do this - to communicate and educate - to overcome ignorance - to make people feel that they have more similarities in common than differences. Racial harmony won't occur if people don't speak out against it.
I mean "speak out against racism."
I cut and pasted this from Sgt. Omar Masry's website. It describes a public relations campaign to promote tolerance and unity among the many ethnic groups in Iraq. It is called " I AM IRAQ" and uses pictures of children.
Background: All around Iraq are these eight sided stars on government buildings and property. To many Iraqis each point represents a letter in the spelling of Saddam Hussein (in arabic). I hope to change that association with a campaign to turn a few of them around the country into murals that stress tolerance.
Concept: Each point will represent each of Iraqs main groups: Arab Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, Turkish, Assyrian, Chaldean, Madan, Bedouin.
The inside of each star will comprise a portrait of a Iraqi holding a sign in Arabic, Kurdish, and English saying
"I AM IRAQ".
The Iraqis will mostly be children dressed as either farmers, priests, sheikhs, students, engineers (complete with hardhat), nuns, one in hijab (simple head scarf), and another in chador (black robe).
It will employ artists that used to paint for Saddam, children that are internal refugees, and others.
Bridget:
i ve been following the work of this guy,i think the americans should be proud of him
Bridget, this campaign idea sounds great - the kind of communication that will be effective. I hope we'll be seeing pictures of completed murals very soon. Omar Masry will probably post them on his site. I can hardly wait.
I think there needs to be some sort of mass campaign to confront and expose the whole middle east 'tradition' of B-S. the racial vilification- of jews, of kurds, of the 'other guy, not me, the other people, not us'. in other parts of the world, people seems to vy along struggles for justice, for economy, for self determination, but i have never seen the raw hatred that i see in the middle east.
we used to have it in the US, the racial lies, stereotypes, fantastic paranoid tales told to make one color fear and terrorize another. since Civil rights in the 60's, we've worked relentlessly to grind that away. we've also worked at it with the male beleifs about women. people now complain about 'Political Correctness" ["PC"] censoring everything we can say about anybody, but it had to be done. the last pockets of such hatred now reside in the neo nazi white supremacists, who are pretty much viewed as insane, sick, backwards specimens who just just can't cope.
By opening up Iraq, I hope we have blown open the festering hatred for all the world to see, so that it can be exposed for what it is and rooted out, the way we had to do with our Civil Rights movement. the gloves ought to come off.It needs to be named for what it is and taken apart at every encounter. There's nobody on earth but us plain old People. There is no race but the human race. Our DNA doesn't care what color anyone is. It can make a new human with any combination of male and female. No one is pure anything anymore, and it's going to keep on going that way. The world is getting smaller. It's time to face it and accept it. Blow open the stereotypes.
The true measure of whether a government is racist is whether it allows people of races other than the majority to hold government office.
America does. Israel does.
Does Kurdistan?
Kurdo, Please do not listen to Janet in Venice Beach. PC speech codes and ideas have done nothing but create animosity after it was first being diminished by out our 60's civil rights advances. Western Leftists are aurhoritarians who believe only their ideas are the correct ones and if you don't follow the party line they will punish you.
Counseling someone to not listen is a bit counterproductive, especially when the person to be ignored is saying things the listener wants to believe.
There is truth to what Janice is saying, but unfortunately she doesn't mention that many people have been unfairly villified with the "neo-nazi" label, often for asking questions or learning things that have nothing to do with race at all, but everything to do with exposing the corruption and fanaticism of the American left.
Israel, in particular, has suffered the brunt of the villification, all because the Jews living there dared to transform themselves from Holocaust victims to succesful capitalists. The epithet "Zionazi" on the lips of supposed civil rights activists all over the US is sad proof that the left has become every bit as hateful as the racists ever were. The reasons change, but the hate remains the same.
Whos is this "left" you mention? Do you mean Liberals? Democrats? and if so it seems your are speaking of them as a whole, as in all of them. As a generalization of all of the "left".
Wanna go string one up, you know they only came over here from that commie country of leftistania to take our jobs and our women, maybe its time for the final solution on those leftians?
wow great comments ! Gotta try and answer you all
Birdie in Texas thanks for your comments. I will try to enrich your info as much as I could
Brian H
lol yeah I meant hatred.. I will add this word to my dictionary..thanks again !
Mut and Dankha..
I understand your concerns..you guys are right racism is found among all races and we have to stop it.. I know some Kurds are as racist as the Nazis but tell me which nation doesn't have these ?
Unfortunately racism is spread just like a virus...if I act like a racist against you , you might probably act racist towards another Kurd you meet coz of your experiences.. and this will go on ....
thanks for ALL and please keep your comments coming in.. They are great and I really do learn from them..
regards
Hi Kurdo,
You have a really nice way in answering questions and comments (very civilised) and I really appreciate that.
You are absolutely right about racism being like a virus... I hope we could find a cure for that, especially in Iraq, because believe me, when I was in Baghdad I never discriminated between: Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Muslims, Shia, Sunni, I didn't even think of it that way, until now because we see it from the outside, but living it was (is?) really totally different.
We are all brothers and one family and I hope that in the not so far feature all these differences/ arguments would just fade away. Thank you again.
Dunkha
I just got here via salam and raed's site,so this is my first read.Its great to see someone from a minority ethnicity blogging about the situation in Iraq,as a chechen/new zealand muslim I am aware of all the ethnic fractures in our own mosque here in democratic,peaceful n.z and I see how those fractures run so much deeper in a place like Iraq where everybody is trying o get their peice of the pie,and there views/opinions heard.Its hard,but like its been said,people just need to realise that we are all just HUMAN and we need to figure out a way to share this world and its resources so everybody can live peacefully and work/worship/love/live the way they want.I look forward to hearing your views.
hi again kurdo,one more thing,I also know what its like to be discriminated againstvia muslims/islam.The chechen people are sometimes not considerd REAL muslims because we are not arabs.Which is stupid because we all share a belief in allah and the koran,but for some thats not enough,and the same goes for the african muslims and so forth,somali's etc.Russia does not want the muslim chechens to be autonomous or have their own country,they would rather we be quiet and be thankful we have land INSIDE of RUSSIA to live in.We feel we are entitled to our own g.overnment/language/culture/autonomous country.there are many exsamples around the world of ethnicity's denied the right to formally exist on there own.thanks
The Chechens were granted freedom by Russia in 1998.
That wasn't good enough for Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev, so they siezed control of the military and invaded the province of Dagestan.
Chechnya broke the peace treaty, and so Chechnya paid the price. I feel no sympathy for them. They cannot control themselves, so I hope the Russians control them forever.
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