Who are the Kurds?
The Kurdish people of the Middle east are a ethnic Iraqi minority group who have lived in the mountainous areas to the south of Caucasus (Northern Zagros and Eastern Taurus mountain ranges), a geographical area collectively referred to as Kurdistan. This group has lived in the region for thousands of years, and has been subject of the rule of others never having been allowed to form its own country or rule itself.
- Kurds make up around 17% of Iraq's population. They are the majority in at least three provinces in Northern Iraq which are known as Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds also have a presence in Kirkuk, Mosul, Khanaqin, and Baghdad. There are around 300,000 Kurds living in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, 50,000 in the city of Mosul and around 100,000 Kurds living elsewhere in Southern Iraq.
- During the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, the regime implemented anti-Kurdish policies and a de facto civil war broke out. Iraq was widely-condemned by the international community, but was never seriously punished for oppressive measures such as the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq. The campaign of Iraqi government against Kurds in 1988 was called Anfal ("Spoils of War"). The Anfal attacks led to destruction of two thousand villages and death of between fifty and one-hundred thousand Kurds.
- The Kurds are a people of Indo-European origin. They speak an Iranian language known as Kurdish, and comprise the majority of the population of the region – however, included therein are Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Azeri, Jewish, Ossetian, Persian, and Turkic communities. Most inhabitants are Muslim, but adherents to other religions are present as well – including Yazidis, the Yarsan, Alevis, Christians, and Jews.