After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters with Kurdistan

by Jonathan C. Randal

Book Overview

Years ago, noting that Kurds--the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country--were involved in every major story he covered in Iran, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq, veteran... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374102007
• ISBN13: 9780374102005
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

luminous book

brilliant book to read. I recommended to every one interested in Kurdish affair, especially the Kurds and their foes. I congratulate him for showing the detailed fact and for his meticulous and fair criticism to all the parties who has been obstacle in the way of Kurds welfare. he also disclose some of the atrocities that happened to Kurds in a very nice narrative way.I would like to thank him

If you have a serious interest in the Kurds read this book

Johnathan Randall, the former Washington Post and New York Times reporter, has here compiled an extraordinary memoir/focused history of the Kurds. He knows more about the Kurds than one could ever possibly hope to know about them. He is well acquainted with Kurdish leaders--warlords is probably a better term--such as Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talibani and has made several rather dangerous journies to visit them in Northern Iraq. He focuses very well on how the Kurds have been manipulated as pawns in the feuds of Middle East nations and how the West, specifically the United States, has ignored them except when its imperial interests are at stake. The U.S. encouraged the Kurds to rise up in Iraq against Saddam Hussein during 1972-75 in support of their friend the Shah of Iran but then were abandoned to Saddam's butcheries after Spring 1975. He, of course, points out the U.S. authorising the shipment of materials to make weapons of mass destruction to Iraq between 1985-90 and its giving Iraq loans and credits to buy a large amount of U.S. agricultural products. The U.S. encouraged the maintenance of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship as a bulwark against threats to the status quo in the region i.e. threats and possible domino effects to the oil-producing despotisms. It did not become fashionable to cry for the Kurds until in the aftermath of the Gulf War when the hundreds of thousands of Kurds in the Turkish mountains captured the attention of the TV cameras and a very reluctant Bush administration was forced to help repatriate and succor the miserable refugees in order to avert potential instability in the virulently anti-Kurd nation of Turkey. Turkey itself where Kurds are refered to as "Turkish mountain people" has seen its U.S. military aid go up dramatically in recent years as it has used severe violence to suppress elementary Kurdish rights in regard to cultural freedom and economic equality with tens of thousands dead, thousands of villages burned, millions of internal refugees, as was partially admited by the Turkish minister for human rights in 1994. The war itself has the potential to unleash great instability in Turkey and big business has been warning the beuracratic-military complex to make serious concessions to the Kurds that would address the injustices done to them which provoked the war in the first place in order to avoid the severe potential internal strife. The U.S. government and its allies of course could withdraw their heavy support for Turkey; fulminating about Milosevic or Rwanda is fine but if you want to seriously stop ethnic cleansing in the world the very best course of action is to help pressure your government to stop supporting it in places like Turkey.

AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE, WHAT FORGIVENESS?

Jonathan Randal did an excellent job of detailing the struggles, battles and betrayals of the Kurdish people. As I read this book, I felt the pain these courageous, spiritual people felt. It was as if I, myself were fighting for the cause. The fight, the cause.....are we not all human? Do we have the right to be treated with dignity and respect? Don't we have the right to live, speak our own language, practice our own religion, have an education and follow our own traditions? This book opened my eyes to the atrocities these people have endured for generations. I believe they are the chosen people. After you read this book, you will agree.

Kurdish plight in Iraq & Iran pales compared to Turkey

Excellent portrayal of the Kurdish cause, especially in Turkey, whose cultural hatred for the Kurds is much deeper and profound than what is happening in Iraq and Iran. The current day Turks, themselves descendents of Mongolian invaders of Mesopotamia, wholeheartedly believed, and still do, that the only way to survive and stay in power is by completely destroying, and Turkesizing, all other cultures in their path, Just read about what so called father of the Turk "Ataturk" did during his reign, in the recent history.

The truth allways hurts....

Mr Jonathan C. Randal has in this book pushed the buttons that exposes the Kurdish problem, especially in Turkey. The analyze of the Kurdish situation, done by a non-kurd, is highly topical. Denying it with arguments that wouldnt hold a feather up is just showing how cheep the reasons for oppressing the 15 million population of Kurds in Turkey are. Mr Randal is accused for being arrogant, and at the same time he is being called stupid and a low-life. 2 contrasting arguments, that is crowned with the argument "it is a tedious read from an author who thinks a bit too much of himself and his acumen over the Kurdish issue." This prooves, as weakly stated in the book, that the hatred of Turks against the Kurdish issue is widely spread among the hearts of the Turks. I find it ironic that all the Pro-Turks doesnt even live in Turkey, the so called misunderstood cradle of freedom. They wish to embellish a country that even they are not living in. If one dared to tell them to go back to their paradice, I assure, they would find 1000 reasons for not doing it. I wish that those who have these opinions were with me as I passed through the border to the FREE IRAQY KURDISTAN. When returning back, I was arrested for being, and I qoute the officer, "a Kurd". After wiping off spit 3 times from my face, have been forced to buy and smoke a package of sigarettes (as i donot smoke) during a half an hour, payed them off 5 hundred dollars as a "present", they agreed to let me go, while a MIT (a member of the turkish "intelligence") was kickng my behind as I ran to my cab. That is the situation for the kurds who say they are kurds. My intention is not presenting sobb-story, but to reveal the truth, that is so deeply contested by the turks. There are'nt any Kurdish tv in Turkey (they have a few hours a day in a turkish channel, highly government-controled). Many kurds cannot speak Kurdish as good as the Turkish, and that was the plan in the ideology (more like idiocy) made by Ataturk, called Kemalism. I quote the book of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk "The best way to control a minority is to make the people forget their history and language". Don't believe me-read his book! That is the reason why many people (Excluded Öcalan, why has a Turkish reputation after him) lack in the Kurdish language. PS-the man at the trial was speaking allright, but Öcalan couldn't hear from inside the "stall". And the so-called "supporting 2 million kurdish refugees"-90% of the support came from external helpers. The fact is that a big part of the things dissapeared under "mystical circumstances", so they never reached the kurds. Iran didn't get a quarter of Turkey got, and thay supported as much refuges by them selves as Turkey. In amny places, the turkish army draw a line on the ground a said-if things that the helicopters drop land in our side, it is ours. If not, we will spread them on you. Don't believe me-read the UN report! When these facts are presented