Through the ages the Kurds have been subject to attacks time and again.
The Yezidi history counts over seventy attacks, some of them clear cases
of genocides. The Kurds in general were the victim of dictatorships,
persecution and genocide.
And through the times, often the victims of these atrocities, who
survived, came out stronger. However terrible the suffering or the
crimes committed, people have the talent to survive by holding on to the
stick held out to them not to drown.
That goes in particular for the Yezidis and the Kurds. When their land
was split over four nations, they put up a fight not to be crushed
completely. When Arab regimes tried to Arabize them, their identity only
became stronger.
The former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein tried to beat the resistance out
of the Kurds, by gassing the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 which
killed more than 5,000 people. And by destroying thousands of Kurdish
villages and killing 180,000 in the Anfal campaign, he tried to destroy
their urge for autonomy and independence.
Yet the opposite happened. The Kurds rose against Saddam when he was
weak in 1991, and were able to turn the tables and get their autonomy.
Read on...
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