After the Gulf War in 1991 the Kurdish people in Northern Iraq thought that the Iraqi army and Saddam Hussein had been so weakened by defeat that then was the moment for them to exert a major effort to gain their freedom as a people. They were wrong. The Iraqi army stormed into this primarily Kurdish area of Iraq with little resistance and several million people fled into the mountains of northern Iraq and Turkey. It was a monumental disaster. Thousands of people, young and old, died in the mountains of exposure to the harsh early spring weather and lack of food and medication.

When pictures of these dying people were flashed on the TV screens in the United States and Europe, there was an outpouring of support for these people and the governments reacted by creating the “no fly” zone in both northern and southern Iraq. U.S. military forces were sent into the north to protect the people and refugee camps were set up for them as they began to return to their homes, many still suffering from the severe conditions they encountered in the mountains.

As a Christian physician I felt like I could help. I was in my last year at Princeton Theological Seminary at the time and had had considerable experience in developing country medical situations. So I went to Iraq. I was able to get into the country through Turkey where I joined a group of Southern Baptist called Global Partners in the refugee camp of hundreds of thousands near Zakho, the northern most city in Iraq. Living in tents with the logistical support of the U.S. Army during this time in the most primitive conditions gave us a “window of opportunity” to minister to these remarkable people, who felt so hopeless under their circumstances.

There were four doctors in our group. Medication in large amounts had been donated to Global Partners, and the United Nations and U.S. Army also supplied us, so that we had a sufficient supply of antibiotics, analgesics, oral re-hydration and other necessary drugs for this kind of situation. We also had several nurse volunteers along with several logistical people for a total of about fifteen people to run our clinic. In this tent clinic adjacent to the refugee camp the three other doctors and I began seeing 300 to 400 people daily primarily with injuries and diseases of exposure to the extreme conditions they had to endure in the mountains. We had no surgical facilities but managed to care for these people with the help of some of our Kurdish Muslim brothers and sisters. We quickly learned that overuse of Tetracycline by the local doctors had resulted in the development of resistant organisms making this medication useless in this particular area. Other antibiotics had to be used for infections in both children and adults.

We worked long and hard hours. My Kurdish Muslim translator and I became like brothers. As we worked, we shared beliefs and aspirations and found that we had many things in common. Muslims, Christians, and Jews have far more things in common than most realize. If there is to be peace in the world, we must all search for these similarities and build on them rather than accentuating our differences. Nowhere is that more important than in the Middle East.

As the Kurdish people slowly were able to return to their homes this refugee camp was closed down after about two months of existence but a small contingent of U.S. Army remained and the “no fly zone” exists to this day. Twenty-five million Kurds live in the area of Kurdistan, which is primarily in southwestern Turkey, northern Iraq, eastern Syria, northwestern Iran and western Armenia. Almost a half-million Kurdish refugees live in Europe, mostly in Germany, and many have come to the United States.  They have no country of their own. The popular saying is that “the Kurds have no friends but the mountains.”

These people are primarily Sunni Muslim but ethnically are not Arab, but Indo-European. When the Ottoman Empire was broken up by the League of Nations following World War I, the Kurds, although promised a country of their own, were literally left out in the cold without a nation. Although they have lived in this area called “Kurdistan” for over 2500 years, they continue to struggle for identity.  There are now more Kurds than Turks.

In their continuing struggle for independence 250,000 Kurdish people were killed by Saddam Hussein the eight years before the Gulf War and thousands of their villages destroyed. Poison gas was used on many villages. The Kurds are one of the most ethnically suppressed groups in the world and little has been written about them in the Western press until just recently. They do not live in such a politically sensitive area as the oil richer nations to their south. As always, oil and money rule supreme in our materialistically oriented West.

In 1993 I returned to Iraqi Kurdistan, this time to work in a Kurdish general hospital in Dohuk, where I worked with both Muslims and indigenous Christians. By this time the Kurds were fully back into their homes still under the air protection of the U.S. Air Force north of the “no fly” zone.  They had their own parliament and indigenous system of government separate from Iraq, but still felt very isolated and vulnerable. Today, with all the Kurdish infighting and continued threat of the Iraqi army, all expatriates and NGO assistance have had to leave Kurdistan and the work has come to a halt. The Kurds are more isolated than ever as they struggle for identity and survival from both their enemies to the north, the Turks, and from the south, the Arabs of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Indeed, “the Kurds have no friends but the mountains,” as true today as it ever was. The treat of violence and further displacement of people is ever present in Kurdistan.

 

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He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the LORD,
"He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust."  
Ps. 91:1-2

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