Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan.

Abstract

MN> X-X 1 ^'\y IjiCpl( xii*'*J'*''r J»^ Agha, Shaikh and State Kurds who did not actively fight identified themselves in one way oranother with those who did. This was true, not only in Iraq, but also in other parts of Kurdistan. In terms of numbers, therefore, this was certainly a people's war, a peasant war comparable to the six that Wolf described in his major work on the subject (1969b). ^But whereas these six movements were progressive (the peasantry were mobilized, at least in part, on the basis of their class interests, against their exploiters; the movements were anti-imperialist and aimed at the abolition of social injustice), the Kurdish movement had, especially since 1966, a conservative, even reactionary appearance, in spite of the justness of its demands. The Kurdish leadership seemed to wish for more imperialist interference in the region rather than less. Mulla Mustafa Barzani repeatedly expressed his warm feelings for the United States, which he wanted Kurdistan to join as the fifty-first state, and to which he was willing to grant control of the oil in Kurdistan in exchange for support.The movement was gradually purged of leftist elements and it seemed that the traditional leaders, whose authority had at first been challenged by young urban nationalists, were able to consolidate or recuperate their positions as a consequence of their participation in the movement.T he vast majority of Iraqi Kurds supported Barzani in these attitudes.His more leftist rivals were followed by a small minority only.The Kurdish movement thus seemed to contrast with another liberation movement of a largely tribal people, that of the Dhofaris in Oman. This movement had the reputation of being very revolutionary; it was one of the favourites of the leftist press, as the Kurdish movement was that of the conservative British and American press. There were two obvious reasons for this difference: the former movement fought a reactionary, oppressive, pro-Western regime, the second an authori¬ tarian, reformist, oppressive, pro-Soviet regime, and the leadership in both movements had completely different backgrounds. But did these two factors alone explain the difference? It seemed to me that there must also be internal reasons why the Kurdish movement in Iraq became more openly conservative during 1964-66.^To what degree did tribal organization and other 'primordial loyalties' (Alavi 1973) prevent poor peasants from defending their own rights against tribal chieftains and landlords, and make them fight for interests not their own? Were these loyalties breaking down, and if so, how and under what circumstances? What precisely was the impact of imperialism on traditional Kurdish society, and could this explain the nature of the Kurdish movement? These and similar questions were at the back of my mind when I started preparing fieldwork (1973).I decided to concentrate on traditional power relations at the local level and the effect of increasing state control and incorporation into the world market on class relations and on the c...

Kurdish gender politics: Funeral ceremonies of female fighters

“…The state also uprooted tribes that did not participate in the revolts, including those that supported the state, and sent them into internal exile to prevent further uprisings (Besikci, 1988). The tribes constituted Kurdish society's social, political, and economic structure (van Bruinessen, 1992). With the crumbling of the tribal networks and years of fighting following the First World War, the social grid of the Kurdish community was weakened, leading to an ontological crisis.…”

“…However, Gellner (1997) also argued nationalism does not always lead to assimilation but also to alternative nationalisms or both simultaneously. For example, Kurdish migrants in the metropolises of Turkey have become increasingly aware of their ethnic identity, which contributed to spreading Kurdish national sentiments despite the expectation that they would be assimilated (van Bruinessen, 1992, 2006, as cited in Wedel, 2001). Similarly, one can argue for women gaining agency in national movements.…”

Order vs Justice in the Middle East

“…It therefore denied that existence by promulgating a program of assimilation from the 1920s (Gourlay 2018; Yeğen 1996). In consequence, “everything that recalled a separate Kurdish identity was to be abolished: language, clothing, names and of course the Kurdish tribes themselves” (Bruinessen 1992, 242). Several Kurdish insurgencies appeared in reaction to Kurdish exclusion throughout the republic, including the Sheikh Said revolts of 1925, the Ararat revolt of 1927, the Ihsan Pasha revolt of 1930, the Dersim rebellion of 1937, the Sheikh Said Biroki rebellion of 1943, and the insurgency led by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) since the late 1970s (Carol 2019).…”

The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations

“…Our argument involves an intellectual sublation (Aufhebung) of two influential accounts of Kurdish nationalism developed by Amir Hassanpour (1992Hassanpour ( , 2003 and Abbas Vali (2003aVali ( , 2003bVali ( , 2014. It incorporates Hassanpour's dialectic of class power and political power and his implicit recognition of the causal significance of the intersocietal in its account of the geopolitically charged self-comparison of stateless Kurds with the surrounding non-Kurdish states in the epic poem of Mem and Zin by Ahamd Khani (1650Khani ( -1707.…”

“…Thus, they arguably mirror, albeit in a resistive mode, unhistorical conceptions of the Arab, Turkish and Iranian nations whose sovereign domination of the Kurds involves the denial of Kurdish nationhood. However, attributing primordiality to the Kurdish nation contradicts the historical fact that as late as the early 20th century, Kurdistan, like the Ottoman and Qajar states enveloping it, was marked by a multiplicity of sub‐national (tribal and kinship) and supra‐national (religious) collective identities and decentralised political loyalties (Hassanpour, 1992, p. 55; van Bruinessen, 1992, p. 6) 3 . Primordialist accounts of Kurdish nationalism, therefore, assume the very phenomenon they are supposed to explain.…”