Xenophon, Pliny and Plutarch spoke of the Carduchi, fierce warriors who lived in the Anatolian peaks and who paid tribute to no king. 2,500 years later the mountains of Kurdistan lie in territory claimed by Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey … and the Kurds continue to vex the rulers who seek sovereignty over their domains. Abdullah Ocalan’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), has been at the forefront of a 20-year civil war in Turkey, a war which has claimed some 40,000 lives to date and which continues to rage despite Ocalan’s 1999 arrest.

The Kurds have always been loosely unified at best, a squabbling conglomeration of tribes speaking several Persian-derived languages and practicing various religions. Like the Scots Highlanders, the Albanian Gegs, and other mountain people, they have spent a great deal of time feuding amongst themselves. This tendency continues to this day; Kurdish-ruled territory in the Iraqi “no-fly zone” is currently embroiled in a civil war between the Jund-al-Islam (militant Kurdish Moslems, many trained in Afghanistan), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the PKK. Outsiders have regularly exploited these conflicts in their own version of the “Great Game;” Syria, which has a dismal record toward its own Kurdish population, funded Ocalan’s PKK and gave him asylum until Turkey threatened to invade. The Turks have armed approximately 50,000 Kurdish “village guards” in the struggle against the PKK: these guards have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities. The PKK has retaliated by executing guards and “collaborators,” thereby raising the body count and ensuring that nobody remains neutral.

Most communists have nothing but contempt for spirituality; Ocalan has praised religion and disagreed with Marx’s militant atheism. This has set the stage for a new and more dangerous breed of rebel – one who combines Maoism with some of the more radical flavors of Islamic fundamentalism. The PKK has not yet found a leader of the jailed Ocalan’s stature (although the Turkish government has refrained from executing Ocalan, largely because they fear the inevitable bloodshed which will ensue). Additionally, the Turkish government is not likely to hear too many complaints about human rights abuses in the near future, given Turkey’s strategic importance to our War on Terrorism. Should a new PKK leader rise – particularly in Iraqi Kurdistan – this could well become yet another major flashpoint in an already volatile region.