Description
Book Synopsis‘The Kurd requires a beating one day and a sugar plum the next.’ British Government official 1921 ‘Saddam throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, “oh, he’s using gas!’’’ former President Donald Trump 2019 Delving into history and mixing eye-witness accounts with compelling anecdotes from his journalistic career, John Cookson examines the Kurds' eternal quest for independence. He tells of his encounters with Kurdish guerillas in their mountain hideouts and of his travels with Kurdish smugglers. He documents survivors' stories from Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign and reveals for the first time how Iraqi Kurdistan was saved from being overrun by murderous jihadis in the summer of 2014. He also digs through secret archives to discover why Sir Winston Churchill and Middle East titans like T. E. Lawrence and Gertude Bell made a fateful decision to leave the Kurds landlocked and doomed to an eternity of conflict.
Table of ContentsForeword 9 1. Magic carpet ride 21 2. Wounded guerrilla on board 28 3. Welcome back Mr John. 32 4. Downtown 38 5. Who are the Kurds? 42 6. Hoshayar 46 7. Iskan Street 53 8. Christians in peril 60 9. ‘Please help me!’ 71 10. Brown envelope anyone? 78 11. Chalabi the Cheshire Cat 87 12. Jalal Talabani 94 13. A matter of ‘honour’? 97 14. Shayan 99 15. Those who die first 103 16. Dara 110 17. The long march 114 18. ‘The Kurd requires a beating.’ 122 19. The Cairo Conference 125 20. Gertrude Bell 128 21. The Kurdish question 132 22. The King of Kurdistan 135 23. The Cairo legacy 141 24. Driving with Mustafa 146 25. Remembering Anfal 153 26. Halabja 157 27. Chemical Ali 163 28. Hypocrisy 165 29. Iran accused 167 30. Inside the clan 170 31. The King’s tomb 177 32. Bring me the manager 182 33. Smugglers’ paradise 188 34. Komola and Iran’s rebellious Kurds 199 35. Khalkhali: the hanging judge 206 36. Four empty graves 208 37. Mahabad 214 38. By the rivers of Babylon 221 39. Betrayal 229 40. The PKK 233 41. The millennials 236 42. They reap what they sow 240 43. Saving the economy 243 44. Not in the news 245 45. Final thoughts 250
