Quote
Around 40 million Kurds are now the largest stateless nation in the world.
SULEYMANIA, Iraqi Kurdistan, Aug 7 2013 (IPS) - “The Islamists’ announcement that god supported the killing of Kurds in Syria made us react,” recalls Farouk Aziz Khadir. This 60-year-old
Iraqi Kurd is ready to take up arms to defend his kin in the neighbouring war-torn country. And there are many more like him.
Khadir, who spent nine years as a peshmerga (as armed Kurdish fighters are called), is also chair of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Veterans Association. A mandatory requisite for membership is “to have fought the tyrant until 1991.” That was the date when Iraq’s Kurds managed to push Saddam Hussein’s troops from their territory and set the grounds of their own autonomous region.
At their headquarters in Suleymania, 260 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, IPS is briefed on the most urgent project for these almost retired members of the peshmerga – that translates into the Kurdish
language as “those who face death”.
More
Retired Kurdish veterans prepare to take up arms again. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
Main 
