Business Recorder op-ed writer Rashed Rahman deserves accolades for presenting to the newspaper readers a highly informed perspective titled “The Kurd struggle’’ in newspaper’s edition of yesterday.
Having said that, I would like to state that it was W. G. Elphinston who had explained in the most profound manner how virtually all efforts failed to achieve legitimate national rights for the Kurds living in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Moreover, more than 30,000 Kurds live in Jordan. There are a good number of Kurds in Saudi Arabia as well; most of them had migrated from Syria during the country’s civil war.
The kingdom had begun to show a lot of empathy for the Kurds after its relations with Turkey deteriorated after Mohammad Morsi’s electoral victory in Egypt following Hosni Mubarak’s ouster from power during the so-called “Arab Spring”.
According to W. G. Elphinston, for example, “The freedom which the Kurdish Nationalists most desire is freedom to educate their children in their own language and traditions.
This they cannot do in Turkey; in Iraq adequate facilities are lacking, and in Persia it is still more difficult. The Kurdish Nationalists are not unreasonable. They simply desire to be allowed to live as Kurds, speak the Kurdish language, read and publish books in that language, and not to be assimilated as Arabs, Persians or Turks.“
Hashim Reza
Karachi
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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