The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1946-04-07
Ne1U Red Proteges
BY RODNEY GILBERT


them involved in a tribal festival of some
sort, reported that they were armed with
spears and wore chain mail which seemed
to be Of the same workmanship as that which
the Saracens wore at the time of the Cru
sades For their own good, it is a genuine
pity that their fighting equipment has in lat
ter years been so greatly improved, and is
now being thoroughly modernlzed according
TO some accounts, because it is no. likely
that anyone would have found it worth while
to egg little nation of mountain spearmen
into such serious trouble with their neighbors
as the Kurdish leaders are now promising
1ran Turkey and Iraq. Even now Iranian
troops are still fighting off attacks by the
tribesmen.
Few of their neighbors would deplore any
grief that could be heaped upon the Kurds
by their own forces or others; for they are
undoubtedly bad boys and have had an evil
reputation since the days of Haroun AL
Raschid-even more evil among those who
had tried to conquer them and have won
their monentary submission than among the
small Christian groups in Armenia and Iraq
that have been the victims of their fanatical
devotion to Islam. A Turkish official and a
Chaldean Armenian Christian would snort
with equal contempt for ones soft-headedness
II one starteo to lament the discontinue of
Kurd IN his presence.
Indeed, their only faithful champions are
those who have gone among them on purely
scientific missions. This is partly because the
Kurd is even more devoted to his code of
hospitality than he is to his rather garbled
Mohammedanism; partly because he has the
spirit OF a bull terrier and the same friend
illness when rightly approached; but chiefly
because, like the Lithuanian, the Basque the
Galcha of Central Asia. and the Anu of Hok-
kaido, the Kurd is one Of the darlings of the
ethnologist. He belongs to one of those little
islands of humanity in which an ancient type
and an ancient language have been preserved
in some purity.
Everyone who has been introduced to the
theory OF the common parentage of the Indo-
European peoples, which includes most Euro
peans and the ancestors of the ancient Aryans
in India and of the ruling element in Persia
at the time of Darius, would of course like
to know something Of the looks and character
of the ancestral savage. So would the ex-
perts The consensus of ancient testimony,
from nations as widely separated as the
Egyptians and the Chinese is that they were
tall, fair, lght-eyed, long-headed. with high.
bridged noses, and ferocious beyond words.
Practically all the Kurds seem to measure
up to the last requirement. Warfare is with
them the one manly sport and they take to
it with unholy zest. Physically they do not
meet the requirements everywhere; but in
some districts they do. They speak an Iranian
language, moreover.
There was time when learned students
OF their looks and ways were content to guess
that they were fairly pure remnant OF the
Medes. Now the guessing goes mucn further
back From the mountains which they still
occupy IN eastern Turkey, northwestern ran,
and northern Iraq, q horde of Indo- European
marauders began making incursions into Mes
opotamia, which finally became conquests of
considerable territory, about $500 years ago.
They are known as the Mitanni, and recorded
names and words from their language were
certainly 1ndo-European and probably Iranian
Aren't the Kurds a surviving remnant of the
Mitanni? Maybe. Do not the physical charac-
terlstics and the temper of the Kurds give.
us pretty good idea of the looks and charac.
ter OF the original ancestral Indo- Europeans?
1t pleaSes those who have been the quo It's of
these handsome spirited and hospitable peo-
pie to think so.
The occasion for all this is, Of course. that
in the northwestern Iranian province of Aver
baijan, in which the Soviet Red army has
protected an autonomous regime, there is now
being fostered Kurdish independence move
as Mullah Mustafa, as its spokesman In the
ment, with fiery exile from Iraq, known
new Kurdish State of which he talks would
be incorporated the several million Kurds in
Iran, Turkey and Iraq; and that States ter
ritores would of course include those parts
of these three nations in which the Kurds
are now domiciled This boastful Mustafa him
self promises to return into Iraq this spring
with an army of 1ranian Kurds to establish
the independence of Kurdish Irau from Brit
ish-patronized Iraq:
Since all this talk is coming out of terri
tory now under Russian military protection
the assumption that Moscow has put IFS bless
ing on it is not only natural but unavoidable
If the Kurds in Turkey and Irau actually
respond to Mustafa's CALL they will certainly
have to fight for the integrity of their pro-
posed State; and if the Soviet Union supnorts
them and If the British come to the hep oe
the Iraqi, anything can happen.
II the Soviet Union is on the other hand
simply using Kurdish bellicosity to create
threat to the Mosul oil fields in Itao and
to Turkish territory to be user for bargain
ing purposes and then abandoned at discre-
tlon what is likeliest to happen is that the
kurds will involve themselves in serious
trouble all around and then pay as heavy
price for it they did for their last re-.
volt against Turkey in the early 1905.
For strangely enough the Kurd is mn
soldier. Individually he is one of the fiercest
fighters III Asia; but no one has vet succeed.
ed IN organizing this zest for war. In battle
each kurd forgets what little Recommendation
mas been inflicted on him and proceeds to
1lght his own war. British officers Of wide
experience, who years ago tried and aban-