Books
John Cookson

The Kurds

A story of broken dreams, bloodshed and betrayal

‘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 Gertrude Bell made a fateful decision to leave the Kurds landlocked and doomed to an eternity of conflict.
221 printed pages
Original publication
2021
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Quotes

  • Talia Garzahas quoted3 days ago
    enterprise and human triumph over adversity.
    The youth of Kurdistan have a limitless potential that deserves to flourish and thrive.
    I pray they remain in their homeland to achieve their dreams.
  • Talia Garzahas quoted3 days ago
    They’re educated, they’ve embraced social media as much as any young generation in the West and as long as the brightest and the best remain in Kurdistan, and not be scattered to the ends of the Earth, then Iraqi Kurdistan will continue on the same trajectory, not as an independent nation - that can never work -but as a shining beacon of enterprise and human triumph over adversity.
  • Talia Garzahas quoted3 days ago
    When I got into conversation with young Kurds, I found they were find a generation, which looked forwards, not backwards to their parents’ and grandparents’ world of persecution and betrayal.
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