“I would not a little bit but a lot rather live in our village home in the mountains than here in the city,” insisted Haji Saleh to the CPT Iraqi Kurdistan team delegation when we visited them on 16 October. Their home in Durgele village had been heavily damaged, forcing their displacement due to Turkish military bombardment and occupation of their region.
Although the ceasefire has meant that Turkey has not bombed Iraqi Kurdistan since August, the Turkish military still occupies their land along the northern border of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. They cannot return home to their own life and land.
While Turkey’s war on Kurds has roots in the 1990s, their ongoing war against the Kurdish resistance force, the PKK, is waged in the name of the War on Terror. It is, though, a War of Terror, implemented and defined by the United States since 9/11.
Life identified with the land, today and across the ages, is given frequent passionate voice by Kurdish people. The sorrow, anger, and grief of loss of home life and land is an ongoing reality of being displaced by war.
This is everyday life for Haji, Saffia, Huri, and for his brother, who is blind and ill and also had his home destroyed by Turkish bombardment. They are now living as displaced people in the city of Sakho, not far from the Turkish and Syrian borders in northwestern Iraqi Kurdistan. They live with the ongoing consequences of warring occupation and political oppression.
When asked by the delegation what they miss most about village life, Saffia and Huri replied, “Everything! We were self-sufficient and had no worries, no rent to pay, no salaries. We also miss the close connections to others in the village. We’re all now dispersed.”
Pray for this family and all displaced Kurds caught in the War of Terror, which deprives them of life and land in the only home they know and love.
