A People in Exile : Far From Their Homeland, Kurds in the U.S. Worry That Once Again Their Political Plight Will Be Overlooked by the World

The neighbors huddle around their television sets in a San Diego housing project, two continents and an ocean from the heartbreaking events they are watching. Their complex is home to 10 Kurdish families who look after, and console, one another.

It is a hot spring day, a good 50 degrees warmer than the freezing mountain climate many of their relatives are enduring. There is plenty of food on the tables-- falafels, pastries, beef and vegetable stews, cucumber salads, spiced tea--all prepared in Middle Eastern style. The children, clad in Kurdish gowns or Western sun dresses, are happy and safe.

If not for luck and timing, these families easily could be among the multitudes scrambling for clothing, blankets and food in Iranian and Turkish refugee camps.

Although they are a world apart from the suffering, their hearts and minds are with their distant loved ones.

“We have not heard anything from our family since the war,” says Jamal Bekhtyar, 64, who has a daughter in Iraq--or, perhaps at this point, in a refugee camp. “I am worrying constantly, not just about my family, but about all Kurdish people in Iraq.”

When Operation Desert Storm ended in triumph for the Allied forces, it simultaneously marked the beginning of yet another tragedy for the Kurds--a people persecuted and slaughtered throughout their history.

Emboldened by the humiliating defeat of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s military, Kurdish resistance fighters attempted a rebellion against his Arab Baath Socialist government. But Iraq’s artillery-laden helicopters swiftly crushed the poorly armed insurgents’ renewed hope for freedom--and forced villagers to seek refuge across the mountainous borders separating them from Iran and Turkey. Thousands of Kurds reportedly have died in the failed revolution, from either Iraqi bullets or the harsh conditions of their exodus.

Over the last two weeks, local Kurds have staged emotional protests in San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange counties, demanding that the United States aid Iraqi rebels spurred on by President Bush’s call to overthrow Hussein. This week, the United States ordered Iraq to stop military operations in the area where more than a million Kurds have fled.

“We don’t understand why they (the U.S. military) stopped when they stopped and didn’t take Hussein out,” Bekhtyar says. “America is the only power that can determine what will happen.”

San Diego has the largest Kurdish community in the United States. Yet even so, their numbers are small. Of 25 million Kurds worldwide, about 1,000 Iraqi Kurds live in the city--one-fifth of their total population in this country. Five-hundred more Kurds live in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Many of them were relocated by American church organizations after a thwarted rebellion against Hussein in the mid-’70s.

Bekhtyar’s San Diego apartment bustles with family members who immigrated to the United States 17 years ago: wife Sabiha, three of their five daughters and one of their five sons. Three preschool granddaughters dart about, cheerfully oblivious to the adults’ serious conversation.

An accomplished artist, Bekhtyar designed anti-government posters during the 1974 revolution. His and other Kurdish families involved in that uprising were banished to refugee camps. The Bekhtyars eventually were adopted by a North Dakota-based Lutheran organization, which transferred them to Bismark.

There Bekhtyar successfully practiced his art. In 1978, he painted the official portrait of North Dakota’s then-Gov. Art Link. A year later the Bekhtyars joined a community of Kurds in Nashville, Tenn. Then two years ago they were drawn to San Diego’s larger network of Kurds.

“I had mixed emotions about coming to the United States,” Bekhtyar says. “I was sad about leaving my homeland with broken hope, yet I was very happy to enter the country that is the land of democracy.”

Today, however, Bekhtyar and many other Southern California Kurds are disillusioned by the country in which they have found freedom and security.

“It is very confusing,” says his 29-year-old son Hunar. “We (Americans) said it was our moral obligation to liberate Kuwait. Is it not also our moral obligation to liberate the Kurds? This President could save 4 million people (Iraqi Kurds) from genocide.”

Unlike the Palestinian Liberation Organization or other groups fighting for a homeland, Hunar Bekhtyar points out, the Kurds have never committed terrorism to attract attention to their plight. “We are a peaceful people, and we have never believed in killing innocent people in airports,” he says. “So we have been ignored.”

Before the post-Desert Storm catastrophe put Kurds in the spotlight, says 19-year-old Rengin, “People used to ask me, ‘What’s a Kurd?’

“This is a new issue to a lot of people,” she adds. “But for Kurds, it is a very old issue. I feel sorry for the Kuwaitis, but in some ways I’m glad that the war finally brought the Kurdish issue to the front burner.”

Although he considers himself a Muslim, Jamal Bekhtyar says, “Right now I am even mad at the Islam religion. Most of the Muslim countries have turned their backs on us. They should be ashamed of themselves. We thank Iran and Turkey for helping our people, and we are grateful to Americans and Europeans.

“We will not forget this help. Our history will remember it forever.”

Sabiha Bekhtyar, 48, speaks little English and always wears traditional Kurdish attire: pantaloons underneath a long gauzy dress decorated with colorful sequins and a scarf wrapped around her head. She taught her children the Kurdish language while they were growing up here.

“Mom wants us to remember our culture,” says 21-year-old Nigar. She and her siblings could not be differentiated from their American peers by their clothes--blue jeans and trendy shirts. Nor could the younger offspring--the ones who scarcely recall life in Iraq--be differentiated by their accent.

But the Bekhtyar children remain fiercely dedicated to their heritage. “Our culture will not allow us to marry Americans,” Nigar explains. “We cannot date at all. We couldn’t go to our senior proms.”

Instead of courting in the American way, Kurdish suitors must express their romantic interest through the women’s parents. If both the woman and her parents approve of the eligible bachelor, she becomes engaged without so much as a lunch date. “It is very important for Kurdish people to be pure when we marry,” Nigar says.

Despite customs that are unusual and unfamiliar in this country, Nigar claims she has encountered scant prejudice. “Our American friends are pretty understanding,” she says.

However, says sister Rengin, the Persian Gulf War stirred up problems for the Kurds in their complex.

“People knew we were Iraqis, so they assumed we were on Hussein’s side. We got the looks--especially my mom, because of the way she dresses. Some of us were called names. Americans were not educated about Kurds.”

In the apartment facing the Bekhtyars’, another family grieves the Kurdish misfortune. “It cannot be any harder than this,” says Mohammed Maromesy as he and his wife, Fatemeh, gaze at the television news footage.

Their story is much the same as their neighbors’: They left behind family in Iraq to escape persecution after the ‘70s revolt, and now they know little about their relatives’ whereabouts--most Kurds have heard nothing from Iraq in eight months. “I have been very homesick for 15 years,” says Maromesy, 36.

He despises the government that has kept him separate from his people. “Two years ago, they killed my nephew in front of his parents,” Maromesy says, his voice cracking. “His crime was fleeing the Iraqi army. He was only 18.”

The man responsible for his nephew’s murder has been permitted to run rampant over the Kurds since the allied forces’ cease-fire, Maromesy believes. “I was 100% sure that if the Kurds rebelled, the American government would back them,” he says. “I am very disappointed by the Bush Administration. All we ask is that the U.S. not allow Iraq to fly its helicopters, all we ask is that Iraq not be allowed to massacre innocent people.

“We do not ask that American soldiers fight our battle. We Kurds can take care of ourselves.”

The scene is repeated in a nearby apartment, where family and friends have congregated to share their sorrow and frustration. Khadigeh Barwari, 54, who has children in Iraq, sits apart from the talkative group silently dabbing her tears. Her husband, Fattah, continuously rubs a strand of prayer beads.

Their daughter-in-law, Galavej Barwari, acts as translator for the non-English-speaking elders. The articulate 23-year-old woman often finishes her in-laws’ thoughts with her own eloquently stated viewpoints.

“American soldiers died for oil when they defended Kuwait,” she says. “If they defended the Kurdish people, at least they would be dying for human beings.”

Barwari dreams of returning to a dictatorship-free Iraq someday. “This is a great country,” she says, “but we do not belong here.”

Although Garden Grove resident Della Jaff lives 80 miles north of the apartment complex dwellers, they are all her close friends: the Bekhtyars, the Barwaris, the Maromesys. “I probably know every Kurd in Southern California,” she says. “That sense of community among Kurdish people is something I love about our culture. It makes me appreciate what I had back home.”

Home no longer exists for Jaff. Halabja, the village in which she grew up, has become a ghost town since it was devastated by Hussein’s chemical weapons three years ago. More than 5,000 civilians died in the attack. Her upper-class family fled to the suburbs of Baghdad; Jaff already lived in the United States, where she had attended college.

“My mother is probably somewhere in the mountains right now,” Jaff says. “I don’t know if she can survive that. She’s 63, and she is not accustomed to such a difficult environment.”

Jaff, manager of development for First Interstate Bank Ltd., is the regional director of the Kurdish National Congress of America. She and other Southern California Kurds met last Saturday in Santa Monica to organize a fund-raiser for the Kurdish refugees.

“I became an American citizen last July, two weeks before the occupation of Kuwait,” she says. “I was so excited and proud. But now I feel betrayed.”

She had a premonition that Kurds would be overlooked after war, Jaff says, when U.S. government officials and the media quit distinguishing the Halabja victims as Kurdish. “They started saying that Hussein used chemical weapons ‘against his own people,’ without mentioning the Kurds. I saw that as a sign we would be abandoned, and I was frightened.”

Jaff faults the media for failing to inform Americans about the Kurdish plight: “We held demonstrations (in Southern California) after the Halabja massacre, but nobody covered them.”

Perhaps some good will come out of the tragedy now unfolding, she hopes. Perhaps, at least, Americans will never again have to ask the question, “What’s a Kurd?”

“The Kurds are an endangered species,” Jaff says. “The world should not just let them fade away.”

WHO ARE THE KURDS? * Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East and the largest ethnic group without their own country in the world.

* About 25 million Kurds are scattered throughout “Kurdistan,” an area that stretches across the borders of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Soviet Union.

* The majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, but some practice Judaism, Christianity and other religions.

* Ethnically close to the Iranians, most Kurds speak a western Iranian language related to Farsi.

* Promises of a Kurdish state have been repeatedly reneged upon throughout this century. In the post-World War I Treaty of Sevres, colonial powers offered to create an independent Kurdish homeland, but the treaty was never ratified.

* In 1974 and 1975, Iraqi Kurds waged a rebellion with the backing of the Shah of Iran but were abandoned when the Shah and Saddam Hussein reached an agreement over a disputed waterway. After the rebellion failed, many Kurds fled to the United States and other countries.

* In 1988, Hussein destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages to avenge Kurdish support of Iran in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. His army used poison gas against the town of Halabja, killing 5,000 Kurds.