After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?
My Encounters With Kurdistan

by Jonathan C. Randal
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. 356 pp. $25.00.


Reviewed by Kamran Karadaghi
Al-Hayat

Middle East Quarterly
March 1998

http://www.meforum.org/1212/after-such-knowledge-what-forgiveness

Randal tells several well-told stories—Iraq and the Kurds, Turkey and the Kurds, Iran and the Kurds, the United States and the Kurds, Israel and the Kurds—combined in one. He presents the internal reasons for the Kurds' failure to become a nation-state, and the role played in this by the international powers, which repeatedly betrayed their promises to help. Randal tells what others did to the Kurds and what they did to themselves, with an emphasis on events of the past quarter century. He rightly concludes that the Kurds themselves are mainly responsible for their problems, due to what Randal calls "a rogue chromosome in Kurdish genetics." His picture is perhaps unique in its detail; also impressive is his ability to penetrated the murk of regional and international politics and uncover hitherto unknown facts. As a correspondent of The Washington Post, he witnessed and reported on the birth, collapse, rebirth and fragmentation of the Kurdish entity in northern Iraq; he allows major players to tell their side of the story.

Randal's well documented book makes an important contribution to understanding a very complicated issue; he shows that it is bound to explode in a way that will compel regional and great powers to intervene.

Related Topics:  Iran, Iraq, Kurds, Turkey and Turks  |  March 1998 MEQ receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing list To receive the full, printed version of the Middle East Quarterly, please see details about an affordable subscription. This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.