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Jamil Meho In Kurdistan Iraq 1971
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PART I of II: Shelter
and Conflict in the Land of the Cedars
The
attention given to the plight of the Kurdish people
under Saddam Hussein in Iraq has eclipsed the fact
that the Kurdish people are scattered and suffer
elsewhere in the Middle East. The following two-part
series tells the story of the Kurdish community of
Lebanon. Part I relates the escape from Ottoman and
Turkish brutality early in the 20th
century and the shelter found in the pluralistic
environment of Lebanon. However, the Kurds of
Lebanon found themselves later in the throes of the
Lebanese-Palestinian war of 1975. Part II will
focus on the Syrian regime?s invasion and occupation
of Lebanon and their impact on the Kurdish
community. Like many other communities in Lebanon,
the Lebanese Kurds today are again in a state of
exile, both physical and existential. As the wounds
of the past slowly heal, and with the impending fall
of dictatorial regimes in the region, the Lebanese
Kurds of the KDP work hard to fulfill the dream of
returning Lebanon to its promise as a land of
liberty, tolerance, diversity, and shared-living.
During His Childhood and in Kuwait City
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In the aftermath of World War I,
which saw the disintegration of the
Islamic Ottoman Empire, Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk laid the foundations
for a young Turkish Republic from
the remnants of the empire. In his
drive to homogenize the disparate
constituents of that empire, he used
an iron-fist approach that included
massacres and crimes against the
various non-Turkish ethnic groups,
among whom the Kurdish people were
in the lead. |
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The racist and criminal methods used
against the Kurds resulted in the
genocide of no less than 1 million
Kurds who died from forced
starvation and outright massacres
and killings carried out by the
Turkish army. The Ataturk policy
that underpinned this building of a
new Turkish republic was one of
hatred and hostility to such notions
as plurality and diversity. Anyone
living on Turkish soil is by
definition a Turk. Anyone having a
specific and distinct identity
alongside that identity was
considered an enemy and was
therefore destined to death, ethnic
cleansing, or forced displacement.
Lebanon was the only country in the
area where diversity, plurality, and
a constitutionally-protected
power-sharing formula were a way of
life and were instilled in every
facet of public life of the
independent Lebanon that emerged in
1918 at the end of WWI. Between 1860
and the onset of WWI in 1914,
Lebanon had been a self-ruling
semi-independent autonomous province
outside the control of Istanbul.
Lebanon had managed to extract a
special status with the help of the
Great Powers (then Russia, England,
Prussia, France and Austria) to
shield the independent-minded
Lebanese from Ottoman brutality.
However, in 1914 when WWI broke out,
the Ottomans broke the agreement and
re-occupied Lebanon. In a spirit of
revenge against the free and
independent Lebanese, the Ottoman
army requisitioned all the food to
starve the people, and practiced a
scorched earth policy. It is
estimated that close to a third of
the Lebanese population died of
starvation between 1914-1918. Waves
of sovereignist Lebanese leaders,
Moslems and Christians alike, were
sent by the Turkish military
governor at the time, Jamal Pasha
?the Bucther?, to hang at the
gallows in downtown Beirut. A statue
commemorating them still stands
today on the huge square, aptly
called the ?Plaza of the Martyrs?.
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And so it was natural for many of
the persecuted minorities in the
region to seek shelter in Lebanon.
Among many of the Kurds who at the
time chose exile to certain death or
loss of identity under Kemalist
Turkey, Jamil Meho?s mother took her
three children (Jamil was 3 years
old) and sought refuge in Lebanon.
Settling in Beirut, this destitute
Kurdish family was welcomed by both
Moslem and Christian Lebanese who
offered assistance whenever they
could, having themselves likewise
suffered from Ottoman repression and
brutality.
On reaching the age of 10 in 1944,
Jamil Meho was training in painting
and internal design under Paul
Dahdah who was then famous in his
field. Jamil continued his
apprenticeship until he became
himself one of its great masters. At
22, Jamil took a job in Kuwait,
which was then still a British
protectorate. He worked there for
many years supporting himself and
his family until 1960 when the
revolution led by Mustafa Barazani
in Iraqi Kurdistan against the Iraqi
regime of Abdel Karim Qasem awakened
in him his sense of national
identity. Jamil Meho returned to
Lebanon with the idea of founding a
Kurdish organization there to lobby
for the rights of the Kurdish
community in Lebanon. The community
had become victim of the racist and
chauvinistic ideologies that
followed the emergence of radical
Arab nationalism in the Arab world.
On July 1, 1960, Jamil Meho and a
number of Kurdish activists
established a clandestine party in
Lebanon, the Kurdish Democratic
Party (KDP) of Lebanon. Slowly
emerging from secrecy, this group of
activists began lobbying publicly
and clandestinely for the rights of
Lebanese Kurds who were at the time
suffering from poverty, deprivation,
and ignorance. The Lebanese
authorities at the time did not pay
attention to the plight of the
Kurdish refugees, and in fact tried
to suppress them leading to the
imprisonment of the KDP activists.
Jamil Meho was arrested and jailed
several times, and was subjected to
all manner of beatings and torture
at the same time that the influence
of President Nasser of Egypt was
spreading across the Arab world.
In 1970, then Interior Minister
Kamal Jumblatt sent a message to
Jamil Meho asking him to submit a
license application to legalize the
Kurdish Democratic Party in Lebanon.
The Ministry issued its decision
(Decree No. 868, dated 24 September
1970) announcing its licensing of
the KDP and authorizing it to freely
operate on the Lebanese political
scene.
That same year, Mullah Mustafa
Barazani, leader of the Kurdish
people, invited Jamil Meho to Iraq
to attend the 8th
Conference for the Kurdistan
Democratic Party. While In Iraq,
Jamil Meho was detained and placed
under house arrest, then imprisoned
in the Khallan Jail on the Iran-Iraq
border, because of disagreements
with the politburo of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party who wanted to
control the Lebanese KDP, something
Mr. Meho rejected because it
violated Lebanese law. After years
of torture and harassment, Mr. Meho
was released in 1975 in the
aftermath of the collapse of the
Kurdish revolution, and he returned
to Lebanon via Iran with the
assistance of the Lebanese Embassy
in Tehran.
The April 1975 events of
Ain-Remmaneh in Beirut between the
Lebanese militias and the
Palestinian Liberation Organization
were the official trigger of the
bloody war from which Lebanon has
yet to recover. While tensions rose
between the Christian and Moslem
communities in the country, it was
the direct intervention of the
Syrians, Palestinians, and Israelis,
and the indirect backing of other
Arab states (Libya, Saudi Arabia,
Iraq, etc.) and of Cold War
antagonists the US and the Soviet
Union, that convulsed Lebanon into
the war. The reasons that led the
Lebanese KDP to take sides in the
war are too painful to discuss here
in any detail, and only history will
be the judge once Lebanon is free
from occupation and the Lebanese
people begin the necessary
soul-searching to re-examine that
terrible period of their history. |
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The Kurds of Lebanon
PART II of II: Occupation and
Liberation in the Land of the Cedars
May 2003
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KDP Lebanon Headoffice In The
Heart Of Beirut - 1970 -
Its been destroyed by Saad
Hariri without any compensation |
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The
attention given to the plight of the Kurdish people
of Iraq under Saddam Hussein has eclipsed the fact
that the Kurdish people are scattered and suffer
elsewhere in the Middle East. This two-part series
tells the story of the Kurdish community of Lebanon.
Part I related the escape from Ottoman and Turkish
brutality early in the 20th century and
the shelter found in the pluralistic environment of
Lebanon. However, the Kurds of Lebanon found
themselves later in the throes of the
Lebanese-Palestinian war of 1975. Part II now
focuses on the Syrian regime?s invasion and
occupation of Lebanon and their impact on the
Kurdish community as represented by the Kurdish
Democratic Party (KDP) of Lebanon. Like other
communities in Lebanon, the Lebanese Kurds today are
in a state of exile, both physical and existential.
As the wounds of the past slowly heal, and with the
impending fall of dictatorial regimes in the Middle
East, the Lebanese Kurds of the KDP work hard to
fulfill the dream of returning Lebanon to its
promise as a land of liberty, tolerance, diversity,
and shared-living.
In
1976, the Arab League endorsed the Syrian invasion
of Lebanon under the guise of an Arab Deterrence
Force supposedly sent in to halt the war between the
Palestinian organizations and their Syrian and
Lebanese proxies on one hand, and the Lebanese army
and allied grassroots organizations on the other.
The bulk of the Arab Deterrence Force was made up of
the invading Syrian troops to which tiny contingents
from the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Oman, and
others were cosmetically added. Lebanese leader
Kamal Jumblatt opposed the official ?entry? of the
Syrians in the country for he knew that this would
have disastrous consequences on Lebanon?s
sovereignty, independence, and free decision-making.
In a famous call to the invading Syrian forces,
Jumblatt said ?You are invaders. You are a party to
the conflict and cannot be neutral?. In the end,
Jumblatt paid dearly for his opposition to Syria
when he was later assassinated on March 16, 1977 in
a roadside bomb planted 200 yards past a Syrian
checkpoint that his car had just cleared. The KDP
had strong ties to Mr. Jumblatt and supported his
rejection of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. |
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Under
direct orders from Syrian president Hafez Assad, the
Chief of Syrian Intelligence Services (Mukhabarat)
operating in Beirut, Col. Ali Khaddour, kidnapped
the late Jamil Meho in West Beirut in an ambush. Mr.
Meho?s own driver was a forced conspirator in the
ambush as he and his family received daily threats
if he did not cooperate. Mr. Meho was incarcerated
in the infamous Mazze Prison on the outskirts of
Damascus where he stayed 2 years. During those two
years, Syrian officials led by then Chief of Syrian
Mukhabarat Services Ali Duba tried in vain to get
Mr. Meho to collaborate with the Syrian occupation,
but he rejected these attempts and remained attached
to the sovereignty, freedom, and independence of
Lebanon. He was eventually released in 1979 after a
campaign in both the domestic and international
media.
The
Syrian regime did not cease its harassment against
the KDP. Through its alliance with Ayatollah
Khomeini and his newly emerged Islamic revolution in
Iran, whose objectives now spread to the Shiite
community of Lebanon, the Syrian regime exploited
the ongoing war between the Kurds and the Khomeini
regime. The Assad regime incited sectarian conflict
between the Lebanese Kurds, who are Sunnis, and the
Lebanese Shiites who had completely fallen under the
influence of the regime in Tehran. The KDP was one
of the staunchest defenders of the rights of the
Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan, and it fought a
media campaign against the crimes and atrocities
committed by the Khomeini regime against the Iranian
Kurds. After assassinating KDP leader Jamil Meho?s
son Mohammed along with a number of his aides, the
Syrian regime managed to drag the KDP into a bloody
military conflict with the Shiite Amal movement
headed by Nabih Berri. A vicious military campaign
was launched against the KDP with the objective of
eliminating it from the Lebanese political scene.
The KDP managed to resist this assault as well as
all other attempts by the Syrian regime and its
proxies among the Shiites in Lebanon.
Between 1983 and 1986, the invading Israeli forces
gradually withdrew from Beirut to the Southern
security zone. With the attack against the US
Marines and French Paratroopers barracks (October
1983) in the first suicide terrorist bombing on
record, the Multi-National Force (MNF) withdrew from
the country. The MNF was composed of American,
British, French, and Italian contingents, and had
come in 1982 to escort the PLO out of Beirut and
help the Lebanese government restore its legitimate
rule over the country. This withdrawal ended the
last direct Western involvement in the crisis and
opened the door for the Syrian army, which had been
evicted from West Beirut by the Israeli army, to
return en force to the city and in turn evict the
Lebanese army. The Lebanese troops managed, however,
to stave off the Syrian assault against the seat of
the Lebanese government in Baabda in fierce battles
that raged for months in Souk-al-Gharb, southeast of
Beirut. By 1986, the Syrian Mukhabarat Services now
fully operational in occupied Lebanon carried out a
series of repressive actions and assassinations
against the rank and file of the KDP. Many of the
party?s political cadres were forced to go
undercover or into exile. Under Syrian sponsorship,
elements of the Amal movement burned and destroyed
the party?s headquarters and property, and killed a
number of KDP members who had stayed in Lebanon.
Other supporters and partisans were subjected to
harassment and humiliation.
In
1992, and in the aftermath of the Taef Agreement,
the Lebanese government headed by Rashid Solh and
under pressure from the Syrians issued an official
decree banning the KDP in Lebanon. In 1994, the
leadership of the party residing in Europe gathered
and decided to resume action, and Abdul Karim Meho
was assigned the mission to return to Lebanon and
investigate conditions for a resumption of political
action there. Within two weeks of his arrival to
Lebanon, Abdul Karim was arrested by the Lebanese
authorities, incarcerated for 2 months, and
deported. That same year, the 8th conference of the
KDP was held in London (UK) and Abdul Karim Meho was
elected Secretary General of the party. The party
resumed its political and media activities under the
banners of rejecting the Syrian occupation of
Lebanon and calling for the freedom, sovereignty,
and independence of the country. Since 1994,
supporters of the KDP have been subjected to
continuous persecution, culminating in May 2002 in
the largest wave of arrests by Syrian Intelligence
Mukhabarat Services, headed by Rustum Ghazaleh, in
occupied Lebanon. KDP members and supporters were
subjected to all manner of torture and harassment.
However, their patriotic spirit could not be broken
and the KDP became increasingly popular among the
Kurdish Lebanese community. The hope is that one
day, like many other patriotic leaders who have been
exiled, the leadership of the KDP will be able to
return to Beirut to continue the political struggle
for a free and democratic Lebanon. The Lebanese
KDP?s persecution and oppression by the Syrian
occupation are a badge of honor as they for all
Lebanese patriots alike.
With
the US-led initiative against the Iraqi Baathist
dictator, the war on terrorism targeting both the
manifestations of terrorism as well as its political
and social roots, and the roadmap for a just and
lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinian
people, the Middle East has entered a period fraught
with potential upheavals but also full of tremendous
hope for positive change. The KDP remains committed
to the mission of its late leader Jamil Meho, a
mission that harbors the ideals of love of country
and a continuous search for peace and justice. As
Lebanon emerges from decades of suffering under
tyranny, the KDP will contribute its share in the
search by the Lebanese people for a renewed
political system that protects the rights of all
people without alienating them from their specific
values, principles, or religious beliefs. The KDP?s
many struggles will continue to be driven by the
party?s core attachment to Lebanon until the day
that true liberty shines again on the country. |
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Joseph Hitti is
President of New England Americans for
Lebanon (Boston, Massachusetts, USA). He
can be reached at
joehittimass@yahoo.com
New Mailing Address:
Joseph Hitti
8 Cottonwood Lane
P.O. Box 2638
Edgartown, MA 02568
New Telephone/Fax:
508-627-9350 |
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