Invisible Nation: How the Kurds' Quest for Statehood Is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East
Author: Quil Lawrenc
The dramatic story of the Kurds and their quest to create a nation—essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the turmoil in Iraq will play out.
The American invasion of Iraq has been a success for one group: the Kurds. For centuries they have yearned for official statehood—and now, as one of the accidental outcomes of the invasion, the United States may have helped them take a big step toward that goal. Informed by his deep knowledge of the people and region, Quil Lawrence’s intimate and unflinching portrait of the Kurds and their heretofore quixotic quest offers a vital and original lens through which to contemplate the future of Iraq and the surrounding Middle East.
The New York Times - William Grimes
Mr. Lawrence…sifts through events taking place in northern Iraq at a time when the attention of the world was focused on calamitous events farther south. It is a story well worth telling…Mr. Lawrence, a sympathetic but not uncritical observer, makes it easy to root for a people whose struggle has long seemed, to quote Neville Chamberlain on Czechoslovakia, "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."
The Washington Post - Joshua Partlow
…the first thorough, book-length chronicle of the Kurds' recent history and their role in the war…[Lawrence's] brisk and engaging narrative makes clear just how tenuous—and anomalous—is this period of relative peace and prosperity for the Kurds of Iraq…a sympathetic but balanced portrait
Publishers Weekly
Numbering 25 million, the Kurds remain the largest ethnic group in the world without its own nation. This is not for want of trying, as British reporter Lawrence writes in this lucid, eye-opening account of the long, brutal struggle that continues despite opposition from Mideastern nations and the U.S. After centuries of oppression under the Turks, the Kurds had a chance at statehood when the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1918. The Middle East was remapped, with the Kurds divided among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Decades of bloody rebellion were ignored until Saddam Hussein's defeat in the First Gulf War. The Kurds rose again, anticipating U.S. assistance. Only media horror at Hussein's genocidal suppression of their revolt galvanized Western nations into action. When the "no-fly" zone was established in northern Iraq, Baghdad lost its capacity for governing the Kurds. Still fearful of Hussein, the Kurds cooperated eagerly as the U.S. planned a second Iraq invasion, but the Kurds' vision of statehood remains unfulfilled. Readers will close this engrossing but disturbing history with respect for a people that has struggled for millennia and whose difficulties continue to generate headlines. 30 b&w photos. (Apr.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationNader Entessar <P>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. - School Library Journal
Ever since the first Gulf War of 1990-91, the Kurdish issue has emerged as a political and strategic fulcrum in Iraq. During the period between 1991 and 2003, the U.S.-imposed no-fly zone in Iraqi Kurdistan allowed the Kurds to develop governing institutions and the components of a civil society away from the suffocating presence of Saddam Hussein's military forces. When the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew its government, the Kurdish region of the country was well poised to exert influence in post-Saddam Iraq. The fact that both Jalal Talabani, the current president of Iraq, and Hoshyar Zebari, the country's foreign minister, are Kurds has further enhanced Kurdish political clout in contemporary Iraq. Lawrence (Middle East correspondent, the World) has spent much time in the region and written reports on it for various Western publications. In lively and jargon-free language, with insights gained through experience, he explains the constellation of forces among the 25 million Kurds, the Kurds' relations to the other groups in contemporary Iraq, and their quest for independence. This is a timely and informative book that should be read by all interested in gaining a better understanding of today's Kurdish political developments. Recommended for academic and public libraries.
Kirkus Reviews
Stimulating history of the single Iraqi ethnic group that doesn't want American troops to leave Iraq. BBC correspondent Lawrence's debut reviews the ancient struggle for independence of 25 million Kurds (the majority living in Turkey), a struggle they may be winning despite the opposition of the United States and every Middle Eastern nation. They seemed on the verge of success after the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War I, but Kurdish leaders made the mistake-one they would repeat-of pinning their hopes on America. By the time they realized that Woodrow Wilson was unwilling to twist anyone's arm to achieve a new world order of democracy and self-determination, Mustapha Kemal (later known as Ataturk) had created a modern Turkish state, and Britain had remapped the Middle East, leaving the Kurds inside Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The world ignored 70 years of violent revolt and oppression until the end of the first Gulf war in 1991. Hearing that the United States would look favorably on Saddam Hussein's overthrow, Iraqi Kurds rose again, trusting that America would help. Only widespread revulsion at Hussein's brutal reaction persuaded Western nations to act. They enforced a "no-fly" zone in Northern Iraq, essentially preventing Hussein's army from entering and creating a reasonable facsimile of an independent Kurdistan. Still insecure, the Kurds cooperated enthusiastically with U.S. planning for a second invasion-which began well before 2003, the author avers. They also did not join in the chaos that followed. Lawrence emphasizes repeatedly that America is greasing the squeaky wheel in Iraq, obsessively concerned with unruly Sunnis and Shiites at the expense of Kurds who would love apermanent American military presence to protect them from Turkey, Iran and the Iraqi Arab majority. A disturbing account that prompts new admiration for a people whose age-old toil for a homeland will continue after the United States withdraws from the region. Agent: Robert Guinsler/Sterling Lord Literistic Inc.
Table of Contents:
Maps viii
Acronyms xi
Cast of Characters xiii
Prologue: The Prodigal Republic (Mr. Talabani Goes to Washington) 1
The Stolen Sheath 8
Betrayal and Holocaust 23
Shame and Comfort 42
Burning Down the House 63
Carnival in Limbo 88
A Most Convenient Foe 111
The Northern Front 132
No Friends but the Kurds 160
Deeds to the Promised Land 182
The Believers 202
The Feast of the Sacrifice 231
Securing the Realm 244
Something That Does Not Love a Wall 271
Conclusion: Visible Nation 307
Key Events in Iraqi Kurdish History 323
Notes 333
Selected Bibliography 351
Acknowledgments 355
Index 357
Go to: El Salto Radical: una Lección Personal en Mando Extremo
The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews
Author: James Jr Reston
The Watergate scandal began with a break-in at the office of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1971, and ended when President Gerald Ford granted Richard M. Nixon a pardon on September 8, 1974, one month after Nixon resigned from office in disgrace. Effectively removed from the reach of prosecutors, Nixon returned to California, uncontrite and unconvicted, convinced that time would exonerate him of any wrongdoing and certain that history would remember his great accomplishments—the opening of China and the winding down of the Vietnam War—and forget his “mistake,” the “pipsqueak thing” called Watergate.
In 1977, three years after his resignation, Nixon agreed to a series of interviews with television personality David Frost. Conducted over twelve days, they resulted in twenty-eight hours of taped material, which were aired on prime-time television and watched by more than 50 million people worldwide. Nixon, a skilled lawyer by training, was paid $1 million for the interviews, confident that this exposure would launch him back into public life. Instead, they sealed his fate as a political pariah.
James Reston, Jr., was David Frost’s Watergate advisor for the interiews, and The Conviction of Richard Nixon is his intimate, behind-the-scenes account of his involvement. Originally written in 1977 and published now for the first time, this book helped inspire Peter Morgan’s hit play Frost/Nixon. Reston doggedly researched the voluminous Watergate record and worked closely with Frost to develop the interrogation strategy. Even at the time, Reston recognized the historical importance of theFrost/Nixon interviews; they would result either in Nixon’s de facto conviction and vindication for the American people, or in his exoneration and public rehabilitation in the hands of a lightweight. Focused, driven, and committed to exposing the truth, Reston worked tirelessly to arm Frost with the information he needed to force Nixon to admit his culpability.
In The Conviction of Richard Nixon, Reston provides a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall account of his involvement in the Nixon interviews as David Frost’s Watergate adviser. Written in 1977 immediately following these celebrated television interviews and published now for the first time, The Conviction of Richard Nixon explains how a British journalist of waning consequence drove the famously wily and formidable Richard Nixon to say, in an apparent personal epiphany, “I have impeached myself.”
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