BBC World Histories Magazine - 03.2020

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A strong Kurdish nationalist

movement was slow to build and,

though there were intermittent Kurdish

protests during the British mandate

over Iraq, these were largely local, tribal

affairs. Yet with the modernity accom-

panying the new Iraqi state, a gradual

‘national’ consciousness began to grow.

Through standardisation of the Kurdish

language, which was taught in Kurdish

schools in the north of Iraq, an incipient

Kurdish literary culture took shape.

Then, following the Second World War,

the first embryo of a coherent Kurdish

nationalist movement began to form.

Short-lived republic

Shortly after the war, a Soviet-sponsored

Kurdish republic briefly came into

existence in Mahabad, Iran. Its military

commander was the indomitable Kurd-

ish nationalist Mulla Mustafa Barzani,

and the Barzani clan has dominated

the Kurdish nationalist movement ever Æ

Arms and the men

Kurdish fighters in north-west Iran,

1918. Some Kurdish nationalists
      worked with the British in the First
      World War, but the promised
      independence proposed in the 1920
      Treaty of Sèvres failed to materialise