(both Palestinian and East Bank), and Armenians,
have not formed movements on a minority basis
although they do make political claims on this basis.
Circassians and Christians (as well as Beduin tribes)
have allotments in parliamentary seats through
quotas in certain electoral districts. Furthermore,
ethnicity and religion certainly play important roles
even in the absence of formal movements. For
example, Circassians and Chechens mobilized to ex-
tend aid and medical relief during the Abkhasian-
Georgian war of 1992–3, as well as for the ongoing
Chechen-Russian conflict, in the latter case finding
common ground with Jordanian Islamist groups.
The experience of Tùjàn al-Fayßal, the only woman
thus far elected (in 1993) to the Jordanian parlia-
ment (there are women appointed to the senate) is
also instructive. Although Tùjàn al-Fayßal did not
campaign on ethnic issues, she did run for the
Circassian seat in her electoral district thus en-
abling her to win with significantly fewer votes than
she would have needed for a majority seat. As a
member of parliament, her progressive politics were
not based on lobbying for her ethnic community
but when she became the target of Islamists and
conservatives in parliament and eventually of the
government (she was taken to court for apostasy by
the former and charged and imprisoned for slander
by the latter), the Circassian community leadership
rallied around her and interceded on her behalf
with the king. In this way, ethnicity plays a political
role even in the absence of movements as such.
Lebanon is the most anomalous state in the
group, constituted (in the French mandate formu-
lation) as “a nation of minorities – where the
largest minority rules,” with the Maronite Chris-
tians having been designated the largest minority.
The Maronites’ collective sense of identity is tied to
the church (an Eastern Christian church later
Romanized) and was forged historically through
territorial and political conflicts (for example, the
Maronite-Druze “civil war” of 1860). An ethnic
dimension is added to this identity through assert-
ing descent from the Phoenicians and distance from
Arabs and Muslims. This identity was continually
mobilized, as were Sunnì, Druze, and Shì≠ìidenti-
ties, due to the sectarian basis of the Lebanese state,
reinforced by such practices as the lack of civil mar-
riage and the relegation of all personal status mat-
ters to religious authorities (Joseph 1991). The
language of political competition and conflict is
that of sectarianism and confessionalism rather
than minority politics. In spite of the Maronite
“defeat” with the end of the civil war in 1990–1,
and shifts in balance, such as the emergence of the574 political-social movements: ethnic and minority
Shì≠ìs as a powerful political force, Lebanese poli-
tics is not about majorities and minorities but con-
sists of shifting alliances among the 17 “sects”
which are officially designated as comprising the
Lebanese polity.Kurdish politics in Iraq:
religion, women, and rights
It should be stated clearly that Kurdish move-
ments are more properly described as national
movements espousing the goal of national self-
determination (the term Kurdistan first appeared in
the fourteenth century.) However, given that the
Kurdish population exists as “minorities” within
four contiguous states (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Tur-
key), as well as in various diasporic communities,
the form in which political struggles have taken
place has been that of minority and ethnic move-
ments and bargaining with the central state for cer-
tain forms of political and cultural expression and
autonomy. The remainder of this entry offers a brief
discussion of how these politics unfolded in the
context of the Iraqi state, where Kurds form be-
tween 15 and 20 percent of the population, with the
recognition that this only addresses one part, albeit
an important one, of the Kurdish situation. Iraqi
Kurdish society is characterized by religious, lin-
guistic, and tribal diversity. Most Kurds are Sunnì
Muslim with a small percentage of Shì≠ìs. Some
Kurds also adhere to Islamic heterodox and pre-
Islamic religions (such as Yezidism) and there are
also Kurdish-speaking Jews.
In 1925, the League of Nations awarded the
Ottoman vilayet of Mosul to Iraq rather than
Turkey, but the area was supposed to remain under
League Mandate for 25 years and the Iraqi state
was to guarantee Kurdish autonomy. This did not
come to pass and the long history of clashes and
negotiations between various Kurdish political par-
ties and movements and the central government in
Baghdad is one of promises not kept and hopes
dashed. For example, when the Ba≠th party first
took power in Iraq in 1963, the Kurdish Demo-
cratic Party (KDP) requested autonomy in Kurdis-
tan over everything except foreign affairs, finance,
and national defense, but this was not accepted. In
1970 a peace accord with the regime outlined a
15-point program which included Kurdish lan-
guage education, respect for culture, economic
support, land reform, self government, and the free-
dom to establish student, youth, women’s, and
teachers’ organizations (McDowall 1996). Despite
the importance of this formal recognition, the plan
was not implemented, setting the stage for the next