Page 339 - America's Failure to Perceive the PKK

were never put down on paper. This was a time when even tribes
fighting against the PKK came under suspicion, when village guards
appointed by the state were suspected of being PKK agents and tor-
tured many times by deep state officials, and when people with broth-
ers, sons or daughters up in the mountains were persecuted, even
though they were themselves opposed to the PKK.

This was a time when even the families of the village guards who
were constantly harassed by the PKK, being targets of PKK bullets,

The Kurdish people
have suffered gravely
in the region for years.
While Saddam was
slaughtering the
innocent Kurdish
people with chemical
weapons in Halabja,
al-Assad in Syria was
oppressing the Kurds
that were not given
even a birth certificate
through brutal
coercion.

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