As Lebanon is temporarily the center of international policy, let’s have a look on Kurdish population in Lebanon.They have been studied in detail Etudes kurdes n°7 by Lokman Meho et Farah Kawtharami, and I make here a resume for non-French readers.
Kurds mostly arrived in Lebanon at the end of the WWI, and during Sheikh Saïd’s revolt in 1925, and during all 30s, when they fled Turkey, which at this time oppressed savagely any Kurdish activism, and practiced genrously massacres and genocidary actions. France, which had a mandate on Lebanon and Syria, ruled them in a softer way and, more important, instead of banning Kurdish movements, instrumentalized them in the conflict it had with Turkey concerning disputed terroritories between Syria and Turkey (Nisîbîn, Cizîr, etc). Since 60s, there was too an economical migration, but if we except those, most of Kuridsh migrants in Lebanon are originated of Mardin region.
They divide themselves as 2 linguistic groupes, those speaking kurmanji (northern-Kurdish) and the Mardallis speaking an Arab dialect (with Kurdish influence). L. Meho thinks that Kurds are the secund “ethnic” minority group after Armenians, though there has been no census since 1932. Before 1985 their number could have been around 70.000, and as most of them fled during the Civil War then they have probably decreased.
Kurds in Lebanon are, in their social and economical aspects, one of the weakest, the less wealthy and the less educated communisties of the country. They were majoritary peasants, workers, and exercised a lot of jobs without diploma. A major cause of this situation is their problem of nationality. For until 1994, most of them were not Lebanese citizens because they did not ask the nationality before 1941, (they saw it useless). But during the WWII, they realized that having no Lebanese passports deprived them of food-cards (because of war restriction, people have right to buit only a certain amount do food and first necessity goods). Before 1940, it was easy though to become Lebanese : just need to have lived 5 years in the country without interruption, or having married a Lebanese citizen. But in 1940 a law restricted this access to Lebanese citizenship.
In 1960, Kemal Joumblatt gave them a “undetermined citizenship”, which allowed them to obtain for their children borned in the country to become Lebanese. But this status was cancelled in 1962 because of Christian opposition : the former supported Armenians’ naturalization but refused to give Lebanese nationality to any muslim groups, fearing to lost their demographical weight comparing with the muslims’ one.
The government then instaured “substitution card”, which allowed them to go in and out the country, and to study in public schools, but no more (this disposition is quite similar to the weird status of 800.000 Syrian Kurds when their Syrian citizenship had been cancelled by Damascus in a campaign of arabization).
This “substitution card” did not give them the right to vote and to work for the State. It was a sort of “Green cards”, with the right to stay and to work in the country, but hereditary.The issue was solved by Rafik Hariri on June 21th juin 1994, who offered Lebanese nationality to the majority of non-Lebanese Kurds (between 10.000 and 18.000). He faced at this occasion a strong hostility from Christian Lebaneses.It is probable that this historical fact handicaped for a long time Kurds in Lebanon and could explain that still nowadays they are in majority poor workers and the less educated group. Other sunnits consider them essentielly as “non-Arabs”, though non-muslim groups consider them as Sunnits. But their recent citizenship (and their new votes) led politician sunnit leaders to pay a relative attention to Kurds, with vague promises to improve their life.
In another hand, Kurds of Lebanon are not isolated from the rest of Kurdish people. Many Kurdish militants fled Syria and were active in Lebanon after 1958. Kurdish revolts against Baghdad and Ankara had an impact on the political awake of Lebanese Kurds.Thus the Kurdish Democratic Party of Lebanon was created in 1970, as a Lebanese branch of Mustafa Barzani’s party. It was supported too by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Syria. It has had later many many scissions and internal rivalries (Lebanese Kurdish, like in Syria, seem enjoying amibian separations until the whole dissolution of the original movement).Beside of parties there are numerous associations, Sport clubs, etc, ruled by great and powerful families, in the same schema of the Lebanese clanism, with the same system of patron-clients. The importance of these associations (like Al Rawdah) could be explained by the long period in which Kurds could not vote.
When their own parties could not take part in the political life of Lebanon, Kurds sought for the support of Sunni leaders in 60s and 70s. During the civil war, firstly neutral, they resisted against Christian Phalangists who had expelled them from Eastern-Beyrouth with Palestinians. They fought with Nasserists, Communists, Palestinians groups like FPLP. In the same time, PKK members went from Turkey to learn guerilla science in Lebanese camps, and peshmergas from Iraq, or Syrian Leftists joined sometimes Feddayins, in a vague and wide anti-US imperialism socialist movement of liberation (even if USA syupported (in a treacheous way) Mustafa Barzanis’ revolution in 1975).
Kurds had also fought Amal militia, probably because they are sunnis, and they even allied with Druses… but at the end they realized that they have struggled for nuts, and received no kind of help or reparation, from Arab muslims as from Christians.The PKK of course, has its members in Lebanon, but their number considerably decreased since Öcalan’s arrest. The emergence of a quite independant Kurdish State in Southern Kurdistan could have strenghened the prestige and the influence of the KDP (in Syria as in Lebanon) but if we analyse the last declaration of the KDP-Lebanon leader, we could see that he aims essentially to have a place in the political Lebanese arena, perhaps by wainting in the same time a support and even a financial help from Hewlêr.(source : La Communauté kurde au Liban : le présent et l’avenir ; L. J MEHO et Farah KAWTHARAMI, Etudes kurdes n° 7, mai 2005.)
Is that “Etudes des Kurds” relatated to Kurdish studies? I also read something about Kurds in Lebanon in one of their books.
Not related though some authors have written in both reviews and then perhapd that L. Meho’s work has been published in English in Kurdish Studies.
You also know some books about Kurds in the Caucasus formed Soviet Union?
“The Kurds of Azerbaijan and Armenia”, Julie Flint, ed. Kurdish Human Rights Project, 1998.
“De Koerden in de (Voormalige) Sovjetunie (1921-1994)”, Herman Taels, ed. Kurdish Institute of Brussels, 1997.
thank you for the info heval piling!