Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro
de la Prensa-Baszn Özeti
sents a mother's life-sized hands holding
a thumb-sized photo ofher dead son, a fitwere
hero-worshipers. When their muchphotographed
leaders were hanged or exiled,
political movements often collapsed.
In the 1910s, Great Britain encouraged
Iraqi Kurds to develop writing, the key to
modern culture. But oil soon led the Kurds'
protectors to betray and then in 1924 to
bomb them. Meiselas has the goods on the
British in their own words-diplomatic
cables,journals and letters. Kurdish writing
and print surfaced again. in the Mababad
Republic, the only Kurdish state. Carved
out of Iran in 1945, represented by documents
and photos of poets in Kurdistan,
Mahabad was reabsorbed in 1946. Farsi,
Arabic and Turkish had the power to suppress
an upstart language. After Mab~bad,
Kurds in Iraq were not allowed typewnters.
In the fifties, only Kurds in the Soviet Union
had access to printing presses. Tothis day,
Turkey and Iran forbid education in Kurdish
dialect, and Turkey denies the validity
of the word "Kurd," calling eastern citizens
"Mountain Turks." In this mid-century
III TBIS REVIEW
ImISTAI: lalla. SIa•••• II Blsllry.
Edited by Susan Meiselas.
Random House. 388 pp. $100.
Ami SaCBDOmBCE, WUT
FOICßEIESS?: M, E.clul.n
Willaluitslu.
By Jonathan C. Randal.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 356 pp. $25.
ATATÏU'S CBD.DIEI:Tark.,
••• Ih. lar.s.
By Jonathan Rugman and Roger
Hutchings.
Cassell. 128 pp. $45.
ImISTU.
Photos by N. Kasraian; text by
Z. Arshi and K. Zabihi.
Oriental Art Publishing. 139 pp.
$76.50.
period, many of Meiselas's photograp~s
were taken by Western military men, engIneers,
journalists and other colonial scouts.
When Kurds could afford cameras of
their own, photography became a suspect
and dangerous occupation, capable of
undermining massive print propaganda.
A Kurdish photographer in Iraq recounts
the 1962 arrest of his cousin for carrying
a photo; he was jailed for ten days. In Iran.
photographs were destroyed in 1974 because
they were "cultural products." N egatives
were buried in backyards, undeveloped
for decades, and some are now printed
in Kurdistan. Fearful ofusing cameras,
Kurds tound cameras used against them. A ting emblem for Meiselas's project.
1984 newspaper photo, obviously staged For all their affecting detail, photographs
for propaganda, shows Kurds surrounded can only witness. Sixteen chapter introductions
and humiliated by Turkish troops. Meiselas
by Martin van Bruinessen-the
also includes 1990 photos of Kurdish Kurdish-speaking author of Agha. Shaikh
villagers wearing numbers, easy identification
and State: The Social and Political Struc-
for Turkish police files.
tures of Kurdistan~o a fine, objective
job of clarifying political movements and
Ifthe technology of the Iranian revolution diagnosing Kurds' friendlessness. Because
was the cassette and of the Chinese ~tudent
uprising the fax, Kurds broke mto of the United States, the material on the
Iran and Iraq have been avowed enemies
Western consciousness with bleary videotape-{)f
dead children, their :yes wi~e distan is relatively familiar. More com-
recent history of those countries in Kur-
open, gassed in the streets of Iraq s Hala?Ja pelling are the sections on Turkey, America's
in 1988-and with this decade's ma gaz me
only friend in the region. Striking
photographs, in vivid color. Compiling this photographs, legal documents, newspapers,
history, contributing to it with photos of her oral histories and van Bruinessen's miniessays
own, Meiselas also implies the limits of her
demonstrate just how similar our
profession. She includes a Canon ad using ally is to Iraq under Saddam. In the past ten
a photograph of a Kurdish guerrilla, rebellion
years, the Turkish military has destroyed
commodified just as exotic difference hundreds of Kurdish villages near Iraq
was in much earlier postcards of Kurdish and Iran, killearties that would be out
noose in 1947.
ofplace in Meiselas's project. But Randal's
The chain on an Iraqi prisoner in 1948 is best chapters are about U.S. involvement in
thick enough to pull a German-made Turkish
Kurdistan. He shows in persuasive insider
tank confronting a Kurdish woman and detail how Nixon, Kissinger and the Shah of
childin 1993. There's a page from an alphabet
Iran betrayed a Kurdish uprising against
book banned by Turkey in 1968, a photo Saddam Hussein in 1975; how Bush, Baker
ofSaddam in Kurdish costume, Meiselas ' s and feckless diplomats both "suckered"
1991 shot of an American forensic anthropologist
the Kurds into rebellion after the Gulf
standing in an Iraqi grave, hold-
War and waffled on aiding them; and how
ing in his bare hands a blindfolded Kurdish
the Clinton Administration might have
skull, a too-late Hamlet to a too-real brokered a settlement in northern Iraq in
Yorick. More than any photographer included,
1996 instead of allowing a civil war and
the editor knows the power of close-
then airlifting thousands offriendly Kurds
ups and blow-ups, the allegory of the superspecific.
to Guam. Randal' s chapter on Turkey re-
The last of her nine color photos cords how the United States has in recent
and the penultimate image in Kurdistan pre-
years skirted its own laws restricting arms
sales to human rights abusers and made
Turkey "the biggest single importer of
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