In the “Second Congress of Negro Writers” in Rome, Italy held in 1959, “Sékou Touré” said: in order to take part in Africa’s revolution, it is not enough to sing a revolutionary song but we need to tie the revolution with the people’s lives. If we integrate the revolution with people’s lives, the songs will come to life automatically. In order to achieve this real action, you need to be a live part of the real Africa. You should become a part of the national movement which is trying to gain freedom and development of Africa. Outside of this endeavor, outside of this wrestling, there is no place for an artist who is out of this attempt and wrestling for Africa’s freedom.”
Sékou Touré had addressed the African writers and artists that their countries are being colonized by the dominant countries. He also said: We have to do our best for Africa and the colonized countries.
Such an attempt needs a social will and individuals cannot do much alone. However, we should note that it is the individuals’ attempts that can make a social movement happen. That is the colonized and oppressed countries must pay attention to two points. First, the intellectuals, writers, and artists’ relationship with the society should form in a natural and subtle way and second, the relationship of the society with the country and homeland must be constant and strong. It is in such circumstances that the country can see freedom and redemption.
Presentation of such a topic can help the great Kurdistan in general and also can be very essential for the South part of Kurdistan particularly.
If we look at this topic in general, we know that Kurdistan is a colonized country being torn into separate parts. The local powers around Kurdistan have dominated this land for hundreds of years. Kurdish people have been oppressed and their land has been plundered. It is important to say that the majority of Kurds have always tried to gain their freedom directly and they have joined in revolutionary movements or indirectly have helped those who were members of such revolutionary movements or at least have opposed the enemy. There have been some people who have been neutral toward the enemy’s plans for many reasons that will be mentioned later. What the socialists insist on and believe to be the reasons for the obedience of the oppressed people can be mentioned within two points. First, the oppressed people feel weak when they compare themselves to the economic, conceptual, and political capabilities of the dominant powers and they wish to be a part of this power so that they would be separated from the weaknesses of their own nation and be merged within the strengths of the dominant power. Second, these people join the oppressors willingly to gain their personal wishes and their own strengths.
We have had both of these groups of people in Kurdistan; those who have surrendered to the imaginary portrait of their historical oppressors, and those who have joined the oppressors’ plans to gain their own wishes. What is the relationship of these two groups to the society?
The answer to this question would be that whenever the number of such individuals, from either group, increases in a society, it will get easier and more convenient to gradually manipulate their identity, especially nowadays when identities overlap each other and some even get lost.
If each of the social generations does not receive their ancestors’ heritages, does not amend them throughout time, and does not transfer them to the next generations, the so-called “Social world” will undoubtedly get weaker and even it would completely change.
“Frantz Fanon” comments on this matter as follows: Every generation should find their responsibility through the relative ambiguities, and either carry it out or betray it. In underdeveloped countries, the old generations had resisted the attempts of the dominant powers to dissolve their societies and they also have helped the revolution to succeed in the future. Today we should avoid degrading our ancestors’ deeds and thoughts and cover up their weaknesses. In other words, we have to preserve their heritage and if there are any weak points, we should make up stronger substitutions.
According to Fanon, the oppressors benefit from some political and social points of their under-authority countries. They take away the oppressed country’s self-esteem by pointing out their economic weaknesses and emphasizing their regional inefficiency regularly. They also discuss their economic plans in a way that implies that the center of power and authority can solve these problems and by doing so they damage the sense of self-confidence, unity, and solidarity or dissolve them completely.
In all the parts of Kurdistan, we have witnessed that all these aspects of dominance have been carried out by the authorities that have oppressed Kurdistan so far. In comparison to the other parts of those countries that control Kurdistan, the Kurdistan part is much more regressed economically. They also try to show that this weak economic condition is the greatest threat to the life of the people and it is the main problem of that nation that is opposing the center of power. The second part of this issue is even more curious which they imply that the reason for this regression is due to the Kurdish people’s inabilities, weaknesses, and even their lack of knowledge. What has been carried out in Kurdistan in the past one hundred years shows nothing less than this.
However, since the topic of this article is the South part of Kurdistan, I try to sum up the discussion on some minor social and cultural problems and major economic problems.
This part of Kurdistan is the only part that has been able to establish a form of governmental system in the past thirty years and somehow cooperate with international laws. They also have been able to become a regional party to play a role many times. But this part of Kurdistan is now facing a number of serious economic, educational, and cultural problems.
From the dominant countries’ perspective, all these problems root in Kurds’ inabilities. For instance, the economic issues in Kurdistan that are briefly discussed here. In the past decade, the central government has tried to prove that; first of all, the main problem of Kurds in the South part of Kurdistan is the economy. And on the other hand, they have attempted to make Kurdistan’s problems an interior case which is happening solely because of the Kurdish government in charge and not due to their unjust laws towards Kurds or the other countries who aid them in any way to keep Kurds from developing. That is, the economic problem is because of the Kurdish authorities’ inabilities. An aspect of this problem is oil and the policies involving it. This aspect will be solved if every right of consuming the oil is in the central government’s control i.e. “every path ends in Baghdad”. This is the route that Kurdistan’s domineering countries especially in the South part of Kurdistan have followed.
Obviously, in the other parts of Kurdistan where there is no Kurdish authority existing, the dominant governments create an even more serious problem.
Sékou Touré, Frantz Fanon, Edward Saied, Houmi Baba, and many other authors and philosophers have discussed such problems which are of a kind that any dominant authority would make into a daily crisis for their colonies. This problem is nothing but a debatable topic among philosophers and socialists called “National Self-esteem” and “Cultural Self-deprecation”. I will discuss it in the second part of this commentary later. I will represent several eminent examples that are among the most discussed topics in social media and have caused people’s curiosity greatly in all parts of Kurdistan, particularly in the East part. I will discuss the reasons behind such circumstances, too. I will also talk about the reason for the lack of an alteration for such issues as cultural self-deprecation in the South part of Kurdistan and the other parts too.
