When people think of diaspora populations, their first thought tends to be of refugee populations, the migrant crisis, and communities fleeing conflict as a result of what’s reported in the media. However, this is only part of the story. Often these scattered populations across the globe continue to have an enormous impact on their homelands.

The European Research Council has sponsored 5 years of extensive research and close to 500 first-hand interviews among Kosovo, Albanian, Armenian, Bosnian, Kurdish, Iraqi and Palestinian diasporas, and a large-scale survey. These displaced, real, diverse people, living in European countries from the UK, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and France give us a unique insight into the homelands from which they originate.

This resourceful, entrepreneurial section of the population are important actors in the conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction processes of their homelands, be that Iraq, Palestine, Bosnia or Armenia.
Conflict-generated diasporas can have a huge influence on war and peace, and it is often something that is under reported in the media.

Dr. Maria Koinova, Principal Investigator for the ERC Project implemented at Warwick University, and her team will present their paper “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty”, and be joined by journalists to discuss the wider importance of their work and how it can influence public policy today.

For more information on the project, visit their website here.

Chair

Chris Morris – BBC Correspondent

Morris regularly contributes to BBC News, Today and From Our Own Correspondent, and is the author of the 2005 Granta publication The New Turkey. He was BBC Turkey Correspondent from 1997-2001 based first in Ankara and later opening the BBC’s new bureau in Istanbul covering the 1999 İzmit earthquake and the arrest and trial of the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan. From 2001-2005 Morris was the BBC Europe Correspondent based in Brussels covering the European Union, the proposed European constitution, and other European stories.

Speakers

Dr Maria Koinova – Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant “Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty”

Before joining Warwick University in 2012, Dr. Maria Koinova held research fellowships and visiting scholar positions at Harvard, Cornell, Dartmouth, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., the European University Institute, and Uppsala University, among other academic institutions. Koinova is the author of Ethnonationalist Conflict in Postcommunist States. Since 2006 Koinova has worked on topics related to diasporas, conflicts, post-conflict reconstruction and democratization, and has conducted multi-sited fieldwork among the Albanian, Armenian, Bosnian, Croatian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Serbian, and Ukrainian diasporas in the US and/or in Europe.

Tony Barber – Financial Times Europe News Editor

Tony is a columnist and specialist writer on European political, economic and business news and currently the Europe editor for the Financial Times. From 1990 – 1997 he was the East Europe Editor and Europe Editor at the Independent. Before that, he worked as a Reuters Foreign Correspondent from a range of cities from New York, Vienna, Moscow, Warsaw to Belgrade.

Dr Ben Margulies –  post-doctoral Research Fellow, University of Warwick 

Ben’s research background is primarily in comparative and European politics. He is also interested in the way that nations and party systems respond to migration and globalisation. His Ph.D. “Liberal Parties and Party Systems” used data taken from European party manifestos to track when parties moved left or right, and showed how these movements affected vote shares that liberal parties received. Ben joined this project to help develop a large-scale survey among conflict-generated diasporas in Europe.

Dr Dženta Karabegović – Ph.D. University of Warwick

Dženeta’s Ph.D. research project analyses diaspora influence on a weak state in post-conflict environments. Her work has looked into Bosnian diaspora mobilisation in Europe around issues of transitional justice, genocide remembrance, and political participation. This research was undertaken in the form of interviews, participant observation and process tracing with multi-sited fieldwork. Dženeta holds an MA. from the University of Chicago and was a visiting scholar from the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.

Dr Oula Kadhum – Ph.D. University of Warwick

Oula Kadhum’s research investigates in a comparative perspective diaspora mobilisation for state-building following the 2003 intervention in Iraq. Her work explores how the diaspora in the UK and Sweden mobilised towards this end and why there were differences in their approaches to building the state. Oula completed her Masters degree at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, a postgraduate certificate in Education at Kings College London, and a Bachelors degree from Queen Mary University of London.

Featured image: protestors demonstrating against Turkish President Erdogan’s visit to Strasbourg. France Oct 4th, 2015

With the independence referendum of Iraqi Kurdistan set for 26th September 2017, The Frontline Club will be hosting a film screening of No Friends But the Mountains along with a Q&A with the makers of the film to discuss the possible outcomes.

No Friends But the Mountains is an insightful personal tale from Kae Bahar, a Kurdish asylum seeker who explains how many wars and the ever growing refugee exodus from the Middle East are fuelling the call for an independent Kurdistan.

Kae himself endured torture under the regime of Saddam Hussein and was forced into exile in 1980. 35 years on, Kae returns to Iraq to win first hand insights into the war against ISIS and explore whether independence in the Kurdish region could become a reality. Along his way he meets Ezidi Kurds who escaped the 2014 ISIS massacre in Sinjar and ended up in Iraqi refugee camps or in Germany.  He also interviews those who are still fighting on the frontline – the Peshmerga and the PKK.

In exile, Kae dreamt about Kurdish independence during all his life and with this film he wants to conduct a reality check back in his homeland. Are the 6-7 million people who are living in the Kurdish region of Iraq also keen on independence? Or could there be a more nuanced attitude to dealing with the real-politik of the region? Kae is also asking how best to prevent further conflicts and more refugee dramas.

Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/230207480

Speakers

Kae Bahar (via Skype): Presenter

Kae is UK based, Kurdish writer and documentary filmmaker. Over the past 25 years he has been producing and presenting films with broadcasters such as BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. In 2015, Kae’s novel Letters from a Kurd  was published to great acclaim.

Claudio von Planta: Director

Claudio von Planta is a Swiss freelance documentary filmmaker who started his career in 1985 with reports about the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Occupation. From 1990 onwards Claudio worked on many TV news features and longer current affairs programmes for all the main UK broadcasters. In 1996 Claudio filmed a Gwynne Roberts report for Channel 4 Dispatches where they tracked down Bin Laden in Afghanistan. The same year he also shot KARZAN’S BROTHERS for BBC Inside Story, his first Kurdish film with Kae Bahar where they documented the smuggling of Kurds from Iraq to the UK. Ever since Kae and Claudio continued to produce films about the fate of the Kurds.

John McCarthy: Narrator

John McCarthy is a writer and broadcaster.  On his first foreign assignment, to Lebanon in 1986, he was abducted by Islamic Fundamentalists and held hostage for over five years. This experience was explored in the book Some Other Rainbow (co-written with Jill Morrell). His other books are Between Extremes (with Brian Keenan), A Ghost Upon Your Path: An Irish Journey, You Can’t Hide the Sun: A Journey through Palestine. Alongside his writing John has worked in television for the BBC, ITV, Sky Arts and Al Jazeera, and on radio for the BBC World Service and Radio 4. In 2014 John presented a documentary for Radio 4 ‘Kurdistan: A State of Uncertainty’. He was awarded the CBE in 1992 and is a Patron of the charity Freedom From Torture.

Tom Hardie-Forsyth: Recent Senior Advisor to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)

Tom Hardie-Forsyth is the recently retired Senior Advisor, Capacity Building to the Prime Minister’s Office, Kurdistan Regional Government, Erbil Iraq, a post he has held since 2005. He remains the Senior Advisor to the KRG UK Representative Office, and a team member of the Genocide Memory Project.

CBS News’ Elizabeth Palmer led an expert discussion at the Frontline Club on 11 September regarding the latest crush of violence in Iraq.

The panel painted a portrait of a country desperately in need of peace, independence, rule of law, reconciliation with its traumatic past, and unity amidst hardening divisions along ethnic, class, and religious lines.  Yet none of these needs are being met.

Professor Charles Tripp lamented Iraqis’ inability to trust their government, with a:

"Parliament that sat for 20 minutes in the whole of the year 2010 after being elected … a judiciary which seems to be completely in the pocket of the executive power, and of course a police that you have to be very wary of calling."

Tripp expressed sadness at a "hatred of the state" that he perceived fueling many Sunni and Shi’a attacks.

"The blowing up of people who are looking for employment … of a large number of people standing outside army recruiting or police recruiting. These are people who are just like [their killers] in some senses, these are, you know, sad people who are looking, desperate for employment."

Kamran Karadaghi, distinguished Kurdish Iraqi journalist, downplayed recent attacks as anything out of the ordinary.  

"This was something that was meant to happen," he said.  "There is always from time to time a wave of violence in Iraq …  Iraqi people are very violent.  Killing, getting rid of others, is something which sometimes is like a normal thing."

Different factions who make up the government, The Independents‘ Patrick Cockburn added:

"Sunnis, Shi’a, Kurds … none of these people like each other … [but] they all have quite a lot to lose if the present system collapses.  So despite the very high levels of violence … in a way it has a sort of grisly stability." 

Karadaghi agreed.

"Being an oil economy … everybody in Iraq wants to be a part of it.  So this is why, despite … all the animosities … nobody actually left the government.  They are all still in the government. This kind of arrangement will continue."

On one topic, however, the panel found optimism, Kurdish independence.  

Karadaghi, as well as Tom Hardie-Forsyth, a senior adviser to the Prime Minister’s office, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Northern Iraq, both touted the transparency and success of recent Kurdish oil contracts, a more stable and prosperous way of life in the region, and a stronger sense of unity and purpose among Kurds.  

"They are the largest disenfranchised nation in the world.  They deserve [independence]," Hardie-Forsyth said.

But are they ready for it?  

Karadaghi smiled:  "Not yet, but like Andy Murray said, getting closer."