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.
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Monday 18 March
On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council will formally consider a highly critical report on Israeli settler activities that was published at the end of January.
Meanwhile, in Yemen a national dialogue conference is scheduled to open to try resolve the deep tensions in the country, with a view to holding credible elections next February.
Iran’s nuclear programme will be discussed at a technical meeting of representatives from the p5+1 (E3+3) grouping in Istanbul. It follows talks last month in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Finally, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will hold his monthly press conference in Brussels at which the focus is expected to be Afghanistan and President Hamid Karzai’s recent inflammatory rhetoric.
Tuesday 19 March
Also Tuesday, incumbent governor of Japan’s central bank Masaaki Shirakawa will step down. He will be replaced on Wednesday by Haruhiko Kuroda, who is moving across from the Asian Development Bank. Kuroda has pushed for looser monetary policy in Japan.
In New York, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will host a UN Security Council debate on Afghanistan, in what is billed as the highlight of Russia’s presidency of the UNSC this month.
Wednesday 20 March
On Wednesday, US President Barack Obama will begin his first visit to Israel since taking office. The trip, which will also see him travel to the West Bank and Jordan, was nearly overshadowed by post-electoral wrangling as Netanyahu sought to form a coalition government.
In Japan, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will deliver what is billed as a major foreign policy address. Observers will be particularly interested to see what Kishida has to say about relations with China, and the Senkaku/Diaoyu island dispute.
Finally, in Brussels EU High Representative Catherine Ashton will host another round of negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia.
Thursday 21 March
In Turkey, imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan is expected to declare a ceasefire between the PKK and Turkish government, timed to coincide with Nowruz.
Meanwhile, an immigration appeals tribunal will hold a bail hearing in the case of Jordanian radical cleric Abu Qatada, who was arrested earlier this month for breaching his bail conditions.
Friday 22 March
The oft-delayed posthumous trial of whistleblowing Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky is scheduled to resume, after it was delayed again on March 11.
Also Friday, the trial of so-called Devil’s Advocate lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano on fraud charges is expected to conclude. Di Stefano has previously represented figures including Gary Glitter, Saddam Hussein and Ian Brady.
Weekend
A final hearing in former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s appeal against his conviction on tax evasion charges is scheduled for Saturday, when a verdict may come. He has called for nationwide protests in piazzas against what he alleges is a politicised judicial process.
The run-down city of Diyarbakir remains the regional hub and political centre of the Kurdish rights movement, where the city’s crumbling infrastructure is testimony to decades of economic neglect.
But Diyarbakir also acts as regional headquarters for the Turkish military with its airport providing the base for missions against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the Iraqi border region.
Further east lies the ancient town of Hasankeyf, considered one of the oldest still-inhabited settlements on earth. But Hasankeyf now faces doom within a decade from the demands of modern energy supply.
And deep in the Taurus Mountains, close to the border with Iraq, lies Hakkari, a city that witnessed some of the heaviest fighting during the Kurdish uprising of the 1980s and 1990s but which now hopes to continue its recent resurgence fuelled by cross-border trade.
However, like all towns in the region, its future is jeopardised by the escalating conflict between diehard PKK members and the Turkish military along the Iraqi border, a short drive to Hakkari’s south.
The upswing in violence stoked by renewed PKK attacks has turned what was an internal Turkish problem into an international flashpoint, threatening to reverse recent improvements within Turkish Kurdistan.
Adding to political conflict, the issue of energy supplies is propelling Turkey’s southeast onto the international stage. The proposed Nabucco pipeline which aims to bring Caspian gas into Europe would run through the region while the Turkey’s massive hydroelectric Southeast Anatolia project (GAP) is already affecting the lives of millions.
Diyarbakir does not benefit from either of these projects. Nabucco will bypass the city to the north, while the economic impact of GAP will only affect the region close to the Syrian border in the southwest, where irrigation has created vast stretches of fertile land in the Mesopotamian desert.
Many in Diyarbakir suspect the Turkish government is willingly excluding the Kurdish heartlands from economic development and expect Diyarbakir, with its population of over 500,000, to drop further into poverty.
“It is no surprise that recent bomb attacks here focused on official Turkish installations and that the PKK receives many of its recruits from the city’s many street kids,” one Kurdish activist told us.
Further to the east, along the shores of the Tigris, the beautiful town of Hasankeyf does not have to battle urban poverty in the ways that Diyarbakir does. Home to some 5,000 inhabitants, it is peaceful and a dazzling testimony to human civilisation. There are Assyrian, Byzantine, Roman, Seljuk Turk and Ottoman archaeological sites, including castles, bridges, troglodyte caves, tombs, churches and mosques.
But the town that survived invasion by Alexander the Great, the Romans and the Crusaders now faces destruction. By the middle of next decade a dam of the GAP project is to flood the area, submerging up to 70 villages and disrupting nomadic routes for thousands of herdsmen.
According to the Kurdish Human Rights Project, an independent NGO, at least 19 villages in the area have been evacuated at gunpoint and in many cases houses have been burnt to the ground, with only a few families being compensated. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the project “demonstrates that the south-east is no longer neglected,” suggesting the new lake could become a tourist resort for the region while promising to relocate all artefacts.
The proposals have been met with scorn by locals like Idris Kartal: “We are angry. Our families have lived here for generations. Some were even born in the caves. We don’t want a water park – do they think we want to jet-ski on our ancestors’ graves?”
Further east, ringed by the 4,000 metre Cilo-Sat mountains on the Iraqi border, Hakkari looks like a city trying to defy its reputation as a war-torn rebel hideout as it comes to terms with fragile peace. Pock-marked buildings and armoured police cars are reminders of the city’s violent history yet an influx of trade from Iraq and Iran has created some hope of improvement.
In this once conservative region, young, fashionably-dressed couples now openly flirt in the tearooms and gardens. But as the closest major town to the Iraqi border, Hakkari remains at risk of being sucked back into conflict.
The resignation, anger and hope of Diyarbakir, Hasankeyf and Hakkari are all part of the emotions that make up today’s Kurdistan. Embroiled in what has become a geopolitical struggle for energy and power beyond local control, the people here can only hope for a better future.
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