Essential Readings on The Left in Kurdistan

Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, 2018

Iraqi Kurds have been involved in a liberation movement since the very beginning of the establishment of the Iraqi state by European colonizers. With the proliferation of communism in the 1960s and 1970s among liberation movements in the third world, the Kurdish liberation movement also adopted popular Marxist, Leninist and Maoist jargons. However, after the 1991 Kurdish uprising successfully liberated some areas of Kurdistan, the leftist rhetoric almost completely disappeared in the dominant Iraqi Kurdish discourse. I argue that, even from the 1960s to the 1980s, the adoption of Marxist rhetoric by the Iraqi Kurdish leadership was inauthentic; it was neither rooted in nor tailored to Kurdistani society. Moreover, unlike the Kurdish liberation movements in Turkey and Syria, as well as Iran to some degree, the Kurdish movement in Iraq failed to recognize gender equality. Thus, while Kurdish women in Turkey and Syria took active roles in the liberation movement, their counterparts in Iraq remained marginalized.

2008

2020

The struggle for political participation, social justice and legal equality was a key element of radical socialist and communist movements that emerged in Arab countries before and after World War I. These movements mobilized the masses, organized the workers, formed political parties and called for political demonstrations or, in some instances, for armed revolution. The spread of radical ideas among workers, the middle class, and intellectuals mirrored the growing integration of Arab societies into a globalized economy from the nineteenth century onwards. Ideologically, the main domestic opponents of Marxist/Communist movements in many Arab countries were Arab nationalist and Islamist movements both of whom connected citizenship rights to national and/or religious identity and strove to establish a homogeneous nation. In contrast, the radical left recruited followers from all sectors of Arab societies, especially from religious and ethnical minorities as well as members of foreign nationalities. Women participated also in communist/Marxist movements, but sources reveal the male-dominated cultures inside these movements and the little attention they gave to the struggle for women’s rights. In spite of the political differences, communists throughout history formed part-time alliances with nationalist, Islamists and authoritarian states, often with detrimental results. Moreover, the rigid structures of communist parties did not favour internal democracy. After 1990, the communist movement lost influence and many former supporters moved onwards to liberal or Islamist ideas, as part of an often bitter learning process. The remaining as well as newly emerging leftist groups are experimenting with new forms of organisation, mobilisation, action, and ideological mixture. A higher sensibility for questions of citizenship rights is characteristic for the post-Communist left. In the recent civil uprisings of 2010/11 and 2019/2020 in many Arab countries, many leftist movements are present, but they represent mainly one contested ideological current among others. Related topics: 1. Socialist and Communist Movements before and after World War I 2. Women Participation and Women Rights in Marxist/Communist Movements 3. Communist/Marxist Movements and Religion 4. Leftism in the Recent Uprisings in the Arab World For further information, see: https://nahoststudien.philhist.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/nahoststudien/CfA_MUBIT_2020_Arab_Marxism_Final.pdf

2012

1992

Wadie Jwaideh, The Kurdish National Movement, Its Origins and Development, Syracuse University Press, 2006., 2006