TWO peoples, both rooted in the tumultuous intersection of modern-day Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Two peoples whose traumatic histories overlap for generations—and then radically diverge. Both were short-changed by the Ottoman empire’s collapse, and suffered in the Arab-dominated countries carved out of it (see map). Yet one of these perennial victims of Middle Eastern upheavals, the Kurds, may be set to achieve its own state. The other, the Assyrians, or Syriacs, Aramaic-speaking Christians whose ancient capital is Nineveh, is politically marginalised, disinherited and now hounded by Islamic State. “We dream of a place on Earth to call our own,” says Bassam Ishak of the Syriac National Council of Syria.
History’s combustions are unpredictable. A country for the Kurds—which they will eventually get in northern Iraq if, or when, they upgrade their current autonomous status to full sovereignty—seemed...
from The Economist: International http://ift.tt/1BqbDWW
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