A sprinkling of Kurds.... to bring out that acceptable flavor in the hellhole wars

I don't know why, but I think of Kurds as Zoroastrians.  And, Zoroastrians are nice, peaceful, decent people....until you ruffle their feathers.

From YahooNews:
.....Kurdish fighters have driven jihadists  from 19 towns and villages across northeastern Syria in recent days, a week after capturing a key Iraqi border crossing, a monitoring group said Monday.
The Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPJ), the main Kurdish militia in Syria, has battled other rebel groups in a bid to carve out an autonomous region in the northeast, where the army is no longer deployed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that relies on local activists and other sources, said that "since Saturday, a total of 19 localities have fallen into the hands of Kurdish fighters."
"The jihadists have been trying to regroup their fighters to reclaim lost ground," it said, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Al-Nusra Front, hardline groups linked to Al-Qaeda.
The Kurdish and jihadist fighters have long been battling for control of the northeastern Hasake province bordering Turkey and Iraq, which is rich in petroleum and grain..............



Fouad Ajami at Bloomberg:
...More than 200,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees    have moved into Iraqi Kurdistan. They have crossed an international border to be sure, yet it is, in the Kurdish world view, a passage from one part of their homeland to another. The Kurds disregard these frontiers, imposed on the Fertile Crescent almost a century ago by Anglo-French power.
No Kurd is lamenting the erosion of the borders in this tangled geography. The partition of the successor states of the Ottoman Empire brought the Kurds grief and dispossession. The Persians, Turks and Arabs secured their own states. Indeed, the Arabs were bequeathed several states in the geography of “Turkish Arabia” that runs from the Iraqi border with Iran to the Mediterranean.
Kurdistan was singularly betrayed, its people divided among Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Kurdish history became a chronicle of thwarted rebellions. According to a deeply felt expression, the Kurds had no friends but the mountains.
Yet a new life is stirring in Kurdistan. Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, once a forgotten fortress town, is a booming city of shopping malls, high-rises and swank hotels. Oil and natural gas have remade the city, as has its political stability, remarkable when set against the mayhem of the rest of Iraq.
The Kurds are shrewd. They aren’t about to claim Erbil as the capital of a restored greater Kurdistan, but it has pride of place in their world. It is the home of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, and of almost 5 million people, who are officially part of Iraq but in reality belong to an independent nation............

From DemotixUK:
The Peace in Kurdistan campaign     protested outside Downing Street against the mass killing of Syrian Kurds by the Al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra front in the Kurdish-controlled region of Syria. The Peace in Kurdistan campaign began in October 1994
Syrian Kurds are said not to be affiliated either to the Syrian Government or to the rebels groups.....

From TodaysZaman:
....A statement released by the pro-Kurdish    Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) strongly condemned the Iranian regime for executing at least 13 Kurdish political prisoners in the last six years.
The statement claimed that Kurds have been systematically attacked in the region and that the Iranian government has breached the terms of the cease-fire that it agreed on with the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) -- the Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
“The latest execution of Kurdish prisoners is the Iranian extension of the attacks against Kurds in the region. It is interesting to witness that these executions were carried out when the Turkish and Iranian governments started strengthening relations. The BDP calls on the Iranian regime to take the necessary steps to guarantee people's freedom of expression and right to live,” the BDP statement said.
Iran hanged Kurdish activists Habibollah Golparipour and Reza Ismaili last week, despite pleas by Kurdish political parties in Iran and human rights organizations, including the London-based Amnesty International. The executions were condemned by Kurdish protesters in Turkey and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region......

From Bloomberg:
Iraqi Kurdistan plans to build a million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline  to Turkey’s Ceyhan port in as little as 18 months, providing an export link that totally bypasses Iraq’s existing network.
“Between 18 months to two years from now the new pipeline from our region to Ceyhan will be ready,” Ashti Hawrami, the Kurdish Regional Government’s natural resources minister, told reporters at an energy conference in Istanbul today.
A new pipeline running from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey would bypass Baghdad, with which the KRG is embroiled in disputes over export revenue, and require Turkey’s approval. No one at the Turkish energy ministry including Minister Taner Yildiz was immediately available to comment when calls were placed to their offices today.....