Why are the Kurds leaving their homeland?

Rizgar Khoshnaw | Exclusive to iKurd.net

I am often confronted with the question of: Why are the Kurds leaving Kurdistan in such large numbers? My answer to them is simple and to the point and that is: For most people life in Kurdistan in not a life and it is merely an existence in its worse form.

There are no jobs, poor health care system, uncertainty of the future and most importantly, there is no electricity. Kurds are leaving as fast as they sell everything they own in order to pay for the costly, and I might add, dangerous trip out of Kurdistan.

Many Kurds have taken huge risks by selling everything they own in order to attempt to venture out of the country. They hire an individual, from the black market Bazzar, to forge their traveling documents to take them to Europe. Once they arrive, if they arrive, they turn themselves in to the authorities to be taken as refugees. This is the common avenue for Kurds to take in order to make their way to a new and better life in another country.

Almost every week there is another group of Kurds caught in a boat trying to make it to land, or on a border trying to cross. There are many documented tragic incidents that has caused the lives of many Kurds, most often women and children, during the smuggling operation.

And yet with all of the high risk involved in their journey, the Kurds fleeing Kurdistan still think it is worth it. The Kurds are in search of a better opportunities for themselves as well as their children. In their new country they are hoping to find work, safety, send their children to school and live a normal life as all humans deserve.

If anyone has been following my writings might say that what I have written above might sound familiar, they are absolutely correct!! Indeed what I have written today, actually duplicated, is an article that I had published 15 years ago!!

It is amazing that here we are 15 years after I had published this article above word for word without changing a single word, we still see Kurds fleeing their homeland in huge numbers. I had published the article on a number of websites, including Middle East News Online, The Kurdistan Observer and Kurdishmedia, on June 13- 14, 2001.

I do not need to give current examples of how Kurds are once more leaving Kurdistan and dying along the way since such news is all over the media outlets and in every country. As we speak, there are over 3,000 Kurds living in tents in France trying migrate to England and hundreds are dying in the sea trying to reach land.

The world now views the Kurds as a “disease” and wants nothing to do with them. If the Kurds were respected at all then the French government would not forcefully place 3,000 women and children in pitiful camps/prison and not allow them to leave.

How sad it is to see the average Kurd is still suffering, jobless, miserable and all a while the Kurdistan Regional Government has managed to collect over $130 Billion in oil revenue in the past ten years alone without improving people’s lives at all.

Where did all that money disappear to? Why is it that we now have Kurdish billionaires and multi-millionaires while at the same time, we have people that can not afford to feed their children? When will the Kurdish government wake up and begin to govern in an honest manner and treats all of their citizens equally? In my honest opinion, the Kurdish government will never wake up, or change, and will continue to operate as they have been all these years.

Rizgar Xoshnaw, a senior Kurdish writer based in Washington, a longtime contributing writer and columnist for iKurd.net.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.