Kurdistan and The Kurds A Divided Homeland and a Nation without ...

a group of Kurdish feudal chiefs whose interests were
harmed by the applications of the Agricultural Reform
Law also supported the confrontational methods and
started challenging the Iraqi government’s decisions. Thus
Qasem’s government refused the requests and suggestions
of the Kurdish liberation movement to resolve the
disagreements via dialogue methods and perpetrated terror
against the Kurdish patriots intending through that to kill
off the movement by force. In September 1961 Qasem
started the war, and the Kurdish people were forced to
resolve to arms to defend their existence and rights (22).
The war operations started on 11 September 1961
between the Kurdish revolutionaries and the Iraqi army
when forces of the two sides were not equal at all. That
is why the leadership of the Kurdish liberation movement
could not withstand the attack of 30 thousand soldiers of
the Iraqi army equipped with the most modern war
machines, airplanes, tanks and rocket cannons by less
than five thousand Kurdish volunteers armed with rifles
only. At the beginning of the campaign the government
forces managed to repel the Kurdish divisions faraway
as these divisions withdrew into the mountains with some
losses. In addition the Iraqi army resorted to a widespread
terror against the unarmed civilians in a hope to destroy
the will of the Kurdish people, by issuing arrest warrants
and mass executions of those Kurds who were suspected
of offering support to the revolutionaries or sympathizing
with them, along with regular raids by the Iraqi air force
on Kurdish villages killing in their bombardment the
elderly, women and children, and destroying fields and
cattle in an extremely barbaric manner. As a result 330
Kurdish villages were turned into ruins and over 200
thousand Kurds lost their abode places and source of
living.
However, the victories of the Iraqi army were temporary
- 132 -