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

poles in many towns of Kurdistan and hanged the Kurdish
tribal chiefs, intellectuals and peasants. As a small
example we mention that on 1st December 1914 they
hanged the great revolutionary and patriot Sheikh
Abdulsalam Barzani together with two of his men and
one of the leaders of the Rekanis in Mosul. Then the
Ottomans took the opportunity of declaring the war against
Russia to attack the Russian Consulate in Bedlis and
arrest the Kurdish leader Mella Salim Khizani and his
comrades who led the revolution of Batlis and took refuge
there after the failure of their liberation attempt. They
hanged them immediately and left their bodies hanging
for several days in the streets, in order to terrorise the
Kurdish people in those areas (see The Kurdish Cause,
Dr Bla J Sherko, page 50).
They also assassinated others using barbaric methods
as the assassination of the late Sheikh Saiid, father of
Sheikh Mahmoud Hafid, together with his son Sheikh
Ahmad and a number of his men after their expulsion to
Mosul on the eve of the World War 1 (18). They also
conspired to loot the house of Sheikh Mahmoud Hafid in
Sulaimany in order to weaken the influence of the Kurdish
leaders (See “Kurdistan in the Years of World War One”
by Dr Kamal Mazhar Ahmad).
This is what happened as far as the policies of the
Ottomans concerned, but even their enemies, the Russians,
the English and the French also could not understand the
reality of the aspirations of the Kurdish people, or perhaps,
their own interests denied them that opportunity.
In one secret document, the Russian Consul in Urmia
admitted clearly that the Russians looked into the Kurdish
question and the future of Kurdistan mainly through the
establishment of an Armenian independent state (See
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