Between the Daggers of Ba’ath and the Strings of Hope: The Syrian Concordance Epic That Will Not Be Buried

An orphan of death-makers, he did not only falsify history but also practiced the highest degrees of intellectual hypocrisy. If he truly claimed to delve into memory, he would have returned to hundreds of books and references that documented the Kurdish presence in the Kurdish region of Iraq — not just for a century, but even before the Islamic conquest itself. He would realize that the geography he now seeks to erase with falsified words was home to the Kurds — in terms of civilization and culture — since pre-Christian eras, continuing through the Islamic ages until the emergence of "Syria," that illegitimate state born from the Sykes-Picot agreement and nurtured under French Mandate.

If he genuinely sought knowledge, he would not have been satisfied with the nonsense of his new Ba’athist masters, but would have examined the names of cities, events, and places that expose his falsification. For instance, does he know that the city of Raqqa, which he falsely claims as part of a unified identity, was not called that in the era of conquests? It was known then as "Kalinikos," a Kurdish city under the control of the Roman Empire, before Arabs invaded it during the caliphate of Omar ibn Al-Khattab.

What is most astonishing is that those Arabs who settled south of Raqqa at that time came as part of the initial invasion, not as citizens, and their leaders conditioned them — as some Islamic sources indicate — not to establish permanent residence there, so as not to quench subsequent waves of invasion, leaving the place as a transit point rather than a settled one. Moreover, the northeastern regions were governed by Kurdish emirates before Islam, such as the Emirate of Beth Zamanî, and others like Bet Nahrain.

What this cultural tail-wagger practices is not research or analysis; it is mere recycling of a pathetic Ba’ath propaganda, which he thought was buried with the idols. Instead, it returned through his distorted prose far from research reflecting superficial thinking, a slave’s rhetoric, and a hypocrite’s fear of truth, for it undermines his false gods.

Who is ignorant enough to ignore that the Kurdish presence in the Kurdistan region predates the maps of nations? Who is unaware that Arab tribes who came there fled internal conflicts in the Arabian Peninsula and the upheavals of Najd? Such ignorance is unforgivable, and if knowledgeable, it is based on deliberate misinformation.

Furthermore, this insignificant person deliberately or out of ignorance forgets the dynasties and emirates that shaped Kurdish history at the heart of the region — beginning with the Hamdani state, which was ruled largely by Kurds, and passing through the Mervani, Ayyubid, Barmakids, Zengids, and ending with the Badr Khan emirates in Bokan and Ibn Omar Island, which bore witness to Kurdish sovereignty, culture, authority, and identity. He also turns a blind eye to the reports of European travelers and orientalists who documented Kurdish villages, the names of their villages, descriptions of their rulers, and dialects — before anyone from "the pilgrims of Hijaz" appeared on the land, at a time when the Kurdish region did not know tribes like Al-Tay, Shammar, Al-Aqeedat, Jabor, or ‘Anza, except as passing guests exhausted by their defeats against the Saudis in Najd’s internal wars. They then turned toward the fertile plains of the Kurdish region and its mountain shadows, seeking salvation.

This interloper speaks of the region as if it were a pasture with no memory, calling its original inhabitants "passersby," and invoking the metaphor of locusts, perhaps to cloak his hatred in poetry. Yet in essence, he only repeats the shattered Ba’athist pattern: dehumanizing the other, villainizing them, creating a "demographic problem" as a prelude to exclusion and extermination, and attacking the fabric of harmony the noble relationship formed over long decades between the authentic Arab tribes from Hail and the root Kurdish tribes, sons of geography and history. Despite the succession of regimes and oppressive circumstances, this harmony was a cultural and social safety valve — until the treacherous Ba’ath came along, inheriting a curse of those who write with hatred, not ink.

Dr. Mahmoud Abbas