After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters With Kurdistan [Paperback]

Jonathan C. Randal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 1998

Years ago, noting that Kurds—the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country—were involved in every major story he covered in Iran, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq, veteran reporter Jonathan Randal decided to produce this first-hand report on Kurdistan, a shocking, tragic account of diplomacy and politics in the Middle East, and a gripping adventure story about being a war reporter in the 1990s.Throughout the Kurds’ history, world powers have promised to help them achieve autonomy, and each time the Kurds have been betrayed. But they are also masters of betrayal: Randal, recording their talent for vehement internecine warfare and their gift for friendship, takes us behind the headlines to the inner story of power politics in the Middle East. His sympathetic knowledge of Kurdish history and his unparalleled access to Kurdish leaders and to diplomats, ministers, intelligence agents, warriors, and journalists makes him the only writer able to get this story for us and discover the truth.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Their homeland was divided out from under them, scattering them across Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union and denying them long-awaited acceptance and peace. Saddam Hussein gassed them; Stalin deported them; Turkey tried to rob them of their own language and today has them engaged in a bitter guerrilla war. Assassinated in Iran, suppressed in Syria--even among their own kind the Kurds are victims of betrayal as one Kurdish faction wages war on another. This is the bitter truth of journalist Jonathan C. Randal's book, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?, an account of his decades-long fascination with the Kurds.

After he was evicted from his apartment by a band of Kurdish mercenaries during the Lebanese civil war, there was no looking back for Randal; for almost 30 years he has roamed the Middle East following the Kurds' fate. In addition to accounts of these travels, Randall also delivers a scathing indictment of U.S. involvement in--and betrayal of--Kurdish interests. Randal details every breach of faith, starting with Henry Kissinger's acquiescence in the Shah of Iran's massacre of thousands of Kurdish fighters supported by the U.S. in their war against Iraq right up to the Bush administration's abandonment of a Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein it had initially encouraged. Whether it is the treachery of outsiders or the perfidious behavior of the Kurds themselves, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? explicates the terrible history and bitter future of this ancient people. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

After spending years covering the volatile Middle East, veteran journalist Randal realized that the Kurds figured prominently in almost every minor skirmish and major political and military confrontation that plagued the region. Fascinated by the contradictions and the complexities of the Kurdish question, Randal ventured into remote areas of traditional Kurdistan in order to gain insight into an ancient and often mystifying culture. The fourth largest population group in the Middle East and the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, the Kurds are essentially a people in search of a nation. Beset by catastrophe and betrayal as one rebellion after another has been brutally quashed, they have nevertheless persevered and survived in the harsh, mountainous regions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria that constitute their historic homeland. Fiercely proud and rabidly nationalistic, the Kurds have also been hampered by a lack of organization and bitter dissension within their own ranks. A superb analysis of the people of an often misunderstood Middle Eastern hot spot. Margaret Flanagan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (December 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813335809
• ISBN-13: 978-0813335803
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,377,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kurdish plight in Iraq & Iran pales compared to Turkey, September 12, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters With Kurdistan (Paperback)

Excellent portrayal of the Kurdish cause, especially in Turkey, whose cultural hatred for the Kurds is much deeper and profound than what is happening in Iraq and Iran. The current day Turks, themselves descendents of Mongolian invaders of Mesopotamia, wholeheartedly believed, and still do, that the only way to survive and stay in power is by completely destroying, and Turkesizing, all other cultures in their path, Just read about what so called father of the Turk "Ataturk" did during his reign, in the recent history.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you have a serious interest in the Kurds read this book, July 12, 2001

By 

Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters With Kurdistan (Hardcover)

Johnathan Randall, the former Washington Post and New York Times reporter, has here compiled an extraordinary memoir/focused history of the Kurds. He knows more about the Kurds than one could ever possibly hope to know about them. He is well acquainted with Kurdish leaders--warlords is probably a better term--such as Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talibani and has made several rather dangerous journies to visit them in Northern Iraq.

He focuses very well on how the Kurds have been manipulated as pawns in the feuds of Middle East nations and how the West, specifically the United States, has ignored them except when its imperial interests are at stake. The U.S. encouraged the Kurds to rise up in Iraq against Saddam Hussein during 1972-75 in support of their friend the Shah of Iran but then were abandoned to Saddam's butcheries after Spring 1975. He, of course, points out the U.S. authorising the shipment of materials to make weapons of mass destruction to Iraq between 1985-90 and its giving Iraq loans and credits to buy a large amount of U.S. agricultural products. The U.S. encouraged the maintenance of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship as a bulwark against threats to the status quo in the region i.e. threats and possible domino effects to the oil-producing despotisms. It did not become fashionable to cry for the Kurds until in the aftermath of the Gulf War when the hundreds of thousands of Kurds in the Turkish mountains captured the attention of the TV cameras and a very reluctant Bush administration was forced to help repatriate and succor the miserable refugees in order to avert potential instability in the virulently anti-Kurd nation of Turkey.

Turkey itself where Kurds are refered to as "Turkish mountain people" has seen its U.S. military aid go up dramatically in recent years as it has used severe violence to suppress elementary Kurdish rights in regard to cultural freedom and economic equality with tens of thousands dead, thousands of villages burned, millions of internal refugees, as was partially admited by the Turkish minister for human rights in 1994. The war itself has the potential to unleash great instability in Turkey and big business has been warning the beuracratic-military complex to make serious concessions to the Kurds that would address the injustices done to them which provoked the war in the first place in order to avoid the severe potential internal strife. The U.S. government and its allies of course could withdraw their heavy support for Turkey; fulminating about Milosevic or Rwanda is fine but if you want to seriously stop ethnic cleansing in the world the very best course of action is to help pressure your government to stop supporting it in places like Turkey.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good history of the modern Kurdish cause, June 18, 2002

By 

AMR (Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters With Kurdistan (Paperback)

This book provides a good overview of the kurdish cause in the last fifty years but it doesn't give much detail on the long and very old history that Kurdistan has. The book provides good detail on the genocide commited by Iraqi forces in operation Anfal and the other abuses in and betrayels by Iran, Turkey, the Soviet Union and the United States. The book will aslo displace the opinions held by by many Americans that the US always stood for global equality, it also tells how the Americans supported Saddam Hussein for many years and armed him to the teeth and also supported Turkey who also commited acts which are also considered genocidal.
In criticism of this book the author, Jonathan C. Randal, in several places throughout the book does seem to be trying to boost his ego by going into great detail describing how he reached Massoud Barzani and Talabani in their mountain save havens. Much of his detail describing his trips through Kurdistan serve no puposes in many cases other than to promote Randal's image of himself - as a brave journalist reporting the injustices of the world.
The author does tell the story in an incredibly unbiased and impartial way even when describing the terrible atrocities committed by the Iraqi forces in the Anfal campaign. The book should convince any neutral that the Kurds have been treated atrociuosly by the international community and are among the worlds longest suffering and most suffering people.