Church of Tigran Honents in Ani, the ancient Armenian capital. This photo is from the boarder of Turkey (left) and Armenia (right), in between is river Arpacay, which can not be seen here.
Photo: Kristiina Koivunen.
This text was published in Xebat on Monday the 5th January 2009.
Some days ago I compared Anfal and the Rwanda genocide in Xebat. There is a need to compare also the Armenian genocide and Anfal. Kurdistan Regional Government wants Anfal to be internationally recognized. Therefore, Kurds need to study how Armenians succeeded in reaching similar target with their genocide, after many decades it occurred.
Many foreign journalists visit North Iraq, write their stories and travel away. When the tension on the Turkish boarder becomes very hot, journalists arrive to Hewlêr like birds that fly to south in autumn and to north in spring. The same way these war reporters fly away as soon as the conflict tenses down. They move to the next war zone in some other part of the world. Their writing is important for Kurds. However, it does not serve the purpose of reaching international recognition of Anfal.
Genocide is very complex issue. A reporter cannot understand it deeply enough during a short visit. Neither can genocide be described well in newspaper articles or television programmes. It is so wide and complicated issue that it can be explained well only in books. I have read in internet and newspapers several well-written articles about Anfal. They are usually interviews of Anfal victims or NGO representatives working with the Kurdish genocide. They express the fate of interviewed persons and their pain, often there is also some background information about Anfal.
Stories in mass media are important, but they have different audience than books, which can be anything from travel stories to academic dissertations. Newspaper stories are written to big audience, so they may not be too difficult to read. Usually they repeat every time same background information, as some of the audience might be not at all familiar with the issue. Politicians do not make their decisions based on information provided by mass media. Of course, they follow it intensively but they need also harder facts. Newspaper stories should be followed by such documents which provide deeper analysis about the situation.
Some war reporters stay so long time in a war zone that they get enough of information for a book instead of newspaper articles. There are several well selling books in English language about the Iraqi war. But they express Baghdad perspective not Hewlêr perspective. Examples of such books are Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” and Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater”.
Maybe some journalists will stay long enough in Hewlêr to write books about their experiences here - especially if Hewlêr turns into a war frontier. However, most probably such books would not tell about Anfal. It happened too long time ago for the interests of the mass media houses which look for profit. Such atrocities are not selling which happened one generation ago!
The Armenian immigrants residing in United States and Europe have understood this. The recognition of the Armenian Genocide in France and discussions about it in the United States are based on massive research material about the topic. It is gathered by scientific methods so it not possible to deny it. Armenians immigrants have themselves supported research about the Armenian genocide.
In many countries it is possible for outsiders to finance research in universities by paying the salary of a professor and all the necessary costs related to scientific research about some topic. It is long process to get university’s acceptance for this, it is not enough that the donor has enough of money. Academic research is objective; it does not function so that any rich person goes to a university and orders a research according his interest. Any way, by this method Armenians have managed to get enough of evidence about their genocide to get it internationally accepted. It has taken long time.
Their success is a good lesson for KRG to study in making their long perspective plan on research about Anfal. Scientific documenting and analysis are compulsory if Kurds want to get international recognition for Anfal.
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