Explained: the Middle East’s alphabet soup of Kurds

[Anthea]

The Washington Post

Kurds the glue when it comes to many of the interlocking conflicts of the Middle East

For decades, millions of Kurds have lived as part of stateless ethnic minorities across a vast expanse of the region, from Iran in the east to Turkey in the west. To varying degrees, they were marginalized, oppressed and under-represented.

Now, they're at the heart of the Middle East's most pressing crises. An autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq has proven to be perhaps the most stable corner of an otherwise imploding nation. Kurdish militias in Syria have battled both the advances of the Islamic State as well as other rebel factions. And a Kurdish separatist insurgency in Turkey has posed the U.S.'s NATO ally a huge strategic conundrum, and sowed deeper unrest in the country.

The aftermath of a Kurdish militant bombing in the Turkish capital Ankara last week, which led to the deaths of 28 Turkish military personnel, illustrated the headaches facing the West and especially Turkey, as my colleague Liz Sly reported over the weekend.

In the U.S., the call to "arm the Kurds" has become a standard refrain of the presidential election campaign, with little recognition of the dizzying array of Kurdish factions operating in the midst of the region's crises. Not all are working in tandem -- some are in direct opposition to the other. What follows is a rough digest of the alphabet soup of prominent Kurdish groups in the Middle East.

Link to Full VERY Interesting Article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wor ... explained/