#kurdish-community

#kurdish-community

What America and Israel are doing in their aggression against the countries of the region is not a war of a military nature, but a senseless war, said Dhirgham Samir, a demonstrator in his 40s.

The handshake between Nikol Pashinyan and Recep Tayyip Erdogan represents a historic moment, as it is the first time an Armenian leader has visited Turkey.

We are on the trigger finger. After 22 years in the movement, we have never been this busy. The American-Israeli effort to bring down the Iranian regime is not likely to succeed without the help of PJAK and other Kurdish armed groups.

Unlike virtually all other non-European ethnicities, SWANA - or Middle Eastern/North African (MENA), as used in the show - is grouped under "White" on the US census. It's not just the census, though. It's medical forms, college applications, just about anything with a check box for ethnicity. Efforts have been made to change this, with some success. More institutions are adding a separate category on forms - and one might appear on the 2030 census.

Numbering between 30 and 40 million worldwide, most live amid the peaks and valleys straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. The Kurds link their history to that of the Medes, an ancient Middle Eastern people. They were left stateless a century ago when the borders of the modern Middle East emerged from the collapsing Ottoman empire.

Within hours of the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran, US assets in Iraq's Kurdistan region came under retaliatory attacks from Tehran-backed groups, dragging the country into the conflict that has since expanded across the Middle East and beyond. Since then, US assets located in Iraq have come under multiple attacks from pro-Iran groups and Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC).

Of these, 3,678 of them have already gone back to their home country. For German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, this is proof of the migration policy that he has been promoting: "Those who have no prospect of staying receive targeted support for their voluntary repatriation." This "targeted support" includes the cost of the flights and 1,000 (ca. $1200) per adult and 500 for minors.

Six people have been injured after a knife attack at a demonstration in Belgium on Thursday evening, police said. Two of the victims were in a critical condition in hospital following the incident in the port city of Antwerp near the Operaplein (Opera Square), police spokesperson Wouter Bruyns said. Bruyns said police were able to apprehend the two suspects who, based on initial findings, had mingled with the demonstrators.

The calls were the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another source said. Israel has had close security, military and intelligence ties with the Kurds in Syria, Iraq and Iran for decades. "It is the general view, and certainly Netanyahu's view, that the Kurds are going to come out of the woodwork ... that they're going to rise up," one official said.

Syrian transitional government troops and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had been fighting for weeks in northern Syria. On Tuesday evening, the announcement of a four-day ceasefire restored a measure of calm. SDF fighters were close allies of the international coalition battling the extremist "Islamic State,&quot, or IS, group in Syria and managed to take control of strategically important areas in Syria during 14 years of civil war. Recent clashes with Syrian government troops has pushed them out of these areas.

Some 182,000 Kurds living in Iraqi Kurdistan were killed in 1988 by chemical weapons launched by Saddam Hussein's regime in a series of attacks known as the Anfal campaign. That campaign included chemical attacks on Halabja, a village on the Iraq-Iran border, and other communities. Five thousand people are estimated to have died in Halabja. They were the victims of sarin and VX nerve agents, and mustard gas.

President Trump's tactic of "flooding of the zone" has focused much of the public sphere on issues and events generated by the president's interests and whims, driving the suffering of millions of people into oblivion. Deserved attention is paid to Trump's threats to annex Greenland, his intervention into Venezuela, the imposition of arbitrary and punitive tariffs on European allies, and the assault of ICE on Minneapolis.

Government troops have seized large swaths of northern and eastern territory in recent weeks from the SDF in a rapid turn of events that has consolidated President Ahmed al-Sharaa's rule, as Syria seeks internal stability and secures the external lifeline of reintegration into the international fold and the economic revival that comes with it. The eruption of fighting has rocked a nation trying to recover from nearly 14 years of ruinous civil war.

The SDF appeared to have largely retreated after initial clashes on a tense frontline area in eastern Aleppo province. Hours after the government announced the deal, SDF leader Mazloum Abdi confirmed it in a video statement, saying the group had accepted the agreement, which stipulates their withdrawal from Raqqa and Deir el-Zour provinces to stop the bloodshed. We will explain the terms of the agreement to our people in the coming days, he said.