Lebanese Kurds ask for aid

Friday, 01 August 2008,

Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed and Nahaddin Hassan Representatives from the LKPA. GLOBE PHOTO/Khidir Domle

By Khidhr Domle
The Kurdish Globe

A Lebanese organization leans on the KRG for assistance.

Representatives from the Lebanese Kurdish Philanthropic Association (LKPA) have requested aid from the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), citing the bad conditions in which Lebanese Kurds are living.

Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed, a member of the LKPA, said, "After Kurds in Lebanon received Lebanese citizenship, they crucially became in need of sides to support and help them." He pointed out that aid could be very simple and not exceed the building of schools for teaching Kurdish language and establishing cultural Kurdish centers for improving their ethnical awareness, similar to other ethnic groups there. Ahmed is with a delegation from the LKPA now visiting Kurdistan Region by invitation from the KRG Ministry of Culture.

The Kurds in Lebanon feel deprived of cultural support there, which is similar to Iraq in its multi-ethnical and multi-religion structure.

"We cannot ask help from the Sunnis as they do not deal with us seriously and fear that we may become a group with power. The Shiites refuse to deal with us because of historical religious views," said Ahmed, who added that the way the Shiites feel toward them dates back to the days when Salahaddin Ayoubi was prevented from establishing the Shiite Fatimi state in Cairo.

Meanwhile, the state hasn't formally done anything for the Kurds in Lebanon, Ahmed added.

In the same way a child in a disaster expects help from his father, we hope for help from you and wait for the KRG to help us before the Kurdish minority in Lebanon melts

Hassan

When Ahmed began to explain their condition in Lebanon, he said the Lebanese Kurds' situation has changed little since receiving Lebanese citizenship in the mid 1990s. Then, they started to get jobs. The Kurdish population is over 80,000; they settled in Lebanon over different periods. In the first stages, they accompanied Salahaddin Ayoubi, and the Junbilati family went there in the early 20th century. About the latest arrivals, Ahmed said, "Most of them came from Omriyan origin in northern Kurdistan (Kurdistan part of Turkey) and from Merdin because of Turkish oppression against the Kurds due to the Sheikh Saeed Piran and Agri revolutions."

Though living in Lebanon for a long period, Ahmed said, Kurds occupy very simple jobs, and the community has not treated them well.

The LKPA was founded in 1963, and has since offered services such as Kurdish language instruction and free medical clinics to Lebanese Kurds.
During a seminar in Duhok on July 24, Nahaddin Hassan, another LKPA member, said that they were in Kurdistan "to bring you the voices of thousands of Kurds in Lebanon to help them simply with building a school and a medical station." He added that some 80% of the Kurds there have forgotten their mother tongue, and there is nothing left to connect them with the rest of the Kurds.

"In the same way a child in a disaster expects help from his father, we hope for help from you and wait for the KRG to help us before the Kurdish minority in Lebanon melts," said Hassan.