'Kurdistan and the Kurds' [‎50r] (99/122)

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Armenia, in which a large part of Kurdistan, especially of Northern
Kurdistan, will be merged. All Kurds are agreed that the result of this
will be a war of extermination between the two races, as neither will
submit to the yoke of the other; for the Kurds are naturally afraid of the
vengeance which they expect the Armenians to take on them in retaliation
for their share in the massacres and deportations; the Armenians, for
their part, are no less afraid that the Kurds will not hesitate to have
recourse to murder in order to rid themselves of them. Nor is there any
likelihood that these inveterate enemies will acquiesce amicably in such an
arrangement. If one is to become an independent kingdom, the other
must become the same; but this is an ideal almost impossible of realisation
in view of the inextricable mixture of the populations in the two countries.
It is, however, possible that, if a suitable boundary* were fixed, those who
were living away from their race across the dividing line and retained their
nationality to a sufficient extent would cross the frontier and rejoin their
own compatriots, while those who remained would graduallj' become
merged in the dominant race. At present, however, both sides
are obsessed with the fear of being placed in subjection to a hated
enemy.
Secondly, there are a certain number of Kurdish chiefs who wish
to avail themselves of the opportunity to seize a kingdom and become
hereditary rulers of Kurdistan. For example, it is suspected that ‘Abd-ul-
Qadir would like to establish for himself a position similar to that of the
King of the Hejaz in Arabia. Very few, if any, of the aghawdt who
are actually resident in the country seem actuated by this motive ; most
of them probably realise too well the difficulty of subduing all the petty
jealousies of the diverse tribes and of uniting them under one head.
Those who allow themselves to be dazzled by the vision of wearing
the crown of Kurdistan are mostly dreamy idealists or ambitious
politicians who live in Constantinople or elsewhere, far from their native
mountains.
Thirdly, there are many Moslems and Kurds who have played an all
too prominent part in the Armenian massacres or who live by brigandage
and murder; with the removal of the weak and incapable Turkish rule
and of those officials who were their guilty partners in crime, their only
hope of escaping from justice and punishment lies in the establishment of
a free Kurdistan, in which they can reasonably expect that law and order
* The population is predominantly Armenian in the districts of Erzerum and Van,
and especially on the whole littoral of Lake Van; there is another large tract between
Tiflis, Alexandropol, Erivan and Lake Sevanga, while there is also a small riug of
Armenians around Mush and Julamerk. Lake Van with Erzerum and Trebizond
might perhaps form the best nucleus for a new Armenia; the parts about
Tiflis would constitute another centre, which might ultimately be linked up
with the southern half of Armenia, if the Russians offered no objection to the
scheme.