Who devide Kurdish of Middle East and Masai of Kenya and Tamganyika

While the Charter of the United Nations enshrines a right to the “self-determination of peoples,” many peoples lack a state of their own, including the roughly 33 million Kurds of the Middle East. Divided up primarily among the states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, Kurds have fought a decades-long battle for political independence and unity, using both non-violent and violent means. In the process, these groups were met with intense – and largely successful – repression, including atrocities bordering on genocide. At the turn of the millennium, a State of Kurdistan, stretching roughly from the Zagros Mountains in eastern Iran to the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey and northwestern Syria, was a faint dream for Kurdish nationalists. In the past decade however, beginning with the US-led invasion of Iraq and now with the Syrian Civil War, Kurdish nationalists have gained power across the region. Northern Iraq’s Kurdish regions, once ravaged by Saddam Hussein’s genocide of 200 000 people, have gained effective autonomy from the central government in Baghdad, due to Kurdish support for the American war effort in 2003, the pivotal role played by Kurdish parties in the federal parliament, and the relatively competent and stable administration of the region. While international relations and the exploitation of oil and gas are constitutionally the Iraqi federal government’s responsibility, the Kurdistan Regional Government has often effectively acted independently on the international stage, and has clashed repeatedly with the federal government over control of petroleum reserves. This, and the independence and strength of the Peshmerga, the former rebel army-cum security force, have left Iraqi Kurdistan with de facto autonomy. In Syria, Kurds were also persecuted. They were often discriminated against by the ethnic Arab majority, subject to political repression, and even stripped of citizenship. However, large-scale massacres and ethnic cleansing were never embraced by the Assad regime. Yet since the beginning of the Syrian revolution, Kurdish militias, principally those affiliated with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), have seized control of the sparsely populated mountains of Syrian Kurdistan. There they have established an independent government, aligning themselves with neither side of the Syrian civil war; the Kurds distrust the fragmented, Arab-dominated opposition almost as much as the Assad regime. Kurdish militias, as opposed to the soldiers of the Free Syrian Army or Syrian military, control roads and provide security to the region. Turkey is home to both the largest Kurdish population in the world, and the most radical Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). Successive Turkish regimes, both civilian and military, have met Kurdish nationalism and the Kurdish civilian population with military repression and forced assimilation, suppressing the use of the Kurdish language and declaring that Kurds were instead “Mountain Turks.” The election in 2002 of a mildly Islamist government in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) signaled a change though. The AKP’s platform included granting increased cultural and civil rights to Kurds, and ending repressive governance of Kurdish provinces. This initially led to a decrease in the amount of rebel violence, even though relations between Turks and Kurds remain tense, reconciliation has slowed or reversed in recent years following nationalist backlash, and violence has seen an upsurge in the past year.