Project Öcalan

This (available on my Google Drive from that link) is my Masters dissertation on Kurdistan; I decided to give it a re-read given recent events in Iran. Some day, when there's more to say & I regain access to academic libraries & journals, I'd like to be able to update & expand it, but for now I still think it holds up as a portrait of a highly-complex geopolitical issue.

the Roots of Civilisation

This book by Abdullah Öcalan is an incredibly ambitious* attempt to sketch a holistic picture of the history of civilisation originating from, driven by, and leading to future questions/plausibilities for the Middle East specifically.

    Obviously a holistic history of civilisation is going to cover a lot of ground & I won't pretend that I'm going to be able to summarise satisfactorily every general thrust of argument & evidence in the book - but this blog is what it is, so I suppose I should at least give a rough outline of the contents. We start in what is typically considered the birthplace of civilisation - Mesopotamia: a new innovation in human relations, hierarchy, emerged & thus supercharged the development of complex societies out of prehistory. Gender norms calcified into patriarchy, class systems cemented themselves as cities became centres of activity, slavery boomed, & religious ideology developed to justify all of this as a new natural. These norms spread - in part organically, in part violently - across the ancient Mediterranean as other hubs of society matured. As states gradually shifted away from slave-owning to feudal systems, monotheisms like Christianity & Islam helped to ideologically & economically support & promote the status quo. These monotheisms had the side-effect of promulgating individualistic & humanistic modes of thinking & being, such that eventually feudalism gave way to capitalism: societies demanded a new relationship to the powers over them - and achieved a great deal thus, with democratic nations emerging as a new normal. However, capitalism being rooted in perpetual expansion & extraction, this trajectory could not be considered perfect in the long-term, ultimately being doomed to crisis & collapse. Öcalan argues that the concept of a democratic nation is poised to fill the void & provide the next step in humanity's civilisational journey. Finally, he takes up the implications of the history he's just walked us through to consider the ideological & socio-political challenges facing us in the 21st century - people must agitate & organise toward a democratic civilisation if we want whatever follows capitalism to be true progress rather than a deterioration: he obliterates the possible objection that "this is all simply theory" by applying these ideas to current situations facing the Kurds, Anatolia, Iran & Palestine (and makes a pretty solid case for his democratic ideology being a workable solution, imho).

   Without committing several years of research into ancient&since history, I admit it's impossible for me to properly assess how accurate the pictures presented in this book are. However the general shape of civilisational development as shown here rings true in its overlaps with what I do know, and I don't know how much access to resources Öcalan was given throughout the writing process** (as Imrali, the Turkish island where he's imprisoned, isn't renowned for its library facilities) but if this book is even half-true it represents a momentous achievement of synthesised interdisciplinary reflection. Postcolonial history done to the highest degree. Absolutely recommended reading for anyone interested in world history, especially from a non-Western angle.

* Especially since it was written entirely from a solitary prison cell. This is the first and most scholarly such book, since being followed by a second about the PKK informed by Öcalan's personal experience & a third proposing a path forward between Turkey & the Kurds. This first volume provides historical context for the theoretical & practical concerns for the contemporary Kurdish movement as attested in his other writings.

** I mean, he must've had some access, because there's 12 pages of endnotes & a smallish but significant bibliography, and though I believe him to be a pretty smart dude I doubt he had all those precise references squirrelled away in mere memory.

Perpetual Peace

This book (available from that link as a .pdf online for free) is a 1794* essay by Immanuel Kant on the possibility of ending war between sovereign nations. He basically argues that we need to seek to establish an international federation of co-dependent nations under a singular representative state. Pretty modern ideas for the 18th-century, but then, this is Kant we're talking about. His arguments are largely pragmatic and don't veer too much into philosophy** and should be generally digestible by a majority of readers. As stated repeatedly throughout the text, this is NOT a manifesto - I don't think Kant believed that any single state of policy would be able to even kickstart the move towards a perfectly peaceable world - but by holding out these plausibilities as ideals, he makes a very convincing case that establishing such a world is not beyond possibility even within a cynical grasp of reality, and so the main thrust of this test stands on its own two feet. Recommended reading for anyone whom this theme strikes curiosity into, but if you somehow happen to be a person of international political influence who reads this blog, I specifically implore you to read this and think of how Kantian your rationality as regards your work is.

* And the translation, by one M. Campbell Smith, was published in 1903 - so even the Very Lengthy (as in, longer than the translated text it was the introduction to) Introduction recounting the history of ideas around the core topic of this essay came too early to be able to speak of anything regarding such institutions as NATO, the EU or UN even, which might have quite substantively reshaped Smith's introductory commentary on the ideas herein.

** Except for the pair of appendices, where he first considers the disagreements between proper moral ethics and political reality, and then secondly looks at the singular overlap point between proper moral ethics and political reality - that being the idea of a public right.

KEEP THE FLAG FLYING

This book is a very patriotic collection of what makes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island so damn special. Which is nothing, really, we're just used to our own weirdness - if deeply, blithely ignorant of ways in which our own prideful hubris has spread to infect World Kultur.

   In any case, I found this book particularly rousing to my sense of English (and Yorkshire) pride; and found myself making a number of annotations in this book in the hope that it may be craftable into an apologetic present for the Conservative friends in my life whom I fear I have alienated somewhat with my own failures to live graciously since 2016 - I can only hope they find it, plus my scribblings, inspiring as I did - and we may come to see a new reimaginable Britain emerge with vim & vigour into the 2020's.
   Small prayers.

the Sheffield Anthology: Poems from the City Imagined

This book is, as its title may suggest, an anthology of contemporary* poems written in, about, or by people from the greatest city in Yorkshire (and therefore Europe); and much like the city itself, it's an exceptionally diverse collection, ranging widely in theme, style, length, and [sorry] quality.** I did find that reading them aloud in a strong local accent did make basically all of them better - but common sense aside, there's more than a few that did leave strong impressions on me, talking about everything from walks in the Peaks and the joys of multiculturalism and crumbling old graveyards and homeless people on West Street and trees and rivers and students in pubs and bus drivers and the scrub-dank backdrop of post-industrialism that seeps through this city & deeper through t'memories of its longer-lived inhabitants. If you like poetry and love Sheffield, there's guaranteed to be several pieces at least in here that'll tingle you somewhere.

   Because that above paragraph is more like an unasked-for spout of Sheffieldy things but also I'll be damned if I'm going to actually write out meaningful reflections on the book as a whole because that's not really a plausible stake given the variety therein*** - I'll instead just provide a list of all the poets who contributed to this book, in alphabetical order, with those in italics being the fine folks who then edited together t'anthology as a whole: Anthony Adler - David Annwn - Charlotte Ansell - Simon Armitage - Ann Atkinson - Angelina Ayers - Elizabeth Barrett - Paul Bentley - John Birtwistle - Matt Black - Joe Caldwell - Clare-Jane Carter - James Caruth - Liz Cashdan - Debjani Chatterjee - Matt Clegg - Jarvis Cocker - Martin Collins - Stanley Cook - Sarah Crewe - Amanda Dalton - Beth Davyson - Russell Dobson - Berlie Doherty - Jenny Donnison - Mark Doyle - Carol Ann Duffy - William Empson - Suzannah Evans - Neil Farrell - Veronica Fibisan - Roy Fisher - Leah Fleetwood - Cliff Forshaw - Andrew Forster - Michael Glover - Sally Goldsmith - Cora Greenhill - Alan Halsey - Geoff Hattersley - Jeanette Hattersley - Lewis Haubus - Ray Hearne - Rob Hindle - Jenny Hockey - Alex Houen - Gary J. Hughes - Karl Hurst - Chris Jones - Donna Jones - Maria Kardel - Linda Kemp - Christine Kennedy - David Kennedy - Jenny King - Agnes Lehoczky - Margaret Lewis - Yann Lovelock - George MacBeth - Jack Mann - E. A. Markham - Roger McGough - Ian McMillan - Allison McVety - Julie Mellor - Bo Meson - Geraldine Monk - David Morley - Helen Mort - Andrew Motion - Fay Musselwhite - Beverley Nadin - Daljit Nagra - Sean O'Brien - Conor O'Callaghan - Alan Paine - Lesley Perrins - Adam Piette - John  Quicke - Karl Riordan - Peter Riley - Rony Robinson - Shelley Roche-Jacques - Ann Sansom - Peter Sansom - Seni Seneviratne - Susan Shaw - Diana Syder - David Tait - Bryn James Tales - Sarah Thomasin - Katharine Towers - John Turner - Carolyn Waudby - Christine Webb - Linda Lee Welch - Ben Wilkinson - Noel Williams - Tony Williams - River Wolton.

   As much as I'd love to provide an in-depth analysis of each poet individually based on their work as compiled in this anthology, my arm is about to fall off and nobody reads this shit anyway. Goodnight

* So none of these feature, more's the pity.

** Don't @ me, most are pretty decent and well over a third are genuinely good-to-great poems, but there are also far more than an entirely-forgiveable share of poems that have virtually no literary or imaginative depth to them and are little more than (-[insert place name] [insert anecdotal memory of activity there] [mention local history nugget or item of reputation associated with aforementioned place name] [oops, add some adjectives!]-), and like - while yeh, these technically are Sheffield-related poems, but I could've stood to see a fair bit more editorial grit. Even the pieces by people literally employed by universities to teach poeting are, in my opinion, miles less noteworthy than the best poetry book to come out of Sheffield in recent years as far as I'm aware.

*** Also because I started reading this book in maybe autumn of 2018 and have only today finished it, so doing anything remotely comprehensive (as per standards I've occasionally been known to hold myself to for these posts) would basically require re-reading the first two-thirds or so, which I'm not going to do solely for the sakes of this blog.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

This book* by John McWhorter is a scintillating romp across the history of Albion, and the surprisingly wide array of people who've arrived, lived, died, fucked, killed, spoken and written there. The central premise is delightfully simple and is consistently paid off more and more with each chapter - ENGLISH IS WEIRD AS FUCK. Generally most Anglophones are, I think, aware of this basic reality, but prefer not to think about it, as attempting to untangle the logic of some of our most commonplace grammatical quirks can be as totally disorienting as if one had just been presented with an ancient unsolveable riddle. Who's to blame? Nobody really - it's just a shambles, with Celts, Jutes, Angles & Saxons, Danish vikings and those bloody French all getting variably involved, twisting shared syntactical formats almost-but-not-quite to breaking point Over & Over Again, the regular speakers of this malshapen mongrel language child basically just keeping calm and carrying on. And here we are. Fascinating stuff. Also poignant ground for that strange phenomenon that as one ponders the natural histories of language it is difficult to not also toy with a smallish variety of anarchistic axioms. Whatever they are.

* Confession time - I didn't read this book. I got it for free on an Audible trial (and then uninstalled it forever because fuck you Jeff Bezos) and listened to the whole thing while on a walk across northwestern Sheffield's outskirts. Given the nature of the book I'd 100% recommend listening to it rather than reading it because McWhorter himself narrates it & as you'd expect from an archaeo-philologist he genuinely knows how to pronounce all the stuff in Middle English, Old English, Old Norse and whatever else, and so you really get a feel for how the sloppages of evolution went down.

Five Escape Brexit Island

This book by Bruno Vincent is, weirdly enough, the only Famous Five book I've ever read, never having been much of a fan of Enid Blyton - in it, our plucky four whoevers and their dog are trapped in a mysterious detention facility off the coast of Dorset, from which they have to try to escape to get back to the mainland. I do appreciate the satirical point of all this but to be honest I just found it incredibly depressingly close to reality. Would perhaps recommend as a Christmas present for your gammoniest relatives.

Yorkshire Wisdom

This book, edited by Joe Moorwood, is a reyt good compilation of quotes from all manner of folks from God's own county. Ranging from famous'uns like Alan Bennett, Judy Dench, t'Bronte sisters and Jarvis Cocker* - and also, for sake of maintaining locally-apt respect for t'common people, a selection of particularly wise-sounding, witty or just damn well-n-truly Yorkshire quotations, apothegms, axioms, one-liners, etcetera from folks you'll've never've heard of but I'll tell thee now they know what life's about. Great depth & breadth of variety in themes, content, whatnot - this'd make a grand present for pretty much anyone as you don't have to be from the best place Earth's got on offer to keep a smallish almanac of wisdom from there as a toilet book or summat.

* Who for my bargaining has the best range & writ of wurbage in here, though I'm probly biased.

Kobane Calling

This book is a graphic recount by Italian artist Zerocalcare and translated into English by "RB" - dealing with events surrounding what is happening in Northern Syria, or Western Kurdistan, at the moment - given the revolution that's going on there. If you don't know much about it then this short comic might be a good introduction, as it does take the whole situation seriously and goes some way toward being of educational value. However if you find yourself wanting to go deeper into knowing more about the Kurds & the things going on in Rojava, may I point you toward my Masters dissertation where you may well find what you're looking for in the bibliography. As a comic though this piece works in its format really well; I love the art style, and the visual atmosphere it maintains gives a real edge to the subject matter - the battle for Kobane itself, where YPG-YPJ forces held the city against Daesh - is dealt with appropriately respectfully and the story told in the pages of this slim volume does end on a hopeful note, as I'd like to think we can say of the story of the Kurds generally some day soon.

Revolution in Rojava

This book by Michael Knapp, Anja Flach and Ercan Ayboga, is one I would recommend incredibly highly to anyone interested in feminism, democracy, liberation movements, and politics in the contemporary Middle East - as it is the most comprehensively detailed single book currently available on the astonishing revolutionary developments that have taken place in northern Syria since 2011 (and as the book was published in mid-2016 these developments only became more astonishing and revolutionary since, see). The authors provide some helpful sociopolitical and geohistorical context for the events, and then walk through how the revolution unfolded, remaining formally unaffiliated with either opposition or regime amid a popular uprising that collapsed into civil war, and expanding in the power vacuum, cooperative and democratic grassroots institutions establishing themselves with remarkable speed and organisation to continue fulfilling the functions (producing economic resources, managing regional security, governing, etc) previously performed by the defunct Syrian state. The developments that have taken place there in my view constitute possible the most morally-legitimate popular revolution that has taken place in modern history, and demands to be more widely-known and supported, as its longevity depends in large part on whether established powerful nation-states will formally recognise its autonomy - but more on that in my actual dissertation.

Biji Rojava!

the Roadmap to Negotiations

This book, the third volume of prison writings* by Abdullah Öcalan, was produced as a negotiation document between himself and the Turkish state's military intelligence tasked with talking through ceasefire options with him. It comprises a concise explanation of his ideological system (see other posts about his books) couched in a critical discussion of the history of Turkey's (admittedly very patchy) democratization, and thus generates proactive and reasonable compromises for the Kurdish question in Turkey in the context of the PKK's shifting away from militant separatism toward grassroots autonomy.

   Unlike the majority of other dissertation research books I've done minimal posts for, this one wasn't from the university libraries - I found a super cheap copy at the last anarchist book fair in Sheffield, and have only just noticed having held it at a funny angle against a sunbeam that there is the imprint of some biro writing on the front cover from where someone (a previous owner?) had written an address in Leeds: this is almost certainly meaningless but I like noticing little details like that on books.

   For some reason (and yes I am sure of this I've just tried fixing it like nine times) this post is refusing to justify its text body, which is annoying, but I'm assuming you don't mind having a jiggly-edged paragraph for just one post. For some even more inscrutable reason, this very paragraph has now decided that it is going to justify the text body anyway! Urgh. I don't know.

* He has been in solitary imprisonment on Imrali, an island just off the Turkish coast, since 1999, for being the founder and leader of the PKK - while there, he has written extensively trying to change the wider dialogue around the Kurdish struggle away from separatism toward democratization and peaceful compromise.

the PKK and the Kurdish Question in the 21st Century

This book, the second volume of prison writings* by Abdullah Öcalan, is probably (given its author's personal experience at the origin and around the centre of developments) the best book one could read to learn about the PKK in broader geopolitical, social, and historical context. It introduces the theoretical frameworks of Öcalan's ideas clearly, then tracing a cogent and clear overview of how existing dynamic power structures originated in ancient societies (from the Neolithic up to capitalist nationalism), and also presents his ideology of 'democratic confederalism' as a cohesive response to the historical critique: the arguments he makes are interesting, if not compelling, certainly moreso in light of adherents of Öcalan's ideas working to implement them in Turkey and Syria - and these practical activities are the core focus ultimately, as the rethinking of the PKK could never be merely academic, as the PKK existed as an organisation at war with the Turkish state: its rethinking was a pragmatic as well as moral decision to reformulate strategy to best and most peaceably work toward a resolution to the Kurdish question in Turkey, which (on their side, at least - Turkey still seems happy violently suppressing the crap out of pretty much every Kurdish political organisation, PKK-affiliated or not) is an enormously positive step. Most interesting from this book I think though are Öcalan's first-hand accounts of several major events and developments - these obviously include the international plots surrounding his abduction and illegitimate trial, but also go into relatively detailed discussion of how the PKK suffered severe internal power struggles, from loss of control over tribalist and ethnonationalist elements prevalent among its large and disparate militant body, which corrupted its liberation mission and saw leaders exploiting their positions to effectively conduct organised crime or petty warlording - which exacerbated militant and civilian death rates and attracted enormous military reactions from the Turkish state; conspiracies and fear dominated the party's leadership in those years as betrayals, subversions, infiltrations by the authorities, and such, came to swamp Öcalan's day-to-day concerns while the PKK itself devolved into a disorganised terrorist gang. Interestingly this seems to have changed a great deal for the better since his imprisonment, as the programme of democratization as opposed to separatist struggle came increasingly to characterise the wider party's leadership and was heavily promoted among the guerrillas too. If you read one book about the Kurdish question, it should probably be this one.

* He has been in solitary imprisonment on Imrali, an island just off the Turkish coast, since 1999, for being the founder and leader of the PKK - while there, he has written extensively trying to change the wider dialogue around the Kurdish struggle away from separatism toward democratization and peaceful compromise.

War and Peace in Kurdistan

This book (available from that link as a free pdf, how good is that) by Abdullah Öcalan is an overview of the hugely-damaging war between the Turkish state and the Kurdish liberation movement - chiefly the PKK, led by Öcalan himself. He outlines the history, the costs, and the sheer futility of this war, and reignites a call for a democratic and peaceful solution as he tries to explain is workable through mere extension of human rights and liberties to the Kurds of Turkey - this is couched in the development of democratically autonomous structures to safeguard Kurdish communities until such a time. Overall this booklet would be an interesting introduction to the Kurds' struggle and where it currently stands in context for readers whose interest I may have piqued but who may know nothing about Kurdistan and don't know where to start. Probably start here, if that's you.

the Kurds of Iraq

This book by Mahir Aziz is a really interesting (and helpful for me academically) in-depth study of ethnonationalism in the semi-autonomous* Kurdish region of Iraq, exploring it in both geopolitical and historical contexts as well as going through a massive amount of data from a survey of university students on their views toward Kurdishness, Iraq, the predominant political parties, tribal culture, and so on.

* I'm writing this before September 25th, so the referendum on Kexit hasn't happened yet.

the Kurds & the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey & Iran

This book by Denise Natali was incredibly helpful to me academically and would probably be interesting to people super-keen on Kurdishness and deconstructions of nationalism. It traces the Kurds' nascent national identity from subordination under the Persian and Ottoman empires to how the colonial powers' establishment of Arab puppet states Iraq and Syria impacted them as a regional ethnic group, fragmenting their nationalism across borders, and thereafter she traces the development of Kurdish nationalism in Iran, Iraq and Turkey, couched in interested discussion of Kurdistan as an inherently transnational space and thereby contextualising the identity of Kurdishness as something that, even as a relatively straightforward ethno-nationalist movement, defies pre-existing nation-states.

the PKK: Coming Down from the Mountains

This book by Paul White was another that played a huge role in informing key historical developments relevant to my dissertation - particularly, as the title suggests, the context for the origins and militant escalation of the PKK, and the impacts this had on the Turkish state and Kurdish region. White also tracks the attempts from the PKK to seek peaceful constructive options, and the failure of these efforts in light of a movement corrupted by ethnonationalist warlordism and widespread repression; alongside the ceasefires, the PKK's efforts to develop democratic, essentially feminist and inarguably post-nationalist strings to its bow for a more legitimate (and hopefully more winnable) struggle are given scrutiny as what started out as a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla cell seems to have undergone a deep and incontrovertible paradigm shift. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the modern history of the Kurdish struggle, or more generally in the nature of terrorism and violent 'freedom' movements and how they constitute themselves.

A Road Unforeseen: Women Fight the Islamic State

This book by Meredith Tax was one of the best single sources I used for my dissertation. It involves a birds-eye historical overview of the Kurdish struggle and how this manifested differently across different nation-states, also exploring in-depth the conditions that led to the establishment and rise of the resistance-guerrilla movement PKK, particularly how this came to root itself so successfully in the popular consciousness in the context of severe Turkish repression. Throughout, the role played by women in the liberation movement is a key factor, couched in contextual discussion of the sociocultural repression faced by women in Kurdish society - but the PKK network's ideology places their struggle front and centre. Tax goes on to describe how self-governance initiatives in Turkish Kurdistan have been attempting to empower and educate women, and moreso the vital role taken on by female-led militias in Rojava (especially facing Daesh, whose bloodthirst and faux-religious fervour celebrates a brutally misogynistic ideology, and the violent opposition of the terrorist quasi-state by what is essentially an anarcho-feminist revolution surely illustrates the fundamentally different nature of a movement that seeks liberation through gender equality), particularly in the astounding victory at Kobani. This book cuts to the heart of the ideological and practical role gender plays in the current form of the Kurdish liberation movement, as will prove a challenging and enlightening read to anyone interested in the contemporary Middle-East, political freedom and equality, and opposing patriarchy and fascism.

Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan

This book, published by a research organisation called TATORT Kurdistan, comprises a series of in-depth interviews with activists and organisers and citizens in the Kurdish region of Turkey, where the ideology of democratic autonomy is being put into practice though establishing community-level self-governance councils, economic cooperatives, and educational and cultural institutions to help propagate itself as a movement. Gender equality and environmental sustainability are core focuses of the projects, and they strive to be as participatory and open as possible - however, uptake is slow among traditional under-developed civil society of the region, and the movement faces heavy repression from the Turkish state. Overall this is an enlightening book on some revolutionary happenings in a corner of the world rarely heard from in mainstream media.

the Kurds of Syria

This book by Harriet Allsopp is an in-depth exploration of the sociopolitical repression faced by Kurds in Syria, also comprising detailed portraits of Kurdish political parties active there and the effects of this repressive environment on their capacity for radical or vocal opposition. It would be a relatively useful read for anyone interested in the Rojava Revolution, as this book lays out a rich and complex sub-national historical context for the events that have taken place in northern Syria since 2011.

the Kurdish National Movement: its Origins and Development

This book by Wadie Jwaideh is an excellently thorough walkthrough of exactly the topic described by its title. Unfortunately, it is also pretty old - it was written as a doctorate thesis in 1959, two years before the guy who wrote the foreword to this book claims the Kurdish nationalist movement properly took off (and the PKK, probably the biggest player in the modern history of Kurdish nationalism, weren't formed for another nineteen years); so even if Kurdish issues fascinate you, frankly I'm not sure why you'd read this one compared to more recent books about their struggle - unless you were, like me, doing a super in-depth academic study with Kurdishness at the centre of it.
   Still, as you can probably tell by the fact that it's getting a post,* I found this informative, useful, and very well-structured - genuinely learned loads of stuff from Long Ago that still helpfully resonates with more contemporary developments. History is always great fun to read too - it's like going through current events on fast-forward, apart from the actual tone and caliber of those events subtly shifts the further back you go, because, like, history, innit. And so the grandeur of the achievements of great persons, placed into the immensely-grander complex webs of context in which they must invariably occur, seem so strange and small, enormous struggles condensed for brevity and laid out cold as mere memory, words on a page. If you want a small taster of this kind of Ozymandian ennui, just google (don't bother actually I'll wikilink it) Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji.***

* That means I read the whole book, which is not the norm for books I'm only reading for research for an essay. But dissertations, as I am finding, are different beasts entirely, if only due to scale; much like having gotten used to writing pickles and now having a full-size courgette demanded of you. Also, the topic is super interesting and I've got a month and a half left** so am taking the luxury of imbibing a ridiculously large quantity of source material from which to whittle out support for my arguments.

** As compared to my typical position when writing essays, which is to do all the reading in a week or two and write it up in a coffee-and-bread-and-humus-and-satsuma-fuelled thirty-six hour stint in the open-all-day library. But dissertations are way too long to do that. And the IC is closed over summer, which is probably just as well.

*** Regardless of how adept or inept a leader they may actually be, I find myself unable to not find something enthralling about historical figures who seem to make it their mission to cause as much irk to great powers as they can while going about their own aims. Not that Barzanji necessarily did, but from the way Jwaideh recounted his exploits, complete with snippets from the statements and letters of increasingly confused and irritated British colonial officers, he certainly did a bit.