#Ayub Nuri#
A day after his new film the Battle of Mosul premiered in Erbil on Wednesday, Rudaw sat down with French philosopher, author and activist Bernard-Henri Levy for an interview about why he thought the Kurds deserved world recognition for fighting ISIS and terrorism.
Levy, whose film documents the Kurdish role in the Mosul liberation operation that was launched in October 2016, said: “You Kurds are on the frontline and hold the line, you fight with great courage and bravery and among all those who fight ISIS, you know better why you fight.
“If there is a people who have the correct reply to the question of why we fight ISIS it is the Kurds. You know that you fight for democracy, you fight for human values, you fight for equality between men and women, you fight for tolerance and for welcoming and sheltering other communities.”
“You know why you fight and this one of the things that strikes me about the Kurdish people.”
Levy said that like the Jewish people the Kurds have suffered for centuries and that sometimes it takes that long for a people to fulfil their dreams and have their own state, but for the Kurds it would hopefully not take that long and that day will come sooner.
Levy whose first film Peshmerga also received international acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival is optimistic that the future Kurdish state will be special and a shining star in the Middle East.
“Sometimes you have a nation that is small in size but great in spirit. This is the case for the Kurds. When the referendum announced by President Barzani takes place and you have a state you will be a small state but big in spirit, values and international commitments.”
He went on to say: “All Kurds speak Kurdish but many speak the language of exile like English, German and French that would make the wealth of a nation.”
He said that the Kurds have suffered greatly under tyrants like Saddam Hussein but they have survived against all odds and their enemies are all in the grave. Most importantly, he said, the Kurds respect their dead but they haven’t been held back by a mindset of victimhood.
“I think this is the sign of a great people,” he said. “Massacred, condemned to death, and for one century they have said that that the Kurds will resign, that national spirit will die, but the surprise is that you still stand and the spirit of patriotism is alive.”
“It is one of the profound miracles of history.”
Independence for Kurdistan is the main theme of Levy’s the Battle of Mosul and he is confident that the time has come for a Kurdish state. “My feeling is that the time has come, because such a long survival, such a long embodiment of the highest values of civilization, and the world needs today an independent Kurdistan. If we want a stable Middle East, we need an independent Kurdistan”[1]