The journalist Manuel Martorell, expert on the Kurdish people, gave at the University of Navarra the lecture: 'Kurdistan: pluralism and diversity in the Middle East', which closed the cycle on geopolitics in the Middle East organized by the Agrupación Universitaria por Oriente Medio (AUNOM) and the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), at partnership with Alumni.

"The Middle East crisis is one of the most difficult to solve. The drama is very strong; not even in the average age has there been so much violence. It will be very difficult for it to return to what it was". This is how Manuel Martorell ended his panoramic view of the Kurdish people, their history and their uncertain future. A nation without its own state, which puts nation before religion and, therefore, they are enemies of the Islamic State. In Martorell's opinion, "Islam has prevented the establishment of a national project in Kurdistan". An Islamic state in Iraq would devastate the Middle East and prevent the autonomy or independence of the Kurds. "If the Iraqi state fails to rebuild itself, they will declare independence." But he doubts that "the rest of the countries will let them do it. At the moment, in Iran, the nine million Kurds have seen all their candidacies rejected for the upcoming February elections," he said.

Martorell, who has been in the profession for more than 35 years and is a direct connoisseur of Kurdistan, explained that the Kurds "are the only force on the ground fighting against the Islamic State, in Syria and Iraq." Since June 2014 more than 2000 young Kurds have died defending their people. "What is striking is that the vast majority of these young men are from Sunni Muslim families, just like the members of the Islamic State. Men and women are fighting together; even though they are Muslims, they are against the vision of Islam propagated by the Islamic State. They are united by a different political project , which has nothing to do with religion. The Kurds know how to fight, they have a great historical experience of resistance and they have strong organizations," he said.

The Kurdish people

Although it is not known precisely, the Kurdish people number between 30 and 40 million people. They are considered the oldest in the Middle East and the fourth largest ethnic group after the Arabs, Turkmen and Persians. Their language has more in common with Spanish or English than with Arabic, as Kurdish is derived from Indo-European. After World War I, Kurdistan was divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran; the last two are the only ones to recognize them. Although the Iranian zone "is occupied by thousands of military instructions ", affirmed the journalist, who assured that any excuse serves in Iran for the "outbreak of popular revolts: there is a clandestine struggle".

Kurdistan is a land of great resources; oil, gas and, above all, water: the Tigris and Euphrates rivers rise from the high mountains of Kurdistan. Its surface area is similar to that of the Iberian Peninsula.

"The Kurdish people are confronting the Islamic State because their vision of Islam is totally incompatible," he said. "Just as for the Islamic State there is only one way to interpret Islam and everything else, if it exists, must disappear, for the Kurds the approach is the opposite. For a Kurd first is the nation, autonomy, their language, their culture, their struggle for independence. For them, Sunni Islam is a minority, but it can subsist with other religions. In fact, there are Kurds who are followers of Zarathustra (the Yazidis) and Christians and Jews. They have no problem living together".

"The Kurds have taken this pro-Western stance and are confronting the Islamic State because it is questioning what the Middle East has always been for them: a mosaic with ethnic, religious and cultural diversity. An ideology with very little presence in the Middle East is destroying Kurdistan and this plurality; this is the real reason for their struggle," concluded Manuel Martorell.