Printer-friendly VersionBy Qassim Khidhir
The Kurdish Globe
Bombardments, land mines, and government negligence are hastening the disappearance of nomadic Kurdish tribes.
Lolan Sipan, a well-known Kurdish nomad expert and director of the Kurdish Textile Museum, demands the government and UNESCO act urgently to protect and help Kurdish nomads and their handicraft works.
Sipan told "The Kurdish Globe" that the number of nomads in the mountainous areas of Iraqi Kurdistan Region is decreasing every day, and within years they will completely disappear.
Reasons for the decline include the constant bombardments of the Kurdistan Region border by neighboring countries, a large number of landmines on the border areas, and the government's negligence.
"When the media talks about the border tension, they only talk about PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). But the number one victims are nomads," said Sipan. The nomads are killed, as are their flocks of goat and sheep, and those who survive cannot continue their lives as nomad, he added. "I ask UNESCO to demand that Turkey and Iran stop shelling the border, because attacking nomads is an attack on human culture," noted Sipan.
Hundreds of thousands of landmines dot the Kurdistan Region border with Iran.
The border line between Kurdistan Region and Iran served as the front during the eight-year-long war between Iraq and Iran to stop Iranian army and Kurdish rebels from crossing the border; the Iraqi army planted more than 1 million landmines there.
Sipan demanded the government help nomads by buying barley and hay for their flocks of sheep and goats, and vaccinating nomads against disease.
Every year at the end of May, when the snow begins to melt, Kurdish nomads begin a dangerous trek to feed their flocks. They depart their villages and head into the deep and difficult mountains of Kurdistan Region, where the roads are dreadfully narrow and too dangerous for vehicles.
They make shelters along the rivers, most often using black tents to protect themselves from the freezing winds in the night. They construct fences around tents using a type of wood called hasir.
According to Sipan, who has prepared research on this subject, in Iraqi Kurdistan there are 20 nomad and semi-nomad tribes five of them are fully nomadic peoples.
He said in the past they were fully nomadic, but after Saddam Hussein's government destroyed 4,000 Kurdish villages and with continuous problems the nomads face, 70 percent of them now have settled in cities and are no longer considered nomadic.
The Kurdish nomad has a typical Kurdish life, which is very simple, and they are very well-known for domesticating wild animals such as goats and horses, a prominent characteristic of the northern Mesopotamia area.
He called on Kurdistan members of Parliament to hold a special session discussing all the threats facing the Kurdish nomads.
Nomadic weaving and handicrafts
Sipan noted that since the 1980s, Kurdish nomads no longer weave because they believe it doesn't pay off financially.
When he noticed old nomadic women who used to make carpets, felts, blankets, rugs, and other handicrafts were passing away, he began preparing a project to open courses so that the old nomadic women could teach the new generation how to weave.
After meeting many NGOs to discuss the project, at last the U.S. Regional Reconstruction Team (RRT) agreed to fund the project.
The project''The Women's' Income Generation Project aimed to create job opportunities for women while reviving traditional Kurdish weaving skills. The program gave experienced tribal weavers the opportunity to teach their skills to younger women producing rugs, kilims, blankets, felts, and woolen socks and hats.
The 14-months program ended last August; it was a TOT course (training of trainers), where 18 women and 10 men participated in the course with five elderly nomadic women as instructors.
Sipan is now working to open a one-year course with the help of the U.S. RRT. "Those who were trained in the last course are ready to train other people," he said.
He has encouraged the Kurdistan Region Ministry of Culture to open such a program in order to teach the new generation--and the new generation of nomadic families who do not know how to weave--to weave and to help sell their products.
Sipan is the director of the Kurdish Textile Museum located in the historic Citadel in Erbil city. The Kurdish Textile Museum is a private not-for-profit initiative and is the only museum in Kurdistan dedicated to the display, preservation, and promotion of the antique Kurdish textiles and textile crafts by settled and nomadic tribes.
Sipan was born in Erbil city he is not from a nomadic family but his grandmother used to make carpets. He lived in Europe and the United States in the early 1990s. During the UN embargo, when he saw the handicraft products of Kurdish nomads were disappearing, he began visiting nomads and buying from them. Now he has more than 1,000 pieces of Kurdish textile and textile crafts by nomadic tribes, which are exhibited in his museum.
Sipan was thanked by UNESCO for preserving traditional Kurdish carpets.