The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran: Pastoral Nationalism (review)

Over the past two decades, the subject of the Kurds and their struggle for national independence has been a thriving subfield in Middle East studies. Such works as Martin Van Bruinessen's Agha, Shaikh, and State: The Social and Political Structure of Kurdistan, Gerard Chaliand's A People without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan, and David McDowall's A Modern History of the Kurds, among others, introduced readers to the narrative of Kurdish history. More recently, new studies have turned to examine various aspects in the making of Kurdish national identity. Taking a prominent place in this literature is Farideh Koohi-Kamali's The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran: Pastoral Nationalism.

Koohi-Kamali's monograph is significant for being the first English-language study devoted to the subject of the Kurds in Iran and for providing a much-needed account of the development of tribal and agrarian societies on the Iranian periphery. Koohi-Kamali convincingly argues that the economic development of Kurdish societies in Iran determined the ways that the Kurds expressed their demands for political independence and accentuated the transition from a tribal to a national consciousness. "The emergence of Kurdish nationalism in Iran," she writes, "began with a break in the traditional economic and social existence of the dominantly tribal community, and its transition to a society with a market based economy and social relationships" (11). Taking Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities as a point of departure, Koohi Kamali suggests that the political development of the Kurds in Iran entailed a transition from a "face to face" to an "imagined" national community (12). Through her account, Koohi-Kamali reveals how the tribes of Iranian Kurdistan were brought into the Kurdish nationalist movement.

The book is organized into six chapters that explore the politics of the mountains in Iranian Kurdistan. The first two chapters present an introduction to the environment, economy, and politics of the Kurds in Iran. Chapter 1 provides a general geographical and ethnographic survey of the Kurdish tribes in the Zagros Mountains, briefly listing some of the major tribal groups and describing their way of life. The second chapter examines the political economy of Kurdish tribalism, in particular the process by which the Kurds in Iran became sedentarized or settled during the 1920s. The third and fourth chapters explore what Koohi-Kamali sees as the transitional period between tribalism and national consciousness. Chapter 3, one of the richest in the book, traces the Kurdish resistance movement for independence led by Isma'il Agha Simko between the years 1919 and 1929, until it was pacified by the modern army of Reza Shah Pahlavi. Chapter 4 examines the formation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, established in 1946 in northwestern Iran, and the emergence of nationalism among Kurdish intellectuals as an alternative to tribal consciousness. The final chapters turn to the political and economic experiences of Iran's Kurds during the latter half of the twentieth century, showing how the inequalities between Kurdistan and Iran stoked the development of national consciousness among the Kurds. Chapter 5 discusses the effects of the land reforms under Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi between 1962 and 1966 on Kurdish societies, while the sixth chapter traces the evolution of Kurdish nationalism in Iran up to the time of the 1979 revolution and its aftermath. The book closes with an epilogue on the current status of the Kurds in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.

In The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran, Koohi-Kamali makes a much-needed and original contribution to the understanding of Kurdish national identity. The book is clearly and concisely written and will have a readership among those interested in the politics of ethnicity in the Middle East. It is theoretically informed and draws on both statistical evidence and archival sources to provide a lasting picture of the political transformation of the Kurdish countryside. It could be noted that while Koohi-Kamali acknowledges it was during the second half of the nineteenth century...