By SORAN BAHADDIN

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Sayid Abdulfatah, an Egyptian journalist who has been studying the Kurds for the past decade, has single-handedly established a center for Kurdish studies in Cairo.

“The Kurds have suffered a lot,” Abdulfatah told Rudaw. “My goal is to expose the Kurdish cause and introduce the Kurdish history and culture to peoples of the region.”

The Egyptian, who officially inaugurated his center last week, says that he has visited the Kurdistan Region of Iraq on different occasions, but that he has avoided funds from any Kurdish parties or government “in order to maintain our impartiality.”

He said that his center will focus on introducing the Kurds in all four parts of Kurdistan to the greater Arab audience.

The founder of the center said that he has received overwhelming moral support from Kurdish officials and scholars for his work. Mala Yassin Rauf, the representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Cairo, and other Kurds residing in Egypt, attended the inauguration of the center a week ago.

Egyptian media paid great attention to the opening. The Al-Masr Alyaoum newspaper, in particular, published a lengthy article on the center as well as several articles online.

Muhammad Aziz, a Kurdish student studying for his Master’s degree in the Arabic language, said that the center is very significant for the introduction of the Kurds, and their cause, to the Arab world.

“There hasn’t been such a center to tell of the Kurds in the past,” Aziz told Rudaw. “Now, a center like this in the heart of the Arab world will be of great significance to the Kurds.”

Aziz, who is a close friend of the founder, believes the center can serve as an academic bridge between Kurdistan and Egypt.

“There can even be efforts to open the Kurdish studies department in some Egyptian universities,” he said.

In the past several years, a considerable number of Kurdish students have traveled to Egypt to study for advanced degrees at Cairo universities that rank among the top for their Arabic and Islamic studies.

Aziz hopes that the new center will become a home for Kurdish students in Egypt and a source of information on the Kurds for Egyptian students and scholars.

Abdulfatah says that he plans to gather a number of Kurdish experts and intellectuals at the center to “translate Arabic and Kurdish books and texts so that both people get to know each other’s culture and literature.”

Despite decades of Kurdish struggle against the Arab regimes in Iraq and Syria, Kurdish leaders have largely maintained good diplomatic relations with Egyptian leaders, from the time of Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s.

It was also in Cairo in 1898 that the first Kurdish newspaper was printed.


RUDAW