ABSTRACT
The Kurdish fighting forces numbered on the order of at least 20 to 25 thousand and were under the direction of the charismatic septuagenarian leader, Barzani. The ultimate aim of the Kurds may have been to establish a separate and autonomous Kurdish state, but the leadership of the insurgency was, in practice, willing to accept far less. Indeed, under Saladin, Kurdish influences spread to include large areas of present-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and the Soviet Union. Kurdish revolts in eastern Turkey in the 1920s and the 1930s were crushed by Turkish government forces. The Iranian armed forces "pacified" the Kurds in the late 1940s and during the 1950s the Kurdish situation in both Iran and Iraq remained relatively quiescent. Government civil administrators in Kurdish areas were normally to be Kurds and representation of Kurds in the Iraqi legislature, judiciary, and executive organs was to be in accordance with the Kurdish proportion of the country's population.
