When the Borders Bleed

Throughout their history, the Kurdish people have been the victims of geopolitics. Caught in the middle of wars and conflicts in the oil-rich territory where the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey converge, exploited and betrayed first by colonial nations and then by Cold War superpowers, they have most recently endured genocidal campaigns waged against them by Saddam Hussein.

This stunning visual essay - one hundred photographs taken in locales ranging from Turkey, Iraq, and Israel to Britain and Germany - brings the Kurdish struggle for survival into sharp, powerfully affecting focus. We see the guerrillas training for war, mothers and children living in the bombed-out rubble of their homes, victims of chemical warfare, expatriates in Europe preserving their culture in the face of sometimes violent xenophobia.

And in a cogent introduction, Christopher Hitchens traces the little-known history of the Kurds - a narrative filled with oppression, exploitation, and betrayal - helping us understand the legacy that has given rise to the Kurds' desperate self-reliance that finds expression in the adage: "The Kurds have no friends - no friends but the mountains."