[Cronos]

I have spent some time looking for information on the Kurds. I have found a lot about how they were pushed around and murdered by both Iraqi and Turks. I was in Armenia and got the idea they were thought of as being second class citizens. But no information on their culture or religion.
kurds are mistreated as they r ethnically different -- not semites like the iraqis or Mongoloid like the turks -- they are an aryan, Irani people. Some other Irani people separated from Iran are the Tajiks -- when the Turkic invasions began, the Turks separated the Iranis in the Iranian peninsula from the Tajiks (Tajik is close to Avestan and modern Farsi). When the Mongol invasions began later, the remnants of the Mongols remained in Afghanistan -- to become the Hazaras (literally the "thousands").

That's why Afghanistan is such a hodge-podge of nationalities + the fact that the Brits really sc**** up the Durand line -- so the Pashto (an Indic people) are spread over south Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, the Tjiks are in the north-east (bordering Tajikistan), the Uzbeks (a Turkic people) are in the north west bordering Uzbekistan, some Turkomen (another Turkic people) are near the Uzbeks, the Hazaras are in central Afghanistan, around the Bamiyan region (remember the Bamiyan Buddhas) and there are Irani shias near the border with Iran -- in the Herat province.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Thank you for the good information.
Do you know of any books that cover the smaller tribes in the mid east?
I love history but even though I have traveled to many countries most of my trips were either new crew starts
or to take care of problems.
Most of my meager knowledge is from reading or talking
to workers on the crews I visited. So I sometimes get
skewed information from these people or information that they think would impress me.