Archie Roosevelt Jr. The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad (1947)

Archie Roosevelt Jr. The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad // Middle East Journal. Vol. 1, No. 3. Published by Middle East Institute. — July 1947, pp. 247-269.

The dream of Kurdish nationalists, an independent Kurdistan, was realized on a miniature scale in Iran from December 1945 to December 1946. The origin of the little Kurdish Republic, its brief and stormy history, and its sudden collapse is one of the more illuminating stories of the contemporary Middle East. Its strangely discordant themes of tribal warfare, rival imperialisms and social systems, medieval chivalry and idealistic nationalism well illustrate the complexity of the Kurdish picture, involving as it does a people never united and now split among five nations, none of which is sympathetic to Kurdish nationalist aspirations. …

*Archie Roosevelt Jr., served as Assistant Military Attaché in Tehran from March 1946 to February 1947. During this period he made a special study of the Kurdish situation and was one of four Americans to visit Mahabad during the brief existence of the Kurdish Republic.

Note: Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt Jr. (2/18/1918-5/31/1990; son of Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt (4/9/1894-10/13/1979) and Grace Lockwood), the first grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was a soldier, scholar, polyglot, authority on the Middle East, and career CIA officer. He served as chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s stations in Istanbul, Madrid and London. Roosevelt had a speaking or reading knowledge of at least twenty languages.