International writer Randall Krzak addresses one of the world’s saddest ongoing tragedies in The Kurdish Connection, a thriller about the plight of the Kurdish people and a desperate plan to free them from their fate.
In a world awash with refugees, perhaps no greater tragedy exists than the ongoing fate of the Kurds of the Middle East, roughly 30 million sect members spread between Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Connected by language, religion, and history, this group has no country to call their own. The Kurds have been the subject of several attempts by international agreements to help them create a haven, the most recent in northern Iraq’s no-fly zone. Meanwhile, all four host countries have ruthlessly suppressed Kurdish hopes and dreams politically and especially militarily.
Among the most vicious suppression efforts were those of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who used deadly sarin nerve gas against them, most notably in the village of Halabja, in which up to 5,000 Kurds perished and another 10,000 were wounded.
The Kurdish Connection takes us deep inside that struggle.
Two young Iraqi Kurds, Dersim and Ismet, scavengers by trade and refugees from Halabja with searing memories from their youth of Saddam’s gas attack, accidentally stumble on a large cache of sarin gas canisters leftover by Saddam’s army. The pair are stunned by the possibilities of what can be done with it. They, in turn, make their finding known to a group of Kurdish mullahs who find themselves torn by the possibilities of how the weapons can be used.
Eventually, they agree that the sarin gas might help them free a powerful mullah named Muhammed Baziyan, imprisoned for many years under tight security by the Turks. The Kurds believe that this one man could be the leader to pull them together and unite them as a single voice.
Meanwhile, half a world away, a new international counterterrorism group called Bedlam assembles in Washington D.C. to explore a rumor from on-the-ground intelligence that an Iraqi sarin gas cache exists. Its goal becomes a frantic effort to locate the canisters, disable or destroy them, and stop them from falling into the wrong hands.
With few intelligence assets on the ground, Bedlam assigns their operatives to travel to Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Using various identities such as amateur archeologists, members of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders), and cultural tourists, they use their limited information plus sophisticated chemical detectors to try and locate the deadly cache.
At the same time, the mullahs make plans to use the gas to disrupt Turkish military forces and other pressure tactics, including kidnapping foreigners to show the world some of the brutal tactics used by military forces against Kurds. In the most recently reported event, they want to show the world how Syrian troops viciously put down a peaceful Kurdish demonstration over bakery prices, which the Syrian government claimed was an attack instigated by the Kurds.
The mullahs’ overall plan is to instigate several near-simultaneous attacks in Turkey to draw out Turkish military forces and disguise their main effort, to free the mullah Baziyan from his well-guarded Turkish prison. Using sarin gas to kill Turkish troops seems like a good plan, but no one wishes to harm civilians. Not everyone agrees with the deployment of sarin gas.
The action is set against the exotic, fairytale-like landscape of Capadoccia, Turkey, with its soaring natural towers, and Gobekli Tepi, an archeological dig of an ancient temple built 6,000 years before Stonehenge. Equipped with sophisticated chemical detectors, built James Bond-like into their gear, the Bedlam teams ready themselves for their mission. A further refinement of Bedlam’s plans is to substitute phony sarin containers for their more dangerous counterparts.
Randall Krzak delivers an exciting cat-and-mouse game between the Bedlam team, suspicious Kurds, and equally suspicious Turkish government spies.
The Kurdish Connection soars in the detailed accounts of towns and villages, the people there, and even the weaponry and vehicles used. Readers will find themselves in the middle of the action as the Kurds successfully bomb a Turkish oil field, terrorize a soccer stadium, and stage a murderous assault on the prison where the mullah is kept. Krzak takes us into the dank caves and sewers where the Bedlam teams go to locate and sabotage the horrific sarin canisters from being used by anyone.
Above all, The Kurdish Connection offers readers a compassionate look at one of the world’s most intractable social conflicts, wrapped in the pages of a thriller that will keep readers glued to its pages until the final sentence. The Kurdish Connection is the first book in Krzak’s Bedlam series. Please read our reviews of the following books by clicking on their titles: Dangerous Alliance and Carnage in Singapore.
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