The break-up of colonial empires in Asia and Africa since World War II; the rise of sternly nationalistic regimes in many non-western countries; the great unpopularity of America's undertakings in Viet Nam; and persisting international tensions have all contributed to the difficulties faced by American social scientists engaged in research abroad. These difficulties have mounted so in recent years that the central problem for North American social scientists could soon become not what to study, but where to study; and one may expect the situation to grow worse, not better. In the Middle East, recent hostilities have made North American social scientists less than welcome in many countries; while “Operation Camelot” in Latin America --when Department of Defense funds were secretly employed to support allegedly “pure” research--did the cause of honest social science much harm.

At present the Kurds occupy parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the USSR. As the map shows, the area in which the Kurds predominate is a long are extending roughly northwest to southeast in a band of varying width from central Turkey to western Iran in the Kermanshah and Shāhābād regions. In these last areas, the historic road from Baghdad to Hamadān and beyond divides the Kurds from their Iranian cousins, the Lurs.

Within this extensive, mountainous area the Kurds speak an Iranian language divided into two groups of dialects--northern Kurdish, or Kurmandji, and southern Kurdish, called Kurdi. The dividing line between these two groups of dialects run roughly from the southwest corner of Lake Rezaiyeh to the town of Rowanduz in northern Iraq. Linguists consider Kurdish to be a northwestern Iranian language and therefore quite distinct from Persian, a southwestern language.