The Military Role of the Kurds and their Participation in the May 1941 Movement

The Military Role of the Kurds and their Participation in the May 1941 Movement The Iraqis’ movement in May 1941 is considered as an important event in contemporary history of this country. This movement was led to change and switch the British-Iraqi relations form political conflict to a direct military confrontation. The results of the movement and event streams had an important and extreme impact on the army, in general, military officers and other commissioned and non-commissioned officers of Iraqi-army, in particular. The Kurdish soldiers’ active participation, as an influential ethnic in Iraqi’s army units and formation has its own significance on the mentioned movement and events. These being multiethnic armed forces require some multidimensional studies to find out the role of the main and various ethnic groups and components of the army in that movement. Thus, the current study, which is conducted for the mentioned purpose, aims at addressing the role, participation, and participation approaches of Kurdish soldiers and their influences on the movement in March 1941. For conducting this study, the descriptive and analytical historical research methods are used to answer the following research questions: (1) What and how much was the role of Kurdish soldiers in the army among the event streams of movement in March 1941? (2) How was the influence of Kurds and their status in leading the army, and in different units of Iraqi army during the movement? The study has reached some outcomes which are presented in the last section.