Xenophon on the Kurds

In the March of the Ten Thousand, Xenophon had to pass thru Kurdistan, and Wikipedia notes this:

A people called the Carduchoi are mentioned in Xenophon's Anabasis. They inhabited the mountains north of the Tigris in 401 BC, living in well-provisioned villages. They were enemies to the king of Persia,[10] as were the Greek mercenaries with Xenophon, but their response to thousands of armed and desperate strangers was hostile. They had no heavy troops who could face the battle-hardened hoplites, but they used longbows and slings effectively, and for the Greeks the "seven days spent in traversing the country of the Carduchians had been one long continuous battle, which had cost them more suffering than the whole of their troubles at the hands of the king [of Persia] and Tissaphernes put together."[11]

And remember: Saladin was a Kurd...

Right now, the Kurds have pretty well run their own area since Bush I stopped Saddam from bombing and gassing them after Desert Storm.

But now the Syrian Kurds have pretty well kicked out both sides of that civil war, so might join them.

If the Iraqi Kurds vote for independence, the result could be messy: For there are a lot of Kurds in Turkey  (more than in Iraq) and also Iran who might want to join them... but both these countries  aren't about to let these folks leave.

and with the war against ISIS and the civil war in Syria going on, the US is worrying that this will just be one more complication to mess things up in that area.

the modern boundaries only go back to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the boundary lines made up by Europeans in the Versailles treaty.

and read about the one million Kurdish refugees in Europe, most of whom fled Saddam Hussein's genocides.

One factoid there are quite a few in Nashville Tennessee 

and here is another interesting fact:

The urdish diaspora can vote via the internet... and the first e-vote came from China.