Veteran British journalist remembered for giving voice to Kurdish cause

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdistan Region officials have expressed condolences over the passing of David Hirst, a veteran British journalist known for his decade-long service and outspokenness on Middle Eastern affairs, as well as his extensive writing on the Kurdish cause.

Hirst died of cancer at the age of 89 on Monday.

Safeen Dizayee, head of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Department of Foreign Relations, said he is “saddened to learn of the passing of David Hirst, one of the most respected writers and analysts on the Middle East, with a close connection to the Kurds and a decades-long voice of insight and understanding.”

“My sincere condolences to his family, loved ones and colleagues,” said Dizayee in a statement on X.

Born in Cumbria, England, on May 26, 1936, Hirst studied at Oxford University and later at the American University of Beirut during the late 1950s and 1960s. He would go on to become a renowned figure in British foreign correspondence, working for The Guardian for nearly four decades.

Based in Beirut from 1964 until 2001, Hirst provided in-depth coverage of critical events, including the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hirst was also a prolific author best known for his books ‘The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East’ about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and ‘Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East’ which chronicled how Lebanon’s sectarian fragility made it a "battleground" for the proxy wars and geopolitical ambitions of larger regional powers.

Moreover, his outspokenness against corrupt regimes in the Middle East prompted several of them to bar him from entering their countries. Those included former Syrian president Hafez al-Assad (1971-2000) and toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (1979-2003).

On the Kurdish cause, Hirst often described the Kurds as a resilient people whose pursuit of independence was shaped less by their own actions than by regional and international dynamics.

In a 2013 article titled ‘This could be the birth of an independent Kurdish state,’ he wrote, the Kurds “never ceased to dream of independent statehood,” however, “it was ever thus for the Kurds, their destiny as a people shaped less by their own struggles than by the vagaries of regional and international politics, particularly the great Middle Eastern upheavals they periodically produce."

At the time of Hirst’s 2013 piece, disputes between the KRG and Baghdad over oil revenues, budget allocations, and territorial control had escalated into military posturing and threats of armed conflict.

In a previous article he published in 2001 titled ‘Liberated and safe, but not yet free,’ he identified the rivalry between the two main Kurdish parties - the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - as a key vulnerability

“There are two great threats to all this. One is the deep-seated rivalry between the two main parties ... On the day of reckoning, a divided Kurdistan could be a fatally weakened one.”

Reporting from what is now known as Kurdistan Region’s eastern Sulaimani province, Hirst described the region as a “Kurdish safe haven,” then under de facto autonomy protected by a Western-enforced no-fly zone.

The Kurds had “acquired a sort of self-mastery,” he said, which was “the fruit of a long struggle and great suffering.”

Reflecting on the historical context of the Kurdish struggle, he added, "In 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres recognised the Kurdish right to statehood. But the rise of the Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne … put paid to their dreams.

“They have been rising in revolt after bloody, uncoordinated, unavailing revolt ever since.”

Veteran British journalist remembered for giving voice to Kurdish cause

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