But the key to Kurdish identity is not so much a common past, language, racial history, or religion; Kurdistan has seen too much upheaval over the millennia for the textbook bonds of nationhood to apply. Instead, it is the independent character and consciousness forged by hardscrabble lives in the mountains, a frontier mindset where honor and brotherhood count for more than what God you believe in or what language you happen to speak. The identity survived thousands of years of wars and invasions and the division of Kurdish lands into parts of five countries by European powers divvying up the
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