Jash (), or "" or The Light Regiments or fursan is a type of collaborator, usually a military unit composed of people of Kurdish descent that cooperates with enemy combatants against the Kurdish Army, Kurdish rebels, or the Kurdish civilian population. The term is considered derogatory in a cultural sense, in much the same way as the use of the term '' quisling'' in the Western world.

History

The Light regiments were first established in the 1940s, during the

1943 Barzani revolt The 1943–1945 Barzani revolt was a Kurdish nationalistic insurrection in the Kingdom of Iraq, during World War II. The revolt was led by Mustafa Barzani and was later joined by his older brother Ahmed Barzani, the leader of the previous Ku ...

in northern Iraq, then it flourished and start to take an important role in the 1960s during the First Iraqi–Kurdish War, when General

Khaleel Jassim Major-General Khalil Jassim Dabbagh or ( ar, اللواء خليل جاسم الدباغ 1916–1969) was an Iraqi senior officer from the first era of the old Iraqi Army, the Commander of the Mosul zone, the Commander of the Light regiments Ja ...

was in the command of these regiments and associated them with many Iraqi Army operations against the Kurd rebels, specially in Amadiya in 1965 and Rawandiz 1966. During the

al-Anfal campaign The Anfal campaign; ku, شاڵاوی ئەنفال or the Kurdish genocide was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988, at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rur ...

, the military campaign of genocide and looting commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid, al-Majid's orders informed ''jash'' units that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even Kurdish women was legal.Jonathan C. Randal, ''After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters with Kurdistan'', 356 pp., Westview Press, 1998, , p.231 The term "Jash Police" was used by the Kurds towards the Iraq's local Kurdish police militias in 1944. In the latter half of the 20th century, Kurds who became collaborators with the Iraqi government were referred to as ''jash''. The number of jash increased to "as many as 150,000 by 1986" as a method of avoiding military participation in the Iran–Iraq War. The jash then realigned with the rest of the Kurdish people during the 1991 Kurdish uprising. It has been stated by a number of Kurds that "the jash had been completely forgiven".

References

{{Reflist Ethnic and religious slurs Kurdish culture Treason

History

See also

References