Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The Kurds have a long and bloody history of oppression. They never gained their own state of Kurdistan after World War I, and the Kurdish people found themselves partitioned between Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, all of whom treated them with suspicion. . . . The Kurds were left without shelter, clean water, food, and medical supplies in the mountains in the middle of winter. . . . The Iraqis were ordered not to fly aircraft in northern Iraq. 30 countries provided aid. For the Kurds, however, coalition protection provided, for the first time perhaps, the prospect of some form of autonomy or even statehood." [Furtado: 1001 Days]