What is Happening with the World Kurdish Congress?

[Aslan]

How and when was the World Kurdish Congress (WKC) established? Who is in charge of it? Where is it at now? What will the October meeting look like and what is the role of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in this organization?

Since I have been involved in the recent events of the WKC, and was elected to its board on the 10th of august 2013, naturally many friends directed their WKC-related questions to me. This has required me to clarify my position on the developments with regards to the WKC and explain the current situation for those interested.

Background:

The World Kurdish Congress was established and registered in Sweden as an NGO (Non-governmental Organization) in 2011. Due to the organization’s constitution, the vision of the WKC is “to transform the ideas and knowledge generated from networking and lobbyist activities to bring about global awareness towards Kurdistan as a highly developed nation and to assist Kurdistan to become an active part of the modern and successful society.” Due to its constitution, the supreme organ of the WKC is a congress which is an event when a majority of the paying members gather to elect a new board that will make the strategic decisions. According to its constitution, this must take place at least every other year. Between the two congresses, the board is the supreme organ. According to the constitution there must be members who pay membership fees, participate in the organizations activities and elect and get elected as board members. For more information see the WKC constitution:

http://kurdishcongress.org/more.php?do=about

Activities:

So far, the WKC has in collaboration with the KRG arranged two interdisciplinary scientific events, with the first taking place in the Netherlands in 2011 and the second the following year in Erbil. The third scientific congress is going to be held in Stockholm, Sweden, between the October 11-13 this year.

Recent developments and problems:

Before August 10 this year, when a new board was elected, there had been no democratic electoral process or any other activity with regards to the above mentioned WKC constitution. In other words, there was no formal election of the board members, registration of fee-paying members, arranging of general assemblies or annual meetings and so forth. Thus, it can be said that a lot had remained only on paper or on the WKC website with no transparency or accountability in the decision-making process, with one or two individuals arbitrarily deciding the various aspects of the WKC. In fact, it can be emphasized that the WKC had been run as a personal project in which one person decided everything. After repeated calls by various members to abide by the constitution, the president and founder of the WKC, Dr Alan Dilani, finally agreed to a democratic election process. In a meeting on June 17 on the premises of the Swedish parliament several members, including Dr Dilani, agreed on a date for the election of a board for the WKC. A nomination committee consisting of Ali Barhoon, Newzad Hirori, Dr Osman Aytar and Sadin Sam got down to the task of contacting Kurdish scholars, inviting suitable candidates and spreading the information about the upcoming election of board members to be held at the Kurdish Library in Stockholm on August 10.


According to the Nomination Committee, the new board of WKC would even start to define the membership criteria of the WKC more precisely and actually register its members, revise the constitution and suggest a suitable structure for the WKC to be presented, discussed and accepted in the upcoming annual meeting on October 13. More than 50 members from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Canada, USA and Finland participated either physically or online in the August 10 meeting. A report on the WKC’s activities and current situation was presented by Dr Alan Dilani at this meeting and various issues such as the structure and aims and vision of the WKC were discussed. The election of a new board was initiated at the meeting and 13 people were elected as members of the new board of the WKC.

Following this, the board arranged its first meeting to take place on August 22 at the Kurdish Library in Stockholm. In accordance with the agenda of the meeting, the board was to determine the various tasks at hand and areas of responsibility and form a preliminary work plan. From the very beginning of the meeting Dr Dilani questioned the legitimacy of the new board and prevented the meeting from progressing along the points on the agenda. This was despite the fact that Dr Dilani had been present at all the previous meetings mentioned above and had personally participated in and become a candidate in the election of the new board and had become elected as one of its members. Dr Dilani undermined the legitimacy of the elected board by arguing that there had been a misunderstanding in the nomination process and that the whole point had been to elect a working group to assist in the organization of WKC 2013. He said he did not favor a new board since a board already existed and that it would be extremely inconsiderate to replace the old board in this manner. During the meeting Dr Dilani also rejected the various attempts to find a solution and to include the previous board members in the process, instead thoroughly questioning the legitimacy and necessity of the new board of WKC This behavior created a very unpleasant and frustrating environment at the meeting, and resulted in the failure of the meeting, despite over three hours of tight discussions and efforts of the remaining board members to find a solution to this artificial problem. Throughout that meeting Dr Dilani showed no interest in collaboration and group-work and pushed the boundaries of decent behavior. He continues to behave as the president of the WKC and contact KRG and other organs as representative of the organization without having any mandate from the new board to do so.

Message:

I would like to express my gratitude to all those who showed their support and faith by voting for me to be elected as a board member of the WKC. I hope they will accept my apologies but neither I nor the other board members felt that we could continue our work in an environment where the basic rules of democracy were not recognized or respected. Not recognizing the votes cast by WKC members and the elected board is neither legal nor ethical and the democratic process has been undermined and sabotaged. This unethical and damaging stance will ultimately have negative effects on the WKC and its reputation as well as the KRG. This behavior thoroughly undermines the important and constructive efforts to involve the Kurdish Diaspora in the development and democratization of Kurdistan.

Comments


4 24 aram | 23/9/2013
1. WKC was initiated, registered and established by Alan Dilani and he has made its active survival possible thanks to his full time dedication. He deserves unconditionally respect for his efforts. 2. Initially, the idea was that as part of WKC activities to organize one conference (call it congress) every year where researchers can present their work and discuss research ideas and cooperation. In addition, a few seminars could be organized at different places with strong impacts. A third area of activity was creation of archives of published research and making it available to researchers. A fourth area of activity was creation and assembling databases and making them available to researchers. 3. A Scientific Board was discussed composed of well-known scientists to suggest research strategy and program and advise on quality of WKC activities. Since we have not many Kurds who qualify, it should be based on invitations and from outside our community. This would have guaranteed that such misunderstanding of our intentions will not happen. 4. Since the tax and bank laws of Sweden requires the WKC to be registered, it led to registration of WKC by Kak Alan and creation of all subsequent problems. 5. I wish also to clarify that we have abused the word science and call ourselves ‘Kurdish Scientists’. There is no such things and we are still primitive and free rider people with ZERO contribution to human development. If you wish to know who is scientist look at this website (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Je ... _laureates) with 181 Jewish Nobel Laureates. The Jewish people make up only 0.2% of the world population but have won more than 20% of the Nobel prizes. Those are scientists and certainly not Kurds of our type. 6. It seems we never learn from our dark history and keep doing our outmost to derail whatever seem to work. It is necessary to distinguish between the Swedish “Akademikernas Forbund, Student Union, Labor Union …. organizations” and WKC. WKC is not a student union nor political party with committees and elections. We need 2-3 dedicated persons who organize the yearly conference and maintain the web-site. These people must be available every day at least 12 hours round the year. There is no need for all these useless and blocking committees, especially committees composed of people with no relevant experience. To make the story short and effective, given you still want the Board to be composed of Kurds, I suggest those who are interested in contributing to writing research strategy, research programs and monitoring the WKC activities and advise the congress organizers to send me: (i) their CV, (ii) scanned certificates of their PHD, (iii) employment (only at University or Research Institute) and (iv) Associate Professor or Full Professor qualifications. I will then classify the candidates based on their: (i) years of employment, (ii) research publications (only in English and preferably SSI and SSCI listed), (iii) advised MSc and PhD thesis, and introduce them at the congress as candidates eligible for the task. I suggest the material to be sent to me before October 1, 2013 to have sufficient time to complete the ranking and provide my recommendations to the congress. This will hopefully put an end to the e-mail circulations, waste of our time and leads to identification of qualified people for the task. Please circulate this mail as soon as possible to the network of potential candidates (with PhD worksing at University or Research Institute and with minimum of Associate Professor qualification) and remind them about the deadline of October 1, 2013 to send in applications. Please note that I have NO desire to receive any replies to this e-mail or CC of e-mails circulated, other than application from eligible candidate for the Board of WKC. Hope my wish is respected. Best wishes, Almas Heshmati Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Room K526, Sogang University, 35 Baekbeom-ro (Sinsu-dong #1), Mapo-gu, Seoul 121-742 Korea, Phone: +82-2-705-8771, +82-10-4513-1712, E-mail: almas.heshmati@hotmail.com
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21 1 Atheist | 24/9/2013
@aram: I have no idea on what basis you have gathered your information. It is very obvious to me that you are not presenting any facts. You totally dismiss Kurds and claim that there are no worthy scientists among them! Shocking!!! Did you know that some of the best and brightest scientists and professors in North America are Kurdish? These are people at the cutting edge of scientific research. In my won city of residence in Canada we have seven world class Kurdish scientists. These people are respected world wide. Obviously you don't know these facts. So, please stop making nonsense statements about Kurds not being worthy scientists. Yours truly is part of top 1% Canadian scientists who has published his scientific work in the most prestigious scientific journals. And, I am proudly Kurdish. Perhaps you've done your research in Pizza stores...
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13 1 Ahmed | yesterday at 05:37
By the way the whole idea and project description was the idea of a very bright and active Kurdish scholar that is Kak Ali Gahramani in the Netherlands. He set up the Kurdish academic network and from there came this idea, but what Alan Dilani did, he took the project and started gathering fund and everything on his own. Then all the Kurdish academic network helped this guy from a mass failure but he kept doing unforgivable mistakes. This GUy in one word is a Psychopath !
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6 1 Karim | 19 hours ago
Dear Mr. Almas Heshmati, With all due respect, I do find some of your statements regarding Kurdish nation inappropriate, offensive and misplaced. I do understand your frustration with some of the recent developments around WKC, but it is best to resort to reason rather than losing control and diminishing a nation to nothing. Dismissing a nation as a whole and counting it as free rider, primitive with zero contributions to humanity is not prudent. I do also strongly disagree that we lack qualified Kurdish candidates to fill the organizing and steering committees of a scientific congress. On the contrary, I do feel that the scientific capability of the Kurdish people is growing very quickly. Personally, I have had the opportunity to meet many Kurdish luminaries in various fields of science who are well qualified to take upon such a challenge. I strongly suggest you to retract some of the statements you made in your post above. Respectfully, Karim Arabi, Ph.D. karim_arabi@hotmail.com