An award-winning journalist John Cookson gave an interview to Washington Kurdish Institute regarding his book The Kurds: My Friends in the North.
Cookson said that his interest in Kurdistan began during 1980s when persecution by the Saddam Regime intensified against Kurds. He first visited the region in 1993. Then last year, Cookson had the privilege of travelling with the Pope on his historic trip to Iraq, which included a visit to Kurdistan.
In 1993, when Cookson was working for Skynews, he pursued a couple kidnapped by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in order to interview them.
“We met [with PKK members] outside the town of Batman ..and to our astonishment they rolled carpets out by the side of the road and invited me on the cameraman to get into a carpet each. We hesitated, of course, we didn’t know who these guys were, but in pursuit of the story, this is the kind of mad thing that you do. I was rolled up in one carpet and the cameraman was rolled up in another carpet. And then we were put into the back of a truck and off, we went up into the mountains,” Cookson explained.
“We came across a Turkish army road block. The Turks started to open fire on the truck, but we were moving so fast. We got away and went up the mountain,” added Cookson.
He did not get the interview with the kidnapped couple, but instead he managed to spend 48 hours conducting interviews with PKK guerrillas in their stronghold camp.
Cookson began writing The Kurds: My Friends in the North when Donald Trump withdrew support to the Kurds, in 2019.
In the book, he tells of his encounters with Kurdish guerrillas in mountain hideouts, his travels with Kurdish smugglers, and for the first time documents how Iraqi Kurdistan was saved from being overrun by jihadis in the summer of 2014.
Starting his career in Fleet Street, Cookson spent 30 years as a senior correspondent at Sky News, Fox News, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, Euronews and African start-up Arise News.
The whole interview is available here.
