Hell is Over : Voices of the Kurds After Saddam

Long oppressed and cruelly treated, the Kurds are the world's largest ethnic group without their own nation.

Kurds, who today live in a mountainous area that extends over Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, are a fiercely proud and culturally rich people whose history is indelibly marred by political machinations and betrayal.

Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist Party have brutally oppressed the Kurds of northern Iraq; his systematic attempts to annihilate them included mass murders, the gassing of entire Kurdish villages, torture, imprisonment, rape, and bombings.

Justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq will likely be subject to worldwide debate for years to come, but one fact remains clear: The war had a moral component, to liberate millions from Saddam's totalitarian rule.

For the Kurds of northern Iraq, there is no ambivalence about American involvement.

The war brought them one step closer to freedom. Here is the first inside perspective on what it was like to endure the horrors of Saddam Hussein.