A longstanding friend of the Kurds and a retired foreign service officer died on September 7, 2022.
Born in Wichita Falls in 1930, and educated at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC, Ambassador Korn served at the State Department for thirty-one years, primarily in the Middle East and Africa. Among the positions he held regarding the Middle East, he was director for Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, and served later as chief of mission and ambassador in African countries.
Upon retirement in 1988, he authored seven books, including the first human rights report on Iraq of Human Rights Watch, which covered the plight of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein. During the writing of this report, he came to know my father, who had just founded the Washington Kurdish Institute. David’s advocacy extended to testifying before The Congressional Human Rights Caucus of the U.S. Congress at its Briefing on Human Rights Abuses Against the Kurdish People (1989) and writing op-eds for the Washington Post (“Don’t Ignore Iraq’s Kurds: It’s wrong, and it’s shortsighted policy,” March 7, 1991) and the New York Times (“Iraq’s Criminal Credit Line,” October 26, 1989) when Kurds were being deported to deserts in the south of Iraq, as well as Letters to the Editor (“Selling Out the Kurds – Again,” Washington Post, April 27, 1994) and articles in journals. The timing of these efforts proved especially effective after the Gulf War when the situation of the Kurds came to America’s consciousness and there was need for an objective and fair voice to provide review and analysis of the very complex Kurdish issues in the Middle East and their relationship to U.S. foreign policy.
Under the direction of my father, the Kurdish National Congress published David’s essay, The Men Who Put the Kurds Into Iraq: Percy Cox & Arnold T. Wilson (1993) while the Kurdish Cultural Institute in Teheran published David’s article, “The Last Years of Mustafa Barzani” (Middle East Quarterly, June 1994) in the Persian book about Mustafa Barzani, On the Crown of Storm, by Bahram Valadbaygi (Sal-es Publication, Iran, 886 pages). David also appeared on a Kurdish Rudaw broadcast on the occasion of Barzani’s 100th birthday with his wife, Roberta Cohen, a human rights advocate and scholar who also supported Kurdish causes. David made many friends among Kurdish groups, championed the rights of Kurds from different parts of Kurdistan and provided advice to Kurdish representatives in Washington and the region. He will be sorely missed.
Sierwan Najmaldin Karim
President,
Washington Kurdish Institute