Tony Gonzalez

The Tennessean, Nashville

NASHVILLE — Kurdish families living in Nashville shudder at every news report on the intensifying conflict in northern Iraq.

They have mourned the deaths of relatives caught in the armed conflict. They have feared for the safety of relatives either engaged in the fighting or among the thousands fleeing for safety.

Now, despite the helplessness of not knowing the fate of people they love, they have found a way to help.

Surpassing expectations, the Salahadeen Center of Nashville — a focal point of the largest community of Kurds in America — has collected more than 700 boxes of clothing, hygiene products and medical supplies to be shipped to refugee camps, mosques and school buildings overflowing with displaced men, women and children in the Duhok area of northern Iraq.

"When this crisis happened in Kurdistan, there were many people, as a result of attacks, that escaped from the cities. They were in a very hard situation," said Nawzad Hawrami, office manager at the Salahadeen Center.

Since Aug. 8, volunteers have invested more than 2,000 hours into organizing the wave of donations from local Kurds, health clinics and faith groups. The center also accepted a truckload of goods from Dallas, home to the nation's second-largest Kurdish enclave.

"We told everybody," Hawrami said. "It reflects very good brotherhood in the Nashville community. We don't feel alone."

For some that banding together has been made necessary by complex and foreboding developments.

Although the Kurds have gained new backing in their decades-long effort to create an independent country, their villages have come under recent attack by the Sunni militant group known as the Islamic State.

It's the latest violence for an ethnic group that, since the early 1960s, has known more years of fighting than peace. The latest threat drew an especially dramatic response this month, including U.S. airstrikes in support of Kurdish peshmerga fighting forces on the ground — the first American military involvement in Iraq since 2011.

A group of Kurds with especially deep connections to the conflict has monitored the developments. Watching from Nashville, former peshmerga fighters — who came to America in the 1990s as refugees — said U.S. involvement has been crucial.

"If it wasn't for the United States, we would be in a very bad situation," Tahir Salman Sadullah, 73, said through an interpreter.

'No fright'

Pershmerga is a Kurdish word that translates to "those who confront death," and it has come to represent the forces of resistance in northern Iraq. For the former peshmerga who know the areas of conflict well, the attacks on Kurds trigger emotions that go back half a century.

Sadullah first defended his people around 1965 and was called on to fight off and on until 1988. In the late 1980s, Iraqi attacks, including chemical warfare, killed tens of thousands of Kurds, forcing Sadullah and others into refugee camps in Turkey.

"They killed so many of the young Kurdish people," Sadullah said. "They were always hurting us in every way they can, bombing us, and hurting us and attacking our villages. We had to (fight). There was no fright to have in that moment."

Sadullah and three other peshmerga who spoke with The Tennessean recounted seeing executions in their villages.

Accounts have not been as dire this summer. But the men said they watch international news broadcasts for information with great intensity. Among the group, they know at least four younger peshmerga fighters killed in recent weeks.

Sadullah said he knew one of the men from time spent together in a refugee camp. Local friends and family members gathered Aug. 23 for a day of traditional mourning at the Nashville home of the fallen soldier's brother.

"It's in our culture," said Nazar Sharanshi, a 38-year-old interpreter and Kurdish independence activist. "It doesn't matter where you are if something happens to your family. Our people are back in Kurdistan."

Sharanshi awaits word on another neighbor caught by the Islamic State.

"We don't know where he is," he said. "We haven't seen his body."

Seeking independence

Amid the conflict, the Kurds have found optimism about gaining independence.

Some allegiances have shifted over the decades, but the Kurds have enjoyed good relations with the U.S.

Peshmerga forces were credited with helping locate Saddam Hussein, and the Kurdish region embraced democracy.

Now, the peshmerga men say that if weapons the U.S. promised to Kurdish forces can reach the fighting front, then the Islamic State could be rebuffed. Re-establishing stability, combined with growing calls for Kurdish independence, could make the difference, Sadullah said.

"Hopefully, it's going to get much better and Kurdistan will get independence," he said. "Of course, that's all of Kurds' dream."

Contributing: The Associated Press