History

Following the 1992 Parliamentary Elections 

in Kurdistan and the establishment of the first government, I founded the Badlisy Center for Kurdish Studies (BCKS) in the United States. The primary goal of BCKS was to educate the American academic community and policymakers about the Kurds—their history, language, and culture—using an academic, non-political approach. BCKS organized two international conferences: one in 1993 in Washington, D.C., and another in 1998 in Princeton, New Jersey. In addition to these conferences, BCKS hosted numerous panels and lectures across the U.S. and Europe, filling a small academic gap in Kurdish studies in the U.S.

In 1996, I transitioned BCKS’s activities into the College of Social Sciences at Florida State University (FSU), where I collaborated with colleagues to establish the Kurdish Studies Program as part of FSU’s international programs. Around the same time, the economic situation in Kurdistan was dire due to the dual embargoes: the international embargo on Iraq following its invasion of Kuwait and Iraq’s internal embargo on Kurdistan following the region’s move toward self-rule in 1992.

In response to the humanitarian needs of the Kurds, the **American Society for Kurds, Inc. (ASK) was founded in 1996 by myself, Ms. Jannet Rogers, and Dr. Michael Basile, while we were all living in Tallahassee, Florida. Initially, ASK focused on providing humanitarian aid to the people of Kurdistan in the late 1990s. However, it soon expanded its efforts to include projects that promoted human rights and democracy.

Notable ASK activities in 2002 included:

🔵  Publishing 1,000 copies of two books on journalism, conducting two workshops, and training 10 students in journalism, with funding

from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). ASK also translated the "Handbook for Journalists" from English to Kurdish and

published 1,000 copies, funded by the World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC).

🔵   Providing health and education services to 100,000 children through a project funded by the U.S. Department of State.

🔵   Supporting college freshmen by covering their basic needs, a project funded by the Low Wood Fund.

🔵   Training Kurdish political party members, members of the Kurdish Regional Government and municipal governments, academicians

and  key media representatives in K Kurdistan, Iraq on the concept of a free market and its mechanisms in democratic society. This    

project  was funded by Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).

🔵   Monitoring a fulfillment of winning pollical parties of their promises during the elections of (2008) in Kurdistan Parliament and

performance of few ministries funded by NED.

ASK operated three offices in Kurdistan—Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah—alongside its headquarters in Tallahassee. The organization attracted esteemed scholars to its Board of Directors, including Dr. Peter Garretson, Dr. Kamal Tawfiq, Dr. Hans Plendl, and Aras Aziz. Each Kurdistan office had a director, with Mr. Rebin Rasul serving as the ASK-IQ Director.

In 2012, the Board decided to suspend operations in Kurdistan following Dr. Salah Aziz's appointment as the founding president of Komar University of Science and Technology. By 2022, instability and economic hardship had affected the region, prompting ASK to resume operations after registering in Florida and obtaining tax-exempt status from the IRS. Currently, ASK operates a single office in Sulaymaniyah.